1 July 1917. Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

There will be no success.

It had long been decided that the main offensive of the year should be launched on the South-West Front, and that this stroke should be accompanied or succeeded by minor offensives on the other fronts.

The section selected for the main attack was twenty-eight miles in length, of which thirteen miles north of the village of Kuropatniki lay in the area of the nth Army and fifteen miles south of that village lay in the area of the 7th Army.

The plan was, briefly, to gain the western bank of the Zlota Lipa and then to wheel north-west and advance on Lemberg.

Two subsidiary offensives were also arranged by the South- West Front:

(a). By the Vth Siberian Corps on a narrow front, nineteen miles south of Brody. This movement was to be supported by the 6th Grenadier Division from the Special Army and was postponed owing to the refusal of that division to fight.

(b). By the Xllth Corps of the 8th Army, west of Mariampol.

The object of the two subsidiary offensives was to hold the

enemy in their immediate front. The Xllth Corps section was selected because certain Austrian units on the line there had more than once urged the Russians to attack quickly so that they might have time to surrender before German troops arrived who might force them to fight.

With the idea of encouraging the men, General Gutor moved the Staff of the Front forward from Kamenets-Podolski to the village of Kozowa, seven miles from the German trenches, and ordered the Staff of the 11th Army to move from Kremenets to Jezierna, and of the 7th Army from Buczacz to the village of Teliache. General Gutor’s Staff consisted of General Dukhonin as Chief of Staff, with General Rattel as General Quartermaster; General Erdeli commanded the nth Army, with General Boris Gerois as Chief of Staff and General Marкоvski as General Quartermaster ; and General Byelkovich was in charge of the 7th Army, with Generals Neznamov and Zapolski.

Most of the Staffs had been changed a short time before the action. General Gutor had only succeeded General Brusilov on June 6th. The Commander of the nth Army had been changed twice in the previous two months, and General Erdeli only arrived five days before the offensive. General Gerois had occupied his post for two months, but his General Quartermaster had arrived only ten days before the attack. Both the Commander and the Chief of Staff of the 7th Army had been appointed in April. All the corps commanders and most of the division commanders had been changed in the three months preceding the attack.

However, all the regular officers that had survived the war and the revolution worked heroically to stem the tide of cowardice and indiscipline.

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The Russian superiority in bayonets was, as usual, considerable, and the Command had succeeded for the first time in the war in concentrating a superiority in guns and aeroplanes.

Apart from specialist detachments numbering over 50,00 men, the twenty-three and a half divisions of the corps in from line had 174,701 bayonets in the companies against, as far as was known at the commencement of the operation, eighteen Gei man battalions, forty-eight Austrian and twelve Turkish, a superiority of three or four to one.

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Alexander Kerensky

Kiev, Russian Empire

Today is the great triumph of the revolution. The Russian revolutionary army went with tremendous enthusiasm on the offensive.

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Alexander Zamaraev

Totma, Vologodskaya guberniya, Russian Empire

Heat. The earth is like a stone. Nothing grows. I went to Medvedka and piled some manure.

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Nicholas II

Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

During the night it continued to rain, reviving the air. The day started wonderfully. We walked to Ifess. At 2 o'clock we went to the park to get good soil and then worked in the vegetable garden. Before dinner I helped the gardener water the flower beds. Towards evening the temperature dropped to 9 degrees and there was a light breeze.

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Zinaida Gippius

Kislovodsk, Russian Empire

And what if Russia has lain too long frozen in the mire of slavery? What if she froze solid, and now, having thawed out, is decomposing rather than coming back to life? I cannot, I don’t want to believe that this is so. But the era is singularly arduous. See more

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Andrei Shingarev

Shingarev's apartment, 22, Bolshaya Monetnaya street, Petrogradskaya side, Petrograd, Russian Empire

An unfathomable and unnecessary demonstration of the strength of the “proletariat” is once again set to take place today. The business life of the city has died off, and tens of thousands of people will take to the streets without a clear understanding of why and for what sake they’re doing so... See more

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

The Great Tsarskosel'skiy Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, Russian Empire

Today in Petrograd there is a large demonstration: they are carrying posters with writings, “Down with the government!”, “Down with war!” Same here: accompanied by the sounds of the Marseillaise they marched through the whole yard to the tombs of the “victims of the revolution”!!! I think that the demonstration was mostly manifested in silly speeches.

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Alexander Blok

57, Ofitserskaya street, Petrograd, Russian Empire

I am terribly worried about all the Cadet and many Jewish, worried about the welfare, ineptness and unwillingness to radically reorganize the structure of the soul and head. Here, at the heart of the Revolution, this, of course, is especially noticeable: eternal rumors and eternal panic (in the Cadets it is expressed in clever irony, and among the homeowners and petty bourgeois like servants, officials, etc., in departures to the dacha, Entrances, etc., but, in fact, there is no difference). See more

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The New York Times

Serge Basset, a distinguished French war correspondent attached to the British armies, was killed by rifle fire while watching the fighting about the Lens salient. Although several correspondents have been wounded, Basset is the first journalist to be killed in the field during the present war. He had been awarded the Legion of Honor for literary and dramatic work. He will be buried with military honors.

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30 June

The epidemic of sunflower seeds has seized Russia

Admiral Kolchak transfers to serve in the US Navy

“Bolshevism” has come to suit the temper of our dark, ignorant, slavery-wrought, war-torn masses."