4-10 June 1917

  • By Mark Sutcliffe
  • 10 Jun, 2017

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.

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Week by week blog tracing Russia's revolutionary year of 1917 through personal testimony, diaries, correspondence etc.
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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)
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Looting of wine shops, Ivan Vladimirov, Petrograd 1917
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General Nikolai Dukhonin, last commander of the Tsarist army, killed by revolutionary sailors on 20 November
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Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Leon Trotsky)
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The Winter Palace during a spectacular light show to mark the anniversary of the revolution,
as per the Gregorian calendar. 5 November 2017
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Red peasant, soldier and working man to the cossack: ‘Cossack, who are you with? Them or us?’
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Students and soldiers firing across the Moika River at police who are resisting the revolutionaries, 24 October 1917 (© IWM Q69411)
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Revolutionaries remove the remaining relics of the Imperial Regime from the facade of official buildings, Petrograd © IWM (Q 69406)
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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.


 

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