R. H. Bruce Lockhart

R. H. Bruce Lockhart was a British diplomat, writer and intelligence-connected representative in revolutionary Russia. Arrested in 1918 amid allegations of an Allied plot against the Bolsheviks, he was exchanged and later worked in wartime propaganda and liaison with the Czechoslovak government-in-exile.

In dynastic and political terms, R. H. Bruce Lockhart was associated with United Kingdom; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The biographical record places the beginning of R. H. Bruce Lockhart’s life at Anstruther and the end at London, giving the career a geographical span that is not apparent from the headline events alone.

Giles Milton’s Russian Roulette follows R. H. Bruce Lockhart through Britain’s improvised intervention in revolutionary Russia. Lockhart operates amid diplomatic isolation, civil war and the rapid growth of the Cheka, working alongside figures such as Sidney Reilly in schemes intended to gather intelligence, influence events and at times undermine the Bolshevik regime. The book uses his experience to show how personal initiative, departmental rivalry and unreliable information shaped Britain’s earliest confrontation with Soviet power.