1 May 1917. Bruce Lockhart

Bruce Lockhart

A few days after the arrival of the Franco-British Labour delegation, and almost simultaneously with the return to Russia of Lenin, came M. Albert Thomas, the French Socialist Minister of Munitions. He, too, had been sent out by a French Government, claiming by its traditions to possess a special knowledge of revolutions and anxious to secure the co-operation of revolutionary Russia with the Allied cause. Thomas, whose Socialism was a shade less pink than the Conservatism of Mr. Baldwin, was accompanied by a host of secretaries and officers. Moreover, he carried in his pocket the recall of M. Paléologue, the French Ambassador and a cynic who never struck me as really serious, but who understood Russia much better than most people suspected. The recall was part of the new policy.

I saw a certain amount of Thomas – a jovial, bearded man with a sense of humour and a healthy, bourgeois appetite. He made friends with Sir George Buchanan. He stimulated the war loyalty of Kerensky. He visited the front and harangued the troops with patriotic speeches well larded with revolutionary sentiment. And he argued with the Soviet. One service, which seemed important at the time, he rendered to the Allies. The Soviets, at this moment, were engaged in abstract discussions about

peace terms. They had invented the formula of "peace without annexations and contributions" and this phrase, adopted at thousands of meetings in the trenches and in the villages, had spread like wildfire throughout the country. It was a formula which caused considerable annoyance and even anxiety to the English and French Governments, which had already divided up the spoils of a victory not yet won, in the form of both annexations and contributions. And both the French Ambassador and Sir George Buchanan had been requested to circumvent this new and highly dangerous form of pacifism. Their task was delicate and difficult. There seemed no way out of the impasse, and in despair they sought the advice of Thomas. The genial Socialist laughed.

"I know my Socialists," he said. "They will shed their blood for a formula. You must accept it and alter its interpretation."

So annexations became restitution and contributions reparations. It was, I imagine, the first time the word reparations was used officially, and Thomas certainly succeeded in persuading the Soviets to accept a clause in their formula for the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine. At the time it seemed an important achievement. Actually, as the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, who had yielded to the Thomas subtlety, were so soon to be swept away, it made no difference whatsoever.

Thomas was the most entertaining of the French and English Socialists who visited Russia during this period of the first revolution. He spoke well. He was adaptable. And he had courage. But the results were insignificant. His speeches were no more effective than those of our military attachés, Colonel Knox and Colonel Thornhill, who with more sincerity besought the Russian soldier not to abandon his allies, who were fighting his battle on the other side of Europe. To the Bolsheviks he was of course a renegade, a Socialist traitor, who had sold himself to the bourgeoisie, and as such he was denounced in all the highways and byways of the revolution.

The position of the Allied Missions in Russia was, in fact, rapidly becoming impossible. Every one was engaged in trying to persuade the Russian to continue fighting when he had just overthrown a régime because it refused to give him peace. A little plain thinking should have made any one see that in these circumstances the success of the Bolsheviks was merely a question of time.

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Kira Allendorf

Moscow, Russian Empire

It's the anniversary of the Revolution, and we're on Red Square.

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Serge Diaghilev

Paris, France

After the premiere of the Russian ballet several people wrote to me, asking what is the meaning of the red flag at the end of 'The Firebird'. In contemporary Russia the red flag is an emblem of those who believe that the prosperity of the entire world depends on the freedom of its peoples, achieved only through a victorious struggle.

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Alexander Zamaraev

Totma, Vologodskaya guberniya, Russian Empire

Today the workers are celebrating their holiday. Going by the new calendar this takes place on 1 May. In the city there were demonstrations. It is the first time it has been celebrated freely in Russia. The weather is damp and snowy. I went to the woods.

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Sergey Prokofiev

Kharkov, Russian Empire

May 1 was celebrated in a new style - there were no cabmen anywhere, there were no cabs, no trams were running. The street, which was flooded with bright sunlight, was crowded with people. There were processions with red flags, among which were blue Jewish and black anarchist flags. See more

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Grigory Zinoviev

Petrograd, Russian Empire

Comrades, workers and soldiers! Today, I am sure, the bright holiday of May 1 is again celebrated by the majority of workers of all countries. The workers no longer listen to their capitalists anymore, to their robbers and wilhemls, their Lloyd George ministers. See more

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Igor Stravinsky

Chiasso, Switzerland

I will never forget an adventure which happened to me on the border of Chiasso. I was travelling with a portrait of myself, which had been painted by Picasso not long before that. When the military authorities searched my luggage, they discovered the painting and refused to let it through. I was asked what the painting was, and when I replied that this was my portrait painted by a famous artist, they did not believe me: "This is not a portrait, but a plan", - they said. See more

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Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein

Rome, Italy

Dear Gertrude!

I've been working for days on my decorations and costumes and also on two paintings, which were started here. I want to finish them before the dearture. Decorations will be finished right here. Here I have 60 ballerinas. I go to sleep late. I know every girl in Rome. See more

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

The demonstrations of May ist passed without disturbance. The general note of the banners was not directly anti-war, but anti-capital, advocating general robbery and confiscation. Colonel Balaban, however, said that the position had grown worse in the last fortnight and that Lenin’s Bolshevik propaganda was making progress in the garrison.

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Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

According to the orthodox calendar to-day is the 18th April; but the Soviet has decided that we shall nationally adopt the Western style so as to fall in time with the proletariats of all countries and illustrate the international solidarity of the working classes, in spite of the war and the illusions of the bourgeoisie. See more

During the last few days preparations have been in progress for a colossal demonstration on the Champ-de-Mars. The weather has not been favourable. The sky has been livid, the wind cold and biting, and the Neva, which had begun to thaw, has piled up its floes again.

From early morning all the bridges and avenues have been thronged with processions proceeding towards the centre of the city, processions of workmen, soldiers, moujiks, women, and children, ---each preceded by tall red banners which had a fierce struggle with the wind.

Perfect order prevailed. The long snaky lines advanced, retreated and manœuvred as easily as a troop of supers on the stage. The Russian people has a rare sense of theatrical effect.

About eleven o'clock I went to the Champ-de-Mars with my secretaries, Chambrun and Dulong.

The huge square was like a human ocean in which the swaying of the crowd resembled the motion of waves. Thousands of red flags fluttered above these living billows. A dozen military orchestras, distributed at various points, made the welkin ring with the strains of the Marseillaise, alternating with operatic and dance selections. You cannot have a ceremony in Russia without music.

Nor can you have a ceremony without speeches. So the Soviet had posted at fixed intervals motor lorries, hung with red cloth, to serve as platforms. Orators followed each other in endless succession, all of them men of the people, whether wearing the workman's jacket, the soldier's greatcoat, the peasant's sheepskin, the priest's cassock or the Jew's gabardine. They spoke as if they would never stop, gesticulating vigorously. The audience gave them the closest attention. There was no interruption and everyone listened with glazed eye and strained car to these naive, grave, confused and fervent outpourings, replete with illusions and dreams, which have been germinating for centuries in the inarticulate soul of the Russian people. The subject of most of the speeches was social reforms and the partition of the land. The war was only mentioned incidentally, and as an affliction which will soon end in a brotherly reconciliation of all the nations. I spent an hour walking about the Champ-de-Mars and in that time counted about thirty-two banners bearing inscriptions such as: "Down with the War! . . . . Long Live the Internationale! . . . . We want Liberty, Land and Peace!"

As I was returning to the Embassy I passed Albert Thomas, escorted by "Russian comrades"; his face fairly beamed with revolutionary enthusiasm. As we met, he burst out:

"Isn't it splendid! Perfectly splendid!"

It was certainly a splendid spectacle; but I should appreciate its beauty more if there were no war, France were not invaded and the Germans had not been in Lille and Saint-Quentin for the past thirty-two months.

Not until evening did the processions cease to file into the Champ-de-Mars and the orators to follow each other in unbroken succession on the platforms draped in scarlet.

To-day has made a very deep impression upon me; it marks the end of a social order and the collapse of a world. The Russian revolution is composed of elements too discordant, illogical, subconscious and ignorant for anyone to judge at the present time what its historical significance may be or its power of self-diffusion. But if one thinks of the world drama of which it forms part, there is a temptation to apply to it the remark which Joseph de Maistre, in this very city, made about the trench Revolution: " It is not a revolution but an epoch."

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Nicholas II

Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

Abroad, today is the first of May. Our "blockheads" decided to celebrate the day by processions through the streets with musicians and red flags. They came openly to us in the park and placed garlands on the graves. The weather got worse up to the time of the celebration. See more

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