28 July 1917. Alexandra Kollontai

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

Alexandra Kollontai

Vyborg female convict prison, Vyborg side, Russian Empire

The February Revolution cleared out our prisons. My presence brings new blood to a complex for political prisoners in this new bourgeois-republican Russia. I slept on a hard cot—slept deeply, at least until they brought in boiling water and a large hunk of black bread. I am permitted to buy tea myself.

The prison’s day began. The first order of business was to bring some sort of order to my cell. It is good that comrade Sh. compelled me to bring her plaid—the cot does not look so prisonly. There is a little shelf for toiletries; there is a place to wash.

One thought will not leave my mind: how strong is the reaction? What are our people doing? Toward midday, the head of the prison appears. He is chubby, has whiskers, was placed here by the “new authorities” (as he said himself by way of introduction). He is talkative but mostly speaks about the “baseness” of the Bolsheviks.

I keep silent.

If one is to believe his words, most of the “Bolshevik incendiaries” have been arrested while others have “repented and admitted everything.”

“And what did they admit?”

“That the Bolsheviks have a direct connection with German general headquarters. There is irrefutable evidence. And against you too… but that is not my business.”

They bring in lunch—beet salad in lenten oil, entirely edible given the times. I ask for a newspaper. It would be charged to my account. They do not bring one. In the evening, I discover that I have am being held under a “particularly strict regime,” and it is not permitted to bring me newspapers. No walks, no visitors. And so they have cut me off from the movement, from the party.

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27 July

Shooting a deserter

Making vodka in the trenches

“The Democratic Army” fled like a herd of sheep"

From one revolution to another

Russia in 1917

+13

in Petrograd

in Moscow