7 July 1917. Grigory Zinoviev

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

Grigory Zinoviev

Petrograd, Russian Empire

The Bolshevik faction intends to propose the following practical measures, which the Bolshevik faction requests the workers and soldiers to discuss and support provisionally. No attempt is to be made, either openly or in covertly - to disband the regiments currently guarding Petrograd.

Not only shall full freedom to engage in political campaigning among the troops be ensured both in the rear and at the front for all defendists, but any repressions of socialists and internationalists shall also be out of the question. The perpetrators of attacks on workers and soldiers which have taken place during the bourgeois demonstrations of recent days are to be swiftly brought to justice.

Resources of paper, accommodation, typography, etc., are to be distributed in such a way as to provide, in the first instance, for workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ newspapers. A state-funded news-sheet is to be published, carrying paid advertisements, while at the same time all newspapers will be forbidden to publish such advertisements, thereby depriving the counter-revolutionary press of its main source of income and it main opportunity to poison the minds of the people.

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Nicholas II

Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

It was a rainy day and slightly cold. During the morning I didn't go outside. At 3 o'clock I went for a walk with the children around the park accompanied by an infantry man of the Third Regiment, Some of them, along with our people, cut the grass by the walk. At 6:30 we went to vespers. During the evening I read aloud.

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Pierre Pascal

Petrograd, Russian Empire

At the Officer’s shop I saw the following notice: ‘No butter, no cheese’. This morning my family could not fry the veal we had for want of fat.

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Anton Denikin

Western Front

After all our bad luck, ever more soldiers have begun draining away from us. By nightfall, the number of deserters had become truly enormous. Our soldiers are exhausted and shaken—they are unaccustomed to battle and to the thundering of guns after so many months of calm, idleness, fraternization, and meetings. See more

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Nikita Okunev

Moscow, Russian Empire

All news from the front lines speaks of our continuing offensive, but at the rear, one hears only of these frenzied outbreaks among the Bolsheviks. In Petrograd, an artillery unit insisted that they would not join the active army. If, say, we are compelled to do the same under threat of repression or liquidation, then we will not back down even in the face of arrest by the Soviet of Workers and the Provisional Government.

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