1 December 1917. Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Recognising the need for energetic measures to reduce the salaries of high-ranking office employees and officials in all state, public and private institutions and enterprises, the Council of People’s Commissars decrees:

1) that the salary limit for people’s commissars be fixed at 500 rubles a month where there are no children, and 100 rubles extra for each child; housing to be at the rate of not more than 1 room for each member of the family; 2) that all local Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies be asked to prepare and carry out revolutionary measures to impose special taxes on high-ranking employees; 3) that the Ministry for Finance be instructed to draft a general law concerning this reduction; 4) that the Ministry for Finance and all the respective commissars be instructed to immediately study the estimates of the ministries and cut all excessively high salaries and pensions.

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Zinaida Gippius with Dmitry Merezhkovsky

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Something has happened to me. I can’t write. “Russia has been sold on the cheap”. After various attempts at “peace-making” by the military high command, after the disgraceful elections to the Constituent Assembly, elections held under the bullets and bayonets of our new thugocracy, after all the decrees of madmen calling to dissolve the Municipal Duma, the “bulwark of the counterrevolution”, what is there to say? Speaking the truth feels as shameful as lying. See more

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Pitirim Sorokin

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The Bolsheviks have clearly lost. Nevertheless, we know that they are not intending to accept this result. They used to hope for a better result, and, at that time, they opposed the Constituent Assembly. Now they will be trying to forbid it and break it up.

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Tamara Karsavina

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Candles were scarce. Darkness set in at three, and the time till six when electric light was given was especially hard to live through. The unhealthy quiet of the town, portentous silence of the empty streets magnified apprehension to an unbearable tensity. Hearing had grown to such acuteness as to catch from afar a faintly audible sound of footsteps on the thick snow. A rifle-shot, a burst of machine-gun fire and all quiet again. See more

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Arkady Averchenko

Petrograd, Russian Republic

I’m thinking of the expression “to laugh till you cry.” That is how all of Russia is laughing now: it is laughing till it cries. This is precisely that throaty laugh that bursts out against one’s will. See more

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Marina Tsvetaeva

Feodosia, Crimea, Russian Republic

Now I have only one method of gratitude at my disposal: poems. They live on food, lend a cot: I recite poetry, rewrite poetry, write poetry. The soul pays for the body. How I would like to say that poems are uninteresting, and simply, for me to be loved! And to pay for a meal, as a meal!

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Little Proctor has arrived from Arkhangel in a deuce of a panic. He says that the Ambassador and his family and all British subjects should at once go home via Bergen, and that the Embassy should move to Arkhangel to escape the massacre that will take place when the northern armies descend in hunger on Petrograd to loot and murder. See more

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Novaya zhizn'

Russian Republic

Ambassadors dismissed

Trotsky has delivered an announcement to all Russian ambassadors abroad declaring that the Council of People’s Commissars will relieve each ambassador of his duties who is unwilling to consent to obey all directives of the Council. All ambassadors removed for this reason are to delegate their work to their subordinates.

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Alexander Kolchak

Tokyo, Japan

I went to the English envoy to Tokyo, Sir Green, and told him my thoughts on the situation, announcing that I do not recognise the present government, and I see it as my duty, as one who represents the former government, to honour our promise to the allies. See more

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30 November

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Russia in 1917

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in Petrograd

-7

in Moscow