Thinking classes exiled on Lenin’s secret ships

The Philosophy Steamer, by Lesley Chamberlain, Atlantic Books, €36.50.

In September 1922, a group of families gathered on the dock of Vasilievsky Ostrov in north-west Petrograd.

While the adults dealt with the political police and customs men trying to confiscate or tax anything they could, a policeman casually ruffled the curls of any young girls present to search for hidden jewels.

These 70 families were all deemed to be ‘undesirables’ by the then ...