The Lenin plot The unknown story of America's war against Russia

Journalist Carr (Operation Whisper) delivers a lively, if somewhat speculative, account of the U.S.-concocted plot to remove Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and install an "Allied-friendly dictator" in Russia during WWI. Shortly after the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917, the U.S. Consul General in Moscow, DeWitt Clinton Poole, left the city on a covert mission to hire a Cossack army to overthrow the new government. The plan, which had the approval of President Woodrow Wilson and the backing of France and Britain (all of whom wanted to draw Russia back into the Allied war effort), also involved American-Russian tractor salesman Xenophon Kalamatiano, who recruited the Red Army's head of communications as an informant, and a French saboteur hired to blow up Soviet bridges, airfields, and ammunition dumps. Piecing together the increasingly convoluted and elaborate scheme through newspaper accounts, archival records, letters, and biographies, Carr contends that it failed because of a lack of funds and disagreements among Cossack leaders, though he admits some pieces of the puzzle are still missing, including whether the plotters were behind Fanny Kaplan's attempted assassination of Lenin in summer of 1918. Fluidly written and impressively researched, this espionage tale delights. Agent: Andrew Lownie, Andrew Lownie Literary. (Oct.)

Deep dive into an episode of history that is little known but deserves more exposure. In 1918, Lenin withdrew Russia from the war against the Triple Entente, having agreed secretly with Germany to do so. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, "a bored pacifist who doodled and daydreamed in Cabinet meetings until Lenin seized power," concocted a plot to overthrow Lenin, install a leader friendly to the Allies, and bring Russia back into the war. Woodrow Wilson, writes journalist Carr, overcame his scruples about self-determination and signed off on the plan. Soon, Allied spies were in Moscow gathering information and concocting schemes; one of them, the author suggests, served as the model for Ian Fleming's James Bond. At the same time, an Allied expeditionary force landed in Archangel, in the Russian Arctic, and engaged with Bolshevik forces, who fought vigorously across a broad front. On the military front, the author shows, the Allied effort was doomed for many reasons: Americans were under British command, never a good formula given national resentments; Allied soldiers of all nations questioned what they were doing in Russia, a former ally, especially when Germany and its allies surrendered; mutinies sprang up along the Allied lines; and when the soldiers finally returned, the U.S. and U.K. governments took pains to sweep the whole thing under the table, undervaluing the efforts of the blameless fighters. Carr's cast of characters includes some improbable figures: a prison interrogator who later moved to France and invented Chanel No. 5 "to capture the essence of snow melting on black earth"; an American journalist who served two separate prison terms in Russia and then teamed up with filmmaker Merian C. Cooper to make the vaunted documentary Grass; and a "hardened terrorist" named Fanny Kaplan who resisted first the czar and then the Bolsheviks, plotting an almost successful assassination of Lenin. Some reads like history, some like a spy novel, and it's always eye-opening. A well-crafted exposé that suggests that the Cold War began half a century earlier than we've been told. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.