10 May 1917. Maria Feodorovna with Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna

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

Maria Feodorovna with Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna

Ai-Todor, Crimea, Russian Empire

Zinaida Yusupova came for tea, full of concern and deeply shocked by all that had happened. Her hands trembled more than usual. Then we went for a stroll on foot with Zenia, Zina and Orbeliani; we can’t go by transport anymore because those scoundrels have taken all the petrol. I was fatally tired and I felt so horrific that I barely moved my legs; probably the body’s “contre coup” to all the anxiety and so on.

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✍ Also today

Marina Tsvetaeva

Foundling hospital, Moscow, Russian Empire

I’m starting to understand the addiction that young children have to mindless tasks: opening and closing doors, spending hours playing with a ball. I have a bell that hangs over my bed and I enjoy ringing it. In those moments, I’m not really there.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

The Russian man doesn’t feel the inseparable connection between rights and obligations; he has a clouded consciousness when it comes to rights and duties - he is buried in irresponsible collectivism, trying to claim for everyone. The most difficult thing for the Russian man to feel is that he is the master of his own destiny.

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Stefan Zweig

8, Kohgasse, Vienne, Austria

Can we escape this horror? I’m scared of the war that will follow this war. The wars of the classes, nations, and religion, escape from taxes, restrictions, and forced measures. I see only one way: withdrawal into oneself, into nature, away from the big city. This is the first thing I must do after the war.

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Georgy Lvov

Petrograd, Russian Empire

We can count ourselves as the luckiest people, because our generation was born into the happiest period of Russian history.

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Anton Denikin

Mogilev, Russian Empire

At the end of April, a parliamentarian appeared on the Dvinsk front – a German officer, who was not accepted. He did however succeed in contributing a phrase to the crowd of soldiers: “I came to you with peaceful proposals, and I even have the authority to influence the Provisional Government, but your bosses do not want peace”. This phrase quickly spread and caused unrest amongst the soldiers, and even the threat of deserting the front.

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Maxim Gorky

editorial office of the newspaper "New Life", Nevsky lane, 64, Petrograd, Russian Empire

In the first days of the revolution, some shameless people threw heaps of dirty pamphlets onto the street, which told heinous stories on the theme of “court life”. The pamphlets talked about “Autocratic Alice”, “Sleazy Grishka”, Vyrubova and other figures from the murky past. We have to fight this poison - I don’t know how exactly – but we have to do it, especially seeing as there are too few publications on the book market (which we really need at the moment) next to these sadistic, afflictive fabrications of filthy so-called “literature”.

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

I had breakfast at their Majesty’s. The Empress was sad and didn’t say word. The children were cheerful. The Emperor surprised me; he told me, perhaps sincerely, that he is quite content with his position. It allows him to read, and until now his only literature had been dry paper.

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Pathe News

Ireland welcomes the revolutionary and leader of the Sinn Fein party, Arthur Griffith.

Pavel Milyukov

Petrograd, Russian Empire

We needed, by all means, a strong power. This is power that prince Lvov did not bring with him.

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The New York Times

Russia is overrun by German agents

While decent Russians are striving honorably to achieve political liberty by civil methods of argument and persuasion, which, if sure, are necessarily slow, the extreme parties - anarchists and social revolutionaries on one hand, and upholders of the old regime and agent provocateurs on the other, and above all the cast organized body of Germans - are using deadly weapons in the streets and lavishly expending money. See more

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9 May

Tolstoy’s widow: “All in all, everything is bad”

Amedeo Modigliani is working on the painting 'Portrait of Jean Cocteau'

The leader of the Mensheviks “lacks the gift of oratory possessed by Lenin and Trotsky, but surpasses them in spirit”.

Map of the Royal dynasties of Europe

Romanovs dangerous liaisons

in Petrograd

+12

in Moscow