St. Petersburg

"Two years later Emanuel was fleeing the country disguised as a peasant, his two brothers were in a Cheka prison, the Nobel empire was a shambles, the ships halted, the refinery fires banked, the hundreds of wells filling with water, the factories in St. Petersburg closed down."

"During their eighty years in Russia the Nobels and their band of Scandinavian expatriates were industrial miracle makers in a primitive land. They built armament factories in the wilds of northern Russia, expanded a small St. Petersburg machine shop and foundry into one of the largest enterprises in the country, developed and marketed the Nobel wheel—the Michelin of its time—devised new tools and procedures for assembly-line production, exhibiting in all their undertakings an active and continuing concern for their workers’ welfare—as unique a concern in Russia at the time as it was in the rest of the world."