20 February 1917. Mathilde Kschessinska

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Mathilde Kschessinska

Kshessinska mansion, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Every day brought more and more alarming news. Nobody knew the exact reasons for this anxiety, but a menacing, stormy atmosphere hung over the capital, and uncertainty increased. It had begun with vague reports, and nobody had been able to decide whether the situation was really serious, or whether these were merely rumours spread by a troubled populace. However, in the first week of February General Halle, Chief of Police of the Fourth District of the "Peterbourgskaia",

whom I knew very well and who had already warned me in January, telephoned me to advise me urgently to leave Petrograd with my son, at least for a short time. According to him, disturbances might break out at any moment in the capital on the occasion of the reopening of the Douma on February 14th. My house, at the beginning of the Kamennostrovsky Prospect, might be in particular danger.

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✍ Also today

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Many have heard of the young Spaniard who painted the dancers and helped Bakst to paint some of the accessories used in the ballet.

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Paul Klee

paints «Hieroglyph with a bird and a fish»

Summer school, Gersthofen, Bavaria, German Empire

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Olga Paley

Petrograd, Russian Empire

One eminent Russian lady ventured to pen a letter of unprecedented nerve to the Empress. I saw this letter, written in a careless and hasty hand on pages torn out of a notebook. Among other things, she wrote the following: “Leave us, in our eyes you're a foreigner.” Naturally, the Empress was mortally offended.

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Alexander Spiridovich

Petrograd, Russian Empire

Globachev has reported on the increasing dissatisfaction with the lack of certain foodstuffs. He warned of the possibility of so-called "bread riots" and excesses of "the most horrible of all the anarchic revolutions." Almost every day his reports speak of strikes. The General warned that there may be an attempt to organize a march to the Tauride Palace and that the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and the Social-Democrats. are united in this plan.

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Peter Struve

Petrograd, Russian Empire

Two features characterize the internal political situation in Russia today: 1) economic difficulties related to the war. 2) The increasingly deepening standoff between the Tsarist government and the people. Dissatisfaction with the situation in the country is extremely sharp and clearly visible.

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Amedeo Modigliani

paints "Adriana" ("Woman with a Fringe")

Emil Gudo's square, 13, Paris, France

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Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Doumergue and General de Castelnau lunched at the embassy very privately to-day.

We conjured up memories of the days just before the war. Doumergue, then President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs, was one of the first who saw, or rather confessed himself obliged to see, the threatening reality. See more

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19 February

Pablo Picasso visits Diaghilev in Rome

Lenin continues to berate Trotsky

“The general mood in Petrograd is subdued. People are openly criticising the tsar”

1916: Year in Review.

It's Romola Nijinsky's birthday today

-20

in Petrograd

-21

in Moscow