15 April 1917. Alfred Knox

Alfred Knox

The Staff of the XlXth Corps sent me to talk to the 731st. Regiment—“ an average regiment

” they called it—in reserve a few thousand yards from the trenches in the Dvinsk bridgehead.

After speaking to them for a few minutes, I told them that the Allies were taking the offensive

in the West to give the Russian army time to settle down after the recent great change, and I

asked them whether in a few weeks’ time they would be ready to commence an offensive too

so that the war might be quickly ended. There were cries of “ No”. The majority of the men

very evidently did not want to fight. One man said : “ The Government want us all to be

killed, so that our wives and children may be starved by the landowners.” Another said : “ We

have attacked and attacked, and nothing has come of it.” Others said : “ England is only

beginning to fight, and we have been fighting the whole time.” “ Russia has not only to

defend her own long frontier, but she has troops in France and in Rumania too.” “ We don’t

want to fight, we only dream of our wives and children.” One man asked when the war would

end. I said that it would end as soon as Russia took the offensive along with her Allies. He

said : “ And if we are beaten ? We have had many allies, but it is all no good. The Germans

are people like ourselves ; we want to live in peace.” An appeal to fight for the reconquest of

the lost territory was futile. One man cried : “ The devil take the sixteen Governments ! ”.

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Sergey Prokofiev

Apartment house, 122, Fontanka embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Easter has arrived. I went to the Conservatory for the matins service. I always go there at Easter; this is a service I enjoy very much. This year, however, it proved somehow less festive than it usually is, although the Cross Procession did leave me in the most convivial, most joyous of moods.

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Alexander Blok

57, Ofitserskaya street, Petrograd, Russian Empire

This year, Easter is running its course more smoothly than ever. Only now is it becoming clear that the coerciveness of autocracy had been ubiquitously palpable – even in the most unexpected areas of life. Last night I was in the vicinity of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. See more

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Pablo Picasso

paints Harlequin and Woman with Necklace

Picasso's studio, Via Margutta 53/b, Rome, Italy

Nadezhda Krupskaya with Vladimir Lenin

Switzerland

All my thoughts were in Russia. We crossed the border in little Finnish sleighs. And now everything became dear and familiar – the ramshackle old third-class carriages, the Russian soldiers. Awfully lovely. It wasn’t long before Robert found himself in the arms of an elderly soldier: clasping him round the neck, he jabbered away to him in French and ate the sweet Easter cream-cheese that the soldier was feeding him. See more

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Vasily Rozanov

Shpalernaya, 44, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Let us pray for our infelicitous Tsar, who is spending Easter as a prisoner. And let us pray, too, for Aleksei Nikolaevich, the heir to the throne, and for the Tsar’s daughters Olga and Tatiana... But as regards the German – no, we shan’t pray for her.

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

Petrograd, Russian Empire

A day of great joy, despite the human suffering. Wonderful weather, sunshine and clear skies redolent of Italy; twenty-three degrees in the sun. At twelve-thirty, we wished their majesties a happy Easter and began the egg-giving. The Emperor gave me an egg inscribed with his insignia; I shall keep it as a treasured souvenir. How few loyal supporters they have left!

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

There was a glut of newspapers. The 12th Army had three, all of which were printed at Government expense. The Staff News of the 12th Army was official and daily. The Officers’ News of the 12th Army and the Soldier Deputies’ News of the 12th Army were published two or three times a week.

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Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

According to the orthodox calendar, to-day is Easter Sunday. Not a single incident or innovation has marked Holy Week, except that the theatres, which formerly closed their doors for the whole of the last fortnight of Lent, remained open until last Wednesday.

To-night all the churches of Petrograd have celebrated the solemn office of the Resurrection with the usual splendour. See more

In the absence of the Metropolitan Pitirim, who is now a prisoner in his Siberian monastery, the pontifical mass was said at the Lavra of Saint Alexander Nevsky by Monsignor Tikhon, Archbishop of Yaroslavl, while the two episcopal vicars, Monsignor Ghennadius and Monsignor Benjamin, officiated at Saint Isaac and Our Lady of Kazan. The crowds which thronged these great cathedrals have been as large as in former years.

I paid a visit to Our Lady of Kazan and saw the same scenes as in the days of tsarism, the same majesty and magnificence, the same display of liturgical pomp. But never before had I beheld such an intense revelation of Russian piety. Nearly all the faces around me wore a positively thrilling look of fervent pleading or prostrate resignation. At the supreme moment of the office, when the clergy came through the iconostasis in a blaze of gold and the hymn of triumph, Praise to the Holy Trinity! Eternal Praise! Our Saviour Christ is risen! rang out, a wave of emotion swept over the worshippers. And while they embraced each other, in the customary fashion with murmurs of Christ is risen! I saw that many of them were dissolved in tears.

On the other hand, I am informed that in the working-class quarters of Kolomna, the Galernaïa and Viborg, several churches were practically empty.

The French socialist deputies and their English comrades were received by the Soviet this afternoon.

Their reception was frigid, so frigid that Cachin was completely taken back and thought it his duty to make any sort of negotiation possible, to "throw out ballast." This "ballast" was nothing less than Alsace-Lorraine, the restoration of which to France was not asserted as a right but presented simply as a contingency, subject to all sorts of conditions, such as a plebiscite.

If that is all the help our deputies have come to bring me, they would have been better advised to spare themselves the trouble of the journey!

At the same sitting of the Soviet, Plekhanov, who arrived from Paris at the same time as the French and English delegates, reappeared before a Russian Assembly for the first time after forty years of exile.

Plekhanov is a noble figure in the revolutionary party and the founder of Russian social democracy. From him the Russian proletariat heard the first appeals for union and organization. He was therefore given a triumphal reception when he arrived at the Finland Station the night before last, and the Provisional Government went to welcome him officially.

He was also greeted with cheers from all sides when he entered the Tauride Palace to-day. But when he spoke of the war, when he proudly claimed the title of socialist-patriot and declared that he would not submit to the tyranny of the Hohenzollerns any more than to the despotism of the Romanovs, there was a gloomy stillness around him and then mutterings could be heard on several benches.

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Nicholas II

Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

Mass finished in an hour and forty minutes. We broke our fast with 16 other people. I laid down and went to sleep. The day became radiant, genuinely festive. In the morning I walked. Before breakfast, I gave — but without Alix — all our employees photographs of the eggs which were preserved from our former supply. See more

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The New York Times

A party of Russians, which is now on its way to Petrograd, includes thirty who came through Germany in a sealed coach. Among principal members of the party is Lenin, radical socialist leader, and Zinovyof, another radical and peace advocate. Both are members of their party’s Central Committee and editors of party newspapers in Geneva as well as prominent figures in the Zimmerwald Congress. See more

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The New York Times

German correspondents on the Russian and Swedish frontiers report that the Russian Provisional Government intends to change the name of the capital back to St. Petersburg. The Government is said to have decided upon this “because Petrograd recalls to every Russian saddest time in Russian history”.

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14 April

General Kolchak is prevented from fighting

The Empress' lady in waiting: “Easter Matin was solemn, and oh so sad!”

Diaghilev met an old friend