4 December 1917. Vladimir Lenin

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Theses for a Law on the Confiscation of Apartment and Tenement Houses

1) All land (urban) shall become the property of the nation.

2) Houses which are systematically let to tenants shall be confiscated and become the property of the nation.

3) Owners of houses that are not let to tenants shall, pending the decision of the Constituent Assembly, remain in possession without any change in their rights of ownership.

4) Several-months compensation (2 to 3 months) to owners of confiscated houses who can prove their …{1}

5) Rent shall be collected by (whom?) the Soviets (paid into the current accounts of the Soviets).

6) Building committees (the trade unions + building offices) shall ’take charge also of house supplies (fuel, etc.).

7) Rent payment to come in force immediately.

8) The building and house committees shall come into force gradually as and when they are set up by the trade unions and the ’Soviets.

9) The heating of the houses and their normal upkeep shall be the duty of the house committees and other institutions (trade unions, Soviets, fuel departments of the town council, etc.).

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Ivan Bunin

26. Povarskaya street, Moscow, Russian Republic

I sit alone, slightly drunk. The wine returns my courage to me, sweet murk of life’s sleep, sensuality is a sense of smell and so forth, it is not so simple, there is some essence of earthly existence. In front of me there is a bottle of Nº24 spare. See more

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Anton Denikin

Sumy, Khar'kovskaya guberniya, Russian Republic

With great interest Liubokonsky and I listened to the amazing news about the flight of KornilovCommander in Chief of the Petrograd command - from 18 March 1917 and the Bykhovo generals; together with a crowd, we read announcements printed in huge letters that have been posted at various stations. See more

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Henri Matisse

is working on "Bouquet of Mixed Flowers"

Marseille, France

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George Buchanan

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

Our position is becoming very difficult as, while it is impossible for our Government to yield to threats, it is very hard on our subjects, who have come here from the provinces on their way home, to be put to the expense of remaining on indefinitely. See more

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Robert Lansing Woodrow Wilson

Washington, D.C., United States

This government has found it impossible to recognize Lenin, Trotsky and their associates as the de facto government of Russia, since there is inadequate evidence that they are the real agents of the sovereignty of the Russian people. See more

When the Bolshevik faction under the leadership of Lenin seized by force the public offices at Petrograd and Moscow arresting or expelling the provisional ministers and military commanders who had obtained authority through legal succession from the revolutionary body which had come into power on abdication of the Czar, they set up in those two cities arbitrary and irresponsible authority based solely on physical control over the residents.

Dedicated as the Government of the United States is to the principle of democracy and to a special order based on individual liberty and the supremacy of the popular will operating through liberal institutions, it cannot but consider the attempt by any class of society, whether distinguished by birth, wealth, occupation or poverty, to arrogate to itself superior political authority to be inimical to democracy. Such class despotism differs only from autocratic monarchy in that the sovereign authority is in the latter case exercised by an individual without sanction of the popular will while in the former case it is exercised by a group of individuals. Upon despotisms of every nature the people of the United States have looked invariably with disfavor as subversive of the rights of man, and hostile to justice and liberty.

Holding these views, this government has watched with deep concern the overthrow by force of the provisional authority representing the revolution at Petrograd, and that on the eve of the popular election of a Constituent Assembly called to establish a constitutional government based on the principle of democracy.

The American people have rejoiced with the people of Russia in the dawn of a democratic era and the prospects of an orderly exercise of popular sovereignty through agencies lawfully and peaceably created. They have been prepared to give every moral and material aid to Russia in her period of transition from absolutism to constitutional democracy; and this sympathetic spirit has been increased by the conviction that the Russian nation, like this nation, recognized in the Imperial German Government the greatest peril to liberty and democracy in the world and especially threatening to new-born freedom in Russia. Convinced of the mutual appreciation of the German menace this government naturally anticipated that the Russian democracy would with the zeal and determination of a people jealous of their rights resist the intrigues of German agents and prosecute with courage and vigor the war which the free people of the world are waging against Prussian militarism.

Relying upon a full realization by the Russian people of the imminent danger to their political and territorial integrity from autocratic Germany and upon their faithful adherence to their cobelligerents, this government has watched with disappointment and amazement the rise of class despotism in Petrograd and the open efforts of the leaders of the Bolsheviki to withdraw from the conflict even at the expense of national honor and the future safety of democracy in Russia.

It has been justly claimed that democracies sacredly perform their treaty obligations whatever the cost may be, that they are hostile to autocracy and unswervingly loyal to nations which have befriended them in their time of need. Russia, as the world knows, is overwhelmingly democratic in spirit and purpose, and yet those who today claim to represent the nation threaten to violate treaties made with other free peoples, to make friends with the most inveterate enemy of Russian aspirations, and to abandon the faithful friends of Russia in the great struggle against the Prussian autocracy.

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Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Republic

Both Manikovski and Marushevski were arrested at 5 a.m. yesterday (Monday).

Manikovski’s offence is that when released by the Bolsheviks to take charge of the office of the Minister of War he sent a circular telegram telling his subordinates that they could only be removed from their posts with his consent. See more

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3 December

Many Petrograd newspapers are closed down

Trotsky threatens Britain

A gruesome murder of the former commander-in-chief Dukhonin