Russian Revolution Centenary

17-31 December 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Russian Christmas postcard, 1917

17 December

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I came back this evening from the Vassily Ostrov in a sledge accompanied by Pingaud and we entered into conversation with the driver … Pingaud asked him what he thought of the Allies and the enemies, and which nation he preferred; to which he gave the admirable reply, worthy of Tolstoy: ‘It doesn’t make any difference, they all eat bread like we do.’ … What a lesson for the people who think they rule the world, and how these words of an illiterate peasant driving me home on a moonlight night in savage, remote Russia, seemed beautiful and profound to me compared with the bombastic proclamations we have become accustomed to through the eloquence of statesmen.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

18 December

Letter to The Times from its Petrograd correspondent
It is notorious – and has been proved by documents in the possession of M. Kerensky’s government, part of which have been published – that Germany commissioned and financed Lenin to go to Russia in order to sow disaffection in the Russian Army … The German Revolution in Russia has been carried out by Lenin and his associates with the aid of a) ignorant and undisciplined reservists who did not wish to fight, b) of workmen who had been deceived by their leaders into believing that they could live without working by the plunder of capital, and c) of rustics deluded by the dream of free land for all. And, I may add, we find the Soviets, or councils of workmen’s, soldiers’, and peasants’ delegates – a sort of revolutionary Parliament – composed of ‘workmen’ who did not work, of ‘soldiers’ who did not fight, and of ‘peasants’ who did not plough.
( The Times )

19 December

Letter to The Times
When at the critical moment the Tsar was appealed to to undertake immediate and drastic reforms as the only means of salvation, he hesitated, abdicated, and deserted his people. I mention that the Russian Revolution was originally purely Russian, and that it must be our interest to influence Russia to pass through and out of her present trouble without in any way sacrificing her identity. From this standpoint … it is more just to regard the Trotszkys and Lenins as extreme Russian fanatics rather than as traitors and agents of Germany.
C. Grabowsky, 33 Bishopsgate
( The Times )

Leader in The Times
The whole civilized world must look forward with awe to the year which opens today [1 January by the Gregorian calendar]. All men can foresee that it is pregnant with events which will shape the destinies of States and peoples for generations yet unborn. But no nation does it promise to be so fateful as to the Russians. For good or evil it will decide their place in history, and the decision rests very largely with themselves. That heightens the interest of the immense tragedy they are playing… The seizure of all private banks – the State Bank had been seized before – is the latest achievement of these apostles of the Revolutionary millennium. How long their reign may last and how the negotiations may effects its duration we need not now surmise.
( The Times )

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Rather an ominous New Year’s Day! I wonder what this year will bring forth for us and for this distracted country. We can only keep on trying and helping and cheering up the relatively few patriotic Russians who are working for their country.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

20 December

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The Bolsheviks recently seized the banks and have now definitely taken them over and have decreed that they are nationalised … Heartrending scenes take place. I was told that outside one of the Nevsky banks an old lady took a sentry to task, at the risk of getting shot point blank: ‘You scoundrel! It’s thanks to you and the likes of you that they’ve been able to commit all these hideous crimes … You are responsible for my children dying of hunger because I cannot give them the bread which I have saved up for them … In the name of God who is in the Kazan Cathedral, right next to you, I curse you…’ The soldier went pale, threw his rifle on the ground, and fled.’
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

21 December

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
A howling blizzard – the heaviest snow fall that I have seen here – and almost everything paralyzed in consequence. The peace negotiations between the Russians and Germans appear to be broken off on account of the German terms … The news is made public that the British ambassador is going home on account of health. We know that to be the real reason but it is most unfortunate that it should take place at this time, for this de facto power is bound to misconstrue it. It militates against the prestige of the Allies and had necessitated some ‘knuckling under’ by the British, I fear, in order that they might obtain free transit and safe conduct for Sir George.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

22 December

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
For the social and cultural historian the evening [with Gorky] would furnish incredible material. And in particular that this is what is talked about and discussed even at Gorky’s in such terrible times shows that we, the Russian people, do not deserve any other fate than that which awaits our society and our government, our Russian people … Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill of a Dostoevesky or a Tolstoy to convey and record a Russian evening that’s so typical of today in every detail. Its very essence, its narrow-mindedness, the general tone, the jumping from subject to subject, the kind of overall complacency and optimism that conceals a staggering frivolity. And it was exactly this frivolity and fantasy-land that Gorky accused Lenin and Trotsky of last night (‘opportunists’ and so forth)!
(Alexander Benois, Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

24 December

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Before our walk we prepared gifts for everyone and decorated the Christmas trees. At tea time – before five o’clock – Alix and I went to the guard house and prepared a tree for the first platoon of the 4th regiment. We sat with the sentries. After dinner it was the suite’s turn to have a tree, and we had ours just before 8 o’clock. The service was very late as the father could not come earlier because of the service in the church. Those of the sentries who were free also attended.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

25 December

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Rumor that three of the regiments of Petrograd garrison will soon rise against the Soviet! That will be nice. This is the Russian Christmas. I haven’t ever wished anyone a ‘Happy’ or ‘Merry’ one with more fervor than I have some of these distracted people.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Sir George Buchanan left this morning. The departure has made a strong impression on the town, and people are trying to interpret it as the sign of coming rupture.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

We had arrived [in Moscow] on Monday, 25th December, at 12.30 p.m. I had returned like a vagrant, bereft of all that I had held dear. My Red Cross work was over; my wartime wanderings had ceased. There was an emptiness in heart and mind which was deeply distressing. Life seemed suddenly to have come to a full-stop. What the future held in store, it was impossible to predict; it all looked too dark and void. But in the remote background there was always, God be praised, my country – England! Like a beacon it shone through the darkness and beckoned me home.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18 , London 1974)

26 December

President Wilson’s Address to Congress (on the Brest-Litovsk negotiations)
No statesman who has had the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure … that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of Society, and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does. There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action … Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

28 December

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The Brest-Litovsk talks are making no progress and there are obviously some difficulties. Consequently, the populace is discontented because peace has not yet been signed. It is rumoured that a movement against the Bolsheviks is starting and that it may come to a head on the occasion of the Russian first of January.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

31 December

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Not too cold a day, with gusts of wind. Towards evening Alexei got up, as he was able to put on his shoe. After tea we all went our separate ways until it was time to meet the New Year. Lord! Save Russia!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

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31 December 2017

And so to the end of the year. ‘Lord! Save Russia!’ is perhaps all there is left to say after twelve months that have seen the demise of two regimes and the onset of civil war. Ahead lies several years of desperate struggle before the iron fist of the communist state proscribes order and one-party rule. But of course a country’s fate is never sealed. Seventy years later, as students of Russian language and culture, we were to witness the demise of this totalitarian state and the descent, once more, into chaos and struggle.

This blog may continue in some form, still to be decided. In the meantime, our attention turns to a forthcoming Fontanka book on 1917 and its aftermath, again told through eyewitness accounts but this time using unpublished material researched by Project 1917 – a collaboration between a Moscow team led by the writer Mikhail Zygar and Pushkin House. Publication, we hope, in July 2018.

3 - 9 December 1917

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

German officers welcoming Soviet delegates at Brest-Litovsk for the Peace Conference. Soviet delegates left to right: Adolph Joffe, Lev Karakhan and Leon Trotsky, the Head of the Soviet Delegation © IWM (Q 70777)

3 December
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I ended the evening at the Military Mission, where General Niessel very kindly made me stay for dinner. I had a long talk with Captain Sadoul, a socialist and a friend of Trotsky’s. He told me that Trotsky receives quantities of love-letters, flowers and cakes, just like Kerensky used to. He would do well to be on his guard.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

4 December
Letter to the Central Executive Committee of Soviets from a group of Putilov factory workers, Petrograd
Comrades, Yesterday we wrote a letter saying that you have earned yourselves enemies in the person of the workers by being more concerned about the bourgeoisie than about the lower class of workers and peasants. For the second month, workers have failed to receive their pound of sugar, but you are giving it to the bourgeois confectioners who make sugar into all kinds of candles at ten rubles a pound. As if a poor worker could buy that … You ought to be worrying about the problems of everyday life, and take your percentage by the thousands and not the hundreds, from the rich and not the poor. The power is in your hands, don’t make yourselves enemies of the people. Requisition footwear and clothing and food reserves from the rich.
Your comrades from the Putilov works
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)

Lenin’s Ultimatum to Ukraine, Warning Against Independence
All that concerns the national rights and the independence of Ukraine we, the commissaries of the people, freely recognise without any limits or conditions. Nevertheless, we accuse the Rada of Ukraine of the fact that, under cover of phrases and declarations regarding national independence, it has given itself over to a systematic bourgeois policy … By sheltering the counter-revolutionary movement of Kaledine, and by running counter to the will of the great mass of Cossack workmen in allowing the armies favourable to Kaledine to pass through the Ukraine, and at the same time refusing such passage to the armies hostile to that General, the Rada is opening the way to an unheard-of treason against the revolution … For the reasons given, the Council of The People’s Commissaries, calling to witness the Ukrainian People’s Republic, submits to the Rada the following questions:
1. Does the Rada promise to renounce in future all action for the disorganisation of the common front?
2. Does the Rada promise to refuse in future to permit the passage over Ukrainian territory of any troops going into the region of the Don, the Urals?
3. Does the Rada promise to lend assistance to the armies of the revolution in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces of the Cadets and of Kaledine?
4. Does the Rada promise to put an end to the attempts to crush the armies of the Soviet and of the Red Guard in the Ukraine, and return their arms, immediately and without delay, to those from whom they have been taken?
In case a satisfactory reply has not been received within twenty-four hours, the Soviet of the People’s Commissaries will consider the Rada in a state of war with the influence of the Soviet in Russia and in Ukraine.
(Source Records of the Great War , Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923)

5 December
V.I. Lenin and J. Stalin, ‘To all the toiling Moslems of Russia and the East’
Comrades and Brothers,
Great events are taking place in Russia … The old edifice of bondage and slavery is tottering under the blows of the Russian Revolution. The days of the world of despotism and oppression are numbered … The rule of capitalist plunder and violence is collapsing. The ground is tottering under the feet of the imperialist marauders. In face of these great events, we appeal to you, the toiling and disinherited Moslems of Russia and the East. Moslems of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kirghiz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and Cortzi of Caucasia, all whose mosques and prayer houses were being destroyed and whose faith and customs trampled under foot by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: Henceforth your faith and your customs, your national and cultural institutions are proclaimed to be free and inviolable … Moslems of Russia, Moslems of the East, in this work of refashioning the world we count on your sympathy and support.
Dzhugashvili-Stalin, People’s Commissar of National Affairs & V. Ulianov (Lenin), Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Pravda
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Today Trotsky made a new move towards us and … he came to the Embassy, where he spent over an hour in conversation with M. Noulens. This visit, which was purely a courtesy one, does not imply any recognition of the Soviet government on our part but it is a first attempt at contact, from which much can be expected … The conversation … took a more personal turn. Trotsky described his tribulations during the first year of the war when he was harried by the Tsar’s ambassadors and deported at their demand from France to Spain, from Spain to the United States and from the United States to Canada. He finally got stranded in Halifax, where the English interned him in a concentration camp, while Mme Trotsky and her children were locked up in the house of a policeman. M. Trotsky seems to have been much affected by this separation. He at once started to spread revolutionary propaganda among the three hundred Germans who were interned with him, and in a few weeks he had converted them all to the Bolshevik way of thinking.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

‘Trotsky against the cadets’
Replying to some speakers [at Smolny] who disapproved of violence being offered to members of the Constituent Assembly, Trotsky said: — ‘You are shocked at the mild form of terror we exercise against our class enemies, but take notice that not more than a month hence that terror will assume a more terrible form, on the model of that of the great French Revolution. No prison but the guillotine for our enemies. It is not immoral for a democracy to crush another class. That is its right.’
(Report in The Times)

6 December
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The German menace is now uppermost in everyone’s mind! Whether it be true that the armistice is iniquitous and will allow the Central Powers to move their troops from one front to the other; whether it will permit German and Austrian officers to establish a staff and bureau here; whether Russia becomes a vassal of Germany or a passive neutral; whether she can profit by this disruption or must wait until it has subsided — all of this makes no difference. Germany will draw heavily upon Russia to recoup her economic and material losses and we must be prepared to offset it in any way that may be deemed possible. I wish that we had more assurance that Washington knew this phase of it and that we had a deeper thinking man at the head here.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

7 December
‘Armistice Illusions’ (from our special correspondent)
The success of the ‘Government’ in bringing about an armistice and initiating peace negotiations is celebrated with resounding paeans in the Bolshevist camp. Victory is claimed for the proletariat over German Imperialism. ‘The will of the Russian soldiers,’ writes Pravda, ‘has dictated the Armistice. The German plenipotentiaries yielded to us on the question of troops from East to West.’ The real truth seems to be that large masses of German and Austrian troops have already left for the West … According to various journals, the German military delegates at Brest-Litovsk have asked on behalf of the Kaiser what are Russia’s intentions with regard to the ex-Emperor and the members of the Imperial Family. The People’s Commissioners, informed of this request, sounded some members of the Imperial Family still residing at Tsarskoe Selo, who replied that the best solution would be to let them go abroad. The ‘Government’ is stated to have agreed to this in principle, but wishes to obtain the decision of the Constituent Assembly.
(Report in The Times)

‘Ultimatum to the Rada’
The ‘Government’ has addressed an ultimatum to the Ukraine Rada, accusing it of following a bourgeois policy by not recognising Bolshevist authority in the Ukraine … It is rumoured tonight that the Rada has rejected [its] demands. The area of civil war is thus extended to the Ukraine.
(Report in The Times)

8 December
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I have a certain sympathy for these visionaries who believe in the future of humanity. Instead of lolling about in the apartments of the Winter Palace like Kerensky, they lead a communal life at Smolny, and together they all eat a simple dish of gruel which is brought in every day for the Comrade Commissars’ dinner.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

9 December
The talks at Brest resumed on December 9. Kuhlmann again headed the German delegation. The Austrian mission was chaired by Count Czernin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs; present were also the foreign ministers of Turkey and Bulgaria. The German peace proposals called for the separation from Russia of Poland as well as Courland and Lithuania, all of which at the time were under German military occupation … Ioffe, under instructions to drag out the talks, made for vague and unrealistic counterproposals (they had been drafted by Lenin), calling for peace ‘without annexations and indemnities’ and ‘national self-determination’ for the European nations as well as the colonies. In effect, the Russian delegation, behaving as if Russia had won the war, asked the Central Powers to give up all their wartime conquests.
(Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution 1899–1919, London 1990)

The scene in the Council Chamber at Brest-Litovsk was worthy of the art of some great historical painter. On one side sat the bland and alert representatives of the Central Powers, black-coated or much beribboned and bestarred, exquisitely polite …. Opposite the ranks of Teutondom sat the Russians, mostly dirty and ill-clad, who smoked their large pipes placidly through the debates. Much of the discussion seemed not to interest them, and they intervened in monosyllables, save when an incursion into the ethos of politics let loose a flood of confused metaphysics. The Conference had the air partly of an assembly of well-mannered employers trying to deal with a specially obtuse delegation of workmen, partly of urbane hosts presiding at a village school treat.
(J. Buchan, A History of the Great War, Boston 1922)

9 December 2017
The treaty of Brest-Litovsk that signalled the end of Russia’s involvement in the war was the conclusion of months of gradual withdrawal. Its year of revolution had created enormous complications in waging war, many of them well documented in these personal testimonies. In July Ukraine had asserted the right of self-determination and its governing Rada (council) began to act as an independent government. The October Revolution then of course exacerbated this process of national fragmentation. Ukraine was represented at Brest-Litovsk first as a ‘sovereign Ukrainian state’ and then, after the Rada’s rejection of the ultimatum (see 4 December) demanding political control of Ukraine, as an ‘independent belligerent’. In a journal article Clifford F. Wargelin suggests that Ukraine’s involvement in the negotiations, which opened the way for others, notably Poland, to make similar representations over independence, was an example of ‘spontaneous popular nationalism that transcended the ideological and geopolitical interests of both sides in the war and threatened to disrupt not only the peace negotiations but the stability and territorial integrity of all of the eastern European empires’. The background is complex (later in the negotiations the rival Kharkov-based Ukrainian Bolshevik government turned up, demanding to negotiate in place of the delegation representing the Rada in Kiev), and presumably some gnarled roots of the current Russian/Ukrainian conflict can be traced back to this time. The Brest-Litovsk talks were to continue for several months, until the treaty was eventually signed in March, but one interesting issue that remains unresolved is the extent to which the Germans tried to intervene in the fate of the tsar and his family. In her book on the last days of the Romanovs, Helen Rappaport mentions a secret codicil to Brest-Litovsk that guaranteed their safe handover to the Germans. It’s hard to find evidence of this, though there is a certain amount of online speculation involving the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and the usual ‘survival stories’. But Wilhelm, related by marriage, presumably did raise the issue, and perhaps more convincingly than George V, the tsar’s cousin and supposed ally.

26 November - 2 December 1917

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Looting of wine shops, Ivan Vladimirov, Petrograd 1917

26 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Last night the tovariches looted the cellars of the Winter Palace, where there were thousands of bottles. Naturally, the drinkers expressed their joy by letting off their guns; all these people walk about with rifles and bayonets all day long, and these become rather dangerous toys when handled by drunkards. All the same, a few willing firemen were found to smash what remained of the bottles and flood the cellar, in order to prevent further attempts. A certain number of tovariches remained prostrate in the middle of this ‘abundance’, and perished there. It is sickening to see such good stuff thrown away: there were bottles of Tokay there of the time of Catherine the Great, and it has all been gulped down by these Vodka swiggers.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

27 November
Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
[Museum preservation commissar Grigory] Yatmanov suggested at our meeting that we come up with conservation measures in view of the fact that the Military Revolutionary Committee had already decreed that all stocks of wine in St Petersburg should be destroyed — as if the city’s artistic treasures would not be at risk as a result (it came out at this point that on Thursday/Friday night drunken soldiers got into the Winter Palace and created a certain amount of mayhem, they went to the church singing gallery, got as far as [Catherine the Great’s] Library and went on the rampage in the New Hermitage) … Finally Lunacharsky turned up. He immediately began assuring us that the whole thing was exaggerated and that he was planning to sell all the wine abroad, in exchange for gold and ‘textiles’, which were so needed by the proletariat.
(Alexander Benois, Diary 1916–1918, Moscow 2006)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Although this unpleasant town seems quiet, it is ominously so! The long feared excesses are beginning, for on Thursday night last the soldiers of the regiment guarding the Winter Palace broke into the wine cellars of the palace and made off with a fair share of the 300,000 bottles there … One can smell the wine and spirits this afternoon more than a block away. Intoxication is noticeably increasing.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

28 November
Parliamentary report headed ‘Mr Churchill on a Perilous Moment’
Mr Churchill, the Minister of Munitions, addressed a large meeting last night in the Corn Exchange, Bedford…
‘Anyone can see for himself what has happened in Russia. Russia has been thoroughly beaten by the Germans. Her great heart has been broken, not only by German might, but by German intrigue; not only by German steel, but by German gold. Russia has fallen on the ground prostrate in exhaustion and in agony. No one can tell what fearful vicissitudes will come to Russia or how or when she will arise, but arise she will. (Cheers.) It is this melancholy event which has prolonged the war, that has robbed the French and the British and the Italian armies of the prize that was, perhaps, almost within their reach this summer; it is this event, and this event alone, that has exposed us to perils and sorrows and sufferings which we have not deserved, which we cannot avoid, but under which we shall not bend.’ (Loud cheers.)
(Report in The Times)

29 November
Stalin’s Speech at the Congress of the Finnish Social Democratic Labour Party
I would like first of all to bring you the joyous news of the victories of the Russian Revolution … Bondage to the landlords has been broken, for power in the rural districts has passed into the hands of the peasants. The power of the generals has been broken, for power in the army is now concentrated in the hands of the soldiers. A curb has been put on the capitalists, for workers’ control is rapidly being established over the factories, works and banks. The whole country, the towns and villages, the rear and the front, is studded with revolutionary committees of workers, soldiers and peasants who are taking the reins of government in their own hands.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
If one had to describe the regime which Russia is suffering from at the moment, one could call it a ‘soldiers’ dictatorship’. It was the soldiers who supported the Bolsheviks, because they promised peace: now they tend to go even further than them and to carry Lenin along with them, in the unleashed flood of their animal instincts … Yesterday, on the corner of the Liteiny Prospekt and Furchtadskaya Street, two soldiers were bargaining for apples with an old woman street vendor. Deciding that the price was too high, one of them shot her in the head while the other ran her through with his bayonet. Naturally, nobody dared to do anything to the two soldier murderers, who went quietly on their way watched by an indifferent crowd and munching the apples which they had acquired so cheaply.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

30 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
They are still plundering the wine-cellars: and in the morning the snow outside the ransacked shops is a purplish colour and smells of stale dregs … Among the cellar-wreckers there are also some men with good intentions who are trying to smash the bottles of wine to prevent drunkenness and disorder.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

The Bolshevik government continued to try and destroy wine stores before the mob got to them: in the Duma cellars 36,000 bottles of brandy were smashed; three million rubles worth of champagne was destroyed elsewhere. There was, however, one unforeseen consequence of the job of the official bottle-smashers: even if they piously refrained from drinking any of the wine themselves, they became hopelessly inebriated from all the fumes.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

1 December
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Another night of continual shooting, seemingly centred in this part of the city and this morning we find that the wine and general provision shop on the corner of the next street was ransacked — as was the shoe shop next to it! The looting is spreading!! The same sort of thing is reported from all over the city. Accosted by a very drunk individual as Amerikanski tovarishch late this afternoon but managed to shake him off … Dined at Norwegian legation. A large diplomatic dinner strangely enough. Missed Harriet fearfully.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

2 December
The writer Maksim Gorky to his wife, E.P. Peshkova
I was not exactly ill, although I was a little unwell. A little discomfort in the lungs is nothing; I’ve had two sessions of X-ray treatment already and I’m feeling better. But my nerves are completely shattered. Completely. I can’t sleep and my mood is so miserable that it’s simply awful. I’m trying to hide from those around me, but how does one do that? Things are bad for Russia, bad! … I hope you aren’t going to the Crimea! Wait a bit!
(Maksim Gorky: Selected Letters, Oxford 1997)

2 December 2017
I hadn’t clocked the extent of the wine episodes, post- both revolutions. It’s understandable that everyone should go a bit mad, particularly soldiers desensitised by their recent experience at the front. But the scale of it, described in these entries, is pretty extraordinary, with even the pious intentions of the bottle-smashers leading to inebriation! There’s a new book out by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa called Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution (Harvard University Press) that looks at the rise in violent crime between March 1917 and March 1918. He ascribes this partly to the new municipal police force that replaced the tsarist police and which was infiltrated, he claims, by former criminals. There was no proper judicial system and the prison system broke down. With people taking the law into their own hands, mob justice began to rule — something Lenin, according to Hasegawa, felt was an expression of justifiable popular anger against the bourgeois order… until it got out of hand, as the wine pogroms reveal, and the Bolsheviks ‘resorted to draconian measures: shoot to kill any criminals on the spot’. The author’s thesis is that the need to clamp down on this violent lawlessness led to all common crimes being deemed counter-revolutionary acts (and therefore under Cheka control) — and that ultimately this was an important factor in the establishment of a totalitarian state. Whether you accept this or not, it’s interesting to consider the role of alcohol in framing the Soviet century: wine — a symbol, perhaps, of bourgeois decadence — leading to tighter controls in the early days of Bolshevik rule; vodka — the scourge of the working man — playing its nefarious part in the system’s demise many decades later.

19 - 25 November 1917

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

General Nikolai Dukhonin, last commander of the Tsarist army, killed by revolutionary sailors on 20 November

19 November
In Bykhov the prisoners [generals and officers arrested after the Kornilov uprising] were kept in better conditions than in Berdichev. The prison was guarded by the Tekhinsky regiment which was loyal to Kornilov, and this prevented any unsanctioned reprisals against the arrested generals. The cells were not locked, the prisoners were allowed to socialize and receive and write personal letters … on the morning of 17 November 1917 [chair of the investigative committee] von Raupakh … received a note from Kornilov in which he said that if action was not taken the Bykhov prisoners could potentially become victims of reprisals by soldiers fleeing the front … Von Raupakh took a piece of Commission headed paper and printed an invented order for their release … On the evening of 19 November 1917 all the generals and officers at Bykhov prison left Bykhov. [The following day General Dukhonin was murdered by revolutionary sailors at Mogilev station; Generals Denikin, Markov, Lukomsky and Romanovsky made their way to the Don region where, with Kornilov and others, they helped to form the Volunteer Army — the major White force of the civil war.]
Elena Shirokova, ptiburdukov.ru/История/были _освобождены_быховские_узники

20 November
At the station, despite the efforts of Krylenko, a crowd of red army men hoisted General Dukhonin on their bayonets. His mutilated body was crucified in the freight-car, pinned up with nails. A fag-end was stuffed in the corpse’s mouth, and the whole crowd went to look at the general’s desecrated body, spitting in his face and hurling abuse at him. It was in this state that his wife, who had heard of her husband’s murder, found him at the station.
(M. Belevskaya, Headquarters of the Supreme Command in Mogilev, 1915–18: Personal Reminiscences, Vilno 1932)

In this way the Bolsheviks seized control of Stavka, and the command of the Russian army was transferred from General Dukhonin to Ensign Krylenko. What was left of it, anyway, for the Russian Imperial Army was melting away as soldiers simply packed up and left. What muzhik wanted to be the last to man his post while the great parcelling out of the land began back home? This was especially true for minority peoples, such as Ukrainians, who saw the opportunity of attaining independence. By the end of November 1917, Ukrainian soldiers had virtually disappeared from the eastern front. It would not be long, a German spy reported from Kiev, before Ukraine would move ‘to separate itself from Russia’. On the northern front, where there were dreams of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian independence, the situation was no better.
(Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History, New York 1917)

21 November
‘The New Siberian State’
After the declaration of independence by the Caucasus comes the announcement of the establishment of a Tartar Republic in the Crimea. This is now followed by the secession of Siberia from European Russia. It is difficult to say where the process of disintegration will end. It appears to cause little concern to the politicians in power, who are wholly absorbed by their programme of peace, followed by a war of classes and social disruption.
(‘From our special correspondent’, The Times)

Nothing is more dangerous for peace and for the future of Germany at this moment than to suppose that Russia is finished and can be treated by the victorious Central Powers as a vanquished foe. It would be madness to mistake the momentary nervous derangement of a vast country for complete exhaustion … The Bolshevik Government might fall within a few weeks and give place to another which would tear up the agreements of its predecessor.
(Report in the German newspaper Mannheimer Volksstimme)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
These people are not going to remain in power long — but they are in power now. It’s like Mexico.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

22 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The pretext which served to enrage the soldiers [who killed Dukhonin] seems to have been the disappointment of the Bolsheviks at not finding Kornilov there. He had been imprisoned at Stavka after his famous attempted coup and had escaped, with four hundred Cossacks from the Savage Division who had been ordered to guard him, on the evening before the actual day when the Soviets arrived at Headquarters. The soldiers claim that this escape took place with the connivance of General Dukhonin, and they murdered him through hatred of Kornilov, who to them symbolized the counter-revolution and the continuation of the war. And during all this time, the theatres of Petrograd are full and I found it impossible to get a seat for the ballet tonight, when they are doing Eros , La Nuit d’Egypte , and Islamet .
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

'Bolshevist Visions’
The Petrograd Agency publishes the following: ‘The Workers’ Government has instituted a Central Economic Council to deal with the economic situation in Russia … All works and factories will elect their own controlling bodies … As the Workers’ Council have in their hands the Central State Bank, and hope in due course to place the private banks successively under the control of the state, the Government of workers at the top and the workers’ organisations lower down will not only find it possible to understand the industrial situation and the rate of profit, but they will also be able to reduce such profit progressively. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, in introducing democracy into the administration of the State, is at the same time making an end of the autocracy of the capitalist in the factory.
(Report in The Times)

23 November
To the Editor of The Times
Sir, — In your leading article on the treachery of the Bolsheviks appearing today, which will be fully appreciated by all Russian Loyalists for its sympathy towards the Russian people as a whole, you show fine appreciation of one of the most serious causes of the development which culminated in the present Russian crisis, especially in the last paragraph of your article, in which you say: ‘We have let the Germans flood Russia with their agents and their propaganda, and have made no organized attempt to counteract the evil work of the enemy.’ May I carry your idea a few lines further, and say that the need for British propaganda in Russia has never been greater than it is today, for … it is not too late to prevent Russia from falling under an economic domination of Germany…
Yours truly, Zinovy N. Preev, London Correspondent of the Utro Rossii, Moscow, 359, Strand, WC2
(Letter to The Times)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy

The territories of the Empire are being frittered away … Finland has proclaimed its independence and has asked the foreign governments to recognise it … I cannot see why we should deny this people the right to govern themselves … It is up to us to win the Finns over to our cause by hastening to give them the recognition which they are asking for before Germany does.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

24 November
‘Trotsky’s idea of peace’
The keynote of Trotsky’s programme is the belief that the whole European proletariat will insist within the next few weeks upon the conclusion of a general peace. His statements, so emphatically repeated, that the ‘Government’ repudiates the idea of a separate peace and intends to negotiate a general peace in concert with the Allies, indicate an illusion of the near approach of a sudden and simultaneous outburst of pacifism before which all Thrones, Principalities, and Powers must yield … What will happen if the expected revolutionary cataclysm fails to take place Trotsky refrained from stating; but the Ministerial Pravda supplies an answer: ‘We will make a general peace if possible; if not, a separate peace.’
(‘From our special correspondent’, The Times)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Whoever they may be, it is the men who end the war who will be masters of Russia for a long time…
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

25 November 2017
We look back on the Kornilovites and the generals who headed south to form the nucleus of the Volunteer, later White, Army, and see them as men ‘out of time’, their photographs fading towards an early grave or impoverished exile. They somehow don’t seem ‘real’ in the way that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others continue to imprint themselves on our imagination. Is this simply because they lost, and the losing side tends to remain in the shadows? Or because they somehow represent the ‘old guard’, whether they were actually monarchist or not — men of the nineteenth, rather than twentieth century? As the revolution centenary recedes and that of the Civil War comes closer, maybe some old wounds will be reopened. General Denikin, who escaped with Kornilov to the Don region and succeeded him to the command of the White forces after Kornilov’s death in April 1918, remained a divisive figure well into exile in France and the United States. In 2005, on Putin’s instruction, Denikin’s body was repatriated and buried in Moscow’s Donskoi monastery — an act seen at the time as partly an attempt to honour the Whites in order to avoid confronting the real legacy of the Civil War. A feature writer in the Spectator magazine wrote at the time: ‘by celebrating Denikin and [anti-communist philosopher Ivan] Il’in, their anti-communism, nationalism and Orthodoxy, the Russian state is making a statement about the country’s future which, for those of us who remember the Soviet years, is a statement we can only welcome.’ I wonder if he would write the same today.

12 - 18 November 1917

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Leon Trotsky)

12 November
The Bolsheviki are forming councils, committees, sub-committees, courts, leagues, parties, societies; they are talented talkers and gifted orators. The masses of the people flock to their call. Already they have established the nucleus of the Proletarian Republic and drawn up their political programme; and, what is more surprising, they have successfully organised the Red Army — in great part drawn from the disloyal soldiers of the Imperial Army. One and all wage war against the ‘intelligentsia’ and the ‘bourgeoisie’ — nicknames given to the educated people and to the middle-class or ‘idle rich’. There is no doubt that Lenin and Trotsky are intent on exterminating the Russian intellectual classes.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914–18, London 1974)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Alexandre Benois, who is president of the Fine Arts Commission, told me that the damage done to the Winter Palace is not as bad as people thought. It is confined to the theft of a few objects in the rooms of Alexander II and Nicholas I.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

13 November
Report in The Times headed ‘Bolshevism repudiated at Washington’
M. Bakhmetieff, the Russian Ambassador, has officially repudiated the Bolshevist regime in Petrograd. He has addressed to Mr. Lansing a long letter which explains that he will continue to carry out the duties entrusted to him at the Embassy regardless of the Bolshevists or any other temporary rule of violence in Russia … M. Bakhmetieff declares in his letter his confidence that the sound, constructive element in Russia will soon arise and sweep aside the Bolshevists or any others who, in opposition to the true spirit of the nation, seek to betray the Allies and withdraw from the war.
(From our correspondent, New York, The Times)

In a highly sensational speech, delivered before the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, Trotsky expressed the hope that General Dukhonin would act in conformity with the policy of the Government … The peace ‘decree’, Trotsky continued, marked the beginning of a new era in history. It came as a surprise to the routine-loving governing classes of Europe, who first regarded it as a mere party manifesto, not as an act of the Russian Government … The greatest hostility was exhibited on the part of England, ‘who plays a leading part at the present juncture and who has suffered least from the war, while she stands to gain most. France, who had suffered most, responded to the Russian revolution with the bourgeoisie Ministry of M. Clemenceau, which was the last effort of French Imperialism. Italy, disillusioned by her losses, welcomed it with enthusiasm. America had joined in the war, not for the sake of ideals, as President Wilson declared, but with a view to financial and industrial advantages.
(Report in The Times)

14 November
Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
In my opinion, the only safe course left to us is to give Russia back her word and to tell her people that, realizing how worn out they are by the war and the disorganization inseparable from a great revolution, we leave it to them to decide whether they will purchase peace on Germany’s terms or fight on with the Allies … It has always been my one aim and object to keep Russia in the war, but one cannot force an exhausted nation to fight against its will.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)

Report in The Times headed ‘Escape of Ex-Tsar’s Daughter’
American audiences are shortly to have the privilege of listening to appeals on behalf of the Russian people from a young woman who will be presented to them under the simple name of Miss Tatiana Nicolaievna Romanoff. She is understood to be the 20-year-old daughter of the deposed Tsar. On the authority of M. Ivan Narodny, of the News Bureau of the Russian Post Office in New York, the American newspapers today publish romantic accounts of the escape of the former Grand Duchess from Tobolsk. Miss Romanoff, according to these accounts, underwent a fictitious ceremony of marriage with a son of her father’s former Court Chamberlain, Count Fredericks, and thereby gained a certain measure of freedom from observation, which she utilized in order to make her escape to Kharbin for Sand Francisco. M. Narodny, who prefaces his narrative with the observation ‘these are strange times in Russia,’ says that the Tsar’s daughter when she arrives here will work for the Russian Civilian Relief Society. She will write short fairy stories, give dance performances, and desires to lecture to American women on conditions in Russia.
(From our correspondent, New York, The Times)

15 November
Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
In my heart of hearts I am convinced that in his soul and in his being the Russian is freer than anyone. Even under the tsarist regime there was nowhere in the world with such freedom (even to the level of libertinism) of way of life, conversation, thought, as in Russia. Even our proverbial ‘right to disgrace’ is only an expression of the freedom that is within and inherent to everyone, based on racial characteristics but nurtured in the Christian idea of ‘the kingdom of God being within us’.
(Alexander Benois, Diary 1916–1918, Moscow 2006)

16 November
Pauline Crosby, wife of American naval attaché, in a letter home
In general the news is: Petrograd is still here; a part of Moscow is no longer there; many handsome estates are no longer anywhere; the Bolsheviki are everywhere.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

From somewhere torches appeared, blazing orange in the night, a thousand times reflected in the facets of the ice, streaming smokily over the throng as it moved down the bank of the Fontanka singing, between crowds that stood in astonished silence. ‘Long live the Revolutionary Army! Long live the Red Guard! Long live the Peasants!’ So the great procession wound through the city, growing and unfurling ever new red banners lettered in gold. Two old peasants, bowed with toil, were walking hand in hand, their faces illumined with child-like bliss. ‘Well,’ said one, ‘I’d like to see them take away our land again, now!’
(John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York 1919)

17 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Things are happening fast, and yesterday Trotsky was able to make a triumphant announcement to the Assembly of Soviets (which has been joined by the Council of Peasants, which up to now had remained with the opposition and had rejected all contact with the Bolsheviks). The announcement is to the effect that armistice negotiations have begun.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

18 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The Allies here continue to give an impression of complete confusion … Meanwhile Trotsky keeps the score and no longer misses a single false move on the part of his adversaries. He has become very self-assured and has not hesitated to send a very firm note to Sir George [Buchanan] asking for two Russian anarchists who are being held in England to be released immediately … People say that the Commissars even contemplated shutting up Sir George himself as a hostage in Peter-and-Paul.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

18 November 2017
The report by the New York correspondent of The Times of the escape of Tatiana, the second of Nicholas II’s daughters, must have been one of the first accounts of the Romanov children avoiding their terrible fate at the hands of the Bolsheviks; a fate that was proved decisively through DNA tests only in the 1990s. Such romantic stories — or as we now call them, ‘fake news’ — subsequently became legion, focusing on the youngest daughter Anastasia and only son Alexei in particular. This report is interesting precisely because it is so early, when the family was still alive and reasonably well in Tobolsk and yet to be moved to Ekaterinburg, where they were all murdered in July 1918. It’s also, frankly, bizarre, with mention of the Grand Duchess preparing to give dance performances to the American public. It makes one wonder what would have become of the former imperial family had they been offered asylum by George V or indeed been spirited away from the Crimean coast like many of their circle. In exile the children would no doubt have married, had children of their own — their grandchildren would be easily alive today, perhaps even back in favour with the current regime. Stranger things have happened (are happening).

5 - 11 November 1917

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Winter Palace during a spectacular light show to mark the anniversary of the revolution,
as per the Gregorian calendar. 5 November 2017

5 November
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Cold — with first real ice and snow of the year. About 35 men, women and children will leave on Tuesday together with the majority of the Red Cross mission who, notwithstanding what seems to me to be a wonderful opportunity to save the cause for which they have enlisted, are going to quit.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

6 November
Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
The government is now in the hands of a small clique of extremists, who are bent on imposing their will on the country by terroristic methods … Some of the [factory delegations] held very outspoken language, saying that all Lenin and Trotzky wanted was to sleep, as Kerensky had done, in Nicholas’s bed.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The government of Peoples’ Commissars has still not been constituted, and well-informed people say every night that it cannot last ‘another day’ … And yet in spite of these assurances the Bolsheviks are still masters, and I cannot imagine who there could be to even compete with them for power … Each day one hears of some new split and some sensational new patching-up; there are announcements that a new army is marching on Petrograd, that the Cossacks are arriving in Moscow, that railway-lines have been cut, that the Germans are landing on every coast … and each day passes in peace and quiet. All these reports are untrue and even if they were true they do not interest anyone, and people in the street and even in the drawing-rooms can only talk of the best way to get hold of a sack of flour or a few eggs.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

7 November
On 7 November the new Commissar of Finance, V.R. Menzhinsky, appeared at the State Bank with a detachment of sailors and demanded the money; but the bankers stood firm and, despite further armed threats, dismissals and ultimatums, continued their strike.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

Lenin and Trotsky do not have the slightest idea of the meaning of freedom or the Rights of Man. They have already become poisoned with the filthy venom of power, and this is shown by their shameful attitude towards freedom of speech, the individual, and all those other civil liberties for which the democracy struggled.
(Maxim Gorky in his column for Novaya zhizn , cited in Figes, A People’s Tragedy)

8 November
Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Nemanov [colleague of Benois at Rech’ newspaper] considers Kerensky a pathetic liar and hypocrite … Kornilov, in his opinion, simply an idiot and Kaledin [head of the Don Cossack forces] a jackass. Overall Nemanov shares Paleologue’s opinion that in Russia we just don’t have any statesmanlike people. There was one who had real determination and personal courage — Stolypin, and that was why the revolutionaries immediately did away with him.
(Alexander Benois, Diary 1916–1918, Moscow 2006)

9 November
Empress Maria in Ai-Todor to her son, former emperor Nicholas II, in Tobolsk
My dear darling Nicky!
You know that my thoughts and prayers never leave you — day and night I think of you all, sometimes it is so painful, that I can almost bear it no longer … l live only by remembering the past and try, if possible, to forget the present nightmare.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)

10 November
[In Red Square] a young soldier spoke to us in German … ‘You foreigners look down on us Russians because so long we tolerated a medieval monarchy … But we saw that the Tsar was not the only tyrant in the world; capitalism was worse, and in all the countries of the world capitalism was Emperor … Russian revolutionary tactics are best.’
(John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York 1919)

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
This morning, as I was deep in two different curtain designs for Petrushka, [Benois’s wife] Akitsa runs in with the paper and starts begging me to be more careful with ‘them’ and not getting involved in any kind of dealings — clearly thinking of yesterday’s visit by [Commissar for Enlightenment] Lunacharsky and not believing my oft-repeated decision to stand apart from politics and political activity. My involvement with them is exclusively with the aim of protecting artistic heritage. From her alarm I realised that something significant and unpleasant had happened, and I must admit that I am also disturbed by many of the recent acts of the Bolsheviks … Fortunately, just before Lunacharsky came we were visited by Count [de] Robien, and his cheerful gossip, anecdotes and humour lifted my spirits a little. He is singularly delighted that the war is juddering to an end. He is clearly enjoying much of what is happening, although at the same time he recognizes that he himself is also in some danger — as is the whole diplomatic community. To get petrol for his car he went to Smolny — and enjoyed the scene of this ‘fairground of triumphant proletariat’! He told how Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich was arrested and asked by the soldiers guarding him to read them the newspaper. They got hold of a copy of Pravda and the Grand Duke, sitting there in a fug of tobacco smoke, read them Pravda from cover to cover. There’s something quite symbolic in this.
(Alexander Benois, Diary 1916–1918, Moscow 2006)

11 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I went to see the Grand Duke Paul and Princess Paley in Countess Kreutz’s apartment, where they have taken refuge while waiting to be allowed to go back to Tsarskoye Selo. I found the Grand Duke wonderfully courageous, relating the details of his arrest and of his detention at Smolny with great good humour. But they went through some terrible hours as after the fall of Kerensky they were at the mercy of the red hordes … The Grand Duke has no complaints about his guards: some of them even addressed him as ‘Comrade Highness’! They found an armchair for him and settled him into it; one of them then begged him to read the newspaper to them and explain it, and they asked his permission to smoke while listening. The Grand Duke naturally agreed, and it must have been strange to see this Romanov in general’s uniform and wearing the order of Saint George, with his majestic look and superb presence, reading Pravda to a group of four dishevelled sailors.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

Reply of the Spanish Ambassador to the ‘Soviet Note’ of the previous day
To the People’s Commissary of Foreign Affairs:
I had the honour to receive your note, №83 … in which you inform me regarding the proposal of the People’s Commissaries to the representatives of Allied powers to conclude an immediate armistice and to start negotiations for peace … I hasten to inform you, Mr Commissary, that … I will not fail this very day to transmit to my government by telegraph the contents of the above-mentioned note in order that my government may be able to make it known to the Spanish people, and also to use all necessary efforts in order to assist in the conclusion of peace which is so desired by all humanity.
(Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920, New York 1920)

11 November 2017
Just returned from Russia with a turbulent stomach requiring several emergency stops en route to the airport (not all of it vodka-related either). Apart from that, an interesting few days. There wasn’t, by any means, a universal show of indifference to the anniversary — several small exhibitions, a major one at the Hermitage, the odd gathering (by the Aurora ), some TV documentaries and a new series focusing on Trotsky all added up to something . But there was a slight sense of going through the motions, of dutifully observing an anniversary that would be good to get out of the way. And maybe the banal truth is, reading de Robien and others in this week’s posting, that people are no different to how they were a hundred years ago: they have a life to live, food to buy, family to look after. If you can do all that with governments crumbling around you and bodies lying on the street, it’s not surprising that 7 November 2017 merits little more than a flicker of interest from the general public.

29 October - 4 November 1917

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Red peasant, soldier and working man to the cossack: ‘Cossack, who are you with? Them or us?’

29 October
Sunday the eleventh, the Cossacks entered Tsarskoye Selo, Kerensky himself riding a white horse and all the church-bells clamouring … There was no battle. But Kerensky made a fatal blunder. At seven in the morning he sent word to the Second Tsarskoye Selo Rifles to lay down their arms. The soldiers replied that they would remain neutral, but would not disarm. Kerensky gave them ten minutes in which to obey. This angered the soldiers; for eight months they had been governing themselves by committee, and this smacked of the old regime … A few minutes later Cossack artillery opened fire on the barracks, killing eight men. From that moment there were no more ‘neutral’ soldiers in Tsarskoye.
(John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York 1919)

… some of the bullets were striking the house where I lived. The besiegers were apparently not strong, and presently their firing ceased altogether. In the pause I emerged from my cover and with gingerly steps crept down the side of the Fontanka Canal towards a bridge, which I crossed … Rifle bullets whistled overhead, and suddenly everyone vanished from the streets. I got into a side entrance of a house along with a number of other people and waited. Everyone was silent and depressed and trying to hide his inner feelings beneath an outward calm … Here indeed was the front, not the national but the class front, and the remarkable thing about it was that there was no sharp line of division between the opposing forces. Among the people where I was standing were persons of the middle class, and beside them a workman and two soldier deserters from the now fast-melting Tsarist army. ‘Why are you hiding?’ said a well-dressed man to one of the soldiers. ‘You have been at the war, and ought not to be afraid of bullets.’ ‘Had two years of it against the Germans and wounded twice,’ said the soldier; ‘think I have had enough.’ ‘Why don’t you go and help these Cadets against the red ruffians? Or are you one of our brave deserters who have sold Russia to these Bolsheviks and to the Germans?’ asked the well-dressed man. ‘Give me a rifle, and I will go and fight against those Cadets,’ replied the soldier. ‘And I will see to it that you don’t get a rifle,’ said the well-dressed citizen, as though he was sorry he had raised the subject.
(M. Philips Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution, London 1921)

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
Darling Ninochka!
The mood here is dreadful, such nervous strain… Yesterday Lena and I went for a walk along Nevsky: there were a lot of people on the street, crowds, meetings, and it was lucky we didn’t go later because the Bolsheviks started to open fire there… But it looks like their rule will soon be over, the government forces will seize power. Which is good, because the Bolsheviks have shown what sort of people they are: so much violence… But you know all this from the papers and conversations … But now it is so indefinably uneasy … We so want everything to settle down and become peaceful again! How will it end, and when will it end? … I wish I was cleverer, had a better memory, could make conversation so that people, good people, found me interesting — and then I wouldn’t be as lonely as I am now. It wouldn’t feel so cold on this earth … You see how much I want? And that’s by no means all…
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916–1919, St Petersburg 2016)

30 October
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
On the 30th it was decided to finish with Kerensky at one blow. The Kronstadt and Helsingfors sailors’ detachments were moved en bloc to the front. Trotsky himself went too; from now on he was invariably present at the most critical points all over the country … And by the end of that night, Trotsky was already reporting to Petersburg from Pulkovo: ‘The night of the 30th will go down in history … KERENSKY IS IN RETREAT — we are advancing. The soldiers, sailors and workers of Petersburg have shown that arms in hand they can and will assert their will and the power of the democracy…’
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

At Pulkovo Heights, twelve miles out of Petrograd, [hard-right General] Krasnov’s forces face a ragtag of workers, sailors and soldiers, untrained and undisciplined but outnumbering them ten to one. The fight is ugly and bloody. Krasnov’s forces fall back to the town of Gatchina, where Kerensky is based. Two days later, in exchange for self passage, they agree to hand him over. The erstwhile persuader has a last escapade in him. He makes a successful run for it, disguised in a sailor’s uniform and unlikely goggles. He ends his days in exile, issuing tract after self-exculpating tract.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

31 October
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Kerensky’s position seems rather bad: he has only got Cossacks and Cossack artillery still with him. The infantry regiments go over to the Bolsheviks as soon as he gets them up from the front.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
Kerensky has again failed us, as he did at the time of the July rising and of the Korniloff affair. His only chance of success was to make a dash for Petrograd with such troops as he could get hold of; but he wasted time in parlaying, issued orders and counter-orders which indisposed the troops, and only moved when it was too late. The Bolsheviks have reoccupied Tsarskoe and are now confident of victory … We are so entirely cut off from the outside world that we know but little of what is passing in the Provinces; but at Moscow, where a regular battle has been going on for the last few days, the Bolsheviks are regaining the upper hand. The number of killed is said to be about a couple of thousand, and the town appears to be given over to pillage at the hands of a drunken mob that had seized the spirit stores.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)

1 November
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The town duma and Mayor Schneider loom large as patriotic persons who have stood out against the Bolshevik disorder. It is, however, a victory of the Maximalists (at least up to the moment), and we are now facing a purely socialist government!! It remains to be seen what it can do. Nothing, of course, as regards recognition by any government. No telegrams at all are being received or sent from Petrograd.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

2 November
Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, former tutor to the tsar’s children
About November 2, we learnt that the Provisional Government was overthrown and that the Bolsheviks had again come into power, but this event did not immediately react on our life, and it was not until some months later, as we shall see, that it occurred to them to turn their attention to us.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)

Resolution of the workers of the Baltic Shipbuilding Works, Petrograd
Although seizure of […] power by a single political party would be an incorrect step, at this time, when an overthrow has been accomplished and become fact, the departure of several political parties from the congress is a step that cannot be justified either … Seeing the full horror of civil war, we decisively and insistently demand the immediate cessation of this bloody nightmare and the creation of a unified socialist authority.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)

To the mass of the workers, it seemed that the whole point of the revolution, as expressed at the Soviet Congress, was the formation of a government of the working people as a whole and not just of one party. Hundreds of factories, garrisons, Front and Fleet assemblies sent petitions to Smolny in support of the [railwaymen’s union] Vikzhel plan [demanding that the Bolsheviks begin talks with the other socialist parties for the formation of an all-Soviet government).
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

3 November
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Kerensky’s supporters have laid down their arms. His General Staff have given themselves up, and he himself has fled. So now we are rid of this grotesque character, and with him the regime which issued from the revolution has collapsed too: it only succeeded in alienating everyone and in becoming an object of ridicule, defended by a few Cossacks, a battalion of women and some children.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

4 November 2017
In Petersburg. Nobody seems to be expecting much of a show of anniversary zeal, though last night we witnessed a spectacular light show in Palace Square. In dramatic, swooping images of fire and tumbling buildings, rather brilliantly choreographed against the stuccoed walls and white columns of the Winter Palace and General Staff, the last 100 years were presented as a narrative of dramatic survival — we have come through all this turbulent history, it seemed to say, a stronger, more unified Russia, symbolised by the final red, white and blue of the national flag. The show was witnessed by huge crowds, part of Nevsky was closed to traffic, and families with young children were prominent. Which perhaps goes counter to the general feeling that the young are not interested in this anniversary. Catherine Merridale writes in the Guardian that ‘the Russian revolution was a moment when the veil of human culture tore. It was a season of euphoric hope, a terrifying experiment in utopia. It tested to destruction the 19th-century fantasy of progress. It was the work of tens of thousands of zealous enthusiasts. Yet now their great-great-grandchildren are bored. This situation suits their government. A cloud of tedium hangs over any formal gathering that ventures to discuss the thing.’ Maybe. Or maybe, just maybe, this is an overly western-centric view of things and in fact people are interested but — like the show in Palace Square — they’re more interested in where the country has ended up now, a hundred years later, than in theories that constantly hark back to rift and destruction. Let’s see what, if anything, 7 November brings.

22 - 28 October 1917

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Students and soldiers firing across the Moika River at police who are resisting the revolutionaries, 24 October 1917 (© IWM Q69411)

The remarkable thing about the Bolshevik insurrection is that hardly any of the Bolshevik leaders had wanted it to happen until a few hours before it began … Trotsky, who in Lenin’s absence had effectively assumed the leadership of the party, repeatedly stressed the need for discipline and patience … ‘This is defence, comrades. This is defence.’
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

22 October
The Minister of War has gone to the Caucasus on a fortnight’s leave, and during his absence the Assistant Minister of War, General Tumanoff, will act. In political circles it is considered that General Verkhovsky will not return to the War Office.
(Report in The Times)

23 October

Report headed ‘American Aid for Russia’
The Administration, which two days ago granted large credits to Italy, has replied to M. Kerensky’s utterances by transferring to Russia’s account over £6,000,000. Washington is willing to encourage and assist Russia by every means in its power.
(‘News in Brief’, The Times)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
‘Yes’, said [Trotsky], ‘an insurrection is going on, and the Bolsheviks, in the form of the Congress majority, will take the power into their own hands. The steps taken by the Military Revolutionary Committee are steps for the seizure of power.’ Had everybody heard? Or was it still not clear enough?
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

At 8pm … the soldiers finally, dramatically, voted. Everyone for the MRC moved to the left: those opposed, to the right. There was a protracted shuffling and shoving. When it was done, there rose a huge and sustained cheer. On the right were only a few officers, and some intellectuals from one of those strange bicycle regiments. The majority, by far, stood for the MRC … Most of Petrograd’s weapon stores were now in MRC hands. And the cannon of the fortress looked out over the Winter Palace itself.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

24 October
At 2.30am a strange army came through the cold night. It was cobbled from whatever forces were to hand, on which the right could count. Two or three detachments of Junkers; some cadets from officers’ training schools; a few warriors from a Women’s Death Battalion; a battery of horse artillery from Pavlovsk; various Cossacks; a bicycle unit with their thick-wheeled machines; and a rifle regiment of war-wounded veterans. They headed through the quiet city to defend the Winter Palace.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
At three o’clock this morning the printing presses of several Bolshevik papers, which the Government had decided to suppress, were seized, and Tereschenko expects that this will provoke a Bolshevik uprising. He is urging Kerensky to arrest the members of the revolutionary military committee, and will not in any case leave for London till the situation has been cleared up.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, London 1923)

By the morning of 24 October the Smolny was the unofficial ‘General Staff’ of the Bolsheviks … For John Reed, Smonly was the place to be, the heartbeat of revolution: it was dynamic, visceral, exciting, invigorating and ‘hummed like a gigantic hive’. Albert Rhys Williams … saw it as a haven, the bastion of a brave new world: ‘By night, glowing with a hundred lamp-lit windows, it looms up like a great temple — a temple of Revolution.’
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
Orders were given [by the General Staff] to raise all the bridges, except the Palace Bridge, in order to hinder marchers … The raising of the bridges at once produced in the city the circumstances of a coup d’etat accomplished and disorders begun. The whole capital, hitherto quite tranquil, became agitated. Crowds began gathering in the streets.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

‘I remembered the July Days’, Ilin-Zhenevsky of the Bolshevik MO later wrote. ‘The drawing of the bridges appeared to me as the first step in another attempt to destroy us. Was it possible the Provisional Government would triumph over us again?’ … Unbidden, Ilin-Zhenevsky directed garrison soldiers to secure the Grenadiers and Samsonovsky bridges. One group returned dragging heavy machinery behind them, and were followed by a shouting mechanic. ‘We have lowered the bridge,’ they told a curious Ilin-Zhenevsky, ‘and to make sure it stays down, we’ve brought part of the mechanism.’
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

By 10 p.m. Lenin could hold back no longer. He donned his wig and a worker’s cap, wrapped a bandage around his head and set off for the Smolny … Near the Tauride Palace a government patrol stopped them, but … mistook Lenin … for a harmless drunk and let them proceed. One can only wonder how different history would have been if Lenin had been arrested.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

Lenin addressing the Bolshevik CC
To delay the uprising would be fatal … With all my might I urge comrades to realise that everything now hangs by a thread … We must at all costs, this very evening, this very night, arrest the government … We must not wait! We may lose everything! … The government is tottering. It must be given the death blow at all costs.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

25 October
The Great October Socialist Revolution, as it came to be called in Soviet mythology, was in reality such a small-scale event, being in effect no more than a military coup, that it passed unnoticed by the vast majority of the inhabitants of Petrograd.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

At 3.30 in the morning of the 25th, the naval cruiser, Avrora, accompanied by three destroyers, steamed in from Kronstadt and dropped anchor broadside-on to the Winter Palace. It was clear that the endgame had come for this, the last symbolic bastion of old imperial Russia.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

Leighton Rogers, bank employee
They’ve begun it; they’re at it now as I write. Machine-guns and rifles are snarling and barking all over the city. Sounds like a huge corn-popper.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Yesterday’s quiet was deceptive. In fact, during the night the Bolsheviks pulled off the surprise attack which they have been planning for a long time … They are now in possession of the telegraph office, the stations, and the department of state: in short, they are masters of the capital. The government collapsed like a house of cards without the least resistance, and the apparent order has not been disturbed. Tereschenko has disappeared since this morning; and Kerensky has fled in a car belonging to one of the secretaries of the United States Embassy … He is said to have gone to the front to bring back some troops.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Sheldon Whitehouse was asked by an aide of Kerensky’s to allow Kerensky the use of the car of the embassy, went to see Kerensky at the staff, found him very much perturbed and admitting that the Bolsheviks control everything and that he desired the car to make a get-away to form junction with the loyal troops sent from the front. We presume that he got away — also that the rest of the ministry are hiding or arrested! The Mariinsky Palace and Winter Palace are surrounded; the majority at the garrison have gone over to the Bolsheviks, the warship Aurora is in the Neva with guns trained on the city.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

Press release issued by Lenin at 10.00 a.m.
To the Citizens of Russia! The Provisional Government has been overthrown. The power of state has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Revolutionary Military Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison. The cause for which the people have fought — the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers’ control over production and the creation of a Soviet government — is assured.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

Lenin to a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet
One of our next tasks is to put an immediate end to the war. But in order to end this war, which is closely bound up with the present capitalist system, it is clear to everybody that capital itself must be overcome. We shall be helped in this by the world working class movement, which is already beginning to develop in Italy, England and Germany.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

… at 9.40 p.m. the signal was finally given and one blank round was fired by the Aurora. The huge sound of the blast, much louder than a live shot, caused the frightened ministers to drop at once to the floor. The women from the Battalion of Death became hysterical and had to be taken away to a room at the back of the palace, while most of the remaining cadets abandoned their posts. After a short break to allow those who wished to do so to leave the palace, [the order was given] for the real firing to begin from the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Aurora and the Palace Square. Most of the shells from the fortress landed harmlessly in the Neva.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

26 October
Meanwhile, the final assault on the Winter Palace was nearing completion. The loyalist forces had virtually all abandoned the defence of the palace and Bolshevik troops could enter it at will. The minsters, who were now stretched out on sofas, or slouched on chairs, awaiting the end, could hear the sound of running soldiers, shouts and gun shots from the floor below. Finally, some time after 2 a.m., these sounds grew louder: the Bolshevik attackers were climbing the stairs and approaching the door. It was clear that the moment for surrender had arrived.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

The night was yet heavy and chill. There was only a faint unearthly pallor stealing over the silent streets, dimming the watchfires, the shadow of a terrible dawn rising over Russia.
(John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York 1919)

Resolution published in Izvestia
The Soviet is convinced that the proletariat of the West European countries will help us to achieve a complete and lasting victory for the cause of socialism.
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

27 October
Report in The Times
For the moment the Allies of Russia can do little but look on at this agony, getting what comfort they can from the reflection that the voice which struggles up from it is assuredly not the authentic voice of Russia. They may remember, too, that revolution works in the blood of nations like a fever, which must come to its crisis, but, if historical analogy is worth anything, is apt to leave the patient stronger than before. Whether this is the crisis of the Russian Revolution or not, certain it is that the tragic events of the last few months have trampled in the mud the banner of revolutionary idealism. Russia, free for an instant, has found herself bound afresh.
(‘Russia’s Critical Hour’, The Times)

The Moscow Bolsheviks were reluctant fighters — they were much more inclined to resolve the power question through negotiation … Nor were they very good at fighting: the Kremlin was soon lost in the opening battle on the 27th … Without victory in Moscow, even Lenin recognized that the Bolsheviks could not retain power on their own.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

Report in The Times
Sir George Buchanan is remaining at Petrograd. The latest telegrams from the British Ambassador, dated Thursday evening, throw no fresh light on the situation.
(‘Sir George Buchanan’, The Times)

28 October
For a couple of days there had been no news of Kerensky. ‘No one had the remotest idea’ what was going to happen next, recalled Bessie Beatty. ‘Where is Korniloff? … Where are the Cossacks?’ Last and worst of all, ‘Where are the Germans? Rumour was riding a mad steed.’
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

28 October 2017
Steve Rosenberg, BBC Moscow correspondent, is doing a week of reports on the revolution, talking to people about their attitude to the centenary and the consequences of 1917. Already, in the first one, it’s thrown up some interesting comments. ‘Communism painted the October revolution as an uprising of the oppressed but in reality it was a coup’; ‘the development of the welfare state in the West was a reaction to the revolution in Russia, i.e. let’s make the life of the workers better [to prevent the same thing happening here]’; ‘we do social experiments, we show how things shouldn’t be done’ (Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky); ‘the authorities’ response to the centenary is radio silence, after all, the idea of taking up arms against an oppressive ruling class and abolishing private property is anathema to the current regime’; ‘now, in the 21st century, you don’t have to kill anyone to make significant changes’. As Rosenberg points out, food prices are rising and incomes falling, but there seems little appetite for a major political upheaval in the near future. Or will this be one of those hubristic predictions so enjoyed by readers of history: horizon clear, no icebergs in sight..?

15 - 21 October 1917

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Revolutionaries remove the remaining relics of the Imperial Regime from the facade of official buildings, Petrograd © IWM (Q 69406)

15 October
Letter to Nicholas II from his sister Xenia, from Ai-Todor, Crimea
They have removed our guard, many sailors asked for leave, some asked to return to Sebastopol, i.e. they were ‘thoroughly fed up’ being here. At first we had many misunderstandings with them, but finally we all got used to each other and they understood that we are neither criminals, nor are we involved in propaganda! But the thought of how you must grieve and suffer for our poor dearly beloved country and army — makes my heart ache and bleed. What have they done to us? Why destroy everything?

(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)

16 October
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
The Military Revolutionary Committee was an apparatus for the overthrow of the Government and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. And on October 16th this ‘motion’ was presented to the Soviet plenum for approval. There were heated protests from a Menshevik orator, whose fraction, in this meeting of a thousand men, numbered fifty people. ‘The Bolsheviks won’t answer the straight question whether or not they are preparing a coup. This is either cowardice or lack of confidence in their own strength’ (laughter in the audience). ‘But the projected Military Revolutionary Committee is nothing but a revolutionary staff for the seizure of power…’
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

What Lenin wanted was a formal endorsement of the previous decision [in favour of insurrection], though one leaving open the form and precise timing of insurrection … Zinoviev, by contrast, called for flatly prohibiting the organising of an uprising before the Second Congress … For Zinoviev, six votes for, fifteen against, three abstentions. For Lenin, four abstentions, two opposed, and nineteen in favour … Though the schedule was still up for debate, for the second time in a week the Bolsheviks had voted for insurrection … in Novaya zhizn … Kamenev published a stunning attack: ‘At the present … the instigation of an armed uprising before and independent of the Soviet Congress would be an impermissible and even fatal step for the proletariat and the revolution.’
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

17 October
Resolution by a general meeting of peasants, Petrograd province, 17 October 1917
We henceforth and forever will not trust any longer an authority that is not responsible to the people … The Soviet must immediately exercise all its powers to carry out the will of the revolutionary people:
1. Immediately propose to all the countries warring with us, as well as to our allies, an honest democratic peace…
2. Immediately declare all the land public…
3. Immediately institute state control over capital and production…
8. Immediately repeal the death penalty, which brings shame upon revolutionary Russia before the revolutionary democracy of the entire world.
Chairman of the assembly, A.P. Vorobyov
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)

18 October
Kamenev’s Letter in Gorky’s paper Novaya Zhizn
Not only Zinoviev and I, but also a number of practical comrades, think that to take the initiative in an armed insurrection at the present moment … is an inadmissible step ruinous to the proletariat and the Revolution. To stake everything on insurrection in the coming days would be an act of despair. And our party is too strong, it has too great a future before us, to take such a step.
(Victor Sebestyen, Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate Portrait, London 2017)

Letter from Lenin to the Members of the Bolshevik Party

Comrades,
I have not yet been able to receive the Petrograd papers for Wednesday, October 18. When the full text of Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s declaration, published in Novaya Zhizn, which is not a Party paper, was transmitted to me by telephone, I refused to believe it … Just think of it! It is known in Party circles that the Party since September has been discussing the question of insurrection. Nobody has ever heard of a single letter or leaflet written by either of the person named! Now, on the eve, one might say, of the Congress of Soviets, two prominent Bolsheviks come out against the majority, and, obviously, against the Central Committee … I should consider it disgraceful on my part if I were to hesitate to condemn these former comrades because of my former close relations with them. I declare outright that I no longer consider either of them comrades and that I will fight with all my might, both in the Central Committee and at the Congress, to secure their expulsion from the Party.
( The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, London 1938)

19 October

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The Petrograd situation is distinctly threatening! The Bolsheviks are well armed and the temper of the army and the fleet rapidly getting worse … The actions of the sailors are fearful — the subordinates of a most popular officer at Oesel raped his wife and daughter and then killed them — upon his return the officer shot himself.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

20 October
Kerensky to Vladimir Nabokov
I would be prepared to offer prayers to produce this uprising. I have greater forces than necessary. They will be utterly crushed.
(Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London 1996)

Diary of Nicholas II
Today is the 23rd anniversary of dear Papa’s death, what circumstances are we forced to live it in! God, how sad I feel for poor Russia!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)

21 October
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
After an excellent performance of La Passrelle, in which Mlle Didier was charming and Hasti screamingly funny in the part of a manservant, I went to end the evening in the house of young Countess Keller. There I heard that old Princess Urussov arrived this morning from Lapotkovo, her estate at Tula; she fled from there without being able to take anything except the clothes which she stood up in. The peasants have burned and pillaged everything.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

21 October 2017
The closer you get to the action the more the dust gets in your eyes. For those living through the turbulent events of October 1917 every day was a whirligig of rumour, half-truth and speculation. Those who were supposedly in control, like Kerensky, were left twisting in the wind (see his professed desire for an uprising which would be ‘utterly crushed’), while Lenin was busy fulminating against his pusillanimous colleagues Kamenev and Zinoviev. The establishment of the Military Revolutionary Committee was a key moment: the uprising now had some real muscle behind it. Four days and counting…

The New Statesman has marked the Great October this week with another article by the historian David Reynolds. He takes a look at the Russian century 1917–2017, and identifies five major upheavals: the February revolution (which ‘came as almost a relief for the British government’, no longer having to fight alongside the world’s leading autocracy), swiftly followed by October (which led to five years of civil war and established the polarised ideologies that characterised the twentieth century); Stalin’s brutal attempts to create a modern USSR (‘We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years … or we shall go under’); ‘Hitler’s revolution’, meaning the impact of the 1941–45 war on the people of the Soviet Union; Khrushchev’s revolution in education and housing (which for the first time enabled Soviet citizens to discuss their lives freely in their own, non-communal, kitchens); and Gorbachev — the revolutionary nature of whose rule ‘is beyond dispute’. And what of Putin? Reynolds’ thesis is that quiet revolutions are no less significant than the dramatic days of February or October. And that just as Khrushchev’s reforms led eventually to greater freedoms under Gorby, so now ‘social media has been quietly transforming urban Russia for several years. Here is the latest phase of glasnost — again rarely noted in Britain.’ The author, wisely, does not try to predict the outcome of this latest revolution.

8 – 14 October 1917

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

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.

1 – 7 October 19171

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Masses of Russian prisoners captured in the fighting near Riga, September 1917 © IWM (Q 86680)

Appeal to the Provisional Government from soldiers at the front, early October
We soldiers at the front have been in the trenches for more than three years now. There is severe hunger here at the front. We get 1 lb of bread and 1 oz. of meat. We walk around in tatters, like beggars. At night we sit by the barbed wire for six hours at a stretch. We have lost the last shreds of our health, while at home our families are going hungry on their two sotkas of land. We soldiers at the front ask you comrades of the Provisional Government to put a speedy end to the war. It would be good for you comrades of the Provisional Government to do the fighting … Once more we demand a speedy peace from you the Provisional Government, and if you don’t try to do this, Comrade Kerensky, then in the near future we are going to throw down our rifles and leave the front for the rear and destroy you, the Bourgeoisie.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, New Haven and London 2001)

1 October
Article in the newspaper Russkoe slovo
In Provisional Government circles the following interesting story is doing the rounds, one that seems to characterize the current game of ministerial musical chairs. Since the revolution there have been so many ministers that even the leaders of the Provisional Government fail to recognize some of them — as was witnessed by the following curious incident that took place a few days ago. In the middle of a meeting of the Provisional Government the doors to the Malachite Hall opened and in walked an unknown gentleman who took his place at the table. The appearance of this stranger created a bit of a stir amongst the members of the Provisional Government. A. I. Konovalov, who was chairing the meeting, beckoned to A. Ya. Galperin, head of the government’s internal affairs, and asked him to find out what the unknown gentleman was doing. To Galperin’s question, the stranger announced that he was Comrade Orlov, minister of provisions, and he was at the meeting in that capacity. The only minister who knew Orlov, S. N. Prokopovich, was not present.
(‘Almost an anecdote’, Russkoe slovo )

3 October
On 3 October, the Russian General Staff evacuated Revel, the last bastion between the front and the capital. The next day, accordingly, the government sought advice on the evacuation of the executive and key industries — but not of the Soviet — to Moscow. News of the discussions leaked out. There was a storm: the bourgeoisie were indeed planning to abandon the city built for them two centuries before. The city of bones. The Ispolkom forbade any such move without its approval, and the unstable government shelved the idea. In this ambience of perfidy, weakness and violence, Lenin took his campaign for insurrection to the wider party.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, London 2017)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
The shameful attempt at evacuating the Government to Moscow was taken up with special fury. The plotters were betraying the revolutionary capital! Incapable of defending it, they did not even want to do so…
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

4 October
Announcement in the newspaper Vpered!
In October and November Ufa’s town slaughterhouse will carry out the slaughter of 150–250 cattle every day, to meet the needs of the army, and for a certain time the slaughter of sheep at an average of 600–800 a day; the whole carcass of the cattle is to be sold: head and tongue, neck (entrails), legs with skin and offal; and also the sheep carcass: head with skin and neck. To this end on Wednesday 4 October there will an open market in the Office of the region’s food production department (Surovskaya 32) at 2 o’clock.
(Vpered! (Ufa regional newspaper))

5 October
Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The great families are obliged to part with their most precious mementoes, in order to live. I went … to see Mme Narichkyn, who has a bust of Marie-Antoinette which she wants the Louvre to buy. The chief lady-in-waiting of the Court, having been unable to follow her Sovereigns to Siberia, has taken refuge in a small apartment in Sergevska Street, where she received us very graciously … With her Bourbon profile, she still looks like a daughter of Louis XV and seems remarkably young … even though she saw the 1848 revolution in Paris and remembers that month of June quite well. The biscuit de Sèvres bust which she showed us is quite exquisite. It was given by Marie-Antoinette herself to Mme Narichkyn’s grandfather … It is a unique example, all the others having been destroyed during the French Revolution, and it would be highly desirable if the Versailles Museum or the Sèvres factory could buy it, rather than it should one day grace the parlour of a Transatlantic pork merchant.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

Article in The Manchester Guardian
The Rev J. Clare, of Petrograd, preached yesterday at the Central Hall, Manchester. Mr. Clare said that today one of the commonest expressions was ‘Russia has let us down’. But that he held to be a great mistake. We were being ‘let down’ before the Revolution more seriously than many of them could imagine. If the Revolution had not taken place, a false and treacherous peace would have been arranged between Russia and Germany, which would have been far more disastrous than the revolutionary outbreak. The Russian soldier had not let the Allies down. On the contrary he had done the Allies a very real service by putting an end to the treachery and corruption which existed in high places. No doubt the Russian soldier was ignorant, foolish, and stupid in what he was doing. The trouble was that the people were not quite ready for liberty.
(‘Russian Revolution: A Petrograd Observer’s Views’, The Manchester Guardian)

6 October
Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
There is slowly developing a most interesting story of the Kornilov-Kerensky affair which — notwithstanding apparent pressure and censorship — is also creeping into the daily papers here and especially in Moscow. It is freely rumoured that when the truth is known the story will rival the expose in the Dreyfus case in France and that Kerensky is purposely postponing Kornilov’s trial as long as possible. I have yet to find one sensible patriotic Russian either here or in Moscow who looks upon Kornilov as at all a traitor, rather as a man who was willing to sacrifice everything, even his reputation and perhaps his life to saving his country from a humiliating and intolerable situation.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

7 October
Letter to the Central Committee, Moscow Committee, Petrograd Committee and the Bolshevik members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets
Dear Comrades,
Events indicate our task so clearly to us that hesitation actually becomes a crime. The agrarian movement is growing. The government is increasing its savage repressions; sympathy with us is growing in the army … To hesitate is a crime … If it is impossible to take power without an uprising, it is necessary immediately to orientate upon an uprising … Even if Kerensky has in the vicinity of Petrograd one or two cavalry corps, he will have to surrender. The Petrograd Soviet may bide its time, while carrying on propaganda in favour of the Moscow Soviet government. The slogan is: power to the Soviets, land to the peasants, peace to the peoples, bread to the hungry. Victory is assured, and there are nine chances out of ten that it will be bloodless. To wait is a crime against the revolution.
Greetings, Lenin
(V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917, London 1938)

7 October 2017
As the anniversary of the October revolution approaches, Russia is preoccupied with more contemporary concerns: today’s 65th birthday of President Putin, marked country-wide by demonstrations in support of his most prominent rival, Alexei Navalny. Although reports suggest that numbers are down on previous protests, Navalny’s twitter feed shows large crowds with the comment ‘Again, nobody has turned up!’ Radio Free Europe reports that spoiler rallies are being held in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg by groups of students brandishing flags in support of Catalonian independence. Navalny himself is behind bars having been sentenced to 20 days for organising unsanctioned rallies. There will be some, many even, who hope for their own Great October this year, but in the absence of widespread hunger or a deeply unpopular war, it’s a vain hope.

Meanwhile, the BBC is getting into the revolutionary spirit with a series of programmes on TV and radio. On Radio 4 on Monday (9 October) Start the Week is focusing on the forces that led to revolution, in a discussion that includes Mikhail Zygar, one of Fontanka’s potential authors. On Tuesday 10 October BBC2 has Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution at 9pm which includes several authors quoted here. Details of all the broadcasts can be found at this link.

24-30 September 1917

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Florence Farmborough at the Russian Front, 1915 (painted from a photograph)

24 September
A newspaper printed a report that the English and French armies, on account of the disorder in Russia, wished to sever the alliance. I refused to believe such a thing. In another newspaper I read that the report had been denied. I read also that the British Army had gained much territory in Mesopotamia.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914–18, London 1974)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The Kremlin is one of the few things in the world that have not proved disappointing to me in the realization! We spent almost all day there today … The icons are extraordinary and on the whole rather pleasing. The almost idolatrous worship of these people makes us sometimes wonder as to their real capacity for self-government. The kissing of relics offends all laws of sanitation.
(Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, London 2002)

25 September
Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
The new government will go down in the history of the revolution as the Government of the civil war. The Soviet declares: ‘We, the workers and the garrison of Petersburg, refuse to support the Government of bourgeois autocracy and counter-revolutionary violence. We express the unshakeable conviction that the new Government will meet with a single response from the entire revolutionary democracy: “Resign!”’
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record, Oxford 1955)

Report in The Manchester Guardian
The reports of the Democratic Conference transmitted to this country could not have been more unsatisfactory if they had been deliberately designed to confound, prejudice and dishearten the English people with regard to Russia. Whatever be the circumstances responsible, such a state of affairs is gravely injurious to this country. It poisons Anglo-Russian sympathies, and therefore Anglo-Russian relations, and, by denying us the materials for judging, eliminates all calculation from our estimates of the future course of events in Russia.
(‘The Democratic Conference’, The Manchester Guardian)

26 September
Arthur Ransome headed home by sea on 26 September with a very clear sense of approaching danger; what he had seen at the congress had convinced him that the Bolsheviks were preparing the ground to seize power.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917, London 2017)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
On orders from their governments the Allied ambassadors today took steps to issue a solemn warning to Kerensky and to convey their anxiety to him. The American Ambassador alone found an excuse to abstain. Kerensky received them in the Winter Palace … Sir George Buchanan, the doyen, read them the joint declaration. Although this was expressed in the most moderate terms — too moderate, in my opinion — it violently irritated the despot’s vanity, and he walked out exclaiming: ‘You forget that Russia is a great power!’ The Tsar also refused to listen to Sir George in similar circumstances: a few weeks later, he lost the crown!
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–1918, London 1969)

27 September
A railway strike has dislocated rail-transport throughout Russia. Finland has proclaimed herself a republic. Strikes and riots are still rampant, while famine is augmenting the general hardship … Alas! For poor, suffering Russia. We heard of a party of Social Democrats in Petrograd, who had coined for themselves the name of Bolshevik — meaning one who forms the majority. Being such a small party, the name Menshevik [minority] would have been more appropriate! The members professed to be ‘apostles’ of the doctrine of Communism and declared that their objectives were to bring peace to Russia by negotiation; to abolish capitalism; to establish a proletariat dictatorship and to equalise all classes … It was not difficult for us now to guess the origins and aims of those suspicious men who for some weeks past had been inspecting Russian Front Lines and delivering speeches to the troops. It was now quite clear that the Bolsheviki had started an extensive subversive movement.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914–18, London 1974)

Report in The Manchester Guardian
Reuter’s Agency states that Commander Locker-Lampson, M.P., who has been in command of the British armoured-car unit in Russia, arrived in England yesterday … ‘No one,’ said the Commander, ‘has any right to suppose for a moment that Russia will not remain loyal to the Allied cause. The Coalition Government now formed is a fine achievement, and many difficulties will disappear within the next few months.’
(‘The Russian Outlook’, The Manchester Guardian)

29 September
Diary of Nicholas II
A few days ago Dr Botkin received a note from Kerensky, from which we learnt that we are allowed to take walks beyond the town. In answer to Botkin’s question about when these could begin, Pankratov — the wretch — replied that there could be no question of it now because of some unexplained fear for our safety. Everyone was very upset by this answer.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, London 1996)

30 September 2017
Florence Farmborough (1887–1978) went to Moscow in 1908 to be governess to the children of a Russian heart surgeon. When war broke out, she trained as a Red Cross nurse (her parents had presciently named her after Florence Nightingale) and was assigned to a surgical field unit of the 3rd Russian Army Corps. The diary she kept of her four years on the Russian front were published only in 1974, when she was 87. An article in The Times, marking the book’s publication, described it as an ‘astonishing record [that] survived through the advances and retreats of trench warfare, through the Bolshevik rampages, a journey across Siberia and her eventual escape from Russia through Vladivostok’. Florence clearly felt a strong bond with the Russian army — and was grateful to be taken on by the Red Cross (‘I would never have been allowed to work in the British Red Cross’) — but described the changes that occurred in the summer of 1917 like this: ‘It was an inexplicable transformation. We were prepared for any hardship and danger at the front. But when our own men wanted to kill us because we were educated or religious it was much more frightening.’ After returning from Russia she went to Spain and lectured in English at the University of Luis Vives in Valencia. During the Spanish Civil War she worked for General Franco, reading daily bulletins broadcast in English by Spanish National Radio, and in the Battle of Britain she was back in London with the Women’s Voluntary Service. Quite some life. Her obituary in The Times described her as ‘a faithful observer and recorder of the bravery and misery, the day-by-day comments, and the increasing acts of desertion and treachery of the officers and men of the Tsarist Army during the period of its increasing breakdown, which played a part in the triumph of the revolutionaries’.

17-23 September 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The man with whom the moderates urged caution, Kerensky, remained pitifully weak, and growing weaker. He struggled, lashed out to shore up his authority. On 18 September he pronounced the dissolution of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet. The sailors responded simply that his order was 'considered inoperative'. The Democratic Conference, too, strained for relevance ... The proceedings were outdoing their own absurdity.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

17 September

All power to the Soviets – such is the slogan of the new movement… All power to the imperialist bourgeoisie – such is the slogan of the Kerensky Government. There is no room for doubt. We have two powers before us: the power of Kerensky and his government, and the power of the Soviets and the Committees. The fight between these two powers is the characteristic feature of the present moment. Either the power of the Kerensky Government – and then the rule of the landlords and capitalists, war and chaos. Or the power of the Soviets – and then the rule of the workers and peasants, peace and the liquidation of chaos.
(J. Stalin, ‘All Power to the Soviets’, The Russian Revolution , London 1938)

18 September

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
I don’t know much about art, I’d love to know more. If you were here and there was no war, we’d go to the Hermitage, everywhere, and we’d learn. Arkasha would go with us the first few times and teach us how to look, how to see and find the beauty in paintings … But unfortunately, sadly, we can’t do any of this. The Hermitage is closed: it’s being evacuated and only, probably, in about four or five years will it be possible to see pictures in the Hermitage again…
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

19 September

Report in the Times headed ‘Good work of Democratic conference’
The conference has lost much of its nervousness and seems to be finding itself. There was a good deal of wandering from the main point, which is to decide the form of government which will be in control until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. Nor is this to be wondered at when it is considered how little experience the Russian masses have had in conducting politics. There is no doubt that the Conference is realizing the terrible situation in which the country finds itself, and is trying to the utmost to bend its energies in the direction of a solution.
(‘Coalition Probable in Russia’, The Times (from our correspondent))

20 September

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Yesterday’s conference was typical of the political chaos now reigning in this distracted country. First vote was for coalition, second to eliminate those implicated with Kornilov, third to eliminate Kadets, and fourth (submitted for no perceivable reason) overwhelmingly against coalition! Whereupon the somewhat dazed ‘presidium’ decided to enlarge itself and to adjourn conference until 6.00 PM today. The two outstanding facts were the extreme unpopularity of the Kadets and the quiet power of the Maximalist [Bolshevik] faction. I forgot to say yesterday that a charming piece of German propaganda is to have a cartoon and the Russian words ‘Why fight for capitalistic England’ on every sheet of toilet paper in the Russian latrines at the front.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

21 September

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
The Bolsheviks, who form a compact minority, have alone a definite political programme. They are more active and better organized than any other group, and until they and the ideas which they represent are finally squashed, the country will remain a prey to anarchy and disorder ... If the Government are not strong enough to put down the Bolsheviks by force, at the risk of breaking altogether with the Soviet, the only alternative will be a Bolshevik Government.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

22 September

Report in The Times
Russia is a woman labouring in childbirth, and this is the moment chosen by Germany to strike her down. Whatever may be the strict rights of the case, the spirit of history will never forgive her. The liberty which has been painfully born in Russia will rise to vindicate her in the coming generation, and will become the most implacable foe of a future Germany.
(‘Reprisals’, The Times)

23 September

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
In the provinces, the hostility of the peasants towards the workers is increasing and the moujiks are refusing to sell their products to feed the workers, whom they accuse of having caused the economic crisis through their idleness. The workers are doing less and less work because it does not provide them with a living, and because on their part they do not want to do anything for the peasants who refuse to supply them. It is a vicious circle which makes the economic situation more serious every day. The result is armed conflict, pogroms, and disorders of every kind.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

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23 September 2017

Party conference season is upon us and excitement is rising to an almost noticeable level. Actually, that's not entirely fair. There is a good deal of anticipation this year, thanks to Corbyn fever and Maybot uncertainty, with Brexit looming large over everything. The stakes are higher than normal, just as they were for the All-Russian Democratic Conference in Petrograd a hundred years earlier. (Corbyn is no Stalin, but a small amendment to the 17 September quotation has a certain resonance: Either the power of the May Government – and then the rule of the landlords and capitalists, war and chaos. Or the power of the Labour left – and then the rule of the workers and peasants, peace and the liquidation of chaos. ) Nobody really suspected that a month after this conference the country would be in greater turmoil than ever before (though the British ambassador, Buchanan, seems to make a good stab at such a prediction, in a book published six years later). Descriptions of the conference reveal all factions to be in various degrees of confusion and internal strife. Perhaps if its representatives had talked about transitional arrangements that avoided a cliff-edge scenario, leading to a new promised land of fairness and prosperity for all, things might have been different... Soft, not hard, revolution then.

10-16 September 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

A half-length portrait of a young female Russian soldier serving with the Russian Women's 'Battalion of Death', 1917. The Battalion was formed by the Provisional Government in Petrograd after the February Revolution. The soldier is carrying a shortened Mosin-Nagant rifle, with bayonet fixed. Her head has been completely shaved (© IWM (Q 106251)

A large section of the propertied classes preferred the Germans to the Revolution – even to the Provisional Government – and didn’t hesitate to say so. In the Russian household where I lived, the subject of conversation at the dinner-table was almost invariably the coming of the Germans, bringing ‘law and order’ … One evening I spent at the house of a Moscow merchant; during tea we asked the eleven people at the table whether they preferred ‘Wilhelm or the Bolsheviki’. The vote was ten to one for Wilhelm.
(John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World , New York 1919)

11 September

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Of the German offensive against this capital I have at the moment no fear. Of the results of the ineptitude of the Provisional Government, the possible outbreak of disorder, the probable riots that might then ensue, I have some fear – or if not fear at least I feel that we should be prepared for such eventualities.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
At dinner last night with Prince Gorchakov everybody was very pessimistic. M. Narichkin, who came in during the evening, said that peace must be made at all costs by giving the Germans everything they want. The whole of Russia basically thinks the same as he does: but there are still people who dare not say so.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

12 September

Letter from Lenin to the Central Committee and and the Petrograd and Moscow Committees of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Why must the Bolsheviks assume power now? Because the impending surrender of Petrograd will render our chances a hundred times less favourable. And while the army is headed by Kerensky and Co. it is not in our power to prevent the surrender of Petrograd … A separate peace between the British and German imperialists must be prevented, and can be prevented, but only by quick action … It would be naïve to wait for a ‘formal’ majority for the Bolsheviks; no revolution ever waits for that. Kerensky and Co. are not waiting either; they are preparing to surrender Petrograd … Power must be assumed in Moscow and Petrograd at once (it does not matter which begins; even Moscow may begin); we shall win absolutely and unquestionably.
V.I. Lenin, ‘The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power’, in The Russian Revolution: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution , London 1938)

As for Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s suggestion that the party await a popular mandate from the Second Congress of Soviets, [Lenin] dismissed it as ‘naïve’: ‘no revolution waits for that’. The Central Committee was far from convinced: according to Trotsky, none of its members favoured an immediate insurrection.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

13 September

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Yesterday to Tsarskoye Selo to wish the Grand Duke Boris ‘Good-bye and Good Luck.’ He was very sad, and said, ‘You are my last link with civilisation.’ On my return, went to the Embassy to thank His Excellency and Lady Georgina for their infinite kindness to me during my sojourn in Russia. This morning left Petrograd at 7.30 for England.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

14 September

Interview given by Kerensky to Le Figaro , reported in the Times
I maintain hope and confidence that the country will revive. The time has come when we are going to reclimb the slope, and we shall get to the top … we have attracted to our front rather more than half the total forces of the Central Empires. We had to bear a tremendous effort on the part of the enemy, but we have pulled ourselves together, and we shall do everything to face the formidable necessities of the situation in order to attain the success of our Armies ... The enemy has made skilful use of the circumstances in order to throw suspicion on our faithfulness and loyalty as an ally. Only the German Press could have spoken of a separate peace. Russia will never make a separate peace. No man would ever consent to put his signature to such a treaty. Such an idea must be excluded alike from the hopes of our enemies and the fears of our Allies.
(‘Russia will never make a separate peace’, The Times )

15 September

Report in the Times
The military section of the Soviet has voted a motion demanding the dissolution of the so-called ‘shock’ battalions for the following reasons:- (1) From the point of view of principle it is inadmissible that there should be in the Army groups of privileged solders who arrogate to themselves the right to die for the liberty of the country, when the right belongs to all soldiers. (2) The ‘shock’ battalions place the Russian Army in the position of an Army which refuses to defend liberty. (3) The ‘shock’ battalions diminish the capacity of the Army by creating, on the one side, a category of heroes, and, on the other, a mass of conscienceless soldiers.
(‘Soviet’s Objections to “Shock” Battalions’, The Times )

16 September

A Prekaz [Order] has been circulated; it directs that, in the event of withdrawal from Roumanian territory, Russian soldiers are strictly forbidden to ill-treat the peasantry, or to steal from them. Another Prekaz, this time from the Roumanian High Command, forbids all sale of foodstuffs to the Russians. I must admit that my sympathies lie with the Roumanians; the Russians are really bad allies, they have lived so long in Galicia, where they considered everything theirs by right … The newspapers hint that Kerensky may resign, as so many people – including some of his own supporters – are advocating a military dictatorship.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18 , London 1974)

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16 September 2017

For most of the year the Russian press has been fairly underwhelmed, it appears, by the centenary of the Revolution. But a new film, Matilda , about Nicholas II’s relationship with the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, has unleashed a media storm this week. A young Duma member, Natalya Poklonskaya, is leading the attack, saying that anyone who watches this ‘blasphemy’ is complicit in its offence against the Orthodox faith (Nicholas having been canonised in 2000). Even Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky has weighed in, though since the film isn’t on general release until October, it seems unlikely that many have seen it. It’s interesting that a few seamy scenes of the last Emperor and his mistress are portrayed as an attack on the church and somehow, by association, the government. In 1917, postcards depicting the deposed Emperor engaged in all kinds of unmentionable acts were part of governmental strategy to vilify his regime. Hard to get one’s head round, but sometimes it seems that contemporary Russia is far more in thrall to tsarist nostalgia than the democratic ideals that were still fighting for life exactly a century ago.

3-9 September 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Lotarevo estate, Tambov province (former home of the Vyazemsky family)

Across the empire, the Mensheviks were splintering. Some went to the right, as in Baku; at the other extreme, the Mensheviks in Tiflis, Georgia, took a hard-left position for a united socialist government that would include the Bolsheviks … And whether or not dissent took socialist forms, the national aspirations of Russia’s minorities were amplifying … From the 8th to the 15th, the Ukrainian Rada provocatively convened a Congress of the Nationalities, bringing together Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Tatars, Turks, Bessarabian Romanians, Latvians, Georgians, Estonians, Kazakhs, Cossacks and representatives of various radical parties … dynamics towards independence in some form were at least implicit.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

3 September

Report in The Times
Petrograd – The Government has issued the following official manifesto declaring the establishment of a Republic:- The rebellion of General Korniloff has been suppressed, but the trouble which the Army has brought upon the country is great. Once again mortal danger threatens the liberty of the Fatherland. Deeming it necessary to define the political status of the country, and taking into consideration the sympathy, unanimity, and enthusiasm for the Republican idea that were so clearly evident at the Moscow Conference, the Provisional Government hereby declares that the political regime of Russia is Republican, and proclaims Russia a Republican State.
('Government Manifesto', The Times , 3 (16) September 1917)

4 September

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
A Prince Viazemski has been murdered by his peasants – his eyes first put out and his sufferings prolonged for several hours. His young wife was in the house and had to witness it all.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
Trotsky had been released from prison on September 4th, just as suddenly and causelessly as he had been arrested on July 23rd. Now he became chairman of the Petersburg Soviet; there was a hurricane of applause when he appeared!
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

5 September

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Today the government proclaimed the Republic, in order to satisfy public opinion … and seized the opportunity to double the price of bread. A theoretical price, in fact, because there is none to be had.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

6 September

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Bad news from Finland. The massacres of officers continue. At Viborg half a dozen of them were thrown off the bridge into the river and finished off with gun-shots. At Helsingfors the sailors murdered several navy officers with blows from a hammer. Murders like these are said to be happening almost everywhere, but they have been kept from the public.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

7 September

Report in The Times
The committee system has been most disastrous in its effect upon industries. Workmen are too busy with politics to attend to their duties. Locomotives and rolling stock are not repaired. The complete paralysis of transport, the stoppage of all industries, owing to the shortage of fuel and raw materials, is a question of months or weeks, perhaps days. The output of munitions has declined by 80 per cent.
(‘Russia Today: The Committee System’, The Times , By our Petrograd Correspondent)

8 September

Diary of Nicholas II
We went for the first time to the church of the Annunciation, where our priest has served for a long time. But the pleasure was spoilt for me by the idiotic conditions in which we had to walk there. Sentries were posted all along the path of the town park, where there was no one, while there was a huge crowd at the church! I was deeply upset.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Alekseev has resigned - as rumored last night - on the ground that the government would not agree to his recommendations relative to the restoration of strict discipline in the army! The members of four cavalry regiments have announced that all their officers who are of noble lineage are to be deprived of their commands by order of their men ... I have determined to send Mrs Wright and Butler tomorrow night to spend a few weeks with the Summers. The situation here is not so reassuring as to incline me to leave them here.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

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9 September 2017

The murder of Prince Vyazemsky, mentioned with characteristic flourish (and artistic licence) by our Anonymous Englishman, had happened a couple of weeks earlier and provides an interesting example of differing historical interpretations. In some accounts Vyazemsky is described as a gentle and generous man who built schools, roads and bridges, kept records of seasonal changes on his Lotarevo estate, planted new species of trees and spent most of his time poring over his numerous books on botany and ornithology. The account of his death in the local Tambov paper suggests that it was almost a chance occurrence that led to his brutal murder – that prosaic business of being in the wrong place at the wrong time: ‘The mob who had arrested Prince Vyazemsky made it a condition of his release that he should be sent immediately to the front. The prince agreed to this and was sent under convoy to Gryazi station for further onward despatch to join the Army. At this moment a train with a squadron of soldiers came into the station. Hearing of the incident with Vyazemsky, they immediately started taunting him and after cruel torture the prince was killed by the enraged mob. It later became known that one of the best cultivated estates in Russia – Prince Vyazemsky’s Lotarevo estate – was completely destroyed.’ In his book A People's Tragedy , Orlando Figes gives a rather different version of events: 'This violent wave of destruction seems to have started with the murder of Prince Boris Vyazemsky, the owner of several thousand hectares in the Usman region of Tambov. The local peasants had been demanding since the spring that Vyazemsky lower his rents and return the hundred hectares of prime pasture he had taken from them as a punishment for their part in the revolution of 1905. But on both counts Vyazemsky had refused. On 24 August some 5,000 peasants from the neighbouring villages occupied the estate. Fortified by vodka from the prince's cellars, and armed with pitchforks and rifles, they repulsed a Cossack detachment, arrested Vyazemsky and organised a kangaroo court which decided to despatch him to the Front, "so that he can learn to fight as the peasants have done". But there were also cries of "Let's kill the Prince! We are sick of him!", and he was murdered by the drunken mob before he even reached the nearby railway station.' So gentle botanist or sadistic landowner, murdered on his estate by his peasants or at the station by unruly soldiers - the window into the past is nothing if not opaque.

27 August - 2 September 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

There was a breath of autumn already in the sky. The unforgettable summer was ending, and the sun set early in the sea. We could not sufficiently admire our marvellous Petersburg.

27 August

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
Sunday, August 27th, marked the end of six months of revolution. It was a rather wretched jubilee … I went to the Petersburg Side to the Cirque Moderne, where Lunacharsky was giving a lecture on Greek art. A huge working-class audience was listening with great interest to the popular speaker and his unfamiliar stories. … The two of us … wandered about the streets and quays for a long time, talking about aesthetics and ‘culture’ … There was a breath of autumn already in the sky. The unforgettable summer was ending, and the sun set early in the sea. We could not sufficiently admire our marvellous Petersburg … The phone rang. Someone from Smolny: …’Kornilov is moving on Petersburg with troops from the front. He’s got an army corps. Things are being organized here…’ I dropped the receiver. In two minutes Lunacharsky and I had already left for Smolny.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

At a hasty cabinet meeting, [Kerensky] read out the transcript ‘proving’ Kornilov’s ‘treachery’. He demanded the astonished ministers grant him unlimited authority against the coming danger. The Kadets, deeply imbricated with the Kornilovite milieu, objected, but the majority gave Kerensky a free hand. They resigned as he requested, remaining only in caretaker capacities. Thus, at 4am on 27 August, the Second Coalition ended.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

28 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Last night I was called to the Embassy by telephone, with the news that General Kornilov had announced the fall of the provisional government and was marching on Petrograd … the facts of the situation [are these]: Kornilov had informed Kerensky through the intermediary of M. Lvov, that in view of the danger which threatened the country, he had decided to take over as dictator, and that he was offering him the office of Minister of Justice in the new government. Naturally, the vain and sensual petty lawyer, who believes himself to be the master of Russia because he sleeps in the Emperor’s bed, could not resign himself to taking his hand out of the till: he answered by having M. Lvov arrested and declaring Kornilov ‘a traitor to the fatherland’.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

29 August

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Rumour has it that many regiments are going over to Kornilov and that he is not far beyond Tsarskoye. It is undoubtedly the fact that the ‘counter-revolutionists’, or monarchists, are on his side too. Heavy detachments of troops in Champs de Mars.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Report during a journey along the Volga river by Manchester Guardian correspondent
‘I say there is no hope for Russia till we have a dictator who can discipline these dogs, and stop all this anarchy,’ said a man in a general’s uniform to his neighbour, a well-dressed civilian. Both were sitting at a mahogany table, taking coffee and rolls. ‘Oh, yes, that’s quite true,’ said the civilian. ‘Before the Revolution the peasants on our estate used to work well, but then, of course, you always had to be there with the threat of force to drive them; I suppose it is just the same with the soldiers.’
(M. Philips Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution , London 1921)

Report in The Times
It is clear that such power as exists in Russia resides not in the Provisional Government, but in the self-constituted and irresponsible committees which have obtained control over the simple soldiery … The news of the internal strife in Russia will be received with profound sorrow in this country. The saddest feature of the situation is that M. Kerensky and General Korniloff are both patriots, and both have the welfare of Russia deeply at heart … In six months the Russian Army has been stripped of its generals as one strips an artichoke, although many of them … were as ardent in support of the Revolution as M. Kerensky himself.
( The Times , 29 August (11 September) 1917)

30 August

Report in The Times
Russia is at the point of civil war. Troops supporting General Korniloff have moved on Petrograd, and, in order to delay them, supporters of M. Kerensky and the Provisional Government are destroying the railway lines converging on the capital. The ‘Savage Division’, once commanded by Korniloff, are reported 30 miles from Petrograd.
( The Times , 30 August (12 September) 1917)

Here to meet them … were scores of emissaries. They came from the Committee for Struggle, from district soviets, from factories, garrisons, Tsentroflot, from the Naval Committee, the Second Baltic Crew. And locals had come too. All stamping across the scrub and through the trees towards that wheezing train. They came with agitation in mind. They came to beg the Savage Division to resist being used for counterrevolution.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Letter to the Editor
Sir, As a personal friend of General Korniloff … may I thank you for your leading article of this morning’s date? Those who label General Korniloff as a traitor to his country are traitors themselves … As an individual, he has a strong personality – the personality of a Cossack … I said at that moment [Revolution], and I say again today, that Russia will be saved by a strong, clean, straightforward individual, unswerved by all petty, passing passions which temporarily influence the emotional mind. Such a man is General Korniloff.
Yours very truly, Marjorie Colt Lethbridge, 15 Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park
( The Times , 30 August (12 September) 1917)

31 August

Letter to the Editor
Sir, A letter in your yesterday’s issue from Mrs Lethbridge appears to suggest that General Korniloff is the sole patriot in Russia at the present moment. The fact is that so far as genuine patriotism … is concerned, there is absolutely no choice to be made between Korniloff and Kerensky … The truth is that Kerensky and Korniloff are equally necessary for the salvation of Russia. Each is incomplete without the other. They are two utterly unselfish men both striving for the same goal, but along different paths.
Yours, Paul Dukes, 2 Bethune Avenue, Friern Barnet
( The Times , 31 August (13 September) 1917)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
It is all over! Kornilov has failed. How it happened we don’t know yet, but today he is to be brought to Petrograd under arrest. If he had succeeded – as he ought to have done, once he had embarked on so important an undertaking – we should have had order restored … The failure of Kornilov has completely knocked me over, and yesterday I could not walk. I still foresee an ocean of blood before order comes.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

1 September

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Anarchy seems to stalk in the streets, for not only has the government given the workmen arms in the recent trouble (about 40,000) but the Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers’ Deputies informed the ministry last night that they wished no Kadets in the ministry. Sober sense cannot but see complete demoralization in the army and serious trouble in this city.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

2 September

Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval cadet at Kronstadt
The ‘Kornilov days’ constituted a Rubicon after which our Party grew so strong that it was soon able to put on the agenda the decisive proletarian attack. The Party’s standing among the workers increased with fantastic speed. The very word ‘Bolshevik’, which after the July days had been a swear-word, was now transformed into a synonym for an honest revolutionary, the only dependable friend of the workers and peasants.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 , New York 1982, first published 1925)

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2 September 2017

In his memoir, Kerensky describes the defeat of Kornilov in pyrrhic terms: ‘The first news of the approach of general Kornilov’s troops had much the same effect on the people of Petrograd as a lighted match on a powder keg. Soldiers, sailors, and workers were all seized with a sudden fit of paranoid suspicion. They fancied they saw counterrevolution everywhere. Panic-stricken that they might lose the rights they had only just gained, they vented their rage against all the generals, landed proprietors, bankers and other “bourgeois” groups.’ The resistance to Kornilov was led by the Bolsheviks with a momentum that carried them through to October. Lenin had demanded renewed radicalism: ‘Now is the time for action; the war against Kornilov must be conducted in a revolutionary way, by drawing the masses in, by arousing them, by inflaming them (Kerensky is afraid of the masses, afraid of the people).’ As for Kornilov, with his fellow conspirators he escaped from prison in November 1917 and became military commander of the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army. He was killed by a Soviet shell in April 1918.

20-26 August 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Column of Russian prisoners captured in the fighting near Riga, August 1917 (© IWM Q 86647)

It was not only the hard right considering martial law under Kornilov. In anguish, lugubriously, incoherently, bizarrely, grasping at a possible way out, so was Kerensky himself … agitated at the possibility of Bolshevik uprising, [he] was split between opposition to martial law, and a belief in its necessity.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

21 August

On 21 August another blow to Russia’s war effort came with news that the strategically important Baltic port of Riga, 350 miles to the south-west, had fallen to the Germans – or, rather, its Russian defenders had simply abandoned it to them without a fight. Despite this, a state of denial about the Russian army’s disintegration persisted in the capital. Willem Oudendijk had gone to the opera that evening with his wife to hear Chaliapin sing in Rimsky Korsakov’s Rusalka: the audience had been wildly enthusiastic, rushing forward from their seats and ‘recalling Chaliapin before the footlights over and over again at the end of every Act. There seemed no thought of revolution, or the Germans, or war that evening. Petrograd was now in the war zone; but what did it matter? Here was Chaliapin singing! Cheer! And applaud! Bravo, Chaliapin!’
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917 , London 2017)

22 August

On the morning of August 22, [conservative Vladimir] Lvov paid a visit to Kerensky. He implied in veiled terms that he represented an influential party which believed the government should be strengthened with the addition of public figures close to the military. Kerensky subsequently claimed that the instant the interview was over, he dismissed it from his mind. Lvov, however, proceeded to Mogilev to sound out Kornilov.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

23 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
People tell scandalous stories about [Kerensky], and the latest pretext for these is his divorce, and his re-marriage to one of his sisters-in-law, who is a very young student at the Conservatoire. Amongst the people, it is said that he has got divorced to marry the Tsar’s daughter, and that his is going to become Regent. It’s the kind of story they love here, and the Slav imagination is busy embroidering on these fantastic themes … we shall see it all later on at the opera with some Chaliapin, or at the ballet with some Karsavina.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

24 August

Account by Vladimir Lvov, member of the State Duma for Samara Region
I arrived at Stavka [Army HQ] on 24 August; no vehicles met us so Dobrynsky and I took a cab … to the hotel where I had to share a room with the Cossack captain Rodionov … From his first words Rodionov knocked me sideways by saying that the supreme commander had signed Kerensky’s death warrant … although Kerensky had not officially asked me to conduct talks with Kornilov, I decided that I could speak on his behalf, since he had shown willingness to reorganize the government … To my question as to whether it was true that the armed forces would not support the government in the event of a Bolshevik uprising, Kornilov reassured me by saying that the situation was very difficult but it would not get to this stage; the troops would do their duty and support the government.
(V.N. Lvov, 'My Talks with Kerensky and Kornilov', A.F. Kerensky: Pro et Contra, St Petersburg 2016)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
A Bolshevik uprising is now looked for by Sunday. We are forced to take the first preparatory steps looking to the removal of our most important archives to a place of safety.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

25 August

Account by Vladimir Lvov, member of the State Duma for Samara Region
My second meeting with Kornilov took place on the morning of 25 August … He started by elaborating the general situation: Riga was taken, Rumania could be cut off at any moment, the mood in the ranks was despondent, the army was wanting to pin the blame on those responsible for its ignominy at the front and rear … Kornilov then added: ‘From 27 August to 1 September a Bolshevik insurrection is expected, their plan being to overthrow the government and replace them, and conclude an immediate separate peace … Do not think I say this on my own account, but in order to save the country I see no other option but to transfer all military and civilian power into the hands of a supreme commander.’
(V.N. Lvov, 'My Talks with Kerensky and Kornilov', A.F. Kerensky: Pro et Contra, St Petersburg 2016)

26 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The internal situation is still far from brilliant. One has the feeling that there is increasing disagreement between Kerensky and Kornilov, and that the extremist parties are taking advantage of it to gain ground … The populace, which had at first accepted the fall of Riga philosophically, is now seized with panic and is trying to get out of Petrograd at all costs. In Kanyuchennaya Street I saw a hundred-yard-long queue of people waiting for tickets outside the Wagons-lits office. There was such a scramble at the Nicholas Station yesterday that several people were suffocated by the crowd and killed.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Letter to Kerensky from G. Korotkov, a worker in the provincial town of Slaviansk, Kharkov Province
To Mr. War Minister Kerensky
I will be brief, Mr. War Minister.
I consider it my sacred duty to inform you that the Provisional Government should expect a new counterrevolution. The mood among the popular masses is decidedly counterrevolutionary in view of the failure in battle of the Russian Army. The peasants arriving in the town of Slaviansk say openly that only the tsar can save Russia and bring all the food prices down; they are extremely embittered against the bourgeoisie and the workers, who are constantly engaged in party struggle, they are embittered against the soldiers, who to their disgrace have fled from the Germans…
P.S. Once you have read this all the way through, Mr. War Minister, you may think I am right-wing, like Purishkevich and so on. No! I am a simple worker who sympathises with the popular socialists, but above all I am a citizen of Russia.
G. Korotkov, Slaviansk, 26 August 1917
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

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26 August 2017

The concept of the strong, forceful leader is a consistent one in Russian history. A tsar shows weakness, he is replaced by someone with a bit more grit (Peter III by Catherine the Great for example). In 1917 this process was accelerated and accentuated. Nicholas, for all his authoritarian impulses, is seen to be weak. He is replaced by the energetic, apparently decisive Kerensky. But over the summer Kerensky starts to look more vulnerable. His appeals to the troops not to ‘vote for peace with their legs’ fall increasingly on deaf ears, he fails to make any real progress with land reform, his government veers from crisis to crisis. And when, in July and August, the dual threat to Petrograd of German advances and Bolshevik uprisings becomes impossible to ignore, another strong man puts himself in the line of succession: Lavr Kornilov, general and putative dictator of Russia. Who knows what would have happened if his coup had been successful, but the strongman model is equally familiar to historians of the Soviet period. Allow some light and shade into the fortress mentality of the Kremlin (e.g. Gorby) and the whole thing can come crashing down. History being, as someone said, just one damned thing after another, it’s hardly surprising that the latest Russian strongman is not far from ratcheting up a quarter of a century in power. He’s done his research.

13-19 August 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

A wiry little little man with strong Tartar features. He wore a general's full-dress uniform with a sword and red-striped trousers. His speech was begun in a blunt soldierly manner by a declaration that he had nothing to do with politics. He had come there, he said, to tell the truth about the condition of the Russian army. Discipline had simply ceased to exist. The army was becoming nothing more than a rabble. Soldiers stole the property, not only of the State, but also of private citizens, and scoured the country plundering and terrorizing. The Russian army was becoming a greater danger to the peaceful population of the western provinces than any invading German army could be.
British journalist Morgan Philips Price, reporting on Kornilov in August 1917

13 August

Message from President Wilson to the National Conference in Moscow
I take the liberty to send to the members of the great council now meeting in Moscow the cordial greetings of their friends, the people of the United States, to express their confidence in the ultimate triumph of ideals of democracy and self-government against all enemies within and without, and to give their renewed assurance of every material and moral assistance they can extend to the Government of Russia in the promotion of the common cause in which the two nations are unselfishly united.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

14 August

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
No news of Moscow conference today, no papers being published, and telephone connection with Moscow very poor. We have extended one hundred million dollars more to Russia with the distinct proviso, however … that it is to be expended for specific purposes ‘on the condition that Russia continues the struggle against the common enemy.’
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

When [Kornilov] arrived in Moscow on August 14, over Kerensky’s objections, to attend a State Conference, he was wildly cheered. For Kerensky, who regarded Kornilov’s reception as a personal affront, this incident marked a watershed. According to his subsequent testimony, ‘after the Moscow conference, it was clear to me that the next attempt at a blow would come from the right and not from the left’.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

Diary of Zinaida Gippius
Kerensky is a railway car that has come off the tracks. He wobbles and sways painfully and without the slightest conviction. He is a man near the end and it looks like his end will be without honour.’
(Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy , London 1996)

Valia Dolgorukov to his brother Pavel from Tobolsk
My dear Pavel,
We arrived in Tobolsk at 6 in the evening. In order to see the house and find out what had been prepared, Makarov and I decided to go into town before the others and do a reconnaissance. The picture was depressing in general, and in complete contrast to Ivan’s description … a dirty, boarded up, smelly house consisting of 13 rooms, with some furniture, and terrible bathrooms and toilets … This is the seventh day when we are cleaning, painting and getting the houses in order while we and the family are still on the steamboat Russia. The cabins are very small and the facilities, for women at least, miserable. Alexei and Maria have caught cold. His arm is hurting a lot and he often cries at night. Gilliard has been lying in his cabin for the last eight days, he has some sort of boils on his arm and legs. And a slight fever. It is easier to get provisions here and significantly cheaper. Milk, eggs, butter and fish are plentiful. The family is bearing everything with great sang-froid and courage.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

18 August

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
I could not … conceal from [Kerensky] how painful it was to me to watch what was going on in Petrograd. While British soldiers were shedding their blood for Russia, Russian soldiers were loafing in the streets, fishing in the river and riding on the trams, and German agents were everywhere. He could not deny this, but said that measures would be taken promptly to remedy these abuses.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

19 August

All rumours of incipient coups notwithstanding, after the Moscow conference, Kerensky was willing to accept the crushing curbs on political rights that Kornilov demanded, hoping they might stem the tide of anarchy … Kornilov pressed his advantage. On 19 August, he telegraphed Kerensky to ‘insistently assert the necessity’ of giving him command of the Petrograd Military District, the city and areas surrounding. At this, though, Kerensky still drew the line.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

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19 August 2017

I keep claiming to be through with historical parallels, but sometimes they're hard to avoid. August is a strange month when politics takes time off and journalists hunt around for things to write about. In Russia August seems to be a month for abortive coups: Kornilov's in 1917; the putschists in 1991. In both instances the coup's failure in the short term heralded the government's demise a little further down the line, and helped bring to power regimes antipathetic to the coup's aims. In 1917 it was the Bolsheviks; in 1991, it was Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, whose resistance to the coup enhanced his popular support. For those who may have forgotten the chain of events in 1991, here's a potted resume:

'The coup of August 1991 was timed to prevent the signing of the new Union Treaty which would have fundamentally recast the relationship between the centre and the republics in favour of the latter, and was scheduled for 20 August. On 18 August, a group of five military and state officials arrived at Gorbachev’s presidential holiday home on the Crimean coast to attempt to persuade him to endorse a declaration of a state of emergency. Gorbachev’s angry refusal to do so was the first indication that the coup plotters had miscalculated. While Gorbachev was held virtual prisoner, the State Committee ordered tanks and other military vehicles into the streets of the capital and announced on television that they had to take action because Gorbachev was ill and incapacitated. Some of the republics’ leaders went along with the coup; others adopted a wait-and-see approach. A few declared the coup unconstitutional. Among them was Yeltsin who made his way to the White House, the Russian parliament building, and, with CNN’s cameras rolling, mounted a disabled tank to rally supporters of democracy. The soldiers and elite KGB units ordered into the streets by the State Committee refused to fire on or disperse the demonstrators. By 21 August the leaders of the coup had given up. An exhausted Gorbachev returned to Moscow to find it totally transformed. When he visited the Russian parliament, Yeltsin's stronghold, he was humiliated by Yeltsin and taunted by the deputies. Reluctantly, he agreed to Yeltsin's dissolution of the Communist Party which was held responsible for the coup and resigned as the party’s General Secretary. Yeltsin thereupon proceeded to abolish or take over the institutions of the now moribund Soviet Union' (Lewis Siegelbaum). I remember August 1991 well since I was supposed to be flying to Moscow the day it all started but my flight was cancelled. Or maybe I chickened out. History doesn't relate...

6-12 August 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Life at Tobolsk during the first few months was another idyll of domestic calm and undisturbed tranquillity. The ex-Tsar breakfasted, studied, walked, lunched, exercised, dined, taught history to Alexis, and held family reunions in the evening to an extent never possible before. Special religious services were held for the royal family in the town church and they were permitted to leave the house for that purpose. The children prepared and enacted dramatic pieces in French and English. The townspeople showed themselves courteous and sympathetic, frequently sending gifts, particularly fresh food, and saluting the members of the family respectfully or blessing them with the sign of the cross when they appeared at the windows of the Palace. It was only the unending monotony, the drab Siberian monotony, that oppressed, together with the almost complete absence of news.
(Edmund Walsh, 'The Last Days of the Romanovs', The Atlantic , March 1928)

6 August

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the tsar's children
What reasons had the Council of Ministers for transporting the Imperial family to Tobolsk? It is difficult to say definitely. When Kerensky told the Tsar of the proposed transfer he explained the necessity by saying that the Provisional Government had resolved to take energetic measures against the Bolsheviks; this would result in a period of disturbance and armed conflict of which the Imperial family might be the first victims; it was therefore his duty to put them out of danger. It has been claimed in other quarters that it was an act of weakness in face of the Extremists, who, uneasy at seeing in the army the beginnings of a movement in favour of the Tsar, demanded his exile to Siberia. However this may be, the journey of the Imperial family from Tsarskoe Selo to Tobolsk was effected under comfortable conditions and without any noteworthy incidents.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

7 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
We only know a few details about the Imperial family’s journey. The departure from Tsarskoye took place in the early morning … The town of Tobolsk, where the Tsar and his family are to be interned, is a long way from the railway. Rasputin was born near there. The Grand Duchesses are supposed to have told Kerensky that the Empress’s dearest wish is to build a big church there, so that people can pray to God for the martyr … Saint Grischa Rasputin, the patron saint of the tovariches … it’s just what they need. In fact, one had to admit that there is something impressive about the fulfilment of the prophecies of this man who never ceased to foretell that, if he met with a violent death, the Empire would collapse during the month after his disappearance.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

9 August

Train 293 for Finland arrived at Udelnaya Station. The driver was Guro Jalava, railywayman, conspirator, committed Marxist. ‘I came to the edge of the platform’, he later recalled, ‘whereat a man strode from among the trees and hoisted himself up into the cab. It was, of course, Lenin, although I hardly recognised him. He was to be my stoker.’ The photograph in the fake passport with which Lenin – ‘Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov’ – travelled has become famous. With a cap perched high on a curly wig, the contours of his beardless mouth unfamiliar, wryly upturned, his deep small eyes are all that is recognisable.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Letter to the Central Executive Committee of Soviets on behalf of positional soldiers
Comrade Soldiers and Workers,
All of us positional troops ask you as our comrades to explain to us who these Bolsheviks are and what party they belong to because we don’t know them or their opinion. Our provisional government has come out very much against the Bolsheviks. But we, positional soldiers, don’t find any fault with them at all … We are little by little going over entirely to the side of the Bolsheviks. But in order for us to find out exactly about the Bolsheviks, we are turning to you, comrades, as our advisors – explain all this to us.
With respect, all the positional Soldiers, 9 August 1917, Active Army, Sirebrov, Soldier
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

10 August

Mistrust between prime minister [Kerensky] and general [Kornilov] was such that Kornilov arrived with a substantial and provocative bodyguard. This was a body of Turkmen fighters from the so-called Savage Division of volunteer soldiers from across the Caucasus … As Kerensky watched in alarm from the Winter Palace, the red-robed warriors came jogging into view down the wide streets, surrounding Kornilov’s car, brandishing scimitars and machine-guns. They took up positions around the palace door like enemies preparing for a parlay.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Resolution of the Conference of Public Figures [representatives of business and industry, the nobility, educated society and former officers, convened in Moscow between 8-10 August]
The time has come openly to admit that the country … is on the verge of ruin. The government, if it realises its duty, must acknowledge that it has led the state on the wrong road, which must be abandoned at once for the sake of saving the country and freedom … The only government is one that cuts itself free of all traces of dependence on committees, soviets and other similar organisations.
( The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 , ed. Ronald Kowalski, London 1997)

11 August

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
I got into a train at one of the stations before Yaroslavl but the train was already overflowing, and in all classes you had to stand up all night. In Yaroslavl, by using my title of Central Ex. Com. member, I penetrated into an almost empty military carriage. I was delighted at my success, but something rather disagreeable happened as a result. I was naïve enough to remove my boots, which were gone when I happened to wake up an hour or two later … In Moscow, astounding the crowd with my stockinged feet, I made my way to the station-master and spent about two hours telephoning to people at random, to see whether some friend could bring a pair of boots to the station for me. This was all quite typical of travelling at this time.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

12 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
There is again a certain amount of excitement in the town. Cossack patrols and machine-gun carriers are massed in the Winter Palace square, ready to intervene. During the last few days one has felt that things were going badly again. … One feels it, like one does when one knows that a storm is coming, even though one cannot yet hear the thunder.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

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12 August 2017

In a series of three articles for The Atlantic in 1928, the journalist Edmund Walsh looked back on the final days of the Romanovs. One of his key questions was why Kerensky sent the family to Siberia rather than Crimea, where many royalists found safe refuge and from where many eventually escaped. The growing threat of Bolshevism was a major factor later cited by Kerensky: the fear that if he offered them sanctuary there would be further unrest which in turn could lead to calls for the royal family to be put to death: 'I will not be the Marat of the Russian Revolution!' Kerensky had said back in March. So he sent two agents called Vershinin and Makarov to Siberia to select an appropriate location, far from Moscow and the threat of mob violence. They chose Tobolsk, a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, some two thousand miles from Petrograd. The judge who later cross-examined Kerensky at a judicial enquiry into the family's murder, gave little credence to Kerensky's protestations that it was for their own good that Nicholas and Alexandra and their children were sent to Tobolsk; rather it was so that the 'dethroned Autocrat of All the Russias [should] be made to taste the bitterness and dreariness of exile in Siberia, must be made to experience the icy blasts of that House of Dead Souls to which he and his ancestors had banished so many Russians!' And not just the family; with them went forty-six court attendants who had volunteered to accompany them on this dismal journey.

30 July - 5 August 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The event that enabled the Bolsheviks to recover from their July debacle was one of the more bizarre episodes of the Russian Revolution. Known to historians as the Kornilov affair, it resulted from a struggle in Kerensky's mind between his sense that as the head of state in a situation of near-anarchy and a looming German offensive he needed the army's support, and his fear as a socialist intellectual that the army was likely to breed a counterrevolutionary Napoleon.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

30 July

Speech by Elihu Root, President Wilson’s envoy to Russia
No one can tell what the outcome will be, but this is certain, that Russia, tired of the war, worn and harried by war; Russia, which has lost 7,000,000 of her sons, every village in mourning, every family bereaved, Russia has again taken up the heavy burden; she has restored the discipline of her army; she has put away the bright vision of peace and rest, and returned yet again to the sacrifice and the suffering of war in order that she might continue free.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

31 July

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Our last day at Tsarskoe Selo. After dinner we waited for the time of our departure, which kept being put off. Kerensky suddenly appeared and announced that Misha was coming. And sure enough, at about 10.30 dear Misha walked in accompanied by Kerensky and the captain of the guard. It was wonderful to see him, but awkward to talk in front of outsiders.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Memoir of Count Benckendorff
The interview lasted ten minutes. The brothers were so moved and embarrassed at having to talk before witnesses that they found scarcely anything to say.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

1 August

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
While Kerensky lives in the Winter Palace and sleeps in the Emperor Alexander’s bed, the Tsar is travelling to Siberia. … The Tsar in Siberia! It seems like a dream … it’s true that it is perhaps the road which will lead him back to the throne. Is it not from there that most of the men of today come into power?
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

2 August

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
I still hope that Russia will pull through, though the obstacles in her path – whether they be of a military, industrial or financial character – are appalling. How she is going to find the money to continue the war and to pay the interest on her national debt beats me altogether, and we and the Americans will soon have to face the fact that we shall have to finance her to a very considerable extent if we want to see her carry on through the winter. We cannot, however, be expected to do this till we have proof of her determination to put her house in order by restoring strict discipline in the army and repressing anarchy in the rear. General Korniloff is the only man strong enough to do this, and he has given the Government clearly to understand that unless they comply with his demands and give him the powers which he considers necessary he will resign his command.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

3 August

On 3 August, the Sixth Russian Social Democratic Workers Party Congress – the Bolshevik Congress – unanimously passed a resolution in favour of a new slogan … No longer did the Bolsheviks call for ‘All power to the Soviets’. Instead they aspired to the ‘Complete Liquidation of the Dictatorship of the Counterrevolutionary Bourgeoisie’.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

4 August

In the cities revolting employees are driving mill-owners out of their offices. Managers try to stop it, and are thrown into wheel-barrows and ridden out of the plant. Machinery is put out of gear, materials spoiled, industry brought to a standstill. In the army soldiers are throwing down their guns and deserting the front in hundreds of thousands. Emissaries try to stop them with frantic appeals. They may as well appeal to a landslide. 'If no decisive steps for peace are taken by November first,' the soldiers say, 'all the trenches will be emptied. The entire army will rush to the rear.' In the fleet is open insubordination. In the country, peasants are over-running the estates. I ask Baron Nolde, 'What is it that the peasants want on your estate?' 'My estate,' he answers. 'How are they going to get it?' 'They've got it.'
(Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution , New York 1921)

5 August

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the tsar's children
We passed the native village of Rasputin, and the family, gathered on deck, were able to observe the house of the staretz, which stood out clearly from the among the isbas. There was nothing to surprise them in this event, for Rasputin had foretold that it would be so, and chance once more seemed to confirm his prophetic words.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Letter to the Central Executive Committee of Soviets from the soldiers’ committee of the 129th Bessarabian Infantry
Comrades!
We, the soldiers of the 129th Bessarab. Inf. Reg., ask you, the Provisional Government, to rescue Russia from the bloody Slaughter. The way it needs to be saved is by making a speedy peace, and then there will be calm and quiet … The strength is in us, the soldiers, in the poor class. If you defend the poor class, then there will be a democratic republic, but if you defend the interests of the capitalists, then Russia is lost. We’ll strangle all the capitalists and you with them. Hold on to the peasant soldier and make a speedy peace – that’s the only way to save Russia. If you continue the war, you’ll let the Germans into Russia, and for us it will be Siberia with the Japanese. So there it is for you, brief and to the point. You don’t scare us with your instructions about the death penalty and iron discipline.
Author of the letter, P. Gurianov, 6th company, For the committee chairman, E. Petrov
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

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5 August 2017

Albert Rhys Williams was a Congregationalist minister and a correspondent for the New York Evening Post who in 1917, like his more famous compatriot John Reed ( Ten Days that Shook the World ), was fired up by the overthrow of imperial rule to experience for himself the new world order in Russia. His account of the revolution and its aftermath was published in 1921 and retains a spirit of optimism that his great hero, Lenin, was a force for good (in later years he said that he ‘remained true to the Revolution’ and still looked forward ‘to the final triumph of socialism because, like Lenin, I do believe in the essential goodness of man’). While his account may not be entirely reliable – he leant heavily on second-hand sources and interpreters – it makes for a compelling read and falls very much into the category of ‘Russia through my eyes’, which occupies several yards of shelving in the London Library. The problem with such retrospective accounts, even if based on contemporary notes, is the inevitable urge to dramatize and exaggerate. A young girl’s casual mention in a letter to a friend of the increasing truculence of the peasants on her father’s estate in the summer of 1917 can say far more than wild descriptions of mayhem written after the event.

23-29 July 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

In the aftermath of the July events, Lvov resigned and Kerensky took over the prime ministership, with wide-ranging powers. He offered Kornilov command of the armed forces. He also ordered that units that had participated in the mutiny be disarmed and the garrison reduced. Pravda and other Bolshevik publications were barred from the front. Yet despite these energetic steps, Kerensky feared a right-wing, monarchist coup more than a repetition of a Bolshevik putsch. Appeasing the Soviet, he failed to deal the Bolsheviks the coup de grace they expected. This saved them: later on Trotsky would write that ‘fortunately our enemies had neither sufficient logical consistency nor determination’.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

23 July

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
We are still without a government although it now transpires that Kerensky, at a meeting of representatives of practically all parties, will be petitioned to form a cabinet of his own choosing … The complete change in Kerensky’s attitude is typical of these extraordinary times. He it is who was at first an idealist, an ultra-Socialist, and contributed more to the demoralization in the army than any one person by countenancing the lack of salute from men to officers and the abolition of the death penalty for desertion. He now has become a conservative, has broken with the Council of Soldiers and Workmen, has assumed the powers almost of a dictator, has restored the salute and the death penalty, and is now sleeping in the Winter Palace in the bed of Emperor Alexander II!!
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

25 July

It took several attempts, but on 25 July Kerensky at last managed to inaugurate the second Coalition Government. It was made up now of nine socialist ministers, a slight majority, but all except Chernov came from their parties’ right wings. In addition, and crucially, they entered cabinet as individuals, not as representatives of those parties, or of the Soviet. In fact the new government … did not recognise Soviet authority. Dual power was done.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Diary of Nicholas II
A new Provisional Government has been formed with Kerensky at its head. Let’s see whether he can do any better. The first task is to re-establish discipline in the army and revive its morale, as well as bringing some order to the internal situation in Russia!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

26 July

Late on 26 July, in a private hall in Vyborg, 150 Bolsheviks from across Russia came together [for the Sixth Congress]. They assembled in a state of extreme tension and semi-illegality, rudderless, their leaders imprisoned or on the run. Two days after the start of their meeting, the government banned assemblies deemed harmful to security or the war, and the congress quietly relocated to a worker’s club in the south-west suburbs.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
By the end of July a new Bolshevik congress had met. It was already a ‘united’ conference where the party of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev formally coalesced with the group of Trotsky, Lunacharsky and Uritsky. The leaders couldn’t attend – they could only inspire the congress from afar. But somehow things were managed even without them.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Everyone is interested in the battalions of women soldiers who exercise in the courtyard of the Paul Palace on the Fontanka … people talk of the ‘heroism of the Russian women’ and they get all excited about it … as for myself, I feel that is rather unpleasant histrionics. As far as fighting goes these women can only be thinking of the rough-and-tumble!
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

27 July

Resolution of a meeting of workers in twenty-seven small enterprises from the Peterhof district of Petrograd
On the Crisis of the Authority and the Current Moment
Recognizing the extremely critical condition of the Russian Revolution … we, workers from the small enterprises of the Peterhof district … consider it our duty to state: 1. The new coalition ‘combination’ of the Provisional Government is frankly doomed to failure and to a new downfall in the near future … 3. We demand the immediate repeal of the shameful introduction of the death penalty. If the penalty has been repealed for Nicholas the Bloody and his gang, then shame on those who would reinstate it for the revolutionary soldier.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

28 July

Diary of Nicholas II
A wonderful day; enjoyed our walk. After lunch we learned from Benckendorff that we are not being sent to the Crimea, but to some remote provincial town three or four days’ journey to the east! Where exactly they haven’t said – even the commandant doesn’t know. And we were all counting on a long stay in Livadia!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Got up at 5. A wonderful morning. A blue-grey mist hovered over the lake … I’m reading Bismarck and increasingly convinced of the vanity of all political vanities. On the one hand, how do we get by without them? And on the other, how can we believe a word they say?
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

29 July

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
The Emperor and his family are still at Tsarskoe Selo; no one knows the reason of the postponement of their journey to Siberia. He was told about it and made no objection. It is true that the Empress can’t walk, but I doubt that being the cause … Want of bread brought on the Revolution, and the same may bring a counter-revolution. There is nothing to eat: I suffer most from the absence of butter.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

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29 July 2017

So Benois is reading Bismarck. Nicholas II seems to enjoy comic novels like Daudet’s Tartarin de Tarascon . Not sure what Kerensky is reading but probably something rather energetic and improving. Lenin, of course, will be deep into Marxist theory. ‘If you want to know the people around you,’ Stalin is said to have said, ‘find out what they read.’ Meanwhile, in Petrograd and on the front, Bolshevik newspapers such as Soldatskaia pravda were being suppressed, though quite a few copies got through disguised as letters. A.F. Ilin-Genevsky, who was on the editorial board of Soldatskaia pravda , described how the paper ‘had to be made appropriate for an ill-prepared and little-educated reading public … Highfalutin words were absolutely taboo. In order to give the articles a form best suited to soldiers, we almost always changed the articles which we had written, to be simplified if need be … We took into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Army consisted of peasants in soldiers’ uniforms.’ Perhaps in his reading tastes, the ordinary soldier at the front was rather closer to the deposed tsar than to the leader of the Bolsheviks.

16-22 July 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

We would like to know, why did [Kerensky] consider it necessary to move into the Winter Palace? Why was it necessary to eat and sleep like a tsar: to tread on elegance and luxury when the only real right to do this was the people’s; for in the future it was to be theirs, as the Museum of Alexander III, as the Hermitage and Tretyakov Gallery. Had Kerensky not been in the palace, the people’s rage wouldn’t have touched a single trinket. Did the prime minister really not know that the political struggle could, at any moment, fling him if not from Nicholas II’s couch, then at least from his chair, that he was putting artistic treasures in the most perilous danger by daring to live amongst them.
(L.M. Reisner in A.F. Kerensky: Pro et Contra , St Petersburg 2016)

16 July

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
I believe the Emperor and his family have been sent to Siberia. I heard this last night. I wonder what effect it will have on the people. I think Kerenski will make himself dictator.
( The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

17 July

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
Now the question that naturally and inevitably arose was that of a dictatorship. Indeed, three days after Kerensky’s ‘appointment’ as Premier, the Star Chamber appeared before the Central Executive Committee with a demand for a dictatorship.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

18 July

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
I met Kerensky again today, in his khaki uniform (he still does not dare dress like a Cossack), installed like the Emperor in the Imperial Rolls-Royce, with an aide-de-camp covered in shoulder-knots on his left, and a soldier sitting next to the chauffeur … the great man of the Russian revolution is in reality nothing but an inspired fanatic, a case, and a madman: he acts through intuition and personal ambition, without reasoning and without weighing up his actions, in spite of his undoubted intelligence, his forcefulness and, above all, the eloquence with which he knows how to lead the mob – all of which shows how dangerous he is … Fortunately, the career of a personality such as this can only be precarious. Nevertheless, for the moment he is the only man on whom we can base our hope of seeing Russia continue to fight the war, so therefore we must make use of him ... but I fear that he has some terrible disappointments in store for us, in spite of his blustering and in spite of the Draconian measures he has proclaimed. And yet, in Russia you never can tell … perhaps the people will lie down like good dogs as soon as they see the stick.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

19 July

Diary of Nicholas II
It’s three years since Germany declared war on us; it’s as if we had lived a whole lifetime in those three years! Lord, help and save Russia!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Statement by the Provisional Government to the Allied Powers
In the inflexible decision to continue the war until the complete victory of ideals proclaimed by the Russian Revolution, Russia will not retreat before any difficulties … We know that upon the result of this struggle depends our freedom and the freedom of humanity.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

Around the country, peasant revolts grew in violence and anarchy continued, especially over the hated war, the catastrophic offensive costing hundreds of thousands of lives. On 19 July, in Atarsk, a district capital in Saratov, a group of angry ensigns waiting for a train to the front smashed the station lanterns and went hunting their superiors, guns at the ready, until a popular ensign took charge, and ordered the officers’ arrest. Rioting soldiers detained, threatened and even killed their officers … By the 19th … the new commander-in-chief [Kornilov] bluntly demanded total independence of operational procedures, with reference only ‘to conscience and to the people as a whole’ … Kerensky began to fear that he had created a monster. He had.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

20 July

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The shadow of a military dictator grows larger and larger – and I am not disinclined to believe that it is the solution of the question.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Kislovodsk. The Grand Duchess [Vladimir] received me in her cabinet de travail, and we counted the money which I had brought her in my boots from Petrograd! It was in revolutionary thousand-rouble notes, which she had never seen before.
( The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

21 July

Resolution from soldiers of the 2nd Caucasus Engineering Regiment
[Our regiment] has allowed its ranks to commit a series of tortures and murders of our citizens over nothing but freedom of speech. Within its ranks there are ignorant men who have trampled upon all the Great human and civil rights; they have dragged speakers off tribunes and even beaten up those who suffered under the old regime for trying to attain freedom … We propose immediately discovering the direct participants in all the crimes … and arresting them and handing them over for trial without mercy or leniency. We will not and cannot allow ignorant people who beat freedom fighters to death in free Russia to go unpunished.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

22 July

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
We awoke to an extraordinary situation of no government this morning! The ministry all resigned last night – being in session until 5.00 AM this morning.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Arthur Ransome in a letter to his family in England
You do not see the bones sticking through the skin of the horses in the street. You do not have your porter’s wife beg for a share in your bread allowance because she cannot get enough to feed her children. You do not go to a tearoom to have tea without cakes, without bread, without butter, without milk, without sugar, because there are none of these things. You do not pay seven shillings and ninepence a pound for very second-rate meat. You do not pay forty-eight shillings for a pound of tobacco. If ever I do get home, my sole interest will be gluttony.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution , London 2017)

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22 July 2017

Lenin called Kerensky a ‘Bonapartist’, other contemporary commentators referred to him as a ‘little Napoleon’. The references to dictatorship in this week’s extracts are compelling. In retrospect, Kerensky's decision to move into the Winter Palace in July 1917 on becoming prime minister seems a bit strange. He occupied the former rooms of Alexander III, and was soon nicknamed ‘Alexander IV’. Rumours that he slept in the imperial bed were not true; in fact Kerensky removed the grandest pieces of furniture and portraits, and went around in his trademark semi-military jacket. In his Interpreting the Russian Revolution , Orlando Figes describes the care Kerensky took over his personal appearance as ‘all part of his vanity – and of his awareness of the importance of public image to the revolutionary minister’. He even wore his right arm in a sling during his tours of the Front, the result, people joked, of too much hand-shaking. He was often photographed in this ‘Napoleonic pose’. Perhaps the imperial instinct was not entirely foreign to Kerensky. The wife of the ex-minister of Justice (whom Kerensky replaced) recalled him expressing a change of attitude after visiting the tsar in Tsarskoe Selo, even admitting regret that people had not really appreciated Nicholas II’s qualities. (There were later rumours of Kerensky helping to fund an unsuccessful attempt to free the imperial family a few weeks later, when they were already in Tobolsk – but these remain unsubstantiated.) A ‘little Napoleon’, assuming the trappings of office, making speeches in royal palaces – perhaps M. Macron, the new president of France, should take heed…

9-15 July 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The city rose in tears and blood, in hunger and cold, in the forced labour of myriads of the starved and beaten. Their bones lie buried deep in the mud below. But their outraged spirits seem to live again in the Petrograd workingmen of today – spirits powerful and avenging. The serfs of Peter built the city; presently their descendants will be coming into their own. It does not appear thus in midsummer 1917. The black shadow of reaction hovers over them. But the Bolsheviks bide their time. History, they feel, is on their side. Their ideas are working out in the villages, in the fleet and at the front. To these places I now make my way.
(Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution , New York 1921)

9 July

It seemed as if the disaster of the July days had set the Bolsheviks back years. Steklov was arrested. The authorities ransacked the house of Anna Elizarova, Lenin’s sister [Lenin was in hiding in Finland]. They took Kamenev on the 9th. By the late days of the month, Lunacharsky and Trotsky had joined many of the Bolshevik leaders, and other activists, in Kresty prison, where the guards stoked up the criminals against the ‘German spies’.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

10 July

Tutor Piotr Petrov to Grand Duchess Olga, Nicholas II’s daughter
The good Lord has allowed me to live until Your name-day, my dear unforgettable pupil, dearest Olga Nicolaevna! If the good fairies of the stories really existed on this earth, I would ask them to bestow all the good wishes , which only those fantastical creatures are able to grant! I, as You are very well aware, am not a fairy, nevertheless from the depths of my heart and affection for you, I want to wish you the one thing, which is more precious than anything else on this earth: physical health and mental balance! Everything else will follow. Goodbye until the next time! Please send my respectful greetings to Mama, Papa, Alexei Nicolaevich and your sisters. May God keep You! Your old P.V.P.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

11 July

Diary of Nicholas II
In the morning I went for a walk with Alexei. On our return, I learnt of Kerensky’s arrival.

Memoir of Count Benckendorff
On the 11th July, at 11 o’clock in the morning, Kerensky came to the Emperor to report that the situation in the town had become alarming and he thought it would be more prudent for His Majesty and his family to leave, and to settle in the interior of the country. He said that he himself and the Emperor were in great danger. The Bolsheviks ‘are after me, and then will be after you’.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

12 July

Report in The Times of an interview given to the press by Kerensky on his return from the front
The Provisional Government has no other object but the defence of the State against disruption and anarchy, and the safety of the Army. Relying upon the confidence of the masses and the Army, the Government will save Russia and weld her unity by blood and iron if argument and reasons of honour and conscience are not sufficient … The situation at the front is very serious and demands heroic measures, but I am convinced that the organization of the State is sufficiently vigorous to be cured without partial amputation. In any case, the Provisional Government will do its duty, and by enlarging and strengthening the gains of the Revolution will resolutely put an end to the criminal activity of mad traitors.
(‘M. Kerensky Resolved on Heroic Measuress’, The Times )

13 July

Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval cadet at Kronstadt
During the night of July 13, when I was already asleep on my ship, Comrade Pokrovsky, a Left SR member of the Kronstadt Executive Committee, summoned me urgently to the Soviet. When I arrived he showed me a telegram … [that] required him immediately to arrest Roshal, Remnev and me and send us to Petrograd … True, it would not be difficult to organise a flight to Finland. But we were the object not only of political accusations – the entre press and so-called ‘public opinion’ were openly making monstrous insinuations about our having collaborated with the Germans, acting as their agents … I realised, of course, that a Party leader like Comrade Lenin had to stay out of prison by all possible means … The Party had waited too long for Lenin, and wandered long enough in the darkness for lack of his clear firm tactics, to let itself be deprived of his leadership, even for a single day.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 , New York 1982, first published 1925)

15 July

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The funeral of the Cossacks killed in the rioting took place today in Saint Isaac’s. … Troops marched past, with the Cossacks in perfect order but with the other troops far from brilliant … The parents walked behind each hearse, accompanied by the friends of the victims, and it was touching to see these worthy peasants, who had come from the Urals or the Caucasus to follow their sons’ coffins, being comforted by other Cossacks … Then followed the dead Cossacks’ horses, in their harness; one of them had been seriously injured and was limping pitifully behind its master’s coffin. On another horse the dead man’s son, a little Cossack of about ten years old, had been put up into the saddle. At present, the Cossacks are the only element of order. It is said that they have received large rewards for keeping order, from various banks. Whatever the truth may be, one can count on them for the moment. But although this may be sufficient for Petrograd, I doubt if they will be able to stop the landslide in the country districts and at the front.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

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15 July 2017

The role of the Cossacks in the revolution is an interesting one. In an article by Gregory Tschebotarioff in 1961 the author looks back on a conference in July 1917 in Berdichev, Ukraine, attended by about 200 delegates of Cossack units from the front. He describes the support shown to the Cossacks by the (primarily Jewish) population, particularly in the context of the recent funerals in Petrograd, described above. His explanation for this reception lies in the ‘Order No. 1’ issued shortly after the tsar’s abdication, which removed the disciplinary powers of Russian army officers and led (in the author’s opinion) to the collapse of the Russian army. The infantry, which far outnumbered the Cossack troops, ‘had little or no inner discipline, which led to their rapid adherence to Bolshevik slogans for immediate separate peace’. The Cossacks, on the other hand, described by Tschebotarioff as mostly ‘well-to-do and hence conservative farmers’, were united by a mistrust of anarchy and a deep-rooted conservatism that led them to actively support Kerensky’s Provisional Government. This in itself was something of a shift in allegiance, as another witness, describing the February revolution fifty years later, describes: ‘Most remarkably, Cossacks on their big horses rode around with banter or curious-questioning looks at the people. “No, we won’t fire”, they soon assured those who asked. Finally, when a mounted police inspector attacked a demonstration leader, a Cossack charged at him with a flashing saber, severing the inspector’s hand with one swift flash. The news spread all over the capital, giving the rebels great courage. It was a thing of wonder, truly: the Cossacks, these watchdogs of the throne, these sworn foes of plain people for centuries, were coming over to the people’s side.’ October and civil war, of course, still lay ahead.

2-8 July 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The government, under siege and virtually without armed defenders, sat as if paralyzed. It was its good fortune that the Minister of Justice took matters into his own hands and released to the press a small part of the evidence in his possession on Bolshevik dealings with the Germans. The information, which quickly reached the garrison troops, produced on them an electrifying effect. In the late afternoon, army units reached Taurida Palace ready to make short shrift of the Bolsheviks and their followers. The mutineers, along with sympathetic workers, ran for cover. By nightfall, the putsch was over.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

2 July

Report in The Sunday Times
According to a cable from Petrograd, the Russian offensive is having a favourable effect on the general political situation. The leaders of the social revolutionaries and the Minimalists – who represent the bulk of the Russian Socialists – advocate the necessity of supporting the offensive and suppressing anarchy. The hopes of many Russian Socialists, who expected the German Socialists to accept the Russian peace terms, have been disappointed in consequence of which they, too, have changed their attitude to the offensive, says the Central News. On the other hand, the Bolsheviki, who have been connected with the Anarchists, have recently lost ground owing to the compromising relations of the latter with spies and criminals.
(Report in The Sunday Times)

3 July

Report in The Times
Owing to the general satisfaction now prevailing here the efforts of extremist agitators to unite the population against the Government and against the continuance of the war seem likely to result in total failure.
('Extremists at a Discount', The Times , from our own correspondent, Odessa)

4 July

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
I went out into the street around 11 o’clock. At the first glance it was obvious that the disorders had begun again. Clusters of people were collecting everywhere and arguing violently. Half the shops were shut. The trams had not been running since 8 o’clock that morning.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Today seemed like a repetition of revolutionary days. The ‘Bolsheviks’, or extreme and anarchistic side, are in open revolt and up to late in the afternoon were in almost complete control of the city. Kronstadt sent its quota of sailors, too, which made matters very ugly and at 3.00 PM, as dangerous a mob as I ever hope to see – composed of half-drunken sailors, mutinous soldiers and armed civilians – paraded through our street, threatening people at the windows, and drinking openly from bottles.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Liteiny Street was a heartrending sight: dead horses, their skins taut and shining from the shower that had just fallen, lay in the wet roadway between the pools of water, some of which were tinged with red … A lot of inquisitive people had already gathered to rob the horses of their harness, but we did not see any more armed men. Neither did we see any dead or wounded: we are told that there are a great number of them, which seems probable considering the number of horses killed.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Letter from Aleksei Peshkov [Maxim Gorky] to his wife E.P. Peshkova from Petrograd
Matters are becoming more and more muddled, and it’s becoming more and more obvious that a civil conflict is inevitable here. To judge by the mood, the fighting promises to be brutal. There are meetings on the streets at night and a wild fury has flared up. Counter-revolutionary forces are actively organising themselves, while the revolutionaries just spout rhetoric. In general, things aren’t too cheerful … That fool Burtsev has announced in the newspapers that he will soon identify a provocateur and spy whose name will ‘stun the whole world’. The public has already started to speculate and has guessed that the person in question is M. Gorky. You think I’m joking? Not in the least. I’m already getting letters with salutations such as ‘to the traitor Judas, chief German spy and provocateur’ … Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia! How foolish we all are, how fantastically foolish!
( Maksim Gorky: Selected Letters , Oxford 1997)

Memoir of Princess Paley
The Bolshevist proceedings made us tremble for the life of the imprisoned Sovereigns. Everything was disorganised – the army had gone, honour had gone. The Revolutionaries had realised that if the army had remained intact, the Revolution sooner or later would come to an end. To save the Revolution they sacrificed the army. What remorse, what terrible feelings of guilt men’s consciences have to bear! But the Russian Revolutionaries have no conscience!
(Princess Paley, Memories of Russia, 1916-1919 , London 1924)

5 July

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
No definite news as to casualties of last night. One hundred and eighty ‘Bolsheviks’ rumoured killed … Public sentiment is suddenly turning against these extremists.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The streets are deserted, and the town is a dead place. It is raining.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

6 July

Memoir of Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia
The Government had suppressed the Bolshevik rising and seemed at last determined to act with firmness … Kerensky had returned from the front on the evening of July 19 [6], and had at once demanded, as a condition of his retaining office, that the Government should have complete executive control over the army without any interference on the part of soldiers’ committees, that an end should be put to all Bolshevik agitation, and that Lenin and his associates should be arrested. The public and the majority of the troops were on the side of the Government, as their indignation had been aroused by the publication of documents proving that the Bolshevik leaders were in German pay.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

Diary of Nicholas II
Luckily, the overwhelming majority of the troops in Petrograd remained faithful to their duty, and order has again been re-established on the streets. The weather was wonderful. Went for a good walk with Tatiana and Valia. In the afternoon we worked successfully in the woods – we cut down and sawed up four pine trees. In the evening I started Tartarin de Tarascon.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Memoir of Count Benckendorff
Prince Lvov, having resigned, for several days we were without Government, and Kerensky had taken refuge with his family in the Grand Palais at Tsarskoe, giving dinners at the expense of the Court, driving about Pavlovsk in the Emperor’s carriage.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

7 July

Memoir of Manchester Guardian correspondent M. Philips Price
As usually happens, when the political atmosphere is charged, a spark from any quarter sets the magazine alight. There was in Petrograd at this moment a number of forty-year-old soldiers, who had been released for field work in the northern provinces. They had been ordered to return to take part in the offensive. Imagine the effect that this order of the Coalition Government had on these men. After three years of suffering and misery in fighting for hated Tsarism, they had been told that peace was at hand. A few days in their home, working at the harvest, in their domestic haunts with their families, had but whetted their appetite for peace. Now suddenly they were ordered to return without any hope being offered them that the end of the war was within measurable distance. It is necessary to understand the psychology of these men in order to grasp the true significance of what happened afterwards in Petrograd and in other parts of the country. Out on the streets these forty-year-old soldiers, together with the machine gun division, went, spurred on by a blind feeling that they must have it out with their rulers, who had betrayed them.
(M. Philips Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution , London 1921)

Letter to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets from the peasant Ivan Pastukhov, Vologda Province
Citizens of our Great Russia, workers’ and soldiers’ deputies,
We, the peasants of Vologda Province, beg you to help our families in their time of Need since we, their fathers, were drafted into military service and got sick in the service: some have rheumatism, some typhus, any and every kind of sickness; we can’t work at all, the hayfield goes uncultivated, there is no life-sustaining food at all, and all because of the war. Comrades, we beg of you, end this bloody drama as soon as possible. It isn’t a war – it’s the extermination of the people.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

Kerensky was furious that the government had not been able to take control of the situation during his absence at the front. He was determined that its replacement, formed on 7 July, under his premiership and supplanting a demoralised Prince Lvov, would be allowed 'dictatorial powers in order to bring the army back to discipline'. ... Retaining his role as Minister of War, Kerensky appointed as commander-in-chief of the army General Kornilov, whose immediate response was to call for the restoration of courts martial and capital punishment for desertion at the front.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution , London 2017)

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8 July 2017

I’ve probably been studying Russian history since about 14 (further confirmation, in my children’s eyes, of a truly ‘sad’ childhood), but I had failed to clock that the October revolution could so easily have been the July revolution. China Miéville paints a vivid picture in his book October of the events in early July, as reflected in this week’s extracts. There seem to be so many disparate elements struggling for control: the First Machine Gunners regiment, different factions within the Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt sailors, the increasingly precarious Coalition Government, still being propped up by the Soviet in the Tauride Palace as it pursued its own line. Everyone jostling to control events that seemed to change direction by the minute.

At 7.45pm on 3 July a truck ‘bristling with weapons’ drove up to the Baltic Station in Petrograd to intercept and arrest Kerensky – but missed him by minutes. Lenin was still in Finland but returned early the following morning. His address to the demonstrators was ‘uncharacteristically brimstone free’: he felt it was too soon for the decisive moment. In the afternoon of 4 July, the mood turned increasingly violent. As the demonstrators converged on the Tauride Palace and one of the Soviet leaders, Chernov, came out to address them, a worker shook his fist in his face and bellowed, ‘Take power, you son of a bitch, when it’s given to you!’ According to Miéville the heat was taken out of the revolutionary fervour by a rumour initiated by the government that they had evidence of Lenin’s links with Germany – that the Bolshevik leader was essentially a German spy. The rumours were never corroborated, and eventually suppressed, but it’s interesting how political upheaval breeds such accusations, and how ‘the enemy within’, whether from Germany then or Russia now, remains a powerful image.

25 June - 1 July 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 10:45:39 GMT

Emmeline Pankhurst and Maria Bochkareva with the Women's Death Battalion, June 1917

The lesson of the Russian Revolution is that there is no escape for the masses from the iron grip of war, famine and enslavement to the landlords and capitalists, unless they completely break with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, unless they clearly recognise the treacherous role of the latter, unless they renounce all compromise with the bourgeoisie and decidedly come over to the side of the revolutionary workers. Only the revolutionary workers, if supported by the poor peasants, can smash the resistance of the capitalists.
(V.I. Lenin, Lessons of the Revolution, The Russian Revolution by V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, London 1938)

25 June

Letter to working women from Maria Kutsko, a worker at the Petrograd Munitions Work
Comrade Women workers! Not long ago we won higher wages for women at the Munitions Works, and this ought to show us how great is the strength and significance of organization. What would we have achieved if we acted alone, by ourselves? Absolutely nothing! Until 7 June we women workers got only four roubles [a day], which … was hard for many to live on, especially for working women with families whose husbands were in the war … The general meeting went very well. Only one comrade expressed an idea that it is completely impossible to agree with. He said that women will work in the factories only until the end of the war, but after the war is over, they will in all likelihood quit the factories. But we are sure, comrades, that this will not be the case. Where can those women workers go whose husbands, fathers and brothers return home as cripples, unfit for labour? Who will support their helpless families and children if not we working women? Further, this comrade said that we women workers should not do dirty work in the factories, that we ought to ‘beautify the lives of men’ … But, comrade workers, one can beautify your life not only at home by the stove but also at the factory. We women workers can beautify your life at the workbench, working hand in hand with you to improve our common working lives, to make this life more beautiful, pure and bright for ourselves, for our children, and for the whole working class. This, it seems to me, is the real beauty and meaning of life.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

26 June

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Gave Alexei a geography lesson. We cut down a huge pine tree not far from the orangerie fence. The sentries even wanted to help us. In the evening I finished reading The Count of Monte-Cristo .
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

27 June

Diary entry of Nicholas II
I forgot to write that on the 26 June our troops made another breakthrough and captured: 131 officers, 7000 lower ranks and 48 cannons, including 12 heavy ones. In the morning all the girls went out to collect the mown grass. I went for my usual walk .
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

After all his urgent and frenetic interventions, Lenin was exhausted to the point of illness. His family were concerned. His comrades persuaded him that he needed to take a rest. On the 27th, accompanied by his sister Maria, he left Petrograd. They travelled together across the border to the Finnish village of Neivola, where his comrade Bonch-Bruevich had a country cottage. There they spent the days relaxing, swimming in a lake, strolling in the sun.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Report on an American Mission to Russia
The Mission has accomplished what it came here to do, and we are greatly encouraged. We found no organic or incurable malady in the Russian Democracy … The solid admirable traits in the Russian character will pull the nation through the present crisis. Natural love of law and order and capacity for local self-government have been demonstrated every day since the Revolution.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

Letter to ‘Comrade Patriots’ from soldiers in the trenches
Certain Bolshevik Anarchists from the Petrograd garrison … are now travelling up and down the front with the following slogans: ‘Down with the war’, ‘Down with the offensive’. And they are running to the ignorant mass of soldiers with these false words: ‘You should trust and believe only us and, generally, all the Bolsheviks and their parties – we alone will save you, we will lead you out onto the true path without bloodshed or carnage!’ and instead of leading us out onto the path of salvation, they send us into Anarchy; they want us to become Anarchists … But no, Comrades! We are not Anarchists or monarchists, not Nicholas II or Grishka Rasputin … We are position soldiers, trench rats! We do not recognise Bolshevik Anarchists or their henchmen, but we have always and only trusted the socialist minister Kerensky and the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

28 June

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Russia is definitely the land of surprise. At the moment when everybody believed the army to be completely breaking up, every day brings news of fresh victories … There is something immoral about the victory of this disorganised, louse-ridden army, led by a petty little socialist lawyer. All our ideas about discipline … are contradicted by this herd, in which each man does as he pleases, where officers are murdered, where each company has a soviet of delegates, and where even the plans of campaign are argued about … But this can hardly last, and we shall have a terrible awakening when the tovariches have to face the Germans, with their machine-guns and their heavy cannon, instead of the Austrians who have decidedly ‘had enough of it’.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

29 June

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Went home on foot past the Stock Exchange. The whole area from the Lunapark to the fortress looked wonderful, it had a magical effect. A blueish mist outlined separately the long perspectives and created an unusual richness and variety of forms that I hadn’t seen before. We talked about the general state of chaos. [Benois’s wife] Akitsa, as a result of all kinds of domestic trials, has completely ‘moved to the right’ and talks almost like the common man, complaining about the soldiers and other ‘proletarians who’ve got too big for their boots’.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

30 June

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Woke up at 11 a.m. No one answered my bell. Found hotel servants on strike, except cooks. Dressed, made my own bed, cleaned my bath, swept my room. I did the same for a rheumatic old lady in my corridor who was much upset by the strike … Dinner at Felix Yusupov’s in the room where Rasputin was killed; sat next to Lady Muriel Paget. Took an izvoschik home; paid him a rouble for a 40-kopek fare. He called me a Jew!
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

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1 July 2017

Maria Kutsko’s appeal to fellow women to ‘beautify’ their lives at the workbench as well as the stove, to discover the ‘real beauty and meaning of life’, was written just days after the legendary Maria Bochkareva, commander of the Women’s Death Battalion, was honoured by Kerensky and Kornilov in front of St Isaac’s Cathedral with an officer’s belt, a gold-handled revolver and a sabre, as a token of the nation’s appreciation. Bochkareva witnessed the disintegration of the Russian army at the front and created her own ‘shock battalion’ of women. ‘We will go wherever men refuse to go, we will fight when they run. The women will lead the men back to the trenches.’ In June Emmeline Pankhurst was visiting Russia. She described Bochkareva as ‘the greatest thing in history since Joan of Arc’, but the battalion was often derided by men, and in particular by their fellow soldiers who felt their courage was being questioned. And perhaps rightly so, as Pankhurst described in a telegraph to England: ‘First Women’s Battalion number two hundred and fifty. Took place of retreating troops. In counter attack made one hundred prisoners including troops. Only five weeks training. Their leader wounded. Have earned undying fame, moral effect great. More women soldiers training, also marines. Pankhurst.’

18-24 June 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Soldiers at the political demonstration in Petrograd on 18 June 1917

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

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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.

11-17 June 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

12 June

At the front, the war crawled on. A strange infrastructure of death. Beyond fields of rye and potatoes and grazing cows, deep in thick woods, Red Cross tents loomed in forest clearings … Trench-drenched soldiers the colour of the ripped-up earth taking what hours of respite they could, drinking tea from tin mugs. Alternate rhythms of boredom and terror … The rage of machine guns, the visitations of bad spirits, twelve-inch shells nicknamed for the witch Baba Yaga, screaming in to tear the world apart.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
It was proposed to organise an ‘official Soviet’ workers’ and peasants’ peaceful demonstration the following Sunday, June 18th, in Petersburg, and in other cities as far as possible … The idea of this demonstration revealed the triumph of a softer line within the Star Chamber with respect to the Bolsheviks. In any case the June 18th demonstration was the tribute of vice to virtue. The resolution was, of course, passed in the absence of the Bolsheviks. It goes without saying that the Bolsheviks had no ground for objection either.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

13 June

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
My articles against the law banning the export of works of art have not appeared. … Stip [the artist Stepan Yaremich] is convinced that this is Faberge’s doing and that they’re planning to close the antique shop and thereby create a huge fall in the value of art. [Artist Osip] Braz thinks the same … he thinks Agafon Karlovich Faberge is just a dealer and a roguish swindler.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

15 June

Report in The Times
A representative conference of seafaring men held in London yesterday decided that the embargo placed on the journey of Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr Jowett to Petrograd should be maintained … Before any resolution was moved, Captain Grace, one of the delegates, said that they were determined to carry on the struggle with the enemy to the last ship and the last man. In granting passports to Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr Jowett, the Government were not playing the game. The two men were known to be pro-German pacifists.
('Ban on Russian Journey to be Maintained', The Times)

16 June

On June 16, the Russian army struck. The brunt of the assault fell on the Southern front, against Lwow and Galicia. But the offensive, in which the Eighth Army under Kornilov distinguished itself, dissipated as soon as the Germans came to the Austrians’ aid. At the sight of the German uniforms, the Russians fled in panic. The June operation was the dying gasp of the Russian army.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

17 June

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Arrived Petrograd at 11.30 a.m. No porters and no cabs; commandeered private two-horse carriage, which took me to the hotel for 5 roubles – five times ordinary price! My case of Crimean wine, too heavy for luggage van, travelled under conductor’s bed. Streets filthy.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

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17 June 2017

I’ve no idea whether Alexei Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, is following the course of the revolution centenary, but it is interesting that his mass anti-corruption rallies took place in the same week, a hundred years on, as the huge demonstrations convened by the Soviet against the Provisional Government. Their description as ‘provocative acts, dangerous to bystanders’ which would ‘be met with the full force of the law’ belongs to Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, but very similar words were used by government representatives in June 1917. Again, it’s easy to force the parallels, but there’s at least one blogger who describes Navalny as ‘trying to become the first Russian politician since Vladimir Lenin to seize power from outside the system’.

4-10 June 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

All over the country disorders, anarchy, seizures, violence and ‘republics’ still continued; people took the law into their own hands, soldiers mutinied, and regiments disbanded … The Bolshevik Central Committee controlled most of the Workers’ Section in the Soviet, as well as the majority of the Petersburg proletariat.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

4 June

Memoir of Princess Paley
Thus passed the months of May and June, 1917. One would have liked to find something to relate but nothing happened apart from the incoherence of the regime of Kerensky, who inspired everyone with a feeling of profound contempt … Kerensky, blinded by his imaginary glory, saw and heard nothing else. Denying himself no fantastic notion, he went so far as to install himself in the Winter Palace and to sleep in the bed of the Emperor Alexander III. This offensive proceeding created more enemies for him than he had already.
(Princess Paley, Memories of Russia, 1916-1919 , London 1924)

5 June

Memoir of Albert Rhys Williams
Chiedze, the President of the Soviet Congress, asked my why I came to Russia. ‘Ostensibly as a journalist’, I told him. ‘But the real reason is the Revolution. It was irresistible. It drew me here like a magnet. I am here because I could not stay way.’
(Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution , New York 1921)

6 June

Note from Secretary Lansing, explaining the Aims of the American Extraordinary Mission to Russia
The High Commission now on its way from this country to Russia is sent primarily to manifest to the Russian Government and people the deep sympathetic feeling which exists among all classes in America for the adherence of Russia to the principle of democracy … To stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder against autocracy, will unite the American and Russian peoples in a friendship for the ages.
( Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

7 June

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Had a touch of the Russian Foreign Office secret service yesterday in an attempt to run down accusations against an American woman correspondent here, against whom the cumulative evidence is not reassuring. Very warm - and a perfect plague of flies.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

8 June

Enemy aeroplanes had been over about 4 a.m. and awakened us; discontented murmurings came from most beds. We took turns in washing, with as little water as possible. Once or twice we had tried to persuade Rupertsov, our tent-boy, to scrounge another bucketful for us. He would screw his face up and shake his head. Smirnov’s tent was next door to the water-cart and woe betide the person who tried to steal more than his share, for Smirnov knew each one’s quota to a spoonful. Our water-cart had to go to Bojikov to be filled, so we had been warned not to be extravagant.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18 , London 1974)

9 June

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
On June 9th proclamations signed by the Bolshevik Central Committee and the Central Bureau of the Factory Committees were pasted up in the working-class districts. These proclamations summoned the Petersburg proletariat to a peaceful demonstration against the counter-revolution at 2 o’clock on June 10th.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Lubersac, who has just returned from the front, is more pessimistic than ever; anarchy is gaining ground and the artillery, which up till now had resisted the infection better than anyone, is beginning to be contaminated … He mentioned the names of several officers who have been murdered by their men. One of them was buried with great pomp by the very men who had killed him. They had invited the Germans, and it is said that a German band marched at the head of the funeral procession. There are many cases of Russians fraternizing with Germans. Sometimes it ends badly: in one village the Russian troops had invited the Germans to a big banquet, but the German officers who came refused to sit down at the same table as their men and the Russian soldiers. The tovariches were offended, and it ended in a battle … I do not know whether it is one which is mentioned in despatches.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Diary of Nicholas II
It’s exactly three months since I came from Mogilev, and that we are here like prisoners. It’s terribly hard to be without news of dear Mama, but as to the rest, I’m indifferent.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Tsar’s children
As the Grand Duchesses were losing all their hair as the result of their illness, their heads have been shaved. When they go out in the park they wear scarves arranged so as to conceal the fact. Just as I was going to take their photographs, at a sign from Olga Nicolaevna they all suddenly removed their headdress. I protested, but they insisted, much amused at the idea of seeing themselves photographed like this, and looking forward to seeing the indignant surprise of their parents. Their good spirits reappear from time to time in spite of everything. It is their exuberant youth.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

10 June

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The ‘Bolsheviks’, or ultra-socialists who have been trying to make trouble for the government for some weeks, announced yesterday that they intended a peaceful demonstration against the government for today. The Provisional Government promptly announced, by placards in the streets, that all gatherings were prohibited for the next three days and that any such that might be held would be dispersed by force! Whereupon the Pravda, the labor publication that has given us all so much cause for anxiety lately, in its edition of this morning said that such meetings should not be held. It is to be considered as another proof of the government’s returning strength and of the opinion in general that the extremists have been too radical.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

The Bolsheviks sought to exploit the war-weariness by staging a second mass demonstration on June 10 – this time, with the participants fully armed – in order to embarrass the government and, should the opportunity present itself, overthrow it. The event, which had aroused considerable opposition in the Bolshevik Central Committee as premature, was cancelled at the last moment on the insistence of the Soviet. But even as they yielded, the Bolsheviks put the Soviet on notice that in the future they would not be bound by its wishes.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

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10 June 2017

It’s often the details that speak loudest. The tentative steps towards a new reality. Mieville describes how when Brusilov became Commander-in-Chief his willingness to work with soldiers’ committees was seen as treachery by the army old-guard, but his dealings with ordinary soldiers had a certain Theresa May gaucheness to it: he would try to show his democratic credentials by greeting ordinary soldiers with a handshake, thereby creating a considerable commotion and fumbling of weapons. The worsening situation with food by June was starkly embodied by the skeletal horses on the streets of Petrograd. Meanwhile, the political momentum was definitely turning more radically left. On 4 June, at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, Tsereteli, a Menshevik minister in the Coalition government, declared that ‘there is no political party in Russia which at the present time would say “Give us power”’. To which a voice rang out from the back of the hall, ‘There is such a party’. Corbyn. I mean, Lenin.

28 May - 3 June 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Kerensky visiting the front, summer 1917

An offensive was scheduled for mid-June. Kerensky’s personal contribution to it consisted in rousing the troops with patriotic speeches; these had an enormous immediate effect which evaporated as soon as he departed. The generals, trying to command an increasingly undisciplined army, regarded such rhetoric sceptically, dubbing the Minister ‘Persuader in Chief’. The will to fight was no longer there. According to Kerensky, the Revolution had persuaded the troops that there was no point in fighting. ‘After three years of bitter suffering’, he recalled, ‘millions of war-weary soldiers were asking themselves: “Why should I die now when at home a new, freer life is only beginning?”’ The malaise was encouraged by the ambivalent attitude of the Soviet, which continued to urge them to fight in the same breath that it condemned the war as ‘imperialist’.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

28 May

Article in the Sunday Times
This revolution is the most colossal social upheaval the world has ever known. It has not fallen on a soil well prepared in advance, but has fallen as a bombshell amongst 150 million of people, 80 per cent of whom are ignorant peasants. It is hardly understood in this country that the revolution is now the one paramount interest to the peasant’s mind, that the war occupies but a very secondary place in his thoughts.
E. Ashmead Bartlett, ‘Our Task Ahead’, Sunday Times

29 May

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Public opinion is as changeable as a summer day – and today my British colleagues feel pessimistic as regards the socialists, who they say are ‘agin’ everybody and prepared to make friends with no one.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
We went for a drive in a car through the immense park [at Peterhof], where the roots of the great trees are bathed by the blue waters of the Gulf of Finland. The park is filled with statues, colonnades, pavilions, hermitages, kiosks, boskets, fountains, pools and water follies, each one prettier than the last … Unfortunately, this splendid scene is defiled by the crowds of soldiers who wander about, all unbuttoned and filthy, sprawling on the lawns and grass walks and reading out their proclamations under the colonnades … they were dressing on the terrace, whose marble balustrades were hung with their thrown off clothes and their doubtful underwear … the reign of the people is hardly an aesthetic one and when I saw them I thought of how, in the past, in many of the towns of Russia there were placards outside the park gates, forbidding the entry of ‘soldiers and dogs’.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

1 June

By the first week of June it became clear that Kronstadt, Tsaritzin and Krasnoyarsk were only Bolshevik islands. The rest of the country was following the lead of the parties of compromise.
(M.P. Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution , London 1921)

Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval cadet at Kronstadt
By June 1917 Kronstadt had been firmly mastered by our Party. True, we did not have a majority even in the Soviet there, but the actual influence of the Bolsheviks was, in essentials, unlimited … long before the October Revolution, all power in Kronstadt was de facto in the hands of the local Soviet – in other words, was held by our Party, which actually guided the Soviet’s current activity.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 , New York 1982, first published 1925)

Emmeline Pankhurst arrived in Petrograd in early June 1917 ‘with a prayer from the English nation to the Russian nation, that you may continue the war on which depends the face of civilization and freedom’. She truly believed, she insisted … ‘in the kindness of heart and the soul of Russia’.
(Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution , London 2017)

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova from Vyatka
We’ve just eaten, Lena has started practising [on the piano] and I’ve gone to the studio. As soon as Lena finishes playing I will play. I play three or four hours every day … In the evening it’s boring: the Toropovs aren’t here yet … we haven’t been getting papers or letters for ages, and have no idea how to send the letters we write … Papa’s and Mama’s moods are not good, and it’s very sad and worse than anything, perhaps. The mood of the local peasants is fine and sympathetic, for the moment this all seems peaceful. They seem to react to events in a very sensible, sane way, as far as we can tell from talking to them. They’re interested in how the revolution came about in Piter, what’s happened to the tsar, where he is, what they’re now doing with him…
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

2 June

Report on a speech by the Russian Chargé d'Affaires
In addressing you I am appealing to a certain portion of the British people, who, after the war, will help Russia to rebuild the industrial fabric of my country. I venture to say that of all the peoples allied for the purpose of exterminating once and for all the poisonous gas of Prussianism, I do not think that any two have manifested in a clearer and more striking manner their deep-rooted desire for national and permanent friendship than Great Britain and Russia. (Cheers.) They are allies not only in arms but in peace.
M. Nabokoff, Minister Plenipotentiary in charge of the Russian Embassy in London, ‘Russia’s Duty to her Allies’, The Times

3 June

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Yalta. Princess Serge Dolgoruki died quite suddenly at the age of thirty-six, leaving six children by a former husband – the eldest only thirteen – and one little Dolgoruka. She has been unconscious for two days from a mistaken dose of veronal. She is to be buried on Wednesday. She was a charming lady, loved by everybody, and was an intimate friend of the Grand Duchess Xenia. Her death has greatly upset us all.
( The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

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3 June 2017

De Robien’s comments (29 May) about the ‘filthy’ and ‘unbuttoned’ soldiers at Peterhof are indicative of how much the Russian army had changed since the Revolution but they were only exercising their new privileges. An article by Robert Feldman (Soviet Studies, 1968) describes how quickly military authority broke down after the change of regime. The tsarist military code (articles 99, 100, 101, 102 and 104 to be precise) forbade the Russian soldier from smoking in the street, riding inside tramcars, frequenting clubs and public dances, and eating in restaurants or other places where drinks were sold. He wasn’t allowed to attend public lectures or theatrical performances, or even read books or newspapers without first having them vetted by his commanding officer. The Petrograd Soviet did away with these ‘degrading regulations’, giving soldiers complete civic freedom. This in turn alarmed the army’s high honchos, like Generals Ruzsky on the Northern Front and Alekseev, Chief of Staff, who pleaded with the new Minister of War Guchkov to prevent the ‘disease of disintegration’. Kerensky’s morale-raising tour of the front had only short-lived impact and by 1 June – just three weeks before a planned offensive against the Germans – he had replaced Alekseev along with the commanders of four of the five fronts. Feldman sums up the subsequent June offensive as dealing the Russian army ‘a blow from which it was never to recover’.

21-27 May 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 27 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Arnold Lakhovsky, Square in a Provincial Town, 1917

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
There were indeed many excesses, perhaps more than before. Lynch-law, the destruction of houses and shops, jeering at and attacks on officers, provincial authorities, or private persons, unauthorized arrests, seizures, and beatings-up – were recorded every day by tens and hundreds. In the country burnings and destruction of country houses became more frequent. The peasants were beginning to ‘regulate’ land-tenure according to their own ideas, forbidding the illegal felling of trees, driving off the landlords’ stock, taking the stock of grain under their own control, and refusing to permit them to be taken to stations and wharves.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

21 May

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
Spring has suddenly turned into summer overnight – and the trees are shooting forth green faster than any foliage I ever saw. It tempted the ambassador and myself to the country to play golf in the afternoon – a poor course but lovely country. My first glimpse of suburban life and found it greatly resembles our western towns in many ways; ill kept small places, swarms of children, log houses, etc. Surely among all the people that we saw in the country and in the large parks of Petrograd there seemed no sign of anarchy or violence. The people seemed rather to be emerging from a rather dazed state of surprise at the complete liberty which they suddenly gained.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

Article in The Times on the Labour conference in Leeds
Mr Ramsay MacDonald moved the first resolution, congratulating the Russian people on a Revolution which had overthrown tyranny … ‘We share,’ he added, ‘the aspirations of the Russian democracy. They turn to us for counsel and support. Let us go to them and say “In the name of everything you hold sacred, restrain the anarchy in your midst; find a cause for unity, maintain your Revolution, stand by your principles, put yourselves at the head of the democracies of Europe, give us inspiration so that you and we together, shoulder to shoulder, will march out, bringing humanity still further upward.’
‘Socialists on War Aims’, The Times

From the protocol of a general meeting of workers of the Okulovsky Paper Factory and local peasants of Krestetsk Uezd, Novgorod Province, 21 May 1917
Let our socialist comrades in the Ministry as well as in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies know that even in the remote provinces we hear their summons to save free Russia and know their work and devotion to the people and with them burn with the desire to work for the common goal –the Salvation of Free Democratic Russia.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

22 May

On the 22nd [Lenin] addressed the delegates [of the First All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Soviets] in person, hammering home his support for the poorest peasants and demanding the redistribution of land.
(China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution , London 2017)

The opening day of this first Labour Parliament of Russia was very memorable. From an early hour in the morning the corridors and halls of the Naval Cadet Corps in the Vassily Ostroff were filled with delegates arriving from East and West. Each group as it arrived bore the mark of the region from which it hailed. Here was a picturesque group of Ukrainians round a samovar and an accordion. There was a group of sunburnt soldiers from the garrisons in Central Asia. There were some dark-eyed natives from the Caucasus. There were lusty soldiers from the trenches, and serious-looking officers; there were artizans from the Moscow factories and mining representatives from the Don.
(M.P. Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution , London 1921)

24 May

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Kerensky has occasional bursts of energy and is trying to take the army in hand again: he has reorganized the courts-martial and ordered them to severely punish all attempts at desertion. All requests to resign presented by officers are refused and General Gurko, who, because of the growing lack of discipline has asked to be relieved of his command of the central group of armies, has been put at the head of a mere division. Generalissimo Alexeiev has been replaced by General Brussilov, the victor of Galicia. But what can all these measures accomplish against the forces of anarchy which are causing the army to disintegrate, and against which all words are useless?
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Felix Yusupov and his wife to tea in the loggia. Afterwards, in the garden, he told me the whole story of the murder of Rasputin.
( The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

25 May

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
Today the weather is fine: sky as blue as blue, white clouds. I’m sitting by the open window: the lightest of breezes, the smell of the garden, the long grass gently moving, the ceaseless chirping of the birds – the warblers and chaffinches. And so many nightingales at night! And frogs!.. Mama is tired from the journey, Papa is okay, feels fine, just worried by the chaos in our household. Lena doesn’t know where to put herself, she’s reading Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’. We don’t hear a word from her.
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

26 May

Article in The Times
When Russia stepped forth from her prison she stepped into Utopia, and she has not yet discovered that it is Utopia. All this is quite natural, but it is embarrassing and dangerous. If it be not corrected Russia will fall away from the great Alliance against barbarism or will stultify the Alliance by an inadequate peace. Our difficulty is Germany’s opportunity, and she has not been slow to use her opportunity. Into the Russian lines German aeroplanes have dropped multiplied forgeries. These purport to be copies of letters from Russian homes to Russian soldiers – letters which fell into German hands when the soldiers to whom they were addressed become prisoners of war. Here is one of those forgeries: –'Dear Soldiers, – You ought to know that Russia would have concluded peace long ago had it not been for England, but we want peace – we are thirsting for it. Working men, who have now the opportunity of making their wishes known, are demanding peace. Nobody has the right to say that the Russian workman is against peace. England has no right to say that. Whatever the outcome of this evil war, we cannot expect any gratitude from England. Therefore we must shake ourselves free of England. This is the demand of the people. This is its holy will. I have nothing more to write. I am well, and hope the same of you. Your loving brother, Nicolai'.
('The New Russia: From Prison into Utopia' by C. Hagberg Wright, The Times )

27 May

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
I've recently become indifferent to everything. An elemental tragedy is almost certain to be played out, and what its outcome will be, nobody for the moment can say.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

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27 May 2017

Narodnaya volya (People’s Will) was the revolutionary organisation behind the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and many other terrorist acts in the decades leading up to the 1917 Revolution. Lenin’s brother, Alexander Ulyanov, was involved with one of its subsequent incarnations, and was hanged at the age of seventeen. Lenin’s ferocious commitment to overthrowing the tsarist regime has often been ascribed to this event, an extreme example, perhaps, of unintended consequences.

In the week of the Manchester bombing, it would be wrong to equate Russia’s revolutionary movement with Islamist fanaticism, the one committed to the demise of a brutal authoritarian government, the other blindly waging war against those who enjoy the freedoms of democratic government. But lessons of unintended consequences are often ignored by those in power, and it can be important to take a step back. The instinct of people to come together, to look for mutual reassurance and seek out the good in the face of inexplicable horror, was witnessed in the vigil in Manchester’s Albert Square, and in particular Tony Walsh’s poem ‘ This is the Place ’ – a stirring tribute to the city’s contribution to the world, an acknowledgement of the hurt, but most of all a reminder that people coming together, and working together, can create a place where a Muslim man supports his elderly Jewish neighbour as they stand united in grief.

14-20 May 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 20 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Lenin speaking to the workers of the Putilov Factory, 1917. Painting by Isaak Brodsky

Factory workers now began to shift their loyalties from unions organised horizontally, along professional lines, to those organised vertically, by enterprises. This development promoted syndicalism, a form of anarchism that called for the abolition of the state and for worker control of the national economy ... Lenin now identified himself with syndicalism, joining calls for 'worker control' of industry. This gained for his party a strong following among industrial workers: at the First Conference of Petrograd Factory Committees at the end of May, the Bolsheviks controlled at least two-thirds of the delegates.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

14 May

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
On May 14th Kerensky published an Order to the army – concerning an offensive … ‘In the name of the salvation of free Russia, you will go where your commanders and your Government send you. On your bayonet-points you will be bearing peace, truth and justice. You will go forward in serried ranks, kept firm by the discipline of your duty and your supreme love for the revolution and your country.’ The proclamation was written with verve and breathed sincere ‘heroic’ emotion. Kerensky undoubtedly felt himself to be a hero of 1793. And he was of course equal to the heroes of the great French Revolution, but – not of the Russian.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

15 May

Appeal by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to the Socialists of all Countries
Comrades: The Russian Revolution was born in the fire of the world war. This war is a monstrous crime on the part of the imperialists of all the countries, who, by their lust for annexations, by their mad race of armaments, have prepared and made inevitable the world conflagration … Let the movement for peace, started by the Russian Revolution, be brought to a conclusion by the efforts of the International Proletariat.
( Russian-American Relations March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

16 May

Extract from the Cologne Gazette
We must be quite clear about the fact that, if the Russian chooses the Englishman as his friend, the world-power of Germany is relegated to a misty distance; it is, indeed, doubtful whether in that event, our object can ever be achieved. Moreover, in addition to this loss, we shall have for a long time to come to reckon with Continental struggles which will cost blood, money and strength.
The Times, ‘Ways to World-Power’, Through German Eyes, The Times

17 May

Our country is definitely turning into some sort of madhouse with lunatics in command, while people who have not yet lost their reason huddle fearfully against the walls.
(From the newspaper Rech, cited in N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

18 May

Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval cadet at Kronstadt
Hardly anywhere in Russia was the deputy of Prince Lvov and Kerensky in such a pathetic situation as [Provisional Government commissar] Pepelyayev was at Kronstadt. In actual fact he possessed no power: the fate of Kronstadt was controlled by our valiant Soviet. [Author summoned to Lenin to explain why the Soviet had taken control of Kronstadt.] We opened the door. Comrade Lenin was sitting close to his desk and, his head bent low over the paper, was hurriedly scribbling his next article for Pravda. When he had finished writing he laid down his pen and directed at me a gloomy glance from under his brows. ‘What have you been up to out there? How could you take such a step without consulting the CC? This is a breach of party discipline. For such things, we shall shoot people,’ said Vladimir Ilyich, giving me a dressing down. […] ‘Declaring Soviet power in Kronstadt alone, separately from all the rest of Russia, is utopian, utterly absurd.’
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 , New York 1982, first published 1925)

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The fever from which all Russia is suffering has spread to our official servants now – and we have had two dvornik strikes since the revolution … They demand impossible wages and simply refuse to leave the premises when discharged on the ground that no one can be so treated in these days of liberty! The black flag has again appeared in parades on the Nevsky this afternoon in which workmen and extremists participated.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

19 May

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Yalta. All round and everywhere there is only anxiety. Countess Betsy Schuvalov has just arrived from Kislovodsk, where she saw the Grand Duchess Vladimir most days, and has brought me a piteous letter from her in which she complains most bitterly of her lot. She has not been out of her house for more than two months. As she has moved into a smaller house, she lives entirely in one bed-sitting room. What can I do? Surely the best thing is to do nothing; but how can she be expected to take this view, never in her life having been denied anything?
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

20 May

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Today was the funeral of our old Stepanida Andreyevna Skovorodina, who was taken on as wet-nurse to my brother Misha back in 1862 and then served as our housemaid. For the last few years she’s been living with Misha, but died in hospital. To my shame, despite a call from Misha to remind me, it completely went out of my mind and I only remembered late this evening. What’s terrible is not just that I failed to pay my final respects to the deceased, but I inadvertently showed a lack of consideration once again to the feelings of those closest to me.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

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20 May 2017

History is written by the victors, said Churchill, Napoleon, Goring or Walter Benjamin (depending on your Google search outcome), but it’s equally true to say that it’s written by the elite, whether intellectual or social. Reading this week’s extracts, I can’t feel too much sympathy for Grand Duchess Vladimir (great name) and her down-sizing trials, while the thoughts of wet-nurse Stepanida Andreyevna would have been just as enlightening as those of her erstwhile charges. Perhaps more so. I suppose domestic staff, industrial workers and farm labourers had neither the education nor inclination (nor – above all – time) to sit at a desk and pontificate. More’s the pity. And it’s worth remembering this, that our sense of history as real, felt emotion – personalized history – comes very much from one sector of society, and it’s very easy to place all others into stereotyped categories: the oppressed peasantry, the militant factory workers, and so on.

The Socialist Worker online is running a weekly article about an aspect of the Revolution: https://socialistworker.co.uk/tag/view/628 . While not necessarily righting this wrong, it does at least put the focus firmly back on to Trotsky’s definition of a history of a revolution, as ‘a history of a forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.’ For several months, this even seemed possible.

7-13 May 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 13 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Russian peasants photographed by Albert Rhys Williams during his journey through Russia in 1917

7 May

Article in Pravda
Comrades! Under oppressive tsarist rule the worker’s word was silenced and the worker’s art could not flourish in the shadows. The proletariat – this Titan of all revolutions and the creator of mankind’s bright future – must have its own mighty art, its poets and artists. Proletarian art will only reach its full potential, of course, under a socialist system. But even now, when some of the fetters that enchain the proletariat have been cast off, the sparks of a free art must burst into a bright flame.

8 May

Diary entry of Lev Tikhomirov, revolutionary and later conservative thinker
In general my own situation is full of fears for the future and misgivings, and I can't see the merest glimpse of hope, except through God's help. To speak of Russia's situation is difficult. The fact is that the revolution is consolidating, and of course in a strongly socialist direction ... the future is very murky and the only thing that's clear is that many trials and tribulations lie ahead ... Of course I'm objective enough not to equate Russia's interest with my own. But how I fear for my family. Poor Mama, why has she lived so long! Mysterious are God's ways! And I too - why did I not die sooner? The only thing I can say is that God's will will be done, however much suffering it may involve. And speaking of God, the new Russia is demonstrating a serious falling away from faith. It's hard to define the extent to which people are turning away from God but there can be no doubt that this is the case.
(L.A. Tikhomirov, Diary 1915-1917 , Moscow 2008)

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador (despatch to the Foreign Office)
The last two weeks have been very anxious ones, as the victory which the Government had won over the Soviet in the matter of the note to the Powers was not nearly so complete as Miliukoff had imagined. So long as the Soviet maintained its exclusive right to dispose of the troops, the Government, as Prince Lvoff remarked, was ‘an authority without power’, while the Workmen’s Council was ‘a power without authority’. Under such conditions it was impossible for Guchkoff, as Minister of War, and for Korniloff, as military governor of Petrograd, to accept responsibility for the maintenance of discipline in the army. They both, consequently, resigned, while the former declared that if things were to continue as they were the army would cease to exist as a fighting force in three weeks’ time. Guchkoff’s resignation precipitated matters, and Lvoff, Kerensky and Tereschenko came to the conclusion that, as the Soviet was too powerful a factor to be either suppressed or disregarded, the only way of putting an end to the anomaly of a dual Government was to form a Coalition.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

9 May

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Today I witnessed an ‘extremely Russian’ scene. At the tram stop a woman and her child boarded at the front of the tram (she could have got in at the back, it wasn’t so crowded). The tram driver was not having this infringement of the rules and declared that the tram ‘was not going any further’. Everywhere else in the world the passengers would have taken the driver’s side and would have helped the woman to enter via the rear. But here exactly the opposite occurred! The whole wagon took issue with the driver, hurling insults and reproaches at him … Maybe such a thing expresses some wonderful characteristic of Russia … But in today’s climate this phenomenon can fill me with horror, precisely because it is spontaneous, unpremeditated, and not consolidated by a sense of ‘higher’ duty. Even Kerensky won’t be able to deal with it…
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

10 May

Diary of Nicholas II
In the afternoon we worked hard in the garden and even started to plant a few vegetables.
(Sergei Mironenko (ed.), Nicholas and Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Tsarist Russia , London 1998)

11 May

Article by Lenin in Pravda
However maliciously the press of the capitalists and their friends may slander us, denouncing us as anarchists, we still repeat: we are not anarchists, we are ardent upholders of the best organisation of the masses and of a most firm ‘state’ authority – but the state we want is not a bourgeois parliamentary republic, but a Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
(Lenin, 'The Russian Revolution', Pravda )

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
You talk of ‘night’, ‘darkness’. Yes, for now everything is still night, but the dawn is close, because nobody will keep that gleam of hope behind thick curtains and leave the people in the dark. It’s possible that much will change for the worse and with the dawn, in the light of day, we’ll see that it shouldn’t have been done like this, but the lesson will be a useful one: it’s necessary, nothing is unnecessary… These are not rose-tinted spectacles, no. Here in Petrograd there are many unpleasant aspects to life. Those who come here from other towns are taken aback at the debauchery and difficulties of our life in ‘Piter’, and perhaps it is here that the revolution is felt most of all, since the uprising began from here. It’s not us so much as subsequent generations who will benefit, but we lived through the events themselves…
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

12 May

Amateur artist M.S. Smirnov on drawing Lenin at the Putilov Works
The young workers constructed a tribune, which was painted red. The committee argued over the text for the slogan. Finally they fixed a slogan to the centre of the tribune which read ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ Lenin arrived with Antonov-Ovseyenko. They came in a small black truck. Vladimir Ilich was in a cap and a light overcoat, which he took off before he made his speech. I stared intently and tried to convey Lenin’s face, I wanted to capture his sharp look, his character. His trimmed, light beard and moustache didn’t cover the outline of his lips. Occasionally he would clench his lips and his cheeks would hollow out, as if he was sucking them in. And his face changed all the time. His suit lay heavily on him. The chain of an old watch hung from the top pocket of his waistcoat. And with his right hand he held onto the lapel of his jacket. His left hand was lowered. Hurriedly I drew him, knowing the great importance of this endeavor and feeling that this could be my only chance to draw the great leader from nature. I heard the cry: ‘Let Lenin speak!...’ The noise, the applause, the shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ … I tried to draw Lenin’s profile. He spoke calmly, slightly leaning forward and gesticulating with his right hand, while holding his cap in his left hand.
(V.P. Lapshin, Artistic Life of Moscow and Petrograd in 1917 , Moscow 1983)

Appeal to the peasants from a Committee of Soldiers’ Deputies, printed in the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaia gazeta
Comrade peasants, our fathers and brothers!
Our freedom, our liberty, is in danger. Rumours have reached us that say certain wild, dangerous people are going from one remote village in our vast and long-suffering Homeland to another and burning the landowners’ hay, burning the grain, killing the livestock, demolishing structures. And seeing them, our ignorant, uninformed peasants are joining the robbers to menace and plunder landowners’ estates. We, your sons and brothers who wear the soldier’s grey overcoat, call upon you from our trenches: Stop! What are you doing? Do you want to leave our army without bread, meat or fodder? Do you want the Germans to capture us with their bare hands right here as we starve? Do you want to wreck our Homeland and your own freedom? Do you want us to have Tsar Nicholas II back with the old ways, the birch rods, the gallows, the penal detachments, the guards, the Ingush? Instead of land and liberty, do you want poverty and misery worse even than before? If not, then don’t lay a hand on anyone else’s property, and maintain order.
Committee of Soldiers’ Deputies, 540th Sukhinichsky Infantry Regiment
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

13 May

During breakfast the Order was brought to us: Kerensky was coming to Podgaytsy! He would come and harangue our soldiers with heartening words. Pray Heaven that his influence would succeed in re-organising the already disorganised Front Line troops … At first glance, he looked small and insignificant. He wore a darkish uniform and there was nothing about him to indicate the magnetic power he was able to wield. I remember clearly a feeling of disappointment. Was this man really the Kerensky? He looked less than his 36 years and his beardless face made him even younger. For a while he stood in silence; then he began to speak, slowly at first and very clearly. As he spoke, one realised immediately the source of his power. His sincerity was unquestionable; and his eloquence literally hypnotised us.
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18 , London 1974)

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13 May 2017

The artist's account of drawing Lenin as he addressed the crowd is striking, partly because his image is so familiar to us as an idealised tool of propaganda after his death; it's almost strange to think that he was drawn from life. What is it about historical figures that make them so hard to picture eating their breakfast, or, god forbid, answering a call of nature? In an article in the New Statesman this week, Catherine Merridale, describes Lenin as 'quick to crack a joke' which again doesn't fit the mental image one has of him. The single-mindedness which led a fellow exile to describe him as 'the only man for whom revolution is the preoccupation 24 hours a day' is more the image, as is Lenin reading 148 books and 232 articles in English, French and German in a few months in 1916 for his essay on 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism'. 'The Soviets exaggerated Lenin's so-called genius', writes Merridale, 'but he was certainly tenacious and quick. What he was missing was the gene for self-doubt and humility. The man's arrogance left others panting in his wake. Years earlier, in his student days (when he was balding fast), friends used to joke among themselves that he had such a big brain that it was pushing his hair out.' Hmm, missing the gene for self-doubt and humility - remind you of anyone on the current political scene..?

30 April - 6 May 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 06 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Bolsheviks influenced minds mainly by means of the printed word. By June, Pravda had a run of 85,000 copies. They also put out provincial papers, papers addressed to special groups (e.g. female workers and ethnic minorities), and a multitude of pamphlets. They paid particular attention to the men in uniform … In the spring of 1917 they distributed to the troops about 100,000 papers a day, which, given that Russia had 12 million men under arms, was enough to supply one Bolshevik daily per company … These publications spread Lenin’s message, but in a veiled form … Such organisational and publishing activities required a great deal of money. Much, if not most, of it came from Germany.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

30 April

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
To summarise my acquaintance [with French ambassador Paléologue] I will say that I judge him less than others … On a purely personal basis I regret that I’m losing a pleasant, lively and amusing companion … Moreover, he has a very low opinion of our government’s mindset, including Kerensky. He has the impression that the Provisional Government is just a continuation of hapless Nicholas II. And therefore it’s the undoubted downfall of the first act of the Russian Revolution.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

1 May

Article in The Times
Discussion of developments in Russia is still confined rigidly in Germany to the Socialist Press. For weeks past the non-Socialist organs, although they cannot conceal their excitement about the prospects of the Stockholm plot, have published no serious comment on the Russian situation. But they were moved to paroxysms of joy by the false report of the departure of the British Ambassador from Petrograd. The Cologne Gazette learned from Copenhagen that Sir George Buchanan left the British Embassy secretly, ‘by a back-door’. The Munchner Neuste Nachrichten reported from Berlin that the Ambassador had ‘made himself impossible’ in Petrograd, and would not return. The Berliner Tageblatt, after expressing some slight doubt as to the accuracy of the news, said: ‘The sudden departure of the Ambassador is very natural. It is explained by his recognition that his part is finished, and that there remains nothing for him to do on Russian soil, since the policy pursued by him and, under his influence, by the Provisional Government, has been shattered ... The English statesmen, unless they want to experience fresh disasters, will have to send to the Neva a different Ambassador with quite different instructions.’
('The Plot against Russia', The Times )

Article in The Times
A great impression has been produced here by General Brusiloff’s latest speech, which points out certain serious shortcomings in the Army and deplores the agitation for the conclusion of a premature peace, the relaxation of discipline, the number of deserters, and the tendency to fraternize with the enemy that has manifested itself since Easter. He stated that the enemy tempted the troops by offers of vodka, and endeavoured to deceive them by proclamations. He mentioned an instance in which the Russian artillery had prepared to fire on Germans advancing with vodka and white flags. He also dwelt on the numbers of deserters, who exercised a baneful influence in the rear, along the railways, and in the villages. He declared that lack of discipline must entail the ruin of Russia.
('Vodka and White Flags', The Times , from our own correspondent in the Balkan peninsula)

4 May

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
Russia has slipped further down the dangerous slope. Kerensky becomes Minister for War in the place of Guchkov. Milyukov is expected to be replaced by Tereschenko. Nobody knows yet whether the other Kadets will remain. The situation is serious: and the fact that Sazonov did not leave for London clearly shows the change in Russian policy as it concerns the conduct of the war. The worst is to be feared from Russia, who staged the revolution in order to have peace, and who wants peace at any price … Several people coming from Moscow and Kiev tell me that these two towns are as contaminated as Petrograd. And yet, up to now there have been no serious disturbances in the big centres. It is, rather, a slow disintegration. It is not the same in the country districts. The soldiers charged with keeping order in the surroundings of Orel have joined forces with the peasants. They have pillaged the stocks of alcohol and have set fire to all the estates. The newspapers say that the horizon is a red circle every night in this district.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

5 May

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
By 2 o’clock in the morning of May 5th everything was ready. The portfolios have been quickly assigned, and all the doubtful points settled in this way: Kerensky got the War Ministry and the Admiralty, Pereverzev the Ministry of Justice; Peshekhonov Supply, Skobelev Labour, Tsereteli Posts and Telegraphs. The Coalition had been created. The formal union of the Soviet petty-bourgeois majority with the big bourgeoisie had been ratified in a written constitution … Now only the last act remained, the final chord, the apotheosis.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

Letter to the independent socialist newspaper Novaia zhizn
To All Russian Women and Mothers
We, a group of Russian women and mothers, are joining the protest of the working people against the war. We are also extending our hand to women and mothers the world over. We are deeply convinced that our extended hand will meet the extended hands of mothers the world over. No annexations or indemnities can compensate a mother for a murdered son. Enough blood. Enough of this horrible bloodshed, which is utterly pointless for working people. Enough of sacrificing our sons to the capitalists’ inflamed greed. We don’t need any annexations or indemnities. Instead, let us safeguard our sons for the good of all the working people the world over. Let them apply all their efforts not to a fratricidal war but to the cause of peace and the brotherhood of all peoples. And let us, Russian women and mothers, be proud knowing that we were the first to extend our brotherly hand to all the mothers the world over.
Smolensk Initiative Group of Women and Mothers
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

6 May

Declaration by the Second Provisional Government, published in Izvestiia
Reorganised and strengthened by the entrance of new representatives of the Revolutionary Democracy, the Provisional Government declares that it will resolutely and whole-heartedly put into practice the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity - under whose banner the great Russian Revolution has come into being.
( Russian-American Relations March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

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6 May 2017

This week's posting draws on several newspapers - German, Russian and British. In today's Guardian the novelist China Miéville muses on the relevance of the revolution for the world today. In fact he asks a very similar question to the one I put to Russian friends in St Petersburg a few weeks ago: how the government will mark the anniversary in October. 'Would it remember the centenary with celebration or anathema? "They will say there was a struggle," I was told, "and that eventually, Russia won."' He quotes the dissident Bolshevik Victor Serge, writing in 1937: 'It is often said that "the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse - and which he may have carried in him since birth - is that very sensible?' Miéville makes an interesting point about the revolution turning in on itself: 'Without hope there's no drive to overturn an ugly world. Without pessimism, a frank evaluation of the difficulties, necessities can all too easily be recast as virtues. Thus after Lenin's death the party's adoption of Stalin's 1924 theory of "socialism in one country". This overturned a long commitment to internationalism, the certainty that the Russian revolution could not survive in isolation. The failure of the European revolutions provoked this - it was a shift born of despair. But announcing, ultimately celebrating, an autarchic socialism was a catastrophe. A hard-headed pessimism would have been less damaging than this bad hope.'

16-29 April 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 13:01:45 GMT

The first, rather halfhearted, Bolshevik bid for power occurred in April, less than three weeks after Lenin’s return. The pretext was a disagreement between the government and the Soviet over war aims. The Soviet wanted to pursue the war till victory, but to conclude it with a peace without ‘annexations and indemnities’. Miliukov, the Foreign Minister, had different ideas, desiring to claim for Russia the Turkish Straits and Constantinople promised her by the Allies in 1915, when they feared she might drop out of the war. Conflicting signals sent by the government on this matter led to street demonstrations by military units brought out by radical junior officers. The Bolsheviks joined these disturbances under slogans calling for the resignation of the government in favour of the Soviet. General Lavr Kornilov, the Commander of the Petrograd Military District, asked the cabinet for permission to suppress the riot by force, but this was denied, and order was restored by agreement with the Ispolkom. Disgusted with the government’s indecision, Kornilov asked to be relieved of his duties and assigned to the front. He would be heard from again. Evaluating the lessons of April, Lenin concluded that the Bolsheviks had been ‘insufficiently revolutionary’ in their tactics.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

16 April

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Tsar's children
In the evening a long conversation with Their Majesties on the subject of Alexei’s lessons. We must find a way out since we have no longer any tutors. The Tsar is going to make himself responsible for History and Geography, the Tsarina will take charge of his religious instruction. The other subjects will be shared between Baroness Buxhoeveden (English), Mlle. Schneider (Arithmetic), Dr Botkin (Russian) and myself.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

17 April

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
My dear Ninochka! Thank you for your letter! … In general I’m very downhearted, I’ve almost a permanent headache, which I discern now and again, and there’s so little air, it feels so enclosed and stuffy, one feels wretched … How we’ll get to [Polyana] I’ve no idea: Papa wants to go but they can’t make up their mind. It’s true that getting tickets and going is another thing altogether. To register you have to stand in line for three days near the ticket office – day and night: a queue to register to get a ticket!... Living at Polyana, far from what’s going on, will be hard, but I just want to disappear somewhere … How difficult one’s personal, internal life is at the moment.
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

18 April

Communication by P.N. Miliukov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Russian Diplomats in the Allied Countries
Our enemies have striven lately to sow discord among our Allies by propagating absurd reports regarding the alleged intention of Russia to conclude a separate peace with the Central Powers … Firmly convinced of the victorious issue of the present war, and in perfect agreement with our Allies, the Provisional Government is likewise confident that the problems which were created by this war will be solved by the creation on a firm basis of a lasting peace, and that, inspired by identical sentiments, the Allied Democrats will find means of establishing the guarantees and penalties necessary to prevent any recourse to sanguinary war in the future.
( Russian-American Relations March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Abroad it’s the 1 May today, so our blockheads decided to celebrate with street processions, musical choirs and red flags. Apparently they came right into the park and placed wreaths on the tomb. The weather changed for the worse during these celebrations, and thick wet snow started to fall! I went out for a walk at 3.45, when everything was over and the sun had come out. Worked for an hour and a half with Tatiana. In the evening I started to read aloud to the children: A Millionaire Girl.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

20 April

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador
Thursday was a very critical day. In the afternoon a number of regiments marched to the space in front of the Palais Marie, where the Council of Ministers sits, and joined the crowd that had already assembled there to demonstrate against the Government. Cries of ‘Down with the Government’, ‘Down with Miliukoff’, were raised, but eventually the troops were persuaded to return to their barracks. Later in the evening there were counter-demonstrations directed chiefly against Lenin and his adherents, and after several Ministers had addressed the crowd from the balcony of the palace the tide turned in their favour … A collision took place on the Nevski between a pro-Lenin and an anti-Lenin crowd, in which several persons were killed and wounded. Between 9 and 10.30 P.M. I had to go out three times on the balcony of the Embassy to receive ovations and to address crowds who were demonstrating for the Government and the Allies. During one of them a free fight took place between the supporters of the Government and the Leninites.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
An immense crowd of workers, some of them armed, was moving towards Nevsky from the Vyborg side. There were also a lot of soldiers with them … Tremendous excitement reigned generally in the working-class districts, the factories, and the barracks. Many factories were idle. Local meetings were taking place everywhere. All this on account of Miliukov’s Note, which had appeared that day in all the newspapers.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

21 April

Appeal by the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies
Citizens: At the moment when the fate of the country is being decided, every hasty step threatens us with danger. Demonstrations arising from the note of the Government regarding foreign policy resulted in clashes on the streets. There are wounded and killed. For the sake of the salvation of the revolution from the threatening confusion, we are making a passionate appeal to you: Preserve quiet, order and discipline.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

23 April

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The state of anarchy is confirmed and extends further and further every day. Petrograd is no longer the only centre: it’s the same everywhere, in Moscow, in Kiev, and confusion and disorder reign. The two influences of the government and of the Committee cancel each other out, and the result of this double authority is chaos and anarchy. Everyone does as he pleases, and from now on it is useless to count on any concerted effort from Russia.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

24 April

Cable from Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies
In view of the grave crisis through which the Russian people are passing, we assure you that you can rely absolutely upon the whole-hearted support and co-operation of the American people in the great war against our common enemy, Kaiserism. In the fulfilment of that cause, the present American Government has the support of 90 per cent of the American people, including the working classes of both the cities and agricultural sections. In free America, as in free Russia, the agitators for a peace favourable to Prussian militarism have been allowed to express their opinions, so that the conscious and unconscious tools of the Kaiser appear more influential than they really are … America’s workers share the view of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates that the only way in which the German people can bring the war to an early end is by imitating the glorious example of the Russian people, compelling the abdication of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs and driving the tyrannous nobility, bureaucracy, and the military caste from power.
( Russian-American Relations March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
After lunch I went to see Countess Kleinmichel. The poor woman arouses one’s pity. She has been guarded for forty days by a gang of soldiers who stole things from her house, made holes in the pictures, ruined the tapestries, and so on. There were sixty of them who behaved as complete masters in her house and penetrated even to her bedroom. They let no one into the house and they did not even allow her to see her doctor. They stole part of her silver, and the arms which were in the smoking-room, and so on. And now, the big drawing-room has been turned into a meeting-place for the area section of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Committee, with wooden trestle tables set up, beside which the little pink chairs are arranged… The floor is filthy… no carpet on the stairs, the tapestries have gone, and I felt sick at heart to find the house, which was once so well kept, in this state. The Countess received me in her bedroom. She is very brave, and views the events calmly … She told me that she has the wherewithal to kill herself, rather than be murdered if fresh troubles arise. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘I have lived for seventy years; it’s not everyone who reaches this age: one must know how to die.’
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

26 April

Letter to the Petrograd Soviet from the peasants of Rakalovsk Volost, Viatka Province
We, the undersigned peasants, citizens of Viatka Prov., … having gathered on 26 April 1917 in a volost assembly, have deliberated, and have decided to send the following to the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, with a copy to the Provisional Government: Our 1st thought and decision is the following: for us not to have a tsar, because we have now found out that they were always enemies of the people, and the last tsar also carried on a friendship with the Germans… Our 2nd thought is the land; the land must be transferred to those who labour on it. Cabinet, appanage, monastery, church, and major estate owners’ lands must be surrendered to the people without compensation, for they were earned not by labour but by various amorous escapades, not to mention through sly and devious behaviour around the tsar. … Our 3rd thought is about liberty. We are sick and tired of living in debt and slavery. We want space and light. We need for our young people to be taught in higher schools – this is necessary but it must be at the state’s expense, because we don’t have money of our own: the tsars have collected so much from us, and they hired guards using our money, and they lashed us with whips for every word of truth, and for reading books in which the truth was written, they put us in prison. And thus we demand freedom of speech, the press, assembly, unions and strikes, and the inviolability of the person … Our 4th thought is a terrible one – about the war. We are sick and tired of it, we pity our brothers, fathers, and sons, and we regret their blood, but we need to beat the German because he wants to encroach on our freedom. We will die rather than give him our freedom…Next, we have read in the newspapers that they want to deport Nicholas II to England and set pensions for high dignitaries, the old enemies of the people, and therefore we ask that the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies under no circumstances allow the former tsar to be deported to England…
Sincerely yours, Citizen-peasants, 130 illiterate men
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

27 April

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
Countess Adam Lamoyska, who arrived here from Kiev yesterday, tells me that she dare not return to her family place at Petchara, in Podolia, which has been her refuge since the invasion of Poland; a dangerous agitation is on foot among the peasants. ‘Hitherto’, she told me, ‘they have all been faithful and attached to my mother, who has certainly done everything she could for them. But since the revolution everything has changed. We see them standing about at the castle gate or in the park, pretending to divide up our lands in dumb show. One of them will affect to want the wood by the river; another puts in for the gardens and proposes to turn them into folds. They go on talking like that for hours and do not stop even when my mother, one of my sisters or myself go up to them.’ The same attitude is observable in all the provinces, so it is clear that Lenin’s propaganda among the peasants is beginning to bear fruit. In the eyes of the moujiks, that great reform of 1861, the emancipation of the serfs, has always been regarded as a prelude to the general expropriation they have been obstinately expecting for centuries; their idea is that the partition of all land, the ‘tcherny peredel’ or ‘black partition’, as they call it, is due to them by virtue of a natural, imprescriptible and primordial right. Lenin’s apostles have an easy task in persuading them that the hour for this last act of justice is at length about to strike.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

28 April

Memoir of Olga Paley
I must admit that I really didn’t want to leave the country. But mainly to persuade the grand duke [her morganatic husband Grand Duke Paul, Nicholas II’s uncle] to leave, I requested a meeting with the all-powerful Kerensky. He apologised in his response – the only time he was polite – and said that he was too busy and could not come to me, but he would receive me in the Large Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Fairly nervous, I went through to the rooms that used to be occupied by the Minister of Court Count Fredericks and his wife, where I often used to go. Some sort of aide with long greasy, slicked down hair, wearing pince-nez and a handkerchief of dubious cleanliness wrapped round an abscess, met me and conducted me to the office. I waited five minutes. Finally Kerensky appeared and in a casual, familiar tone invited me to sit down. I immediately explained the reason for my visit. ‘I’ve come to ask permission to leave Russia: the Grand Duke Paul, our children and myself.’ ‘Leave?’, Kerensky responded sharply. ‘For where?’ ‘France, where we have a house and friends, and where we can still be happy.’ ‘No’, he answered. ‘I cannot allow you to leave for France. What would the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies say if I allowed the grand duke to leave, the former grand duke’, he immediately corrected himself. ‘You can go to the Caucasus, to Crimea, to Finland, but not to France.’ ‘So, you need us, do you?’ I asked. ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned I’d let you go right away, but what will the Soviets say?’ I wanted to get up but he stopped me and launched into a scathing attack on the autocratic state, which according to him was responsible for so many crimes and unlawful acts. I had only one thought - to get away from this pitiful person as quickly as possible and never ever see him again.
(Cited in A.F. Kerensky: Pro et Contra , St Petersburg 2016)

29 April

Lenin, ‘On the present political situation’, speech at the All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)
The Russian Revolution is only the first stage of the first of the proletarian revolutions that are inevitably being brought about by the war. In all the countries there grows a rebellious spirit among large masses of the people against the capitalist class, and there grows the consciousness of the proletariat that only the passing of power into its hands, and the abolition of private property in the means of production, will save humanity from ruin. In all countries, especially in the most advanced, England and Germany, hundreds of Socialists who have not gone over to the side of ‘their’ national bourgeoisie, have been thrown into prison by the governments of capitalism which have thus given an object lesson that they are afraid of the proletarian revolution which is growing in the depths of the masses of the people.
( The Russian Revolution by V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin: Writings and Speeches from the February Revolution to the October Revolution, 1917 , London 1938)

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29 April 2017

The first-hand accounts of the period between the two revolutions of 1917 give an overriding sense of hope and fear, expectation and almost simultaneous disappointment. Kerensky gives greater freedoms to the ordinary soldier, but the ordinary soldier decides he's had enough of fighting a war against people he now realises are no different to himself. The streets are the forum for political argument and discourse, while those associated with the old regime are beginning to think they must leave the country altogether. The parallels are becoming a little tired, perhaps, but momentous events, like Britain's exit from the European Union, seem to be accompanied or presaged by a heightened level of background noise; there is a sense of expectation, people are talking, worrying, planning. Looking back at the inter-revolution months, Boris Pasternak described it as a golden period, when 'the air was seized from end to end with fervid inspiration': 'A multitude of excited, keenly watchful souls would stop one another, flock together, form crowds and think aloud "in council", as they would have said in the old days [...]. The infectious universality of their elation blurred the boundaries between man and nature. In that famous summer of 1917, in the interval between two revolutionary periods, it seemed that the roads, the trees and the stars were rallying and speechifying right along with the people. The air was seized from end to end with fervid inspiration that blazed for thousands of versts - it appeared to be a person with a name, to be clairvoyant and possessed of a soul' ( 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution , London 2016).

2-15 April 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 05:15:30 GMT

Statue of Lenin outside the Finland Station, St Petersburg

The Finland Station, on Petrograd’s Vyborg side, shortly before midnight on 3 April 1917: workers and soldiers, with red flags and banners, fill the station hall; and there is a military band. The square outside is packed with automobiles and tank-like armoured cars; and the cold night air is blue with smoke. A mounted searchlight sweeps over the faces of the crowd and across the facades of the building, momentarily lighting up the tram-lines and the outlines of the city beyond. There is a general buzz of expectation: Lenin’s train is due.
(Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy , London 1996)

3 April

Lenin and his party arrived in Petrograd on April 3 at 11.10 p.m. It happened to be the final day of the All-Russian Bolshevik Conference, and his followers prepared him for a welcome accorded to no other political figure in post-tsarist Russia. As the train pulled into Finland station, a band struck up the ‘Marseillaise’; outside the terminal stood an armoured car illuminated by a projector. Lenin mounted the car to deliver a short message, and then, followed by a crowd, rode to Kshesinskaia’s villa. There he delivered a speech whose militancy stupefied everyone present. Its thrust was that the transition from the ‘bourgeois’ phases of the revolution to the socialist one had to be accomplished in a matter of weeks rather than years … Later that day Lenin read to his followers a document which came to be known as ‘the April Theses’. It impressed most members of his audience as written by someone out of touch with reality, if not positively mad. Lenin proposed renunciation of the war; immediate transition to the next phase of the Revolution; denial of any support to the Provisional Government; transfer of all power to the soviets; dissolution of the army in favour of a people’s militia; confiscation of landlord property and nationalization of all land; integration of Russia’s financial institutions into a single National Bank under soviet supervision; soviet control of production and distribution; and creation of a new International.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
I cannot forget that speech, like a flash of lightning, which shook and astonished not only me, a heretic accidentally thrown into delirium, but also the true believers. I aver that no one had expected anything like it. It seemed as if all the elemental forces had risen from their lairs and the spirit of universal destruction, which knew no obstacles, no doubts, neither human difficulties nor human calculations, circled in Ksheskinskaia’s hall above the heads of the enchanted disciples.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

Report in The Times (from our own correspondent in the Balkan peninsula)
General Brusiloff: I greatly esteem the Council of Labour Deputies, but the order which it issued at first entailed much harm. As is known, it states that officers must be chosen by the soldiers. Such a thing has never been seen. There is no such army in the whole world. If there were it would not be an army, but a mob. This was more dangerous because of its possible results behind the front. Here there is complete solidarity between the officers and soldiers in the trenches. This order is not so pernicious at the front, where it failed to destroy discipline and comradeship, as it did in the rear. There the effect was really destructive in many places – not in our Army, be it said to its honour, but in the remote rear of Russia … Those who think that the war can now be ended or that the country can be saved without going ahead are mistaken. To beat the enemy one must go ahead, for he who advances wins. Lastly, the Germans occupy a large area of our country, and all this must be won back.
('General Brusiloff’s Warning', The Times )

4 April

Cable from German agent in Stockholm to Berlin: ‘Lenin’s entry into Russia was successful. He is working exactly as we desire.’
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

Resolution of workers of the Petrograd Pipe Factory, printed in Izvestiia
We, the workers of shop no. 3 at the Petrograd Pipe Factory, having assembled in a meeting of 2,600, are deeply indignant at the persecution on the part of the bourgeois press and various dark and ignorant persons who, while trying to sow hostility between workers and soldiers, say that the workers are not working but only demanding an increase in their wages and an eight-hour day. This, comrade soldiers, is not true. We appreciate the gravity of the present moment and, aware that our brothers and fathers are sitting there in the damp trenches, defending our Free and Great Russia, we are prepared to work not eight but twelve hours, and more if necessary and if we have the metal, material, and fuel. We ask you, comrade soldiers, not to believe the various provocative rumours but to select a delegation and send them to see us in the factories … With comradely greetings, the workers of shop no. 3.
Chairman of the meeting, F. Golakhov, Secretary, I. Gavrilov
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
A disgusting scene was witnessed a few days ago in the Russian Church at Helsingfors. A funeral service was being held for Lieutenant-Commander Polivanov, who was murdered by his crew during the recent disorders. The coffin was open as the orthodox rite prescribes. Suddenly a mob of workmen and sailors burst into the church. The whole lot marched past the catafalque in single file and spat in the dead man’s face. The stricken and weeping widow wiped the sullied features with her handkerchief and implored the brutes to cease their infamous behaviour. But, thrusting her roughly aside, they seized the coffin, turned it upside down, emptied out the corpse, the candles and the wreaths, and left the church bawling the Marseillaise.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

5 April

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
This morning Milukov gleefully remarked to me: ‘Lenin was a hopeless failure with the Soviet yesterday. He argued the pacifist cause so heatedly, and with such effrontery and lack of tact, that he was compelled to stop and leave the room amidst a storm of booing. He will never survive it.’ I answered him in Russian fashion: ‘God grant it!’ But I very much fear that once again Miliukov will prove the dupe of his own optimism. Lenin’s arrival is in fact represented to me as the most dangerous ordeal the Russian revolution could have to face.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

6 April

Report in The Times (from our own correspondent in the Balkan peninsula)
Odessa: The revolutionary movement pursues its course in Southern Russia with a tranquillity that seems almost miraculous. Here in Odessa there has not been a drop of blood shed. Meetings have been held, orderly demonstrations have taken place in the streets, but there have been no riots. Travelling hither from Jassy last Monday I was unable to discover any symptoms of popular excitement. The railway stations presented their usual aspect. All railway employees and the police have sworn fidelity to the new regime. Trains have become more punctual and supplies of provisions now reach Odessa more regularly. In all this this region a heavy snowfall has been followed by a rapid thaw, and the floods have claimed more victims than the bloodless revolution.
('The Revolution in Southern Russia: Tranquil Transformation', The Times )

8 April

Memoirs of Count Bendendorf
On this day, the officer commanding the incoming Guard was a former sergeant-major who, as soon as he had arrived at the Palace, had made himself conspicuous by his violence and his revolutionary opinions. He wished to search the Palace, threatening everyone with worse treatment if he found anything suspicious. When the Emperor held out his hand, he moved a step back and said, ‘Not for anything in the world.’ Then the Emperor advanced a step and said, ‘What have you got against me?’ He remained open-mouthed, turned on his heel, and left the room.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Report in The Times (by a ‘competent observer, who witnessed the Revolution in Russia, and has just returned to Western Europe')
The most astonishing feature of the whole Revolution was the revelation of the weakness of the Tsar’s hold upon the people, peasants and workmen alike. He was nothing to them, hardly even a name. I have visited several parts of the country since the Revolution, and have nowhere found regret at the abdication of the Tsar. The peasants are far more interested in the local landowners than in the ex-Emperor. They seem scarcely to have been affected by the propaganda for a free distribution of the land, but have in many places expressed a wish to be allowed to buy land at fair prices from the Government. It is true that one peasant woman whom I saw wept on hearing of the abdication of the Tsar. ‘How shall we now say our prayers?’ she asked tearfully. It was explained to her that she could now pray for the Duma. This substitution of the name of the Duma for that of the Tsar is now widespread in Russia: and prayers are daily offered for the welfare and health of the Duma.
('How Tsardom Fell. New Sidelights on the Revolution', The Times )

10 April
Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
Kerensky dined at the Embassy last night ... and in a long conversation I told him quite frankly why my confidence in the army, and even in the Provisional Government, was shaken. He admitted the accuracy of the facts which I cited, but said that he knew his people and that he only hoped that the Germans would not delay taking the offensive, as, when once the fighting began, the army would pull itself together. He wanted, he said, to make the war a national one, as it was in England and France. He saw no danger of the Provisional Government being overthrown, as only a small minority of the troops were on the side of the Soviet. He added that the Communistic doctrines preached by Lenin have made the Socialists lose ground.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
Albert Thomas asked to have a talk with me privately in my own room. There he said in a serious but friendly tone: 'Monsieur Ribot [French Minister of Foreign Affairs] has given me a letter for you; he left it to my discretion when I should hand it over to you. I have much too high a regard for you not to give it to you at once. Here it is.' It was dated the 13th April. I read it, without the slightest surprise or emotion ... 'Monsieur l'Ambassadeur ... It has seemed to the Government that your position of favour with the Emperor would make it more difficult for you to carry on your duties under the present government. You will realize that in new circumstances a new man is required, and you have told me, with a delicacy of feeling I highly appreciate, that you were ready to sacrifice yourself by laying aside all personal considerations. I take this opportunity of thanking you for this proof of your disinterestedness, which does not surprise me in a man like you, and of telling you at the same time that we will not forget the great services you have rendered our country.'
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

14 April

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
First of all - there can be no doubt about it - Lenin is an extraordinary phenomenon, a man of absolutely exceptional intellectual power ... he represents an unusually happy combination of theoretician and popular leader ... The Bolshevik party was the work of his hands, and his alone. The very thought of going against Lenin was frightening and odious, and required from the Bolshevik mass what it was incapable of giving ... without Lenin, there was nothing and no one in the party.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

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15 April 2017

Quite an interesting counter-factual piece in Vedomosti , wondering what would have happened if the war had not sapped morale to the extent that it did, and Russia had continued to a victorious conclusion:

Let’s suppose that the arctic conditions didn’t happen, the workers’ protests weren’t so widespread, the demonstrators weren’t harried and so on – and that the Russian empire continued more or less without a hitch until the spring. What would then have happened? Russia, having survived the winter with enormous difficulty, tries with all its might to hold the front. Soldiers are increasingly less keen to fight, but the front holds and Germany is forced to retain the strength of its forces. In April 1917 the USA enters the fray. Since the informal truce between Russia and Turkey doesn’t happen, the advance by English troops into Mesopotamia is far more successful. By the end of 1917 it’s clear that Germany cannot continue the war and the hope that Russia will pull out is not envisaged. Germany capitulates by the end of the year. Russia receives its cherished Bosphorus and Dardanelles, and as victor claims it share in the war indemnity. The army quickly and at times randomly reduces from 7 million men under arms at the end of the war to the pre-war figure of 1.5 million. Another 3 million are released from captivity. Most of them are peasants. They’re embittered, tired of war, they’ve learnt how to kill and handle a weapon. The victorious tsar is garlanded with laurels. The capital celebrates the victory. But who has benefited? The elite, of course … But the land question hasn’t gone away, particularly with the peasants returning from the war to find destruction, sometimes family members killed, land or property taken off them. And this is not all. The country is hit by inflation. Prices are three times higher than before the war. The main pre-war trading partners – Germany and Austro-Hungary – lie in ruins. Industry has been shifted onto a war footing and cannot meet the needs of the population. The regions are populated by refugees, displaced people, prisoners. Everyone wants to get home as quickly as possible. The roads are paralysed by a scarcity of engines and trucks. There’s little bread, but the cities in any case can’t offer the villages goods in exchange for food. Furthermore, the soldiers who have spent time in Europe, especially the Russian expeditionary force that fought in France, are now convinced that life over there is better. As a result, in the spring of 1918 the country undergoes an epidemic of peasant unrest, led by those who fought on the front. Estates are put to the torch, officials are killed, the country comes to a halt. The army doesn’t want to fight against its former comrades-in-arms. In many provinces the soldiers stand alongside the peasants. The cities are beset by uprisings from lack of bread. The Duma accuses the government and tsar of being unable to resolve the peasant issue. Political activity becomes more extreme, particularly in the case of the Socialist Revolutionary party. A huge number of soviets are created as an alternative source of authority.

The end result, the author concludes, of this ‘alternative history’ is almost certainly revolution, removal of the tsar, and a bitter civil war; in other words, what actually happened, just delayed by a year or so. The key event was therefore not the revolution as such but Russia’s involvement in the First World War, which was little short of inevitable. It was this, he suggests, which led to the ‘catastrophe of 1917’.

26 March - 1 April 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Photograph published in The Illustrated London News in April 1917, showing the Duma
with an empty frame that had contained the portrait of Nicholas II

Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian army officer
During these months I could only partly grasp the political situation in the country. Of course we wanted the Provisional Government to take hold and carry out the necessary reforms, and most importantly bring a speedy end to the war. I came across a piece in a newspaper, Kopeika I think, that described how Germany was conducting the war with the aim, in the event of victory, of concluding a profitable trade agreement with Russia, and in this way the Russian people was dying on behalf of the capitalists. It was stunningly simple, and true. Nobody, of course, wanted Germany to win, but nor did anyone want to continue fighting. Kerensky’s calls for further military offensive seemed pitiful. He himself had no authority with us soldiers. It was all just a complete muddle.
(From the memoirs of G.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Russia in 1917 in first-person testimony , Moscow 2015)

26 March

Sunday Times article
The question which interests everybody more than anything else is Russia’s future attitude towards the war. There have been misgivings about the possibility of a separate peace. But to suppose that Russia would now seek to conclude a peace without the consent of the Allies is to misunderstand the whole course of the Revolution. The Revolution bound people and Army together in an indissoluble union, resulting in a firm resolve to win a decisive victory. It is true that that a section of Socialists, now on the Committee of Workmen Soldiers’ Delegates, express the wish for immediate peace. But they have no majority on the committee, and still less influence in the country.
(‘Russian War Aims: What the Socialists Demand’, from our own correspondent, Petrograd)

Letter to Minister of Justice Kerensky from worker and deserter A. Zemskov, Kuban region, 26 March 1917
Kind sir, Mr Minister,
Allow me, a poor worker living in Russia’s hinterlands, to express myself, if only in a letter, on the subject of past and present events in the current historical moment. In addressing you, an individual who professes proletarian worldviews and is a defender of the interests of the working classes, I must nonetheless ask you to forgive me, an insignificant worker, for being so bold as to address to you, a great political figure whose name is covered in glory, a letter in which I set forth only my own personal opinions and worldviews and, regrettably, for taking up a minute of your very valuable time, the minute you take to read my letter … Ever since the last Russian autocrat fell from his high throne, you have been hearing on all sides laudatory hymns to the new state order and freedom … Aren’t you singing the praises of new chains that are only going by the name of freedom? … You (I am addressing the Provisional Government) have the audacity to say that freedom has come. But isn’t your current power over the people a power that the bourgeoisie delivered to you, based on coercion? … In professing a lie to the world, you, gentlemen, the new rulers, think that the working masses are so intoxicated by your lie that everyone is accepting it as truth without exception. No, gentlemen, in this you are mistaken … The details of my person are these: I am a former Moscow worker of peasant origin from Vladimir Province, Suzdal Uezd, surname Zemskov. As a deserter I’ve been hiding in the Kuban steppes for more than two years … With deep apologies,
Worker A. Zemskov
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

27 March

At 3:20 p.m. on March 27, thirty-two Russian emigres left the Zurich railway station for the German frontier. Among the passengers were Lenin, Krupskaia, Grigorii Zinoviev with his wife and child, and Inessa Armand. On its journey across Germany, their train received the highest priority. Contrary to legend it was not sealed, but in conformance with the agreement, no Germans entered the car.
(Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution , London 1995)

Statement by the Provisional Government regarding the War
Leaving to the will of the people, in close union with our Allies, the final decision of all questions connected with the world war and its ending, the Provisional Government considers it its right and duty to declare that the purpose of free Russia is not domination over other peoples, nor spoliation of their national possessions, nor the violent occupation of foreign territories, but the establishment of a permanent peace on the basis of self-determination of all peoples … These principles will be made the basis of the foreign policy of the Provisional Government, which will firmly carry out the will of the people and will protect the rights of our fatherland at the same time fully observing all obligations made in regard to our allies.
Signed by Minister-Chairman, Prince G.E. Lvov
( Russian-American Relations March 1917-March 1920 , New York 1920)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
The Soviet demands that the Government shall immediately join with its allies in opening peace negotiations on the following basis: ‘No annexations, no indemnities, and the free development of the nations.’ I fortified Miliukov to the best of my ability by pointing out that the Soviet’s demands amount to the defection of Russia, and if that came to pass it would be an eternal disgrace to the Russian people … ‘I’m so entirely in sympathy with your view,’ Miliukov protested, ‘that if the Soviet got its way I should resign my office at once!’ A proclamation which the Provisional Government addresses to the Russian people and has published this morning tries to evade the difficulty be veiling its intention to continue the war in nebulous phrases. When I pointed out the inconsistency and timorousness of these phrases to Miliukov, he replied: ‘I think I achieved a great triumph in getting them inserted in the proclamation. We are obliged to tread very warily in dealing with the Soviet; we cannot yet rely on the garrison to defend us.’ Can it be that the Soviet is the master of Petrograd!
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

28 March

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
At this time Stalin appeared in the Ex[ecutive] Com[mittee] for the Bolsheviks, in addition to Kamenev. This man was one of the central figures of the Bolshevik Party and perhaps one of the few individuals who held the fate of the revolution and of the State in their hands. Why this is so I shall not undertake to say: ‘influence’ in these exalted and irresponsible spheres, remote from the people and alien to publicity, is so capricious. But at any rate Stalin’s role is bound to be perplexing. The Bolshevik Party, in spite of the low level of its ‘officers’ corps’, had a whole series of most massive figures and able leaders among its ‘generals’. Stalin, however, during his modest activity in the Ex. Com. produced – and not only on me – the impression of a grey blur, looming up now and then dimly and not leaving any trace. There is really nothing more to be said about him.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

30 March

Diary entry of Joshua Butler Wright, Counselor of the American Embassy, Petrograd
The news from the front seems reluctantly to improve; from the socialist workers in Petrograd remains disquieting; and from the navy at Kronstadt to cause worry generally. Our military attaché is watching the first; we are preparing a sort of propaganda … to meet the second; and our naval attaché took a quiet little trip of observation to Helsingfors to verify the third. Many people … are refusing to be reassured and bombard the embassy for news. The Germans certainly can’t get up the Neva until the ice goes out; they can’t dig trenches in this weather; they would not push a slender column on Petrograd alone; and the enormous British drive in Flanders is gaining steadily.
( Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright , London 2002)

31 March

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Akitsa just harps on about peace and is sent into raptures by the socialist papers which she believes like the Gospels ... Meanwhile the world, and in particular the Russian, tragedy is approaching its fatal moment of crisis. Decrees based on common sense and the most noble humanity, which were entirely pertinent when Russia was establishing its new order (how strange! It already feels that the revolution took place not a month ago, but five years ago), are now silenced in the face of the total mess that's been made ... Any question of patriotism is corrupted by the unlimited cruelty of the British, its systematic and cunning avarice, its stupidity; they're not only terrifying, they're outrageous. I remember how loathsome I thought that war poster in London was, showing Kitchener's face blown up and the words at the top: 'This is your hope!' He's now at the bottom of the ocean but it turns out that he and his accomplices have so managed to defile, enslave and plunder 'the land of freedoms' that it's now a more sinister, more enslaving place than Prussia itself!
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

Resolution of the workers of the Putilov metal and machine factory, Petrograd, 31 March 1917
Considering the fact that the rumours being spread by the bourgeois press to the effect that workers are striking and leaving the army without shells are a foul lie and are being spread to weaken the revolution and sow strife between the working class and the army, the workers of the Putilov factory resolve:
1. To address a request through their representatives to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies demanding that the Provisional Government make statements in the press saying that these kinds of rumours are a foul lie and take measures to put a stop to these rumours.
2. Because the bourgeois newspapers … are a mighty weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie, to boycott these bourgeois newspapers, while trying in every possible way to support and disseminate our workers’ press.
3. To have our comrade workers from all the other plants, factories and workshops of Petrograd join us in our resolution to support the boycott.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

1 April

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The famous Allied socialist deputies arrived yesterday at Finland Station. Representing France: Cachin, Lafont, and Moutet – two professors of philosophy and a lawyer. Representing England: O’Grady and Thorne, a cabinet-maker and a plumber … I decidedly prefer the English socialists!
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
…French socialism is thus represented by intellectuals with a classical education, English socialism by manual workers, ‘matter-of-fact men’. Theory on one side, practice on the other … When [the French socialists] left me, they went to the Champ-de-Mars to lay a wreath on the grave of the victims of the revolution, just as in the old days the envoys of the French Republic used to go to the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul to place a wreath on the tomb of Alexander III. As Sainte-Beuve wrote: ‘Life is nothing but seeing everything and the reverse of everything.’
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

Diary entry of Nicholas II
Forgot to mention that yesterday we said goodbye to 46 of our servants who were finally released from the Alexander Palace to [go to] their families in Petrograd. The weather was nice with a strong southern wind. Walked until breakfast. During the day started to break the ice as usual by the bridge over a stream; [with us] worked Tatiana, Valya and Nagorny. Took a nap until dinner. Gave each other gifts of [Easter] eggs and photos. At 11 ½ went to the beginning of the midnight service.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

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4 April 2017

Posting later every week. Terrible day yesterday for St Petersburg - a suicide bomber, or so it seems, on the metro, ten people dead, possibly more. The messages were immediate and from all over the world. Through the Likhachev alumni came an outpouring of horror and compassion for a city that is close to so many.

19-25 March 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Funeral of the 'martyrs of the Revolution' on the Field of Mars (Champ de Mars), Thursday 23 March

Memoirs of Evgeny Drashusov, naval officer
A new life began. Whilst through inertia the old forms were retained, its content was fundamentally transformed… Going to work became little short of a punishment. Normal business ceased and as with everything else it turned into something monstrous, laborious and at the same time childishly naïve. From the start we were forced to play at equality and solidarity with our inferiors. The pen-pushers majestically inveigled themselves into the running of things, pulling а revolver and some kind of all-powerful revolutionary ‘mandate’ from their pocket at the slightest hint of dispute. We unfortunates, not knowing who to rely on and sensing the same situation at the top, where the role of our pen-pushers was played by the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, dragged ourselves around and – alas – instead of any active response just dreamed of being magically spirited away from it all … A couple of weeks after the ‘liberation’, I received a telegram from my father in Yurakov, our estate in Ryazan province, where my parents and two sisters were living at the time. The telegram confirmed what I had feared. Our peasants … had quickly grasped the way things were going and had begun to stir and make demands which the household didn’t want to respond to without me. I quickly took time off and with a heavy heart and foreboding … went back home. … I found everyone alarmed and dejected. After hearing the first news of what had happened, and particularly after the Tsar’s abdication, my father had stopped reading the papers and with the profound suffering of an old man of conviction had silently begun to expect the worst.
( Russia in 1917 in first-person testimony , Moscow 2015)

19 March

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
General Kornilov, the new Military Governor of Petrograd, is endeavouring gradually to resume control of the troops of the garrison. The task is all the more arduous because most of the officers have been killed, degraded or forced to fly … A consignment of newspapers, the latest of which is eleven days old, has reached me from Paris and strengthens me in a view I took on reading the daily résumés transmitted by telegraph. The French public is enthusiastic for the Russian revolution! Once again our press will have been found wanting in moderation and judgement.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

Diary entry of James L. Houghteling, Jr, attaché at the American Embassy, Petrograd
We have heard that at Kronstadt the sailors revolted with much bloodshed, killing 170 officers, including a very efficient and popular admiral who had been put in command at the request of the British. The sailors seem to be responsible for the few excesses of the revolution.
(James L. Houghteling, Jr, A Diary of the Russian Revolution , New York 1918)

Memoir of Fedor Raskolnikov, naval cadet at Kronstadt
Soon afterward there hastened into the room [at Gorky’s flat] where I was awaiting the end of this rather boring meeting the well-known writer I. Bunin, who is now on the run. When he learnt that I had come from Kronstadt, Bunin bombarded me with a whole heap of philistine questions: ‘Is it true that anarchy reigns in Kronstadt? Is it true that unimaginable excesses are going on there? Is it true that the sailors are killing any officer they come upon in the streets of Kronstadt?’ In a tone that permitted no objection I rebutted all these bourgeois calumnies. Bunin, sitting with his legs crossed on the ottoman, listened with great interest to my calm explanations and fixed his sharp eyes upon me. My officer’s uniform evidently gave him confidence, as he offered no objections to what I said.
(F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 , New York 1982, first published 1925)

21 March

Memoir of Princess Paley
The life of the august prisoners was monotonous, mournful, devoid of all joy. The restrictions were rigorous. The Provisional Government granted them credits, characterised by the utmost parsimony. All their letters were opened, the use of the telephone was denied them. Boorish, and frequently drunken, sentries were posted everywhere. The sole distraction of the Emperor was to break up the ice on a little canal which runs along the barrier of the Imperial Park.
(Princess Paley, Memories of Russia, 1916-1919 , London 1924)

Diary entry of Nicholas II
After lunch, I went out into the park with Alexei and spent the time breaking the ice by our summer landing pier; a crowd of loiterers again stood by the railings and stared at us from start to finish.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

22 March

Letter from Sofia Yudina in Petrograd to her friend Nina Agafonnikova in Vyatka
My dear Ninochka!
… Do you read the papers, maybe it’s not interesting for you or they don’t allow it? Here we spend a lot of time poring over the papers. I get up late (what a bore!): earlier than 10 I can’t even think of getting up! I get up, drink some coffee and read the papers, then I play [the piano], and get on with other things – somehow everything moves at such a slow pace here… I agree with this point of the social-democratic programme – to limit and take over landed estates – but it really worries Papa and Mama: they’ve put so much into Polyana, created it through their own hard work and have looked upon it as a little refuge for when they are old. Now this probably won’t happen… Moreover, lessons have almost stopped, all these Romanovs are leaving, the price of everything is going up – and Papa is very worried, he’s getting tired … Tomorrow is the funeral of those who lost their lives on the Field of Mars: sounds like it will be quite a ceremony, judging by the programme for the procession. We will probably stay at home … we won’t see anything anyway, better to read about it in the papers.
(Viktor Berdinskikh, Letters from Petrograd: 1916-1919 , St Petersburg 2016)

23 March

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
Today there has been a great ceremony on the Champ-de-Mars, where the victims of the revolutionary rising, the ‘nation’s heroes’ and ‘martyrs to liberty’, have been given a state burial … Since early morning, huge and interminable processions, headed by military bands and carrying black banners, threaded their way through the streets of the city to collect from the hospitals the two hundred and ten coffins destined for revolutionary apotheosis.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
It would be an understatement to say that the funeral went off brilliantly. It was a magnificent and moving triumphal procession of the revolution and of the masses who made it. As for its size, it surpassed anything ever seen. Buchanan, the British Ambassador, watched it from his Embassy, whose windows looked on to the Champ de Mars and the Neva Embankment, and stated categorically that Europe had never seen anything like it. But the size of the demonstration was not the most important thing on that remarkable day of March 23rd. This time the entire press without exception had to admire the standard of citizenship displayed by the masses of the people in this majestic review. All fears proved groundless. In spite of the hitherto unheard-of number of demonstrators, which undoubtedly reached a million, the order was not only irreproachable but – in the words of the same Buchanan – ‘unbelievable’ … This was no funeral but a great, unclouded triumph of the people, which long remained a grateful memory with all those who took part in it. I did not take part in it myself, any more than in most such demonstrations.
(The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record by N.N. Sukhanov, Oxford 1955)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
The burial procession of the victims of the Revolution in the Champ de Mars began to pass the end of Michail Street along the Nevski at 8.40. During the next three hours I saw only four coffins go by, and there were in all only twelve coffins in that procession which passed up the Nevski.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
On the emblems there are inscriptions: ‘Eight-hour days’ – ‘Social Republic’ – ‘Votes for Women’ and, above all, ‘Zemlya i volya – land and liberty – which apparently was the battle cry of the peasant who revolted against Catherine the Great under the leadership of Pougachev … In Russia nothing changes.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
The most chilling moment was when … there appeared, behind the black banners, the first two coffins, covered in bright-red cloth. This spoke particularly clearly of the new spirit of the time and the break with deeply held traditions (I never expected my compatriots to break so audaciously with the sacred rituals of death); it signified something malignant and defiant.
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Tsar’s children
Whenever we go out, soldiers, with fixed bayonets and under the command of an officer, surround us and keep pace with us. We look like convicts with their warders. The instructions are changed daily, or perhaps the officers interpret them each in his own way! This afternoon, when we were going back to the palace after our walk, the sentry on duty at the gate stopped the Tsar, saying: ‘You cannot pass, sir.’ The officer with us intervened. Alexei blushed hotly to see the soldier stop his father.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman
Each time the guard is changed there is a regular scrimmage amongst the soldiers as to who should be on guard in the palace and who should be outside in the park. Everyone desires to be near the Emperor, such is the love of the Russian for his Little Father.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

25 March

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
The declaration of war by the United States has had no effect whatsoever on the Russian people … In spite of their lofty principles, the United States are only coming into the war to get their money back … Besides, they are on the other side of the Atlantic. When one thinks about it all, one wonders what use their alliance can be to us at the moment, except by way of moral support!
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

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25 March 2017

A Hermitage translation for its forthcoming Anselm Kiefer exhibition has wiped out this week, hence this late posting. But the different takes on the event of the week - the funeral (on 23 March) of those who lost their lives in the immediate aftermath of the revolution - is another reminder of how history depends almost entirely on who's writing it. Managed at last to get to the Royal Academy Revolution exhibition which is every bit as good as everyone says. In his introduction to the catalogue, co-curator John Milner highlights the significance of artists in promoting the new world order, not just the well-known names of the avant-garde but more conventional academic painters like Isaak Brodsky who painted famous portraits of Lenin and Stalin: 'The Bolshevik government needed recognisable images of its leaders and heroes to consolidate the foundation myths on which the Soviet state was constructed.' Still, pretty hard, in my view, to beat Alexander Deineka and his extraordinary paintings.

It was while we were in the Royal Academy that the attack on Westminster Bridge took place. Random loss of life today, no less than a hundred years ago; freedoms that need defending, no less than a hundred years ago.

12-18 March 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 20:52:22 GMT

Revolution meant to the small professional man in the crowd that peace with victory was not far off, that he would then be able to return to the same quiet life as he led before the war, retire to a dacha and end his days in peace, undisturbed by mobilization orders and oppressive food restrictions. But Revolution meant to the haggard workmen something very different. It meant that the war indeed would soon be over, but that he would not return to the condition he was in before … The Revolution meant to the peasant soldier … that the memories of his life between 1914 and 1917 would be as a bad dream, and that land … would be at his disposal as soon as he arrived in his village. Beneath the enthusiasm of the common rejoicing in those street meetings one could see that at least three different social types were interpreting the Revolution in three different senses. Which of these types would lead the Revolution? Would it be the well-dressed man with the money-bag, or the timid little professional man, hankering after the paradise that had disappeared? Or would something pale, ragged, hungry – yes, if you like, brutal and raw – build the new altar and make it the shrine of Holy Russia from that day forth?
(M. Philips Price, former correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in Russia, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution , London 1921)

12 March

Diary of Nicholas II, Tsarskoe Selo
We spent this feast day [Annunciation] in unbelievable conditions – under arrest in our own house and without the slightest possibility of communicating either with Mama or our relatives!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Letter from Lord Stamfordham, George V's private secretary, to the Foreign Secretary, A.J. Balfour
My dear Balfour,
Every day the King is becoming more concerned about the question of the Emperor and Empress of Russia coming to this country. His Majesty receives letters from people in all classes of life, known or unknown to him, saying how much the matter is being discussed, not only in Clubs but by working men, and that Labour Members in the House of Commons are expressing adverse opinions to the proposal. As you know from the first the King has thought the presence of the Imperial Family (especially of the Empress) in this country would raise all sorts of difficulties, and I feel sure that you appreciate how awkward it will be for our Royal Family who are closely connected both with the Emperor and Empress.

Later the same day:

My dear Balfour,
The King wishes me to write again on the subject of my letter of this morning. He must beg you to represent to the Prime Minister that from all he hears and reads in the Press, the residence in this country of the Ex-Emperor and Empress would be strongly resented by the public, and would undoubtedly compromise the position of the King and Queen from whom it is already generally supposed the invitation has emanated … Buchanan ought to be instructed to tell Milyukov that the opposition to the Emperor and Empress coming here is so strong that we must be allowed to withdraw from the consent previously given to the Russian Government’s proposal.
Yours very truly, Stamfordham
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

13 March

Diary entry of Alexander Benois, artist and critic
Went over to Paléologue, having long ago agreed to visit the World of Art exhibition with him, but instead of that we sat for an hour and a half in his study going through the latest events. He is seriously scared. Against my insistence that universal peace must be sought as soon as possible, he set out a whole scenario of how the entire burden of the war would in this case land on Russia, because whereas the other Allies have a bargaining chip – Mesopotamia, colonies and so forth – Russia doesn’t. At the same time he outlined what he sees as the hopeless situation the country is in, its total disorganisation and effective inability to continue the war. … Suing unilaterally for peace would result in bankruptcy as we wouldn’t benefit from the commercial opportunities with Germany that would come after its final destruction … Some pages or junkers rare on duty at the Embassy. They salute you with particular zeal when you come across them. For some reason I felt very sorry for them. If something were to happen to the Embassy, they’d be the first to perish
(Alexander Benois , Diary 1916-1918 , Moscow 2006)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
Alexander Nicolaievitch Benois, the painter and historian of art and a friend of whom I see quite a good deal, has given me an unexpected call. Descended from a French family which settled in Russia somewhere about 1820, he is the most cultivated man whom I know here, and one of the most distinguished … His personal opinions, which are always judicious and far-sighted, are all the more valuable in my eyes because he is eminently representative of that active and well-informed class of professors, savants, doctors, artists, men of letters and publicists which is styled the intelligentsia. He came to see me about three o’clock, just as I was preparing to go out. He looked grave and sat down with a weary sigh: ‘Forgive me if I inconvenience you, but yesterday evening some of my friends and I were indulging in such gloomy reflections that I couldn’t help coming to tell you about them.’ Then he gave me a vivid and, alas, only too accurate picture of he effects of anarchy on the people, the prevailing apathy of the governing classes and the loss of discipline in the army. He ended with the observation: ‘However painful such an admission must be to me, I feel I’m only doing my duty in coming to tell you that the war cannot go on. Peace must be made at the earliest possible moment.’ … My answer was as follows: ‘… In the first place you should know that, whatever may happen, France and England will carry on the war to complete victory. Defection on the part of Russia would probably prolong the struggle, but would not change the result … you may be quite sure that the moment Russia betrays her allies, they will repudiate her. Germany will thus have full license to seek compensation at your expense for the sacrifices imposed on her elsewhere. I certainly do not imagine that you are founding any hopes on the magnanimity of William II … You will therefore lose – as a minimum – Courland, Lithuania, Poland, Galicia and Bessarabia, to say nothing of your prestige in the East and your designs on Constantinople.’ … He continued: ‘There’s no reply to you, alas! Yet we simply cannot continue the war! Honestly, we simply cannot!’ And with those words he left me, the tears standing in his eyes. I have met with the same pessimism on all sides during the last few days.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

14 March

Petrograd Soviet: Call to the Peoples of the World
Comrade-proletarians, and toilers of all countries:
We, Russian workers and soldiers, united in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, send you warmest greetings and announce the great event. The Russian democracy has shattered in the dust the age-long despotism of the Tsar and enters your family of nations as an equal, and as a mighty force in the struggle for our common liberation. Our victory is a great victory for the freedom and democracy of the world. The chief pillar of reaction in the world, the 'Gendarme of Europe', is no more. May the earth turn to heavy granite on his grave! Long live freedom! Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat, and its struggle for final victory! Our work is not yet finished: the shades of the old order have not yet been dispersed, and not a few enemies are gathering their forces against the Russian revolution. Nevertheless our achievement so far is tremendous. The people of Russia will express their will in the Constituent Assembly, which will be called as soon as possible on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. And it may already be said without a doubt that a democratic republic will triumph in Russia. The Russian people now possess full political liberty. They can now assert their mighty power in the internal government of the country and in its foreign policy. And, appealing to all people who are being destroyed and ruined in the monstrous war, we announce that the time has come to start a decisive struggle against the grasping ambitions of the governments of all countries; the time has come for the people to take into their own hands the decision of the question of war and peace… We are appealing to our brother-proletarians of the Austro-German coalition, and, first of all, to the German proletariat. From the first days of the war, you were assured that by raising arms against autocratic Russia, you were defending the culture of Europe from Asiatic despotism. Many of you saw in this a justification of that support which you were giving to the war. Now even this justification is gone: democratic Russia cannot be a threat to liberty and civilization. We will firmly defend our own liberty from all reactionary attempts from within, as well as from without. The Russian revolution will not retreat before the bayonets of conquerors, and will not allow itself to be crushed by foreign military force. But we are calling to you: Throw off the yoke of your semi-autocratic rule, as the Russian people have shaken off the Tsar's autocracy; refuse to serve as an instrument of conquest and violence in the hands of kings, landowners, and bankers — and then by our united efforts we will stop the horrible butchery, which is disgracing humanity and is beclouding the great days of the birth of Russian freedom. Toilers of all countries: We hold out to you the hand of brotherhood across the mountains of our brothers' corpses, across rivers of innocent blood and tears, over the smoking ruins of cities and villages, over the wreckage of the treasuries of civilization; — we appeal to you for the reestablishment and strengthening of international unity. In it is the pledge of our future victories and the complete liberation of humanity.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
(Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, Izvestiia )

Diary of Nicholas II, Tsarskoe Selo
We started to fast, but this fast did not begin happily. After church, Kerensky arrived and asked us to limit our meetings to meal times and to sit separately from the children; this is apparently necessary to appease the famous Workers’ Soviet and the Soldiers’ Deputies! We had to agree, in order to avoid the use of force.
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
At Tsarskoe Selo a closer watch is being kept over the fallen sovereigns. The Emperor still presents an extraordinary spectacle of indifference and imperturbability. He spends, in his calm and casual way, his day skimming the papers, smoking cigarettes, doing puzzles, playing with his children and sweeping up snow in the garden. He seems to find a kind of relief in being at length free of the burden of supreme power. The Empress, on the other hand, has taken to mystical exaltation; she is always saying: ‘It is God who has sent us this ordeal; I accept it thankfully for my eternal salvation.’
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

15 March

From A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
There was a new stress on the workers’ own sense of dignity. They were now aware of themselves as ‘citizens’ , and of the fact that they had ‘made the revolution’ (or had at least played a leading part in it), and they were no longer willing to be treated with any disrespect by either foremen or managers. This was often a spark for violence: offensive factory officials would be symbolically ‘carted out’, sometimes literally in a wheelbarrow, and then beaten up or thrown into the canal or cesspool. Many strikers demanded respectful treatment. Waiters and waitresses in Petrograd marched with banners bearing the demands: WE INSIST ON RESPECT FOR WAITERS AS HUMAN BEINGS! DOWN WITH TIPS: WAITERS ARE CITIZENS! … During the February Revolution a wide range of workers’ armed brigades had sprung up its own militias in the cities. So there was a dual system of police – with the city militias in the middle-class districts and the workers’ brigades in the industrial suburbs – which mirrored the dual power structure in Petrograd. Gradually the workers’ brigades were, albeit loosely, unified under the direction of the district Soviets. But from the start it was the Bolsheviks who had the dominant influence on them.
(Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy , London 1996)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
I was called out of the Ex. Com. and told that Kamenev [Lev Kamenev, a Bolshevik and at this time one of Lenin’s closest colleagues] wanted to talk to me in the Catherine Hall … I began asking Kamenev what was being done in general and in which direction a ‘line’ was being defined in his party circles. What was Lenin thinking and writing? We strolled about the Catherine Hall for a long time, with Kamenev trying at some length to persuade me that his party was taking up or ready to take up a most ‘reasonable’ (from my point of view) position. … Lenin? Lenin thought that up to now the revolution was being accomplished quite properly and that a bourgeois Government was now historically indispensable. ‘Does that mean you are not going to overthrow the bourgeois Government yet and don’t insist on an immediate democratic regime?’ I tried to get this out of Kamenev. … ‘We here don’t insist on that, nor does Lenin over there. He writes that our immediate task now is to organize and mobilize our forces.’ ‘But what do you think about current foreign policy? What about an immediate peace?’ ‘You know that for us the question cannot be put that way. Bolshevism has always maintained that the World War can only be ended by a world proletarian revolution. And as long as that has not taken place, as long as Russia continues the war, we shall be against any disorganisation and for maintaining the front.’
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

16 March

Speech by Alexander Kerensky in Finland
I came here not only to greet you but to bring the Finnish people the news of its freedom, which the liberated Russian peasant, worker and soldier has given you. From now, comrades, all doubt is dispelled … Comrades, let me tell you today that the enemies of the old regime, all citizens of Finland who carried out political crimes, are from this moment our brothers, and I declare a full amnesty.
(A.F. Kerensky, Diary of a Politician , Moscow 2007)

17 March

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
The most dangerous germ involved in the revolution has been developing during the last few days with the most alarming rapidity. Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia and Siberia, are demanding their independence, or, failing that, complete autonomy. That Russia is doomed to federalism is highly probable.
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

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18 March 2017

The British monarchy's ability to see which way the wind is blowing has often been cited as a reason for its longevity. Sometimes it gets it spectacularly wrong, as with the death of Princess Diana twenty years ago this September, when public opinion turned against it and the Queen was forced into a statement she seemed anything but keen to make. Eighty years before that it would seem they made an even worse decision over whether to give sanctuary to Nicholas II and his family. Certainly, knowing the fate of the Russian royal family just over a year later, it's hard to conclude otherwise. And yet it could be argued that this was another example of the British royals' chilly instinct for self-preservation, deciding to withdraw an earlier offer to their Russian cousins in the face of growing public opposition and an increasingly republican tone to public discourse. In a recent doctoral dissertation, Claire McKee tells how the British ambassador in Petrograd, George Buchanan, reported back to London the threat of 'serious consequences' issued by a visiting socialist politician, William Thorne, if Nicholas and Alexandra were allowed to come to England. A few weeks later H.G. Wells was writing 'The tsar is not an evil figure, he is not a strong figure but he is the sort that trails revolution in its wake. He has ended one dynasty already. Our royal family owes it to itself that he brings not the infection of his misfortunes thither.'

Post-script 1. A bit late for the February anniversary (not untypically – a few years ago a friend and I arrived for a Nabokov conference in St Petersburg exactly a week late), but the city this week (hence the slightly tangential image that heads this post) has been an eye-opener. Not sure what I was expecting – not necessarily banners across Nevsky Prospekt proclaiming the end of empire, but certainly … something. Instead, there is almost universal indifference. A small exhibition here, a private ceremony marking the Provisional Government there, but nothing that comes close to matching the Royal Academy show or the level of interest in the West. Revolutionary fervour in the cradle of the revolution, it seems, is in short supply. The analysis of two Russian friends couldn’t have been more different: nobody has much appetite for celebrating something that has little direct bearing on life today, said one, and in any case is it a cause for celebration, does the Russian government really want to mark a popular uprising that toppled a tsar? You’re too early, said the other, everyone’s gearing up for October (or November new style). So I’ll just have to head out again and find out who’s right. And try not to miss it.

Post-script 2: It's been noted that the comments on this blog are disabled, which I admit was a conscious decision but perhaps a rather cowardly one. So I'm enabling them and let's see what happens (cue deafening silence...).

5-11 March 1917

mark@fontanka.co.uk (Mark Sutcliffe) — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 18:08:29 GMT

Alexander Kerensky, leading member of the Provisional Government

It was Alexander Kerensky who most represented the fraternal and national ideal of the revolution. A member both of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and of the Provisional Government … Kerensky was idolized by many as a symbol of the revolution – and with good reason. In the February days, no other member of the Duma so boldly went out into the streets of the city to voice support for the demonstrating workers and soldiers. None was so ready as he to defy the tsar’s order disbanding the Duma. And Kerensky was the most convinced and energetic advocate of the political coalition that united the ‘bourgeois’ liberals and the plebeian soviets … that characterized Russian politics between February and October. He literally ‘personified’ national unity, and he was lionized in just this way: as ‘the genius of Russian freedom’.
(Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 , New Haven and London 2001)

Memoir by the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov
It was a heavy load that history laid upon feeble shoulders. I used to say that Kerensky had golden hands, meaning his supernatural energy, amazing capacity for work, and inexhaustible temperament. But he lacked the head for statesmanship and had no real political schooling. Without those elementary and indispensable attributes, the irreplaceable Kerensky of expiring Tsarism, the ubiquitous Kerensky of the February-March days could not but stumble headlong and flounder into his July-September situation, and then plunge into his October nothingness, taking with him, alas! an enormous part of what we had achieved in the February-March revolution. But it was clear to me that it was precisely Kerensky with his ‘golden hands’, with his views and inclinations, and with his situation as a deputy and his exceptional popularity who, by the will of fate, had been summoned to be the central figure of the revolution, or at least of its beginnings.
(N.N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: a Personal Record , Oxford 1955)

It soon became obvious that Alexander Feodorovich Kerensky, Minister of Justice, was man of the moment. His name seemed to be in everyone’s mouth; in fact, it was rumoured that Kerensky himself was instrumental in bringing about the abdication. So much is rumoured in these exciting days that it is difficult to distinguish truth from fiction. I saw a picture of Kerensky this morning and was surprised to see how young he looked; clean-shaven, with an oval face, his appearance was in striking contrast with those heavily bewhiskered and bearded generals and politicians … All eyes were now riveted on the Provisional Government. Would the power wielded by that handful of brave men spread its kindly influence throughout that vast country, bringing new hope to the despondent, allaying the fears of the pessimistic, and assuring one and all of the advent of a new era of hope, peace and prosperity?
(Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front: A Diary 1914-18 , London 1974)

5 March

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
I went out to see some of the churches: I was curious to know how the faithful would behave at the Sunday mass now that the name of the Emperor has been deleted from public prayers … The same scene met me everywhere; a grave and silent congregation exchanging amazed and melancholy glances. Some of the moujiks looked bewildered and horrified and several had tears in their eyes. Yet even among those who seemed the most moved I could not find one who did not sport a red cockade or armband. They had all been working for the Revolution; all of them were with it, body and soul. But that did not prevent them from shedding tears for their little Father, the Tsar, Tsary batiushka !
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

6 March

Diary entry of Louis de Robien, attaché at the French Embassy
People say that the Emperor is asking to be taken to Tsarskoye selo, to be near the Grand Duchesses, who are ill. From there he would go to England by way of Murmansk.
(Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917-1918 , London 1969)

7 March

Report in The Times
A cavalry captain today tried to gain access to M. Kerensky, the Minister of Justice, on the pretext that he had a letter to deliver. As the man’s attitude was suspicious he was searched, and in one of his pockets was a loaded revolver. On being placed under arrest the officer snatched the revolver from one of the officials and shot himself dead.
The Times , ‘The New Regime in Russia’

Diary entry of Georges-Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia
This afternoon I went for a walk round the centre of the city and Vassili-Ostrov. Order has been almost restored. There are fewer drunken soldiers, yelling mobs and armoured cars laden with evil-looking maniacs. But I found ‘meetings’ in progress everywhere, held in the open air, or perhaps I should say open gale. The groups were small: twenty or thirty people at the outside, and comprising soldiers, peasants, working-men and students. One of the company mounts a stone, or a bench, or a heap of snow, and talks his head off, gesticulating wildly. The audience gazes fixedly at the orator and listens in a kind of rapt absorption. As soon as he stops another takes his place and immediately gets the same fervent, silent and concentrated attention. What an artless and affecting sight it is when one remembers that the Russian nation has been waiting centuries for the right of speech!
(Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs 1914-1917 , London 1973)

Diary entry of an anonymous Englishman (Letter to Sir Arthur George)
Oh! Archie we have had a week! As you may imagine, I have been in the streets all through the revolution – constantly on my stomach in the snow with the police machine-guns firing over me. You would have laughed to see me lying in the snow in the middle of a street with a fat woman across my body and the machine-guns raking the street. I am very, very tired. I saw a great deal and also heard a great deal of first-hand news, all of which I have written down from hour to hour … The first firing by the police was in our street at 5.15p.m. on Saturday [25 February]. – Until Wednesday [1st], a complete upheaval. By Thursday the police had been beaten and the Emperor had abdicated. The new Executive Government only wanted a Constitutional regime, but things have gone so far it will probably have to be a Republic; still, Russia is a box of surprises … The fear is that the present Liberal-Radical Government may become Radical-Red.
(The Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-1917 , New York 1919)

8 March

Memoir of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Tsar’s children
At half past ten on the morning of the 8th Her Majesty summoned me and told me that General Kornilov had been sent by the Provisional Government to inform her that the Tsar and herself were under arrest and that those who did not wish to be kept in close confinement must leave the palace before four o’clock. I replied that I had decided to stay with them. ‘The Tsar is coming back tomorrow. Alexei must be told everything. Will you do it? I am going to tell the girls myself.’ It was easy to see how she suffered when she thought of the grief of the Grand Duchesses on hearing that their father had abdicated. They were ill, and the news might make them worse. I went to Alexei and told him that the Tsar would be returning from Mogilev next morning and would never go back there again. ‘Why?’ ‘Your father does not want to be Commander-in-Chief any more.’ He was greatly moved by this, as he was very fond of going to GHQ. After a moment or two I added: ‘You know that your father does not want to be Tsar any more?’ He looked at me in astonishment, trying to read in my face what had happened. ‘What! Why?’ ‘He is very tired and has had a lot of trouble lately.’ ‘Oh yes! Mother told me they stopped his train when he wanted to come here. But won’t papa be Tsar again afterwards?’ I then told him that the Tsar had abdicated in favour of the Grand Duke Mikhail, who had also renounced the throne. ‘But who’s going to be Tsar, then?’ ‘I don’t know. Perhaps nobody now.’ Not a word about himself. Not a single allusion to his rights as the Heir. He was very red and agitated. There was a silence, and then he said: ‘But if there isn’t a Tsar, who’s going to govern Russia?’ At four o’clock the doors of the palace were closed. We were prisoners!
(Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion , London 1996)

9 March

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
The Emperor – who after his abdication had returned to his former headquarters at Mohileff – was now styled ‘Colonel’ Romanoff, according to his official rank in the army. On March [9] he was brought to Tsarskoe, where he and the Empress were placed under arrest. When the news of his abdication had first reached the palace the Empress had refused to credit it... But, when the first shock was over, she behaved with wonderful dignity and courage. ‘I am now only a nursing sister,’ she said. … Though, during their stay at Tsarskoe, Their Majesties were under constant guard, and could not even walk in their private garden without being stared at by a little crowd of curious spectators who watched them through the park railings, they were spared any ill-treatment. Special measures for their protection were taken by Kerensky, as at one moment the extremists, who clamoured for their punishment, had threatened to seize them and to imprison them in the fortress.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

Report in the Manchester Guardian
M. Kerensky, one of the Russian Socialist leaders and the new Minister of Justice, in an interview with the ‘Daily Chronicle’s’ Petrograd correspondent, said: - ‘I must tell you frankly that we Russian Democrats have been latterly rather worried about England, because of the close relations between your Government and the corrupt Government we had. But now, thank God, that is over, and our deep, strong feeling for England as the champion of liberty will come into its own again.’
The Manchester Guardian, ‘Russian Democrats and Britain’, 22 [9] March 1917

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
The United States Ambassador was the first to recognize the Provisional Government officially on March [9], an achievement of which he was always very proud. I had, unfortunately, been laid up for a few days with a bad chill, and it was only on the afternoon of the [11th] that I was allowed to get up and go with my French and Italian colleagues to the Ministry, where Prince Lvoff and all the members of his Government were waiting to receive us.
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

Memoir of Princess Paley
The Embassy of England, on the orders of Lloyd George, had become a centre of propaganda. The Liberals, Prince Lvoff, Miliukoff, Rodzianko, Maklakoff, Guchkoff etc, were constantly there. It was at the English Embassy that it was decided to abandon legal avenues and follow the path of Revolution. It should be added that in all of this Sir George Buchanan, the English Ambassador to Petrograd, was satisfying a personal grudge. The Emperor didn’t like him and he was increasingly cool towards him.
Princess Paley, ‘Souvenirs de Russie’, Revue de Paris 1922

Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Imperial Court
That Princess Paley is gifted with a vivid imagination is no secret to me, and I can but congratulate her on this chef-d’oeuvre … Needless to say, I never engaged in any revolutionary propaganda, and Mr Lloyd George had our national interests far too much at heart ever to have authorized me to promote a revolution in Russia in the middle of a world war … Princess Paley, unlike my other critics, has rendered me one service for which I am grateful. I have often wondered what was the motive that prompted me to start the Russian revolution, and she is good enough to tell me. The Emperor did not like me – he has received me at my last audience standing – he had never offered me a chair. What more natural than that after such treatment I should … try to bring about a palace revolution?
(Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia , London 1923)

10 March

Letter from Aleksei Peshkov [Maxim Gorky] to his son M.A. Peshkov from Petrograd
My dear friend, my son, You should bear in mind that the revolution has only just begun; it will last for years, a counter-revolution is possible, and the emergence of reactionary ideas and attitudes is inevitable … The events taking place here threaten us with grave danger. We have accomplished the political revolution and now we must consolidate our conquests … And we must remember that Wilhelm Hohenzollern could still play the same role in the rebirth of reaction as was once played by our own Alexander Romanov I. The Petersburg bourgeois is capable of greeting Wilhelm with the same applause with which he once greeted Alexander! … Russia is now a free country and the German invasion is threatening that freedom. If Wilhelm were to win, the Romanovs would be restored to power.
( Maksim Gorky: Selected Letters , Oxford 1997)

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11 March 2017

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970), the son of a school superintendent from Simbirsk, graduated in law in 1904 and specialised in legal aid. In December 1905 he was arrested and imprisoned for four months for possession of illegal literature. For the next six years he devoted himself to the defence of political offenders all over Russia. In 1913 he came to public attention for highlighting the government's antisemitic policies in the trial of Menahem Beilis. For this Kerensky was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment and denied the right to run for public office (though he was already a member of the Duma). He was a highly informed opponent of the Tsarist regime, but surely he could never have anticipated his sudden elevation to the forefront of Russia's revolutionary events. In the words of one historian, 'Kerensky's emergence as a popular leader in the first days of the February Revolution was phenomenal. He was everywhere, in the halls of the Duma, on the streets, in the barracks, voicing with impassioned eloquence the hopes and aspirations of the people. When the decision was taken to form a new government, it was clear to all he would have to be in it.' Kerensky's role in the Provisional Government will form part of the narrative of the coming months; how he saw it all ten years later is clear from the title of his 1927 memoir: 'The Catastrophe'. In the book he makes an interesting, though perhaps rather self-justifying, assertion about the importance of the Revolution in the eventual defeat of Germany: 'The Revolution succeeded in abolishing the autocracy, but it could not remove the exhaustion of the country, for one of its main duties was to carry on the War. It had decided to put the utmost strain upon the country's resources. Herein lay the tragedy of the Revolution and of the Russian people. Some day the world will learn to understand in its proper light the via crucis Russia walked in 1916-17 and is, indeed, still walking. I am quite convinced that the Revolution alone kept the Russian army at the front until the autumn of 1917, that it alone made it possible for the United States to come into the War, that the Revolution alone made the defeat of Hohenzollern Germany possible.'