24 August 1917. Pierre Pascal

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

Pierre Pascal

Petrograd, Russian Empire

A great discovery. I read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot from start to finish, unable to tear myself away. There is a character in the book called Myshkin – an idiot, a Christian, meek and kind with human frailties; a young boy, Kolya; a general’s wife - kind-hearted, but excitable woman; and another woman, Nastasya Filippovna, who has been corrupted through no fault of her own.

It is difficult to understand all these complex characters, because they contradict themselves, just as real life does, and they are all rather sickly and excitable, because Dostoevsky thought anyone worthy of being called a human being should by definition be excessively sad and too bewildered to keep a calm head on his shoulders. And last of all, as far as the author is concerned, this terrible work springs from his own memory of his last minutes when he was condemned to death.

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✍ Also today

George Buchanan

4, Dvortsovaya embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire (British Embassy)

Letter to the Foreign Ministry

"I returned last night from a week's holiday in Finland and saw Tereschenko this morning. I told him that I was greatly disappointed to find that the situation had, if anything, changed for the worse, that hardly any of the disciplinary measures contemplated had been applied, and that the Government seemed to me weaker than ever. On my inquiring whether Kerensky was in agreement with the commander-in- chief on the question of the death See more

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Vasily Shulgin

near Sandunóvskie Baths, Moscow, Russian Empire

Moscow is now filled with “women of easy virtue” – or, to put it bluntly, prostitutes. They were assailing men on the way to the bathhouse, and the police were doing nothing to stop them. See more

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Osip Mandelstam

Alushta, Crimea, Russian Empire

The stream of golden honey poured, so viscous,
slow from the bottle, our hostess had time to murmur:
‘Here, in sad Tauris, where fate has brought us,
we shan’t be too bored’ – glancing over her shoulder. See more

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Nicholas II

Tobolsk, Russian Empire

Alexis only slept a little. During the night he moved in with Alix. His ear was better, and his arm only ached a little now and then. MarieThird daughter of Nicholas II is better. The day became quiet. All morning I walked around the deck. See more

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23 August

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Sailors send arrested Bolsheviks generous packages

From one revolution to another

Russia in 1917

1917. Zombies, drugs, and progress

Why did the Russian Empire collapse

+19

in Petrograd

+16

in Moscow