20 November 1917. Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

Roma, Italy

Rome is a provincial city. All capitals save for Paris are provincial. They talk shop right in the middle of the street. Everyone gets together in one single café.

The Coliseum is sublime. We saw it at night. It’s impossible to add anything to these ruins, in and of themselves an architectural masterpiece, an enormous repository of centuries past, now surrounded by crowds of onlookers, fauvists and cocaine dealers.

I really like Massine. Our work is progressing apace. You know that my greatest joy is to create, to give form to dreams. Serge is an ogre. He eats and drinks non-stop. This morning he bundled us into the car. All in all, I’m fond of Rome and the hustle and bustle amidst its ruins. No war. Night lights. Trams and cinemas.

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Romain Rolland

Grand Hotel Chateau Bellevue, Sierre, Switzerland

The Bolsheviks are in power. Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, are national commissioners of Internal Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and National Education. There is a truce offering with Germany. The Allies refuse to recognise the government of the Russian Revolution. And pacifists are blamed for all problems!

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Alexandre Benois

38, 1st line of Vasilyevsky Island, Petrograd, Russian Republic

The Au Bon Gout pastry shop, which is in our building, is refusing from now on to bake bread for us. Now our poor servants will have to stand for hours once again in those “lines”! See more

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Felix Yusupov

Petrograd, Russian Republic

At the train station in Petersburg, I bought a newspaper and read, “Prince Yusupov has been arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.” The servants who had read of my arrest were in tears. See more

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Mikhail Larionov

Paris, France

Nijinsky gained some weight in America, but then he lost it and danced wonderfully again.

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George Buchanan

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

It would not do for me to leave Petrograd, as my presence here reassures the colony, and it is better that I should remain and await events. My Allied colleagues, with whom I have discussed the question of the attitude which we should adopt towards the new Government when it is formed, all agree that we cannot recognize it officially but differ as to whether we should or should not enter into unofficial relations with it. See more

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19 November

There has been a serious split in the ranks of the Bolsheviks

Vakhtangov: "The theatre is for the people. The theatre is with the people."

Kollontai: "Women workers have been able to bring to the Soviets a lively, productive discussion about easing the burden of motherhood for women"

1917. Zombies, drugs, and progress

Why did the Russian Empire collapse

1916: Year in Review.

-2

in Petrograd

-3

in Moscow