20 March 1917. Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzov embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

The Provisional Government's manifesto was published this morning. It is a long, verbose and strongly-worded document which fiercely castigates the ancien regime and promises the nation all the benefits of equality and liberty. The war is barely mentioned: The Provisional Government will loyally maintain all its alliances and do everything in its power to provide the army with all its needs with a view to carrying on the war to a victorious conclusion. Nothing more!

I went straight to Miliukov this is exactly what I said:

"After my recent talks with you I was not surprised at the language adopted by the manifesto published this morning on the subject of the war; but it doesn't make me any less angry. A determination to prosecute the war at any cost and until full and final victory isn't even mentioned! The name of Germany does not occur! There isn't the slightest allusion to Prussian militarism: No reference whatever to our war aims! France too has had her revolutions with the enemy at the gates; but Danton in 1792 and Gambetta in 1870 used very different language . . . And yet in those days France had no ally who was in deadly peril on her behalf."

Miliukov looked very pale and abashed as he heard me out. Choosing his words carefully, he argued that the manifesto was intended specifically for the Russian nation and, anyhow, political eloquence to-day employs a more temperate vocabulary than in 1792 and 1870.

I then read him the appeal which our socialists, Guesde, Sembat and Albert Thomas, have just made---at my suggestion---to the socialists of Russia, and I had no difficulty in bringing home to him the warmth of tone, fierce resolution and determination to conquer which inspires every line of this appeal.(1)

Miliukov, who seemed painfully moved to the very depths, did his best in urging extenuating circumstances, the difficulties of the internal situation, and so forth. He, wound up with:

"Give me time!"

"Time has never been more precious! Swift action has never been so necessary! Please don't think it isn't very painful for me to talk to you like this. But the moment is far too serious for us to treat each other to diplomatic euphemisms. The question with which we are faced---or perhaps I should say the question that forces itself upon us is this: yes or no, will Russia go on fighting at the side of her Allies until full and final victory, without faltering and without ulterior motives? Your ability and your patriotic and honourable past are my guarantee that you will soon give me the answer I expect."

Miliukov promised to take an early opportunity to set our minds entirely at rest.

.

This afternoon I went for a walk round the centre of the city and Vassili-Ostrov. Order has been almost restored. There are fewer drunken soldiers, yelling mobs and armoured cars laden with evil-looking maniacs. But I found "meetings" in progress everywhere, held in the open air, or perhaps I should say open gale. The groups were small: twenty or thirty people at the outside, and comprising soldiers, peasants, working-men and students. One of the company mounts a stone, or a bench, or a heap of snow and talks his head off, gesticulating wildly. The audience gazes fixedly at the orator and listens in a kind of rapt absorption. As soon as he stops another takes his place and immediately gets the same fervent, silent and concentrated attention.

What an artless and affecting sight it is when one remembers that the Russian nation has been waiting centuries for the right of speech!

On my way home I dropped in on Princess R----- on the Serguievskaïa for tea.

The beautiful Madame D-----, the "Houdon Diana " or Tauride Diana," was there in a tailor-made and skunk toque, smoking cigarettes with the lady of the house. Prince B-----, General S----- and a number of familiars came in one after the other. The stories told and impressions exchanged revealed the darkest pessimism.

But there was one anxiety greater than all the others, a haunting fear in every mind---the partition of the land.

"We shall not get out of it this time! What will become of us without our rent-rolls?"

To the Russian nobility, the rent-roll is of course the main, and often the only, source of income.

The company's forebodings comprised not only legal partition of the land, i.e. formal expropriation, but confiscation by the high hand, wholesale looting and jacquerie. I am certain that the same sort of conversation can be heard in every corner of Russia at the present time.

A fresh caller, a lieutenant in the Chevaliers-Gardes, entered the room, wearing the red favour on his tunic. He soothed the company's anxieties a little by telling them (supporting his argument with figures) that the agrarian question is not as terrifying as it seems at first sight.

"There's no need to have immediate recourse to our estates to take the edge off the peasants' hunger," he said. " With the crown lands, perhaps ninety-four million desiatins, (2) thechurch and monastic lands, let's say three million desiatins, there's enough to keep the moujiks from gnawing-pains for quite a long time to come."

His entire audience agreed with this argument; everyone consoled himself or herself with the thought that obviously the Russian nobility will not suffer too severely if the Emperor, Empress, Grand Dukes, Grand Duchesses, the Church and the monasteries are ruthlessly robbed and plundered. As Rochefoucauld said, "We can always find strength to bear the misfortunes of others."

I may remark in passing that one person present possesses an estate of 300,000 hectares in Volhynia!

When I returned to the embassy, I heard that there had been a ministerial crisis in France and Briand's place is being taken by Ribot.

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Provisional Government

RESOLVED:
To declare the abdicated Emperor and his consort under arrest and to deliver the former Emperor to Tsarskoe Selo.

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Trubetskoy bastion, 55, Petropavlovskaya Fortress, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Brazen, with beastly faces, people in gray overcoats, pretending to be from some garrison committees, burst into the cell and rummaged through already pretty ramshackle surroundings. A certain spotted, beastlike soldier Kulikov was raging particularly hard. During various searches, and they completely undressed me, on a stone floor, in a cold cell, this monster decided that they needed to also remove my cross. They took it off, but someone from those who still believed in God objected, and they gave the cross back to me—the gold chain Kulikov claimed as a memento.

At the same time, people kept looking in the peephole trying to see when the consequences of this barbarity will begin. Soldiers came from garrison regiments to look at former tsarists servants now imprisoned. It really got on my nerves to hear the incessant clicking of the peephole’s lid. At the same time you could hear laughter, various jeering, and the promise to deal with us.

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Elizaveta Kuzmina-Karavaeva

Koven Lane, 16, Petrograd, Russian Empire

It is only necessary to go to Nevsky Prospekt and pass it from the Admiralty to Alexander the Third, and everything becomes clear without newspapers.

There are no trams. Everywhere are red flags. A huge crowd does not move, but is scattered across the Nevsky Prospekt, standing and discussing the events. Many soldiers. Many workers. Occasionally you come across a peasant from a distant village. Some girls, students, civilians. At the corner of the Sea agronomist - it is evident, a visitor - is telling the bearded soldiers that it is not so easy to divide the land.

The soldiers listen attentively, but, it is apparent that this is not interesting to them, but something more - maybe to each his own thing. How much, they say, each person in my own Ryazan provence will gain land per capita. And I do not care much about the Vologda region.

A heavy truck flew by. It is carrying armed people: workers, students. On the sides of the truck lie two soldiers with rifles. A red flag is waving. A young lady, following the truck with her eyes, tells her student companion:

“When they will be putting up the monument to the revolution, I think it is best to display a truck which carries the people of the revolution, armed with rifles.”

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Alexander Kerensky

Revolution square, 2, Moscow, Russian Empire

I appeared before the Moscow Soviet. The workers bombarded me with a veritable hail of highly aggressive questions, such as “Why has Grand Duke Nicholas been appointed Commander in Chief? “and “Why is Nicholas II allowed to travel freely throughout the whole of Russia?” These questions were undoubtedly prompted by a feeling of enmity towards the government, and I was disturbed to see the extent to which such attitudes, typical of the Petrograd Soviet, have now been embraced in Moscow. I realized that I would have to give a clear, unequivocal and firm answer to the workers, so I told them:

“The Grand Duke Nicholas was appointed by Nicholas II before his abdication; however he will not remain in the post of Senior Commander in Chief. Now Nicholas II is in my hands: in the hands of the Prosecutor General of Russia. Comrades, I remind you that up until this time, the Russian revolution has taken place without bloodshed, and I do not wish, nor will I allow bloodshed to cast a shadow over the revolution. I shall never be the Marat of the Russian revolution. Very shortly, Nicholas II, under my personal supervision, will be taken to the harbour and sent to England by steamer.”

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Zinaida Gippius

Sergievskaya 83, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Kerensky is now the only one who is not on either of the two sides, but exactly where he should be: with the Russian Revolution,. He is the only one, and quite alone. It’s terrible that he is alone. He is a man of brilliant intuition, but not a fully-rounded character. Nowadays, nobody should be alone. And to be alone right at the very top is absolutely terrible. Kerensky will either be joined by many more, and still more, or he will come tumbling down.

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Vladimir Lenin

Zurich, Switzerland

Our tactics: no trust in and no support of the new government; Kerensky is especially suspect; arming of the proletariat is the only guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd City Council; no rapprochement with other parties. Telegraph this to Petrograd.

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

I moved to Tsarskoe Selo with Lili Obolenskaya. What sorrowful minutes! I saw the Empress. She is very gentle, very calm, and shows an amazing nobility of the soul. It seems to me that she does not at all realize that it is all final and irreversible. She says that God is stronger than man, and it seems to her that everything is calming down. She does not even understand that everything that has happened is the result of her own mistakes.

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

There is only one man who can save the country, and that is Kerenski, for this little half-Jew lawyer of thirty-one years of age has still the confidence of the over-articulate Petrograd mob, who, being armed, are masters of the situation. The remaining members of the Government may represent the people of Russia outside the Petrograd mob, but the people of Russia, being unarmed and inarticulate, do not count. The Provisional Government could not exist in Petrograd if it were not for Kerenski.

I went to see him to-day at 9 a.m. He is so over- whelmed with work that he could not see me at any other hour. This is a welcome change from the old regime,when it was impossible to see anyone before 11 a.m. The huge Ministry of Justice, deserted by all the old officials, seemed empty. To Harold Williams and me the new Minister’s footsteps sounded hollow, as he walked to meet us through perhaps a hundred yards of reception apartments.

Kerenski seems shrewd,energetic and a man. Hehas a certain charm of manner.

He spoke repeatedly of his sympathy for England, and said that at the time of the Boer war he was one of the few Russians who had stood up for England. He is in favour of the continuance of the war, but without any idea of conquest. He says Milyukov has no tact, and we are not to believe him when he says that Russia wants Constantinople. He, Kerenski, wants the interationalisation of the Straits and self-government for Poland, Finland and Armenia, the latter as a separate entity from the Caucasus. He is instituting a search for proofs of the correspon- dence of the Romanov family with Germany.

<…>

I pressed the necessity of making each regiment swear allegiance to the Provisional Government, pending the decision of the Constituent Assembly as to a permanent constitution. He made a note of this, and asked me to speak to Guchkov. Guchkov received me at 11 a.m., together with General Kornilov, who had just arrived to take command of the Petrograd Military District. They both welcomed the suggestion that British officers who spoke Russian might be of use in barracks to reason with the men. Kornilov said that units would have to be brought to some sort of order before the oath was administered.

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Lili Dehn

Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

We remained in the mauve boudoir until quite late, but, just as we were about to go to bed, Volkoff entered in a state of painful agitation. He managed to tell us that M. Goutchkoff had arrived, and insisted upon seeing the Empress. It was then ii o'clock.

“But, at this hour— it's impossible,” said the Empress.

“Your Majesty, he insists,” stammered Volkoff.

The Empress turned to me— terror and pathos in her eyes.

“He has come to arrest me, Lili,” she exclaimed. “Telephone to the Grand Duke Paul, and ask him to come at once.”

Regaining her composure, the Empress rearranged the Red Cross head-dress which she had taken off, and stood waiting in silence for the Grand Duke. Neither Marie nor myself dared speak. At length, after what seemed an interminable agony of suspense, the Grand Duke entered, and the Empress told him in a few words about her ominous summons. The next moment, loud voices in the corridor, and the banging of a door, announced Goutchkoff's arrival in the adjoining room.

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Kazimir Malevich

Moscow, Russian Empire

The newspaper "Sotsial-Demokrat" was published - the only people approaching vegetarianism, the only ones to refuse self-abuse and devouring of other tribes.

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Nicholas II

Mogilev, Russian Empire

I received two more letters from dear Alix brought by officers from the regiment. At 11 o'clock I received Williams, Janin, Ryckel: all were warm and sympathetically treated. I had breakfast with Mama, and sat with her until 2:30. I received Coanda, Romei, Marcengo, and Lontkevich. I took a walk for about an hour. The weather was mild but all day it had been snowing. After tea I began packing things. I had dinner with Mama and played bezik with her.

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19 March