24 August 1917. George Buchanan

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

George Buchanan

4, Dvortsovaya embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire (British Embassy)

Letter to the Foreign Ministry

"I returned last night from a week's holiday in Finland and saw Tereschenko this morning. I told him that I was greatly disappointed to find that the situation had, if anything, changed for the worse, that hardly any of the disciplinary measures contemplated had been applied, and that the Government seemed to me weaker than ever. On my inquiring whether Kerensky was in agreement with the commander-in- chief on the question of the death

penalty in the rear, he said that it was only during the past few weeks that it had been possible even to moot this question and that the Government had been obliged to move very cautiously. Kerensky, he told me, had, in the Council of Ministers advocated its application to certain offences committed against the State by soldiers and civilians alike, but the Cadets had objected to its being applied to the latter for fear that it might be used against persons suspected of promoting a counter-revolution. I replied that, whatever reasons the Government may have had for caution in the past, they had now no time to lose, as, apart from the military outlook, the economic situation was so serious that unless drastic measures were at once taken there would be serious trouble in the winter. I had once warned the Emperor that hunger and cold would bring revolution in their train, and if the Government did not act with prompti- tude the same causes would provoke a counter-revolu- tion. Tereschenko admitted that the Government was not as strong as he could wish, but said that General Korniloff would, at the Moscow conference, which opens to-morrow, submit his programme and explain the measures which he considers it necessary to take. The conference will constitute the first great national gather- ing since the revolution, and will be attended by all the Ministers as well as by representatives of the Soviet and of other institutions."

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✍ Also today

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A great discovery. I read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot from start to finish, unable to tear myself away. There is a character in the book called Myshkin – an idiot, a Christian, meek and kind with human frailties; a young boy, Kolya; a general’s wife - kind-hearted, but excitable woman; and another woman, Nastasya Filippovna, who has been corrupted through no fault of her own. See more

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Vasily Shulgin

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Moscow is now filled with “women of easy virtue” – or, to put it bluntly, prostitutes. They were assailing men on the way to the bathhouse, and the police were doing nothing to stop them. See more

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Osip Mandelstam

Alushta, Crimea, Russian Empire

The stream of golden honey poured, so viscous,
slow from the bottle, our hostess had time to murmur:
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we shan’t be too bored’ – glancing over her shoulder. See more

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Nicholas II

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Alexis only slept a little. During the night he moved in with Alix. His ear was better, and his arm only ached a little now and then. MarieThird daughter of Nicholas II is better. The day became quiet. All morning I walked around the deck. See more

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23 August

Chaliapin visiting highlanders

Krupskaya secretly travels to Lenin to Finland

Sailors send arrested Bolsheviks generous packages

From one revolution to another

Russia in 1917

+19

in Petrograd

+16

in Moscow