21 October 1917. Alfred Knox

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21 October

Today:

Massacres of officers in Vyborg

The palace of Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich is robbed

“We consider the policy of the Bolsheviks meaningless”

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

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Poor Neverdovsky came to see me at the Embassy yesterday. He and his wife escaped from Vyborg disguised and by the skin of their teeth. The massacre of officers lasted two days, and was organized by sailors who came from Helsingfors, and called the local garrison “Black Hundred Reactionaries,” because they had not shed any officer blood.

At 2 p.m. on the first day, a few of his men came to Neverdovsky and asked him to explain Kornilov’s movement. When N. complied, one man said: “All the officers say that they are for the Government, but they are all secretly for Kornilov. They should all be wiped out.” Another man said: “ Come along and don’t talk,” and they all went out.

Two hours later he saw some forty soldiers running with rifles, and soon afterwards, he heard that General Oranovski, the Commander of the Troops in Finland, General Vasiliev, the General Quartermaster, and General Stepanov, the Commandant of the Fortress, had been arrested. Later a lady came in to say that they had all been murdered. They were thrown over the bridge and shot in the water.

Neverdovski spent the night in a house with friends. He was about to go to his office in the morning but was implored by his officers to wait while a junior officer spied out the land. This boy soon returned with the news that it had been decided to murder all officers of field rank. N. managed to find a hired carriage, which took him for an exorbitant fare to the house of a colonel he knew some twenty miles off. There he hid six days before venturing to escape to Petrograd. The Finnish peasants helped him and gave him a rifle, saying: “ The Russian soldiers are bad men. We will defend you.”

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20 October

The Provisional Council opened with a scandal

Lenin returned to Petrograd

“Now in the background of Russian politics began to form the vague outlines of a sinister power—the Cossacks”

Map of the Royal dynasties of Europe

Romanovs dangerous liaisons

in Petrograd

-1

in Moscow