S. Martin Shelton – Page 11 – Retired U.S.Navy Captain, Novelist

What compelled me to pen this historical novel, St. Catherine’s Crown, about the Russian Revolution?

I chose to write about the Russian Revolution—the overthrow of the monarchy and installation of an atheistic Communist regime—to refresh our minds of its monumental impact on world events for seventy years. The Bolshevik’s leaders—Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Felix Dzerzhinsky head of the Soviet secret police, for examples—exercised their unmitigated evil and bilious paranoia by slaughtering some twenty- to thirty-million Russians. The malevolent cruelty and manifestly unnecessary regicide, is a horror of their rabid Communist orthodoxy that engendered the slaughtered of Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra and their five children, including their youngest daughter, Anastasia.

The Comintern apparatchiks spread its tenancies worldwide to overthrow western democracies and corrupt its citizens with agitprop in the media, films, and universities. For several decades, we fought the Soviets in Winston Churchill’s “Cold War,” oftentimes on the cusp of a real nuclear war.

Since I was a nipper, I had interest in Anastasia because of the films, stories, and flimflam hustlers hawking the fiction that she survived the regicide and was living incognito in some exotic locale. During my naval career and after retirement, I studied Russian/Soviet and modern-day Chinese history.

Scribing St. Catherine’s Crown was a classic evolution process. It started as a short story about fifteen-years ago. I combine my two interests: Russia and China into one narrative. I started with the tale of the regicide and the then acceptable idea that Anastasia survived and escaped to a refuge in China.

As a young lad, I enjoyed stories about the orient—especially the comic strip titled “Terry and the Pirates,” by Milton Caniff—who featured such gorgeous femme fatales as the Dragon Lady, Burma, and CopperCanyon.

My tale grew into a novella as I developed Anastasia’s China adventures with blackguards that included the femme fatale, Black Orchid: whom I based on The Dragon Lady.

For reasons I cannot explain I could not leave this tale alone. Then several years ago, I stumbled on an article about the Czech Legion—never heard of this outfit. Did research, got interested, and decided to incorporate the Legion into my narrative. My novella evolved into a complete historical novel.

St. Catherine’s Crown will be available for purchase in August 2013.

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Llich Lenin
(1870-1924)

Lenin was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Russia—a town on the Volga river about 850 miles east of Moscow. He became a leftist revolutionary after the OHKRANA (the Czar’s secret police) arrested and executed his brother in 1887. He attending the Kazan State University, but he was suspended for his anti-Tsarist protests. Eventually he earned a law degree, and embraced radical politics and became an avid Marxist.

In 1893, while in St. Petersburg, the OHKRANA arrested Lenin for sedition and exiled him to Siberia for three years. After his release, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, and lived in Western Europe. In 1909, Lenin published Materialism and Empirio-criticism that set the course for socialist revolution, and became the philosophic foundation of Marxism-Leninism. At the start of World War I in 1914, he was living in Switzerland and in poverty.

The February Revolution of 1917, precipitated by the Russian military disasters on the Eastern Front and the revolutionary chaos forced, Czar Nicholas II to abdicate. Germany seized this opportunity to weaken the Russia war effort by sending the rabble-rouser Lenin to St. Petersburg in a sealed train.

Lenin realized that his Bolshevik party had the advantage and must seize the moment. From the steps of the post and telegraph building, he shouted the mantra of the Marxist revolution: “Workers of the world unite! Throw off your chains. You are the vanguard of the proletariat. Today, the armed revolution has begun, We will have peace, land, and bread.”

This is the locomotive that brought Lenin to St. Petersburg in 1917

Lenin in disguise in 1917: clean-shaven and with wig

Then, much to Lenin’s chagrin, the Petrograd Soviet, with its Menshevik and Socialist majority, elects Alexander Kerensky as minister of justice and commander-in-chief of the army. In effect, Kerensky becomes the premier of the provisional government. He promises democracy, abolition of the death penalty, and a continuation of the war.

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970)

The provisional government under Kerensky isolated the Czar and his family at the TsarskoeSeloPalace—about thirty miles from St. Petersburg. And, on March 21, Kerensky placed Czar Nicholas and his family under house arrest.

In late October, Lenin’s Bolsheviks launch the second revolution with the goal to overthrow Kerensky’s provisional government. Bolshevik troops invade the Duma of Deputies in Petrograd and arrest the top two hundred leaders, including Kerensky and Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

On November 8, the Bolsheviks’ All-Russian Congress of Soviets elected Lenin chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars—in essence, the head of government. Lenin pronounced, “Communism is Soviet power. “Henceforth the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will be totalitarian Communism.” Bolshevik commissars throughout Russia establish socialist Soviet Councils of Workers’ Deputies to govern provinces and cities. Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka begins the Red Terror.

On March 3, 1918, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending its participation in World War.

Lenin ruled the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the next seven years with an iron-hand dictatorship. His secret police, the Cheka, reigned unchecked and murdered an estimated 2,000,000 people—anyone who opposed him, or his revolutionary policies.

The Royal family was under house arrest in the “House of Special Purpose” in Ekaterinburg, Siberia, On 17 July 1918 Lenin signed the regicide telegram that ordered his Cheka lieutenant to eliminate the Czar, the Empress and their five children and others in their entourage.

Lenin died of a massive stroke on 21^st January 1924.

It’s a gloomy day in the Kremlin and Lenin sits at his desk in my historical novel St. Catherine’s Crown. He solicits comments from his revolutionary comrades about the regicide telegram he has just drafted. When he asks for your opinion, try to dissuade him from signing that telegram—the regicide will engender the enmity of the western nations. May I suggest that soon afterward you skedaddle tout de suite to the nearest friendly border and seek asylum. The Cheka has alerted its worldwide network to arrest you: or to “terminate with prejudice.”

Beretta 32 Caliber Semi-Automatic Pistol

The Beretta is a magazine-fed, semi-automatic pistol that fires the 32 ACP* caliber bullet. Beretta first introduced this pistol in 1935, and produced approximately 500,000 copies in various models. The Italian armed forced adopted the Beretta 32 ACP as the standard service firearm in 1937. The German Wehrmact used the pistol in 1944 and 1945.

Specifications

This pistol has the capacity for eight rounds: seven in the magazine and one in the chamber. Its semi-automatic function is a single-action, blowback process. It has a manual safety, and when the last round is expended, the empty magazine keeps the slide open. The Beretta M1935 model is made of carbon steel and the grip is plastic.

Muzzle velocity is 925 feet per second.
Weight is about 22 ounces
Length is six inches.

Intended for military use, Beretta designed the model 1935 with minimal parts for maximum reliability and ease of maintenance. In particular, the feeding and extraction cycle is very dependable. Its robust construction insures a long service life if properly maintained.

In my historical novel St. Catherine’s Crown, the female protagonist, Black Orchid, uses the Beretta 32 with deft skills.

ACP = Automatic Colt Pistol

Black Orchid

A key character in my novel St. Catherine’s Crown is Black Orchid—an incredibly beautiful and seductive female—as only an oriental female can be. She is narcissistic to a faretheewell. Quick to hot temper when provoked, inordinately vain, and having no moral compass; she gets what she wants by whatever means are necessary: treachery, seduction, prevarication.

My inspiration for Black Orchid was triggered by the character The Dragon Lady in the comic strip “Terry and the Pirates,” by Milton Caniff. This strip started in the early 1930’s and continued for about twenty years. In those days, most comic strips developed a continuing narrative. Caniff kept his current story alive from two to three months.

The Dragon Lady was a Chinese pirate raiding shipping in the South China Seas and the Yangtze. She was exquisitely alluring, fiercely determined, and a dangerous enemy. When not pirating, she wore beautiful clothes that enhanced her seductive figure. At times she was brutal—gunning down any threat, perceived or in fact. Yet she had, as the occasion dictated, a soft heart—falling in love with Terry’s sidekick, Pat Ryan, teaching Terry to dance, and caring for orphans. During the Japanese war, she developed her pirate gang into a highly effective guerrilla fighting force.

If I’ve piqued your interested, please visit amazon.com and search for “Terry and the Pirates” and enjoy Caniff’s masterful drawings, dramatic dialogue, and intriguing stories.”

Black Orchid has no soft heart. Nonetheless, I invite you to romp with Black Orchid in my historical novel St. Catherine’s Crown. Beware! You’ve been warned.