25 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

Every direct or indirect attempt to consider the question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal, legal point of view, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy and disregarding the class struggle and civil war, would be a betrayal of the proletariat’s cause, and the adoption of the bourgeois standpoint.

The revolutionary Social-Democrats are duty bound to warn all and sundry against this error, into which a few Bolshevik leaders, who have been unable to appreciate the significance of the October uprising and the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have strayed.

The only chance of securing a painless solution to the crisis which has arisen owing to the divergence between the elections to the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, and the will of the people and the interests of the working and exploited classes, on the other, is for the people to exercise as broadly and as rapidly as possible the right to elect the members of the Constituent Assembly anew, and for the Constituent Assembly to accept the law of the Central Executive Committee on these new elections, to proclaim that it unreservedly recognises Soviet power, the Soviet revolution, and its policy on the questions of peace, the land and workers’ control, and to resolutely join the camp of the enemies of the CadetConstitutional-Democrat-Kaledin counter-revolution.

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✍ Also today

Alexandra Feodorovna

Tobolsk, Russian Republic

Merry Christmas to you, my dear Iza! I kiss you tenderly and wish you all the very best. May the Lord send you good health and provide you with that spiritual world which is the greatest gift for us mortals. See more

, and others

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Rosa Luxemburg with Sophie Liebknecht

Prison of Breslau (Wroclaw), Wiezienna street, Poland

I think about you every day when I get the news from Russia. It worries me to imagine how nervous you must become over every insane telegram. However, the greater part of this news, especially the news from the South, is about the Tatars. See more

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1 Like

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Ottokar Czernin

Brest, Belorussia

I am reading some memoirs from the French Revolution. A most appropriate reading at the present time, in view of what is happening in Russia and may perhaps come throughout Europe. See more

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1 Like

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Winston Churchill

London, United Kingdom

Gone for ever was the Empire of Peter the Great, and the long-dreamed-of liberal Russia, and the Duma, and the already summoned Constituent Assembly. Cast into outer darkness with the Czarist Ministers were the Liberal and Radical politicians and reformers. See more

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George Buchanan

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

On Christmas night we gave what will be our last entertainment at the Embassy to over a hundred members of our staff and of the various military missions. We began with a concert and variety entertainment, arranged by Colonel Thornhill, and ended up with a sit-down supper. In spite of the prevailing scarcity of provisions, my cook gave us a most sumptuous repast.

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24 December

Wilhelm II wishes the German soldiers a merry Christmas

Constitutional Democrats confused shortcakes and confidential papers

Kerensky insists he did everything he could

Nightmare before Christmas

Death of Rasputin. Murder conspiracy and its consequences

1916: Year in Review.

-9

in Petrograd

-12

in Moscow