I’m not sick as such, but I am a little out of sorts. My lungs are playing up a bit – it’s nothing, though: I’ve already been treated twice and I'm feeling better. But as for my nerves, they are utterly shot. Utterly. I’m not sleeping, and my mood is so heavy! I’m trying not to let it show to my nearest and dearest, but, really, how can you keep it hidden?
All is not well with Russia – very much not well!
The Russian people are the most humane people. Their literature is the most humane in the world. Russia has always been, deep inside, a democracy. Yes, a Christian-Communist one, and it was, I believe, Dostoevsky, who said that this democratism takes the form of a patriarchal, theocratic, tsarist monarchy, rather than a social and aesthetic republic.
The systematic arrest of arriving Constitutional Democrats continues. In “Izvestia” (that single daily newspaper), a decree was issued, in which Constitutional Democrats are declared OUTLAWS all over and subject to arrest. See more
Russia on sale
The Bolsheviks decided to suggest that the United States buy Kamchatka. Negotiations between an American agent Jameson with Trotsky are based on this fact. However, the US government categorically refused Trotsky's suggestion.
There's no other sphere than art where conservatism is quite so lamentable.
At luncheon in the New Club, which was founded by high-ranking members of the Hunting Society, I found myself sitting between two grand dukes. News filtered through that the Bolsheviks had searched the Hunting Society’s premises and arrested several of its members, among them my friend Arseniy Karageorgievich, a cavalry officer and brother of the King of Serbia. See more
In order not to disclose my situation, an acquaintance in Petrograd volunteered to get us some railway tickets. One evening in December he brought me three sleeping-car tickets for a train departing the next day; getting his hands on them had proved enormously difficult. The tickets were all for different towns on the Trans-Siberian Railway – a ploy which, as he believed, would allay any suspicions.
The cold had decreased but today was overcast, I felt as though my head cold had completely passed.