14 December 1917. Winston Churchill

London, United Kingdom

Lenin and his confederates did not contemplate at the outset a separate peace. They hoped to procure under the lead of Russia and under the impact of the Russian desertion a general cessation of hostilities, and to confront every government, Allied and enemy alike, with revolt in their cities and mutiny in their armies. Many tears and guttural purrings were employed in inditing the decree of peace.

An elevated humanitarianism, a horror of violence, a weariness of carnage breathed in their appeal—for instance, the following:— ‘…Labouring peoples of all countries, we are stretching out in brotherly fashion our hands to you over the mountains of corpses of our brothers. Across rivers of innocent blood and tears, over the smoking ruins of cities and villages, over the wreckage of treasures of culture, we appeal to you for the re-establishment and strengthening of international unity.’ But the Petrograd wireless stirred the ether in vain. The Crocodiles listened attentively for the response, but there was only silence. Meanwhile, the new régime was sapiently employed in securing intimate and effectual control of the Czarist police and secret police.

By the end of a fortnight, the Bolsheviks abandoned the plan of ‘peace over the heads of the government with the nations revolting against them.’ On November 20, the Russian High Command was ordered to ‘propose to the enemy military authorities immediately to cease hostilities and enter into negotiations for peace,’ and on November 22 Trotsky served the Allied Ambassadors in Petrograd with a note proposing an ‘immediate armistice on all fronts and the immediate opening of peace negotiations.’ Neither the Ambassadors nor their governments attempted any reply. The Russian Commander-in-Chief, the aged General Dukhonin, refused to enter into communication with the enemy. He was instantly superseded at the head of the Russian armies by a subaltern officer, Ensign Krilenko, who delivered the arrested general to be torn to pieces by a mutinous mob. The request for an armistice was then made to the Central Powers. These Powers also remained for a time plunged in silence. The promise of ‘an immediate peace’ had however to be made good at all costs by the Bolshevik Government, and orders were issued to the army at the front for ‘compulsory fraternisation and peace with the Germans by squads and companies.’ All military resistance to the conqueror thenceforward became impossible. On November 28 the Central Powers announced that they were ready to consider armistice proposals. On December 2 firing ceased on the long Russian fronts and the vast effort of the Russian peoples sank at last into silence and shame.

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Aleksandra Tolstaya

18, Merzlyakovsky per., Moscow, Russian Republic

It has become hard to live in this world, but I still believe in a brighter future.

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Vladimir Lenin

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Considered apart from the circumstances of the class war, which has developed into civil war, we so far do not know of a more perfect institution for determining the will of the people than the Constituent Assembly. But we must not indulge in fancies. The Constituent Assembly will have to function under civil war conditions; the Kaledinite bourgeois elements have started a civil war. See more

After attempting to drag out the insurrection in Moscow, after the unsuccessful attempt on the part of Kerensky to bring troops against Petrograd, after the fruitless attempt to organise the counter-revolutionary high-ranking officers of the army, these elements are now endeavouring to organise an uprising on the Don. The attempt is hopeless, since the working Cossacks are opposed to the Kaledinites.

The class struggle must not be regarded separately from one’s political opponents. When it is sald that the Cadet Party is not a strong group, it is not true. The Cadet Central Committee is the political general staff of the bourgeois class. The Cadets have absorbed all propertied classes; they have been joined by elements that stood to the right of the Cadets. They all support the Cadet Party. We are being called upon to convene the Constituent Assembly in the form in which it was first planned. Under no circumstances. It was planned against the interests of the people. We made the revolution so as to have guarantees that the Constituent Assembly would not be used against the people, and in order that the guarantees would be in the hands of the government. Our decree states clearly and unambiguously when the Constituent Assembly will be convened. It contains an exact answer to that question. Do not try any thought-reading; we are concealing nothing. We said that we shall convene the Constituent Assembly as soon as four hundred deputies have arrived.

When a revolutionary class is fighting the propertied classes that offer resistance, the resistance must be crushed. And we shall crush the resistance of the propertied classes, using the same means as they used to crush the proletariat—no other means have been invented. You said the bourgeoisie must be isolated. But the Cadets are actually starting civil war under cover of a formally democratic demand, the demand for a Constituent Assembly. They say they want, to sit in the Constituent Assembly and organise civil war at the same time. And you reply to that by talk about isolation. We are not merely persecuting non-observers of formalities, we are levelling direct political accusations against a political party. The French revolutionaries acted in this way. This is our reply to those peasants who elected without realising whom they were electing. Let the people know that the Constituent Assembly is being summoned in a way somewhat different from what Kerensky intended.

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Alexander Kerensky

somewhere between Gatchina and Luga, Russian Republic

Two sleighs pulled up at the lodge and several astrakhan-hatted soldiers tumbled out, rifles and grenades in hand. These were friends of mine, trustworthy and valiant, and they were here to take me to a secret forest hideout on the road to Novgorod. See more

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Marina Tsvetaeva

Borisoglebsky lane, 6, Moscow, Russian Republic

Alya, at the time of the uprising (as far as I've heard, I wasn't there, I was in Feodosia):

-Poor Irina! How late have you been born! And such horrible things are now hanging over your head!

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Nicholas II

Tobolsk, Russian Republic

Both days went absolutely the same. It was fairly cold but the sun was out. After my daily walk both days we got together with Mr. Gilliard and practiced our roles and rehearsed aloud. Vespers was at 9 o'clock.

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13 December

The Tasks Of The Public Library In Petrograd

"Anyone who had the chance sought to leave to the provinces, where the Bolshevik government was not yet fully recognized."

Feodor Chaliapin gives concerts