29 April 1917. Leon Trotsky

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

Leon Trotsky

Amherst concentration camp, Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada

The hour of our release from the concentration camp struck. But we were released with the application of violence. We were simply ordered to lay down our things and go under escort. We demanded that we be told where we were being sent and why. They refused. The prisoners worried that they were taking us to the fortress. We demanded a call to the nearest Russian consul. They refused.

We had good reason to distrust the good intentions of these gentlemen from the great sea road. We said that we wouldn’t go voluntarily until they told us the reason for the new trip. The commandant ordered the use of force. The escorting soldiers carried our luggage. We stubbornly laid on our bunks. And only when the convoy was faced with carrying us out with their own hands, like we were carried out of the steamer a month before, and this time through a crowd of agitated sailors, the commandant yielded. He declared in his own Anglo-colonial style that he was putting us on a Danish steamer set for Russia. The colonel’s face convulsively twitched. He didn’t want to accept the idea that we were escaping his grasp. We would have taken him on the African coast!

Imprisoned comrades gave us solemn farewells as we were led away from the camp. Upon leaving I threatened the British police officer Mekken, who arrested us and came to our departure, that first thing I will request in the Constituent Assembly is for Foreign Minister Milyukov inquire into the mistreatment of Russian citizens by the Anglo-Canadian police.

"I hope," answered the resourceful police officer, "that you won’t get to the Constituent Assembly."

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Sergey Prokofiev

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Stefan Zweig

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

As a matter of fact, the Order of April 29th remained as much a dead letter as that of April 12th, and the committee system developed in each army on individual lines. Working-men and soldier deputies boasted that the 12th Army was “ the most democratic of all the armies.”

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Maurice Paleologue

10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Since the revolutionary drama began, not a day has passed without its ceremonies, processions, charity performances and "triumphs." There has been an uninterrupted series of demonstrations, demonstrations of victory or protest demonstrations, inaugural, expiatory and valedictory. The Slav soul, with its vague and fervent sensibilities, its intuitive notion of the bond of humanity and its violent passion for æsthetic and picturesque emotions, revels and wallows in them. See more

All the clubs and corporations, the political, professional, religious and ethnical associations, have been here to lay their grievances and aspirations before the Soviet.

On Easter Monday, the 16th April, I passed, not far from the St. Alexander Nevski Monastery, a long line of pilgrims who were marching to the Tauride Palace, reciting prayers as they went. They carried large red flags on which could be read: "Christ is Risen! Long live the free Church!" or, "A free and democratic Church for a free People!"

The Tauride Gardens have thus witnessed processions of Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, working men and women, peasants of both sexes, school teachers, young apprentices, orphans, deaf mutes and midwives! There has even been a procession of prostitutes! Shades of Tolstoï! What an epilogue to Resurrection!

To-day it was the turn of mutilés of the war, who came in their thousands to protest against the pacifist theories of the war. At their head was a military band, and the front file carried scarlet banners inscribed thus: "War for liberty to our last breath!" or: "Let not our glorious dead have died in vain!" or: "Look at our wounds! They call for victory!" or: "The pacifists are disgracing Russia. Down with Lenin!"

An heroic and pitiable sight! The least damaged of the victims dragged themselves slowly along, keeping line as best they could. Most of them had lost one or more limbs. The worst cases, swathed in bandages, were fixed up on lorries. The blind were led by Red Cross sisters.

This mournful troop seemed a living embodiment of all the horrors of war and to stand for all that human flesh can endure in the way of mutilation and torture. A religious silence greeted them; heads were bared as they passed and eyes filled with tears; a woman in mourning fell to her knees and sobbed as if her heart would break.

At the corner of the Liteïny, where the crowd was thickest and the working-class element best represented, there was loud cheering.

But, alas, I very much fear that among these spectators who came to cheer there is more than one who will go to welcome Lenin to-night. The Russian nation is enthusiastic over "spectacles," whatever their purpose, so long as they affect its emotions and stir its imagination.

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Nicholas II

Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

During the night the temperature went down to 3 degrees of frost; beside that, a cold wind was blowing. At 11 o'clock we went to Ifess. I walked with Tatiana and read until dinner to myself-and in the evening to the children,

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28 April

The intelligentsia, with some rare exceptions, is helpless in the matter of statesmanship

If his Majesty could rid himself of the cult of autocracy and the handful of rascals in whom he places his trust, everything might be different!

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From one revolution to another

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-2

in Petrograd

in Moscow