Over the divide : impersonal record of personal experiences / by Victor A. Yakhontoff.

Chapter I. The background (heredity and environment) -- Chapter II. Czars and their subjects (youth and the old regime) -- Chapter III. Caucasia (accumulation of experiences) -- Chapter IV. The crumbling empire ( learning from books) -- Chapter V. War with Japan and the revolution of 1905 (detached observers) -- Chapter VI. The state duma and the return of reaction (hopes betrayed) -- Chapter VII. In Japan (between the acts) -- Chapter VIII. Russia and the far east (chauvinism and patriotism) -- Chapter IX. The World War (universal cataclysm) -- Chapter X. The World War (the decisive years) -- XI. Visiting our allies (an unusual escape) -- Chapter XII. Fool's paradise (diplomatic career) -- Chapter XIII. The February revolution (an embarrassing appointment) -- Chapter XIV. The Bolshevik revolution (disillusionment and confusion) -- Chapter XV. Civilization on the decline (on the right track) -- Chapter XVI. Democracy endangered (in the new world) -- Chapter XVII. The winning side (it is hard to lose one's mother country) -- Chapter XVIII. Crystallization accelerated (new experiences) -- Chapter XIX. The world-wide crisis (good method for learning) -- Chapter XX. Russia and the Soviet Union (revisiting the mother country) -- Chapter XXI. Twenty years after (the balance sheet).

"Over The Divide is an impressive record of personal experiences, which is the proper description of a book that combines autobiography of a singularly varied sort with the objectivity of a historian and social commentator. Here is history, both military and social, in the making as seen through the eyes of a professional soldier, diplomat, and scholar. Yakhontoff was born in the Russian privileged world in time to find himself of some in importance in the Russian Army at the outbreak of the World War. He was Chief of the Division of Operations of the Tenth Russian Army, active at the front, and later was sent by the late Czar to France during the general offensive in the summer of 1916. Later he was sent as a military attaché to the Imperial Russian Embassy in Tokyo. When the Revolution broke out, Yakhontoff returned to Russia and was Assistant Secretary of War in the last of the Kerensky Cabinets. He stayed in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution before he returned to Japan. He was very much opposed to any foreign intervention in the affairs of his country and finally resigned his post in Tokyo and came to the United States, where he became an American citizen...Gifted with insight and balanced judgement, Yakhontoff presents his fascinating review of years unexampled for change with a scholars detachment. It is a human document, a living example of one man's emotional and intellectual reactions to the events which were literally changing over night. It is the development of one who was born in the privileged class and through years of discipline and hardship discovered the human nature is stronger than class traditions and the the interests of a nation are more important than the interests of any one group." -- From the book jacket.