28 October 1917. John Reed

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

John Reed

Smolny Institute, Petrograd, Russian Republic

In the corridors of Smolny, I spoke with Kamenev, a little man with a reddish pointed beard and Gallic gestures. He was not at all sure that enough delegates would come.

“If there is a Congress,” he said, “it will represent the overwhelming sentiment of the people. If the majority is Bolshevik, as I think it will be, we shall demand that the power be given to the Soviets, and the Provisional Government must resign.”

Volodarsky, a tall, pale youth with glasses and a bad complexion, was more definite. “The ‘Lieber-DansA nickname given to the Mensheviks, comprised out of the last names of their leaders: Lieber and Dan.’ and the other compromisers are sabotaging the Congress. If they succeed in preventing its meeting,—well, then we are realists enough not to depend on that!”

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Sergey Prokofiev

Yessentuki, Russian Republic

My concert took place yesterday. For the first time, I publicly played the 3rd Sonata and the “Transience”. Of course, the premiere should have been given in Petrograd, and not Kislovodsk, but I look at this performance as a rehearsal before the concert in the capital. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Petrograd, Russian Republic

The traditional history of the Russian intelligentsia is over. It was in power, and there was hell on earth. Indeed, the Russian revolution has some great mission, but the mission is not creative, but negative - it must expose the lie and emptiness of some idea that the Russian intelligentsia was obsessed with and with which it poisoned the Russian people.

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Joseph Stalin

Petrograd, Russian Republic

The bourgeois Provisional Government, backed into a corner by the pressing revolution, is trying to wiggle out of it, slapping us with false promises that they are not planning to flee Petrograd and surrender the capital.

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Peter Kropotkin

44 Bol'shaya Nikitskaya street, Moscow, Russian Republic

The work is so-so… I read proofs of the “Great Revolution” and “Notes”, I see a lot of people. I am preparing another large work - a constructive one, and devote time to the Society of rapprochement with England. Visitors come in the evening, after 8, almost every day.

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Alexander Blok

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Two phone calls with Gippius and Merezhkovsky. A phone call with Vengerov (he wants to elect me to the Literature fund. I am so old).

My table is covered with Belyaev's case files (the former Minister of the Military).

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Grand Duchess Anastasia

Tobolsk, Russian Republic

My dear Katya!

I am sending you a view of the Governor’s House. On this balcony, we often sat for long periods of time. Our windows face the street behind the trees on the corner. See more

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27 October

Food riots might begin in Petrograd

"At any rate, here were eight months of the Revolution gone, and little enough to show for it"

The former Empress writes to Anna Vyrubova

1916: Year in Review.

in Petrograd

in Moscow