5 June 1917. Alfred Knox

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

Alfred Knox

General Kornilov's plan was to strike north-west through Nadworna. He did not believe in piercing the Carpathians. Neither did the troops. One of the men of a unit in the Carpathians said to him : “ Mr. General, we will attack, only this place is not convenient for attacking. If we take a mountain, there is always another in front of us, and there is no end and no profit in it.”

Here in the far south there were fewer complaints of the visits of agitators which so plagued the Northern Front, but officers spoke of the evil influence of the Left papers. The Colonel of the Engineer Regiment of the Xlth Corps said that his men subscribed for ten copies of the Pravda, and received forty additional copies free, and the men who could read to a certain extent —perhaps 20 per cent, of the rank and file—had been so long accustomed under the strict censorship of the old regime to regard the printed word as of guaranteed truth, that they believed all they read”.

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Boris Savinkov

Petrograd, Russian Empire

The air in Petrograd is toxic with the fumes of words and the fog of anarchic thought. How easy it is to be a demagogue. How easy it is to whip up the crowd. Leaving Petrograd you realize the danger, the shame, the sadness and madness of it all. One must be brave; one must keep one’s faith.

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Konstantin Paustovsky

Moscow, Russian Empire

Almost every day additional newspapers appeared in Moscow, often with the most unusual ideologies, right through to theosophy and anarchism. One paper advocating the latter was printed with the slogan “anarchy is the mother of order”. See more

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Anatoliy Lunacharskiy Anna Lunacharskaya

apt.17, 25/20, Lakhtinskaya, Petrograd, Russian Empire

It’s Trinity Day. Every decent restaurant is closed. I had a horrible dinner and went to see Filippov for hot chocolate. Suddenly someone calls me. -– It’s Kamenev! Purely by chance. A little of this, a little of that. "Let's go to the Soviet." Today, Minister Kerensky is giving speech and trying to defend himself from the leftwing "attacks." So I went. See more

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completes his painting on glass “Amazon”

Moscow, Russian Empire

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Anton Denikin

Mogilev, Russian Empire

The new commander was given a particularly dry and cold welcome at Mogilev. Stern faces, bureaucratic phrases. The first steps taken by Brusilov were small but revealing episodes which yet further darkened our mood. See more

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Aleksandra Tolstaya

napravleniye Minsk-Molodechno-Smorgon', Minskaya guberniya, Russian Empire

The entire front was awash with the most desperate propaganda. Meetings are endless. This propaganda, of course, has had its desired effect. Which is hardly surprising: the soldiers have sat tired and hungry for months in the trenches, when someone comes along and says “go home, the land will be yours, the factories will be yours. A new life is beginning”.

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Peter Kropotkin

Bergen, Norway

travels to Russia

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Leon Trotsky

Tauride Palace, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Milyukov accuses us of being agents and hirelings of the German government. From this tribune of revolutionary democracy I appeal to those of honesty in the Russian press to broadcast my words: until that time when Milyukov sees fit to take back his words, let his forehead be branded with the stamp of the dishonest slanderer.

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Boris Pasternak

Lebyazhy Lane, 6/1, apt. 7, Moscow, Russian Empire

It cannot be denied that here, in the Urals, the workers are more ready to take control of their enterprises that they are in any other place. Even last year I was delighted by the extent to which their intellectual abilities have developed, and the particular character of those craftsmen whose ancestors had not experienced the yoke of serfdom.

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Alfred Knox

Bukovina, Austria-Hungary

I spent the next week with the left army of the group, the 8th, in Bukovina. General Kaledin had proved too honest to give way to all the demands of the army committee and had been in consequence removed by General Brusilov. See more

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4 June

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Why did the Russian Empire collapse

1916: Year in Review.

+13

in Petrograd

+17

in Moscow