2 March 1917. Pierre Gilliard

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

Pierre Gilliard

Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

Everyone hacked at the central pillar of the tottering political edifice, and no one thought of attempting to shore it up while still there was time. Everything was done to accelerate the revolution; nothing to avert its consequences. It was forgotten that Russia did not consist merely of fifteen to twenty million human beings ripe for parliamentary government, but that it had one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty million peasants, most of them rude and uneducated, to whom the Czar was still the Lord's Anointed, he whom God had chosen to direct the destinies of Great Russia. Accustomed from his earliest youth to hear the priest invoke the name of the Czar in the offertory, one of the most solemn moments in the Orthodox liturgy, the moujik in his mystical exaltation was bound to attribute to him a character semidivine.

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Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzov embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

The effects of the stimulant which the Allied Conference provided to the Russian Government departments, or at any rate the departmental offices in Petrograd, has already worn off.

The artillery, war-factory and supply and transport departments have fallen back into their old casual and leisurely ways. Our officers and engineers are up against the same dilatory replies, the same dead weight of inactivity and indifference as before. It is enough to make one despair of everything. How I can sympathize with the spur of Ivan the Terrible and the cane of Peter the Great!

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Anton Denikin Xenia Chizh

Romanian front, 4 Army, 8 Corps

You’re unhappy with the fact that I’ve told you little about the situation here. That’s true enough. But, when it comes to most operations-related matters, matters of army life, or even matters regarding the country at large – matters that could be of interest to you – we must observe the injunction against disclosing military secrets. It’s for this reason that my letters are colourless and insipid. As to letters concerning completely neutral matters – matters of heart and soul – it’s none too pleasant when they’re rifled by the hand of a stranger, and not always a clean hand at that.

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Nikolay Gumilyov

Okulovka, Novgorodskaya guberniya, Russian Empire

I have been assigned a new colonel, who is frightfully thoughtful and dedicated. He will make a pleasant companion and an even better worker.

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Amedeo Modigliani

paints "A girl in yellow dress"

Emil Gudo's square, 13, Paris, France

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Sigmund Freud

19, Berggasse, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire

In the last weeks of cold and dark I stopped working in the evenings and am yet to return to it. Even now it is warmer the lack of light prevents me from finding any pleasure in my work and gives me enough justification to put it aside. My motivation for work has been dulled and supressed. This unbearable waiting to find out what is to come of this world of ours is too much for me. I am considering returning to work in the summer, at that time when one needs to struggle with one’s nature and force oneself to work in the city.

As for science, it seems of late there has been little of novelty and only slow progress.

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