Raymond Robins' Own Story

In the last days of 1917, Russia declared that it had uncovered a plot by the American ambassador to undermine the new Lenin and Trotsky revolutionary regime. It was a scandal of immense proportions at the time, yet one that has been all but forgotten. As has one of the primary players: Colonel Raymond Robins, then head of the American Red Cross in Russia, who became a minor celebrity thanks to his role in events in Moscow.

Who was Raymond Robins? What had he done-or not done-to compel one high-ranking Russian revolutionary to say, as quoted in The New York Times in June 1920: "All the foreigners and Americans were against us except Raymond Robins. He was the only true and faithful friend we had among the foreigners and he was the only one who understood our aims and fully sympathized with us..."

This obscure but captivating work, first published in 1920, reads like a political thriller in its illumination of one of the most mysterious events in 20th century history.

WILLIAM HARD (1878-1962) also wrote Theodore Roosevelt, A Tribute (1899) and The Women of Tomorrow (1911).