Opposing communist doctrine, she presented Russia as a profoundly religious and humanitarian society oppressed by the totalitarian Soviet regime. She has devoted a significant part of her work to informing the French and the Americans about Russia and its culture, through translations and through her own texts. She became a fervent promoter of ecumenical dialogue, participating in the French Catholic Action as well as in the meetings of her Orthodox compatriots and publishing an intconfessional journal, “The Third Hour.” Iswolsky took advantage of her emigre position in-between, fighting against the prejudices between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and between Russia and the West in general. Raised Russian Orthodox, Iswolsky entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1923. She was thus connected to the Russian elite as well as to Parisian high society. Living in Paris from 1931, then in New York from 1940, she cultivated the acquaintances of her father, the tsar’s last ambassador to France. Reviewed by January 1943 Published on JanuThe reminiscences and impressions, covering the period 1923-41, of a daughter of the pre-1914 Russian Ambassador in France who chose to stay in that country after the First World War. The Revolution of 1917 radically changed the career of Helene Iswolsky (1896–1975), from Russian aristocrat to emigre writer. Light Before Dusk By Helen Iswolsky Longmans, 1942, 253 pp. Post-Revolutionary movement The Third Hour Iswolsky ecumenism Russian Catholics Russian émigré
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