18-24 June 1917
- By Mark Sutcliffe
- •
- 24 Jun, 2017
- •
The collapse of the offensive dealt a fatal blow to the
Provisional Government and the personal authority of its leaders. Hundreds of
thousands of soldiers were killed. Millions of square miles of territory were
lost. The leaders of the government had gambled everything on the offensive in
the hope that it might rally the country behind them in the national defence of
democracy. The coalition had been based on this hope; and it held together as
long as there was a chance of military success. But as the collapse of the
offensive became clear, so the coalition fell apart.
(Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy , London 1996)
18 June
A clear, windy morning. Workers and soldiers assembled
early. That day sister demonstrations were planned in Moscow, Kiev, Minsk,
Riga, Helsingfors (Helsinki), Kharkov, and across the empire. At 9 a.m., a band
struck up the Marseillaise, the French national anthem that had become an
international hymn to freedom. The parade began its procession down Nevsky
Prospect.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
It was on a magnificent scale. All worker and soldier
Petersburg took part in it. But what was the political character of this
demonstration? ‘Bolsheviks again,’ I remarked, looking at the slogans, ‘and
there behind them is another Bolshevik column.’
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)
Resolution of the workers of the ‘Old Parviainen’ metal and
machine factory, Petrograd
We, the workers of the ‘Old Parviainen’ factory, having
discussed Comrade Yevdokimov’s report at the general meeting of both shifts on
15 June, consider the policy of appeasement with our country’s capitalists, and
through them with capitalists worldwide as well, to be ruinous for the cause of
Russian and international revolution … Long live the power of the revolutionary
proletariat and peasantry! … Peace to the hovels! War against the palaces! …
Down with the ten capitalist ministers! … No separate peace with Wilhelm, no
secret agreements with the English and French capitalists!
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)
19 June
Letter from Sofia Yudina in Polyana to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
Dear Ninochka!
Our luggage has arrived, and we are all so happy – so, so
happy! And why wouldn’t we be! My music
has come, my books, and everything else. And the luggage is fine, not damaged
at all. Though of course it did take a month to get here…
Nothing much has changed with us. I’ve read six books by
Diogenes, I practise my music – half of it diligently, but the other half I
don’t have time or energy. There’s no time to draw, when I do I will draw
something for you as well, but for the moment I’ve not tried to draw anything…
It’s sweltering
here and dry, there’s been no rain to speak
of, just one storm with rain but it didn’t wet the ground much. The
strawberries are going over, the raspberries are ripening, the currents and so
forth. We’ve had all sorts of vegetables for some time now. The roses are
blooming. We swim every day…
I’m eating
a lot, putting on weight, getting fat – Mamochka is happy…
Everyone’s
well, we’re just being eaten by mosquitoes, midges and so on and so on. We go
barefoot all day….
With all my
kisses!
Write, my
dearest: you have more time for letters, I have so little.
Say hello
to everyone!
Your S.
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919, St Petersburg 2016)
Olga, Nicholas II's eldest daughter, to P.
Petrov, Tsarskoe Selo
We go for a
walk in the afternoons from 2 o’clock until 5. We each do something in the
garden. If it’s not too close, Mama also comes out, and lies on a couch under
the tree by the water. Papa goes (with several others) deep into the garden
where he fells and saws up dead trees. Alexei plays on the ‘children’s island’,
runs around barefoot and sometimes swims … Lessons continue as normal. Maria
and I are studying English together. She reads aloud to me, and if it’s not too
hot, will do a dictation … Twice a week Anastasia and I study medieval history.
It is much more difficult, as I have a terrible memory for all those events,
though she isn’t any better.
Your pupil
no. 1, Olga
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)
21 June
Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
A procession of soldiers went up the Nevski at noon. In the
afternoon to visit the Felix Yusupovs. He showed me exactly where Rasputin was
killed, the blood-stained Polar bear skin, and how it happened. We then walked
to the Nevski, where Felix left me.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)
22 June
This morning we were all rested and in good spirits.
Camp-fires have been lit and water is plentiful. One or two of us Sisters
washed and ironed our laundry. But before long our peace was disturbed by
shouting and the noise of creaking vehicles … there were soldiers everywhere,
hundreds of them. The ground was covered with their tents. The 45th and 46th
Siberian Regiments have encamped in our wood, awaiting reinforcements.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18, London 1974)
23 June
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
This evening I watched a demonstration of territorials,
several thousand in number, who marched along the Nevsky Prospekt demanding ‘Bread
and Peace’. It is hard to imagine anything more dishevelled and dirty than this
troop of ragged men with long hair and shaggy beards, their pale, vacant eyes
staring out of weatherbeaten hairy faces … They carried red notice-boards with
inscriptions in watery ink, and as they marched they gnawed hunks of black
bread or chewed sunflower seeds. This tatterdemalion army made a lamentable
impression of poverty, savagery and fatalism. It is a crime to take men away
from their homes and their work, and then leave them in a state of total want:
the first thing to do is to demobilise all these poor wretches, who are quite
justified in their demands for bread, and who are of no use in the war.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918, London 1969)
24 June
A resolution passed by the Congress of Soldiers’ and
Workmens’ Delegates condemns the anti-Jewish agitation in Russia, in which it
sees a danger to the revolutionary movement.
Imperial and Foreign News Items, The Times
24 June 2017
In her recent Reith lectures, Hilary Mantel says that ‘Facts
are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And
history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our
ignorance of the past … It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have
run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth.’ The scraps of cloth
I’ve pinned to this particular notice-board are perhaps even more misleading
than most ‘versions’ of history. One thinks they tell a truth because they are
often first-hand accounts, or at least written in recent memory of the events
they describe. But then you read our ‘anonymous Englishman’ describing his
encounter with Rasputin’s murderer, Yusupov, and it seems likely that the myth-ship
surrounding the monk’s death had already launched. What hope do we have of
gleaning the truth a century later when people were already composing their
own, often self-regarding, accounts just a few months after an event? Perhaps
what we can take from these scraps of cloth are the details, the notice-boards
inscribed with ‘watery ink’ that the starved marchers are carrying, the raspberries
that have ripened in the summer heat, just as they have done for many years before
and continue to do so today – but somehow so appreciated in June 1917 by the
girl on her country estate.
as per the Gregorian calendar. 5 November 2017
8 October
Letter from Lenin to the Bolshevik Comrades attending the Regional Congress of
the Soviets of the Northern Region
Comrades, Our revolution is passing through a highly critical period …
A gigantic task is being imposed upon the responsible leaders of our Party,
failure to perform which will involve the danger of a total collapse of the
internationalist proletarian movement. The situation is such that verily,
procrastination is like unto death … In the vicinity of Petrograd and in
Petrograd itself — that is where the insurrection can, and must, be decided on
and effected … The fleet, Kronstadt, Viborg, Reval, can and must advance
on Petrograd; they must smash the Kornilov regiments, rouse both the capitals,
start a mass agitation for a government which will immediately give the land to
the peasants and immediately make proposals for peace, and must overthrow
Kerensky’s government and establish such a government. Verily, procrastination
is like unto death.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches
from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)
9 October
Report in The Times
The Maximalist [Bolshevik], M. Trotsky, President of the Petrograd Soviet,
made a violent attack on the Government, describing it as irresponsible and
assailing its bourgeois elements, ‘who,’ he continued, ‘by their attitude are
causing insurrection among the peasants, increasing disorganisation and trying
to render the Constituent Assembly abortive.’ ‘The Maximalists,’ he declared,
‘cannot work with the Government or with the Preliminary Parliament, which I am
leaving in order to say to the workmen, soldiers, and peasants that Petrograd,
the Revolution, and the people are in danger.’ The Maximalists then left the
Chamber, shouting, ‘Long live a democratic and honourable peace! Long live the
Constituent Assembly!’
(‘Opening of Preliminary Parliament’, The Times)
10 October
As Sukhanov left his home for the Soviet on the morning of the 10th, his
wife Galina Flakserman eyed nasty skies and made him promise not to try to
return that night, but to stay at his office … Unlike her diarist husband,
who was previously an independent and had recently joined the Menshevik left,
Galina Flakserman was a long-time Bolshevik activist, on the staff of Izvestia.
Unbeknownst to him, she had quietly informed her comrades that comings and
goings at her roomy, many-entranced apartment would be unlikely to draw
attention. Thus, with her husband out of the way, the Bolshevik CC came
visiting. At least twelve of the twenty-one-committee were there … There
entered a clean-shaven, bespectacled, grey-haired man, ‘every bit like a
Lutheran minister’, Alexandra Kollontai remembered. The CC stared at the
newcomer. Absent-mindedly, he doffed his wig like a hat, to reveal a familiar
bald pate. Lenin had arrived.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai
Sukhanov
Oh, the novel jokes of the merry muse of History! This supreme and decisive
session took place in my own home … without my knowledge … For such a
cardinal session not only did people come from Moscow, but the Lord of Hosts
himself, with his henchman, crept out of the underground. Lenin appeared in a
wig, but without his beard. Zinoviev appeared with a beard, but without his
shock of hair. The meeting went on for about ten hours, until about 3 o’clock
in the morning … However, I don’t actually know much about the exact
course of this meeting, or even about its outcome. It’s clear that the question
of an uprising was put … It was decided to begin the uprising as quickly
as possible, depending on circumstances but not on the Congress.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)
11 October
British Consul Arthur Woodhouse in a letter home
Things are coming to a pretty pass here. I confess I should like to be out
of it, but this is not the time to show the white feather. I could not ask for
leave now, no matter how imminent the danger. There are over 1,000 Britishers
here still, and I and my staff may be of use and assistance to them in an
emergency.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)
Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval
cadet at Kronstadt
The proximity of a proletarian rising in Russia, as prologue to the world
socialist revolution, became the subject of all our discussions in
prison … Even behind bars, in a stuffy, stagnant cell, we felt instinctively
that the superficial calm that outwardly seemed to prevail presaged an
approaching storm … At last, on October 11, my turn [for release]
came … Stepping out of the prison on to the Vyborg-Side embankment and
breathing in deeply the cool evening breeze that blew from the river, I felt
that joyous sense of freedom which is known only to those who have learnt to
value it while behind bards. I took a tram at the Finland Station and quickly
reached Smolny … In the mood of the delegates to the Congress of Soviets
of the Northern Region which was taking place at that time .. an unusual
elation, an extreme animation was noticeable … They told me straightaway
that the CC had decided on armed insurrection. But there was a group of
comrades, headed by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who did not agree with this decision
and regarded a rising a premature and doomed to defeat.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917, New York 1982, first
published 1925)
12 October
Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
On [Kerensky] expressing the fear that there was a strong anti-Russian
feeling both in England and France, I said that though the British public was
ready to make allowances for her difficulties, it was but natural that they
should, after the fall of Riga, have abandoned all hope of her continuing to
take an active part in the war … Bolshevism was at the root of all the
evils from which Russia was suffering, and if he would but eradicate it he
would go down to history, not only as the leading figure of the revolution, but
as the saviour of his country. Kerensky admitted the truth of what I had said,
but contended that he could not do this unless the Bolsheviks themselves
provoked the intervention of the Government by an armed uprising.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)
13 October
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Kerensky is becoming more and more unpopular, in spite of certain grotesque
demonstrations such as this one: the inhabitants of a district in Central
Russia have asked him to take over the supreme religious power, and want to
make him into a kind of Pope as well as a dictator, whereas even the Tsar was
really neither one nor the other. Nobody takes him seriously, except in the
Embassy. A rather amusing sonnet about him has appeared, dedicated to the beds
in the Winter Palace, and complaining that they are reserved for hysteria
cases … for Alexander Feodorovich (Kerensky’s first names) and then
Alexandra Feodorovna (the Empress).
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)
14 October 2017
The BBC2 semi-dramatisation of how the Bolsheviks took power, shown this week,
was a curious thing. Talking heads in the form of Figes, Mieville, Rappaport,
Sebag-Montefiore, Tariq Ali, Martin Amis and others were interspersed with
moody reconstructions of late-night meetings, and dramatic moments such as
Lenin’s unbearded return to the Bolshevik CC (cf Sukhanov above). The programme
felt rather staged and unconvincing, with a lot of agonised expressions and
fist-clenching by Lenin, but the reviewers liked it. Odd, though, that
Eisenstein’s storming of the Winter Palace is rolled out every time, with a
brief disclaimer that it’s a work of fiction and yet somehow presented as
historical footage. There’s a sense of directorial sleight of hand, as if the
rather prosaic taking of the palace desperately needs a re-write. In some
supra-historical way, Eisenstein’s version has become the accepted version.
John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World
, currently being
serialised on Radio 4, is also presented with tremendous vigour, and properly
so as the book is nothing if not dramatic. Historical truth, though, is often
as elusive in a book that was originally published — in 1919 — with an
introduction by Lenin. ‘Reed was not’, writes one reviewer, ‘an ideal observer.
He knew little Russian, his grasp of events was sometimes shaky, and his facts
were often suspect.’ Still, that puts him in good company, and Reed is
undoubtedly a good read.