Golejewski (Nicholas)

Autograph letter signed ('Golejewski') reading "Dear Murray, I wrote to you in April confiding my plan of "emigration" to U.S. as soon as the war was over and my duty to my country done. I am longing to do so. There is nothing left here to keep me and instead of going on struggling here against this huge nightmare of [..] counterfeit of liberty I long to rest and live a quiet life in a country where I can just be a man, without any heart burning. In writing this I also [...] you try and find me some kind of a job - just enough to live as I used to live - which is not very ambitious. I did not get an answer to my letters as yet. Of course I know that it takes about 2 months for a letter to get to America, so I can hardly expect an answer. But as I am very anxious to get into touch with you and xxx from you a word of advice, I am writing again, in case my first letter got lost. How is the "Professor" doing as "Envoy Extraordinary"?! ", four pages, mid-horizontal folding mark with some splitting and minor losses, 8vo, 21 July 1917; with original mailing envelope.

***Rare signed letter from Colonel Nicholas Golejewski the former Assistant Military Attache at the Imperial Russian Embassy at Washington. He fought in the Russo-Japanese War and in 1907-1912 was Assistant Military Attache in London, in 1913 he was appointed to Washington where he remained until 1916 when he returned to Russia. He wrote several articles for the New York Times during 1916 regarding the war and the effects of it on Russia.
The letter is addressed to John Murray at the law firm Coudert Brothers asking for his assistance in getting him into America. Written from Galata a neighbourhood opposite Constantinople (today's Istanbul, Turkey), located at the northern shore of the Golden Horn, the inlet which separates it from the historic peninsula of old Constantinople. From 1917 members of the former Tsarist government were leaving Russia. The defeated anti-Bolshevik Russians went into exile, congregating in Constantinople, Belgrade, Berlin, Paris, Harbin, Istanbul, and Shanghai.