18 September 1917. Alexander Vertinsky

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

Alexander Vertinsky

Moscow, Russian Republic

The revolution didn’t change anything for us, the bohemians. It might as well have never happened. Some new cafes opened, “Pitersk” on Kyznetsky St and the “Poets’ Cafe” on Nastas’insky St. By then we’d stopped wearing yellow jackets, but, as always, continued to think up oddball ideas. Not that anyone was really paying attention.

People had already got used to us and listened with condescending smiles. You can’t shock people forever! Futurism had already made its mark, society was paying attention, and neither we nor the public had any further use for it. The “father of futurism, Marinetti, came over from Italy but failed to make much of an impression. We gradually started to move away from futurism, each following his own path. At the end of the day, futurism made nothing and made no one famous. Mayakovsky? But Mayakovsky was a genius on his own merits, regardless of anything else.

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Mstislav Dobuzhinsky

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John Reed

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W. Somerset Maugham

Hotel "Evropeyskaya", 1, Mikhailovskaya street, Petrograd, Russian Empire

I often see brooding over the crowd on the Nevsky an extraordinary, a horrifying figure. It seems hardly human. It is a little misshapen dwarf, perched strangely on a tiny seat at the top of a stout pole high enough to bring him above the heads of the passers-by; and the pole is upheld by a sturdy peasant who collects the alms of the charitable. The dwarf sits on his perch like a monstrous bird and the effect is increased by some thing birdlike in his head, but the strange thing is that the head is finely shaped, the head of a young man, with a great hooked nose and a bold mouth. See more

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Lev Urusov

Petrograd, Russian Republic

As is now well known, the crisis was resolved by the amalgamation of five ministries into the Directory. At the same time, the Council of Workers’ Deputies decided to call an all-Russian democratic congress, along the lines of the Moscow congress, which will pronounce on the forms and make up of government.

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Nikita Okunev

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Purishkevich is released from the Vyborg solitary prison. He hasn't been charged with anything.

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Yuri Gotye

Moscow, Russian Republic

The “Provisional Government” has discontinued classes in all institutions of higher education in both capitals, i.e. in 75% of Russia’s institutions of higher education. Perhaps this is because “student housing” canceled these classes? See more

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Nicholas II

Tobolsk, Russian Republic

Telegrams arrive here twice a day; many of them are composed so obscurely that it is difficult to understand them. Evidently, in Petrograd, there is great confusion. Again there has been a change in the staff of the government. See more

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17 September

The Extraordinary Commission interrogates the Chairman of the State Duma

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Vladimir Lvov is pronounced insane

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Why did the Russian Empire collapse

Map of the Royal dynasties of Europe

Romanovs dangerous liaisons

+10

in Petrograd

in Moscow