1917 Diary

the politicians

The cold spring of 1917 (it even snowed on May 20) was followed by a hot summer. Over the course of just a few days in late June and early July, the political situation in Russia changed radically. The enthusiasm people had felt for the Provisional Government back in March had faded, at least among many. Alexander Kerensky, who was playing an increasingly prominent role in the government, later recalled the first days of July:

Trucks filled with mysterious armed men appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg. Some of these trucks went from barrack to barrack, urging soldiers to join the armed rebellion that was starting. Others drove around the city following me. One such band burst into the courtyard of the building where Minister-Chairman Prince Lvov lived just moments after I had driven away. And no sooner had my train pulled out of the station on its way to the front than another truck stormed into the station. Above the armed men flapped a red flag reading “The First Bullet is for Kerensky.”

On July 3 and 4 Petrograd was shaken by riots. For the rest of his life Kerensky firmly believed that these disturbances had been planned and instigated by the Bolsheviks. It now appears that the Bolsheviks merely took advantage of the general turmoil in their effort to seize power. They did not (yet) succeed. The Provisional Government, in which the main roles were now being played by like-minded “brother socialists” (albeit belonging to more moderate parties), ordered Lenin’s arrest. The hunt for him was not, however, particularly diligent, so he and his fellow Bolshevik and old friend Grigory Zinoviev were easily able to escape to the village of Razliv, not far from the capital. The role played by Nikolai Yemelyanov, who hid the revolutionaries in his attic and later in a hut a few kilometers from Razliv, is enthusiastically described by a fellow Leninist:

The first thing was to change Zinoviev and Lenin’s appearance: their hair was immediately cut. It was not a pleasant situation: there were dacha-owners all around, enjoying nature at the expense of the working class, and it’s only natural that these enemies of any workers’ movement would have been glad to take on a spy mission if given the chance…

However delightful the comforts of the attic may have been, the situation was not the most pleasant: at any moment someone could notice, so a safer place had to be found. “It’s haymaking time, so what if Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Yevseyevich were to dress up as haymakers and take up residence near the hayfield?” – especially as, after their appearances had been transformed and their hair cut, they looked the part. It was a good idea, and Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Yevseyevich approved of it. Also, the two outlaws probably did not much care for the attic.

The hayfield was on the other side of Razliv (a small lake), about four versts by water and about another verst and a half through the forest. There it was a different atmosphere, none of the sort of public that populates dacha places. That public was rarely seen around there. The permanent residents there were toilers, worker-mowers who would not be on the lookout for the hiding leaders of the workers’ movement. The attic was replaced with other housing: a hut made of branches with hay on top. And this hut should be called “the Headquarters of the Revolution,” because here Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Yevseyevich perfectly calmly got down to work. A kitchen was also set up right there: a kettle was hung from poles and tea was heating. But nighttime was unbearable: pesky mosquitoes gave them no peace: no matter how you hid yourself from them, they would get what they were after, and often you couldn’t avoid being all bitten up. There was nothing to do about it – you had to resign yourself.

Comrades came to see them; they traveled halfway around the world by all means of transportation: first on an outdated railroad, and then on a boat across Razliv, finishing up their long journey on foot.

This is how things were set up: some comrade would arrive, usually at night, and would go to the old apartment, and then from there he would be escorted by Yemelyanov’s son, Kondraty, and delivered to the hut. I remember how joyously the comrades would greet one another, talk, and then, toward dawn, they had to leave.

After the Bolsheviks finally triumphed, Yemelyanov made a career out of his role in saving Lenin, and after Lenin’s death he was constantly giving speeches and writing articles, sharing with the entire world his ridiculous memories of how Lenin and Zinoviev were tormented by mosquitoes, how Lenin in a matter of minutes convinced one of Yemelyanov’s sons to leave the anarchists and become a Bolshevik, how the hut’s residents, at the height of summer, when nobody would be planting trees, brought a sapling from the woods and planted it – and of course it took root and blossomed from Ilyich’s magical touch.

A few years later, this heroic episode began to undergo revision. Grigory Zinoviev was by then one of Stalin’s main opponents and would be branded first an “oppositionist” and then a terrorist, conspirator, and enemy of the people. He would be arrested, confess his mortal sins during a show trial, and, in 1936, as legend has it, kiss the boots of his executioners as he begged for mercy before being shot. The Great Terror spared almost no one who had been associated with Zinoviev. Nikolai Yemelyanov, his wife, and children were all sent off to prison and the camps. One of Yemelyanov’s sons was executed, another died trying to escape from a camp. Yemelyanov and his wife spent many years in the camps and exile.

Zinoviev miraculously vanished from later versions of Yemelyanov’s memoirs about the summer of 1917, and it turned out that Ilyich was living in the hut all by himself. Then it suddenly became known that Comrade Stalin was, of course, among the many revolutionaries making the journey to Razliv for Lenin’s wise counsel.

But back to 1917... As chaos reigned during the summer of that year, one person Kerensky had confidence in was his commander-in-chief. Lavr Kornilov, the son of Cossacks who had worked his way up through the ranks to general, was a charismatic commander renowned for having escaped captivity during the First World War. He was now urging Kerensky, who had been named chairman of the Provisional Government in late July, to use a heavy hand to restore order both on the front lines and the home front. Kerensky apparently agreed, or at least Kornilov thought he did. But in August, when the general sent troops to Petrograd, claiming that he was defending the revolution against a possible Bolshevik dictatorship and the chaos engulfing Petrograd, something happened.

It is not clear whether Kerensky was caught off guard or simply realized that Kornilov would not submissively fulfill his commands. Whatever his thinking, Kerensky immediately declared the general a criminal. Kerensky later described his suspicion that a conspiracy was afoot, and how, in a conversation with State Duma member Vladimir Lvov, he had been informed of the conspirators’ intentions:

Suddenly, Lvov broke off what he was saying. Then, apparently having made up his mind, in a state of great agitation, he faintly stated:

“I must make you an official proposal.”

“On whose behalf?”

“General Kornilov’s.”

“What?!” I could already sense that something extraordinary was about to happen. “What is going on? Tell me!!”

Lvov began to speak. From what he said, which was muddled at first, the content of the ultimatum finally became clear. General Kornilov was suggesting that the government should: 1) declare a state of siege in Petersburg, 2) transfer power to him, 3) have all ministers immediately step down. As for me and my closest subordinate at the war ministry, Savinkov, we were being asked, that very evening (the eve of the arrival of General Krymov’s force), to travel to Headquarters, since in the new government under General Kornilov I was to be minister of justice and Savinkov, war minister. [This is the same Boris Savinkov whose name has come up repeatedly as we chronicle the events of 1917 (see RL March/April and May/June 2017).]

I now had the missing link in the chain of what I knew about the military conspiracy!

The entire picture became horribly clear! I had no doubts as to the veracity of Lvov’s account: he was behaving in a way that would have been impossible for someone making things up.

With the greatest urgency, immediately, right away, this insane attempt, fraught with mortal danger for the state, had to be nipped in the bud. That was what I immediately felt.

It is difficult to convey what I was going through. I did not waver. My mind was working with exceptional clarity and speed.

Kerensky summoned everyone to oppose the power-grabbing Kornilov, and Kornilov was indeed defeated. Agitators traveled from Petrograd to the front to convince soldiers to refuse to enter the revolutionary city. Kornilov was arrested.

Kerensky was triumphant, but his was a Pyrrhic victory: the Provisional Government was left incredibly compromised. The center began to grow weaker as the extremes grew stronger, a familiar pattern in Russia. Kornilov and all those who thirsted for order and a “strong hand” had been thwarted. Meanwhile, those who were listening to the fugitive cowering in his hut in Razliv grew in number. A military dictatorship had been averted, but not a dictatorship of the extreme left.

Six months later, by which time the Civil War was already underway, General Kornilov, who was leading the Whites, died outside Yekaterinoslav [modern Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine]. We will never get to hear his account of the events of August 1917.

As for Kerensky, his half-year of glory had come to an end. He fled the Bolsheviks and went on to live a long but sad life. His political death came in 1917, but his biological life continued for many years, as he issued statements of little interest to anyone, wrote his memoirs, and explained how he, Kerensky, tried to fend off both Lenin and Kornilov. He was universally praised as a kind and intelligent man, but nobody really had any use for him.

Kerensky, the man whom many saw as Russia’s savior in the summer of 1917, died in New York in 1970, forgotten and alone.

the poet

Beginning in May 1917, Alexander Blok worked as an editor for the Provisional Government’s Extraordinary Investigative Commission, which had been set up to look into actions by tsarist officials. His diary entries from that summer describe his work and relate how depressed and wearied he was by everything going on around him. Blok had been quick to urge the intelligentsia to “heed the music of revolution,” but four years later he would die in a state of despair at what revolution had wrought.

That summer, he recorded what he was seeing in Petrograd (which he still thought of as St. Petersburg). He contemplated the political situation and, as one might expect from a great poet, exhibited a keen, intuitive understanding of the colossal changes coming.

On July 3, when unrest began to engulf Petrograd, he wrote:

There is some sort of disturbance on the bridge. At night, workers drove up to the postal offices and called for their comrades to join them. Three trucks filled with people, who were then driven away, shouting, to the city (one truck was so old and broken down that 10 minutes later they had to roll it back).

Little boys were yelling their own exclamations. It’s rumored that today the Moscow Regiment left its quarters, armed. It’s also rumored that German money and agitation are tremendous. Petersburg’s food situation is very bad.

This is followed by gloomy images that are quintessential Blok:

“What a humid night, it’s almost 1 o’clock, and sleepless people are all over the street, din, laughter, and leaden clouds.”

On July 4, as the entire city was overcome by chaos, as crowds rampaged through the streets, as Bolshevik leaders tried to focus their anger on the Provisional Government, Blok suddenly wrote:

“One car was very handsome today (small, speeding along, a huge red banner, and a machine gun in the back).”

This was immediately followed by:

“How tired I am of the state, of its poor prospects, of the various forms of mandatory military service. Could it really be that the return to art is far away, if it will ever come?”

Petrograd remained on edge throughout the first half of July. Many – on both the left and the right – feared a Bolshevik uprising. At the same time, there was constant speculation that Lenin was receiving money from the German government (which he was). The threat of famine also loomed, and everyone was tired of war. Blok made an eerily prescient entry in his diary.

The bourgeois evening papers – full of frenzy: spiteful baiting, hysterical horror, threatening screams. And the Russian people are being affably, dimwittedly “capricious,” with a dose of malice and their own axe to grind. This is our drunken little truth: “trench truth.” Why should we believe it? Why should we believe the state? The gentlemen have always deceived. The gentlemen may be good, but they are not our kind. If this prevails, it will be the total collapse of the state, but do I really dare chastise them for this? They may be stupid, bitter, venal, doltish, and boorish – but what are gentlemen supposed to be, after all?

A few days later he made another entry, a sort of prose poem:

Night is like a mouse, somehow flitting, it is gray, cold, and it smells of smoke and some sorts of sea barrels, my eyes are like a cat’s eyes, and Grishka [Rasputin] is sitting in me, and I love living, but I don’t know how to do it, and – when will old age come?

And, as always in times of crisis in Russian life:

So is everything really so awful?... Has the revolution destroyed itself? A quiet, muggy night, the smell of burning. Albert Thomas, as he was leaving, called Petersburg a “mess,” and the officers of the English general staff foresee famine and Germans, and they are advising everyone who can to get out.

By August, Lenin was already hiding out in Razliv. Kornilov and Kerensky were still working hand-in-hand. The Provisional Government, on Kornilov’s insistence, was attempting to use strong-armed measures to restore order. Blok was appalled.

August 3: Something awful is happening: the death penalty at the front, the organization of combat training, Cossacks, censorship, a ban on assembly. These are general words that are like a thousand little facts choking the entire population and every soul.

But weren’t the Bolsheviks and the looming chaos equally horrifying? Why not support Kornilov? One so wants to get them a message from a century in the future: be patient, better Kornilov than Lenin. They cannot hear, but they do sense that chaos is looming.

August 6: Between two dreams: “Save it, save it!” “What should we save?” “Russia,” “The Motherland,” “The Fatherland,” I don’t know what and how to call it to avoid it being painful and bitter and shameful to the poor, the embittered, the benighted, the demeaned! But, save it! Yellow-brown clouds of smoke are already reaching the trees, wide swaths of bushes and grasses are catching fire, and God isn’t sending any rain, and there’s no grain, and what grain there is will burn. The same sort of yellow-brown clouds that leave smoldering and burning in their wake (and from which the entire city is shrouded in soot every night) are blanketing millions of souls, a burning enmity, savagery, Tatar ruthlessness, malice, humiliation, oppression, mistrust, vengeance is flaring all over the place; Russian Bolshevism is having a spree and there is no rain, and God is not sending any.

And yet there is hope that the revolution will purify life, that its music will resound with powerful beauty.

August 7: Upon wakening: now the task of Russian culture is to direct this fire at the things that need to burn, to turn Stenka’s and Yemelka’s rampaging into a resolute musical wave, to put up the sorts of barriers against destruction that will channel rather than weaken the fire’s force, organize an untamed will, and aim the lazy smoldering that also harbors the potential outbreak of tumult at the embers of Rasputin’s soul, and fan it into a bonfire that reaches the sky, so that cunning, lazy, servile lust will burn.

And yet another strange entry, full of foreboding:

Night – there are strange flashes in the sky right in front of my window, far off. A storm? Heat lightning? But the air is cold. Could it be rockets? Or a searchlight? The night (the early hours of Sunday) gives the impression of a weekday, as if the city noise has yet to subside, car horns, the street lamps blaze over the factories. The flickering flashes continue, yellow, sometimes pale, at times covering a vast swath of the sky, and I start to think that I can hear another rumble beyond the rumble of the city.

the tsar

While Lenin was in Razliv, hatching plans for the coming revolution, Kornilov was struggling to restore order, and Kerensky was seeing himself as savior of Russia and the Revolution, Nicholas II, like Blok, was keeping a diary.

Back then, it was common practice to keep a diary, a habit instilled in childhood. The tsar, alas, did not have anything terribly brilliant to say – no poetic inspiration, no flashes of insight.

The arrival of summer in 1917 found Nicholas still under house arrest in Tsarskoye Selo with his wife and children. News reached him of tumultuous events in Petrograd, and although he, of course, was anxious, fearful, and worried, his daily life was placid and monotonous. The tsar took walks through the park, cut down trees, read books, and spent time with his children. It could not have been cheerful. He had no idea what his future held, but he certainly did not suspect just how short that future would be – the royal family had only one year to live.

On July 4, when unrest broke out in Petrograd, Nicholas made the following entry in his diary:

Yesterday I began the third part of Merezhkovsky’s Peter. In the morning we took a walk under a warm, steady rain. During the day we worked in the same place and finished cutting the pine trees. In the evening it began to rain again.

Merezhkovsky’s Peter and Alexei (written 1903-04) is a dark and tragic novel that at the same time seemed to promise Russia future redemption and deliverance from the gloom. But when would that future come? What must Nicholas have thought about as he read of the savage cruelty of his forebear? Did he believe that the Russia Peter had created had reached the end of its road, or did he still believe that the country could yet be redeemed?

The following day, July 5, brought another melancholy entry:

It rained all morning, but by 2 o’clock the weather cleared and by evening it grew cool. We spent the day as usual. In Petrograd, these days have brought riots and shooting. From Kronstadt they report that yesterday a great number of soldiers and sailors arrived to go against the Provisional Government! An utter mess. And where are the people able to take this movement in hand and put a stop to the discord and bloodshed? The seed of all this evil is in Petrograd itself – not throughout Russia.

As Nicholas wrote these words, could he have imagined that in exactly one year, during the early morning hours of July 17 (according to the Gregorian calendar, to which Russia switched in February 1918; according to the Julian it would have been July 5) his wife and children, the court physician Eugene Botkin, along with their servants, would be taken into the basement of Ipatiev House and shot, or that those who did not immediately die would be stabbed to death with bayonets? And this was not St. Petersburg, but the Urals, which the tsar firmly believed back in 1917 was populated with devoted subjects. What a difference a year can make.

On July 19 the tsar wrote:

Three years ago Germany declared war on us; these three years feel like an entire lifetime! Lord, help and save Russia!

Did Nicholas reflect on the fact that he had been reluctant to sign the order for a general mobilization, which would mark the point of no return, or that, before he finally decided to move ahead with it, he twice rescinded his orders to begin the mobilization? Now the soldiers, exhausted from war and barely remembering what peace was like, despised the government and were prepared to do whatever it took to bring the war to an end – even if it meant following Lenin.

Throughout July, rain alternated with heat. Kerensky was now in charge of the government, and Kornilov commanded the army. The Bolsheviks voted to prepare an armed uprising. The Romanovs were hoping that they would be sent to Crimea, to their favorite residence, where they would be able to live out their days on the banks of the sea. Perhaps if they had made it to Crimea it would have occurred to them that they could flee, or some daredevil would have undertaken to save the royal family.

July 28: A marvelous day; we enjoyed our walk greatly. After breakfast we learned from Count Benckendorff that, instead of Crimea, we’ll be sent to some remote provincial city three or four days journey to the east! But where specifically, they won’t say… And we had so set our hopes on a long stay in Livadia! We cut and toppled a huge fir tree at the clearing by the path. A brief, warm rain came through. In the evening I’m reading Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet out loud. It is Conan Doyle’s first novel with Sherlock Holmes. It is a dark story about the terrible retribution that catches up with the villain after many years, about fate, which cannot be avoided, even though the villain and avenger each had a 50-50 chance of drinking the poison. Also about a strange and wonderful detective who always restores justice and fears nothing.

On July 30 Tsarevich Alexei celebrated his 13th birthday – his last.

By August 1, the royal family had already begun their journey:

The entire family was put into a nice sleeper car… I went to bed at 7:45 and slept until 9:15. It was very muggy and dusty, 26 degrees in the train [78 Fahrenheit]. During the day we took a walk with our riflemen and picked flowers and berries. We eat in the restaurant; the Chinese Eastern Railway provides very tasty cuisine.

On August 4 they passed through Yekaterinburg, to which they would later return. But for now their destination was Tobolsk, which they reached by train and steamer. In Tobolsk a crowd of people was waiting for them on the dock, which must have awakened hope that here, the royal family might find “real” Russia, a Russia very different from Petrograd.

A great number of people were standing along the riverbank, which meant they knew we would be coming. I remember the view of the cathedral and houses on the hillside. As soon as the steamer docked, they began to unload our baggage. Valya, the commissar, and the commandant set off to inspect the houses that had been assigned to us and our retinue. When they returned, we found out that they were empty, had no furniture, and were dirty, and moving there would not be possible. So we stayed on the steamer and waited for them to bring back the baggage containing what we would need for sleeping. We had dinner and joked about people’s amazing inability to arrange even housing; we then went to sleep early.

They joked over dinner! It is a wonder they found anything to laugh about! Nicholas reports having an excellent night’s sleep that first and second night in Tobolsk. His entries are full of exclamations about “glorious” and “marvelous” days, referring, of course, to the weather.

On August 31, when Petrograd was only just recovering from the crushing of Kornilov’s attempt to assert control and discussions by the Petrograd and Moscow soviets were leading toward a decision to support the Bolshevik’s call for an uprising against the Provisional Government, Nicholas made a one-line entry:

The day passed as usual.