23 June 1917. Gilbert Keith Chesterton with Nikolay Gumilyov

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

Gilbert Keith Chesterton with Nikolay Gumilyov

London, United Kingdom

It was at the house of Lady Juliet Duff; and among the guests was Major Maurice Baring, who had brought with him a Russian in uniform. He talked French in a flowing monologue that suavely swept us all before it; and the things he said had a certain quality characteristic of his nation; a quality which many have tried to define, but which may best be simplified by saying that his nation appears to possess every human talent except common sense.

He was an aristocrat, a landed proprietor, an officer in one of the crack regiments of the Czar, a man altogether of the old regime. But there was something about him that is the making of every Bolshevist; something I have felt in every Russian I ever met. I can only say that when he walked out of the door, one felt he might just as well have walked out of the window. He was not a Communist; but he was a Utopian; and his Utopia was far, far madder than any Communism. His practical proposal was that poets alone should be allowed to rule the world. He was himself, as he gravely explained, a poet. But he was so courteous and complimentary as to select me, as being also a poet, to be the absolute and autocratic governor of England. D'Annunzio was similarly enthroned to govern Italy. Anatole France was enthroned to govern France.

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Petr Konchalovsky

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Anatoliy Lunacharskiy

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A lot of people are turning sour here. They’re frustrated. They want the revolution to be as sweet as candy, and for democracy to follow us, the socialists, in through the door without a hitch.

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Rurik Ivnev

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Geslersovsky Lane. A crowd. Some officer explains something to the crowd. An unpleasant subject in a cap listens rather angrily. There is so much anger and vileness in his face that looking at him, you suddenly realise how insulting it is to consider Christ a member of mankind.

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in Petrograd

+23

in Moscow