1917 Diary

the politicians

In a popular 1935 Soviet film, Three Comrades, soldiers sing a song by Mikhail Svetlov: “We are a peaceful people, but our armored train is at the depot standing by.” In the fall of 1917, the proverbial armored train was not standing anywhere – it was barreling ahead at full speed toward an uncertain future. Everyone could sense that momentous changes were coming at them fast.

With each passing day, Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky was losing supporters. The ground was giving way beneath the Provisional Government – and beneath Russia itself. As the government’s hold on power faltered, Kerensky turned to society. Throughout September and until the revolution became a fait accompli, he was engaged in meetings, negotiations, and inter-party debates. Little good it did him.

Many years later, in memoirs written from exile (Kerensky spent more than half his life in exile; he died, all but forgotten, in New York in 1970), he looked back on the nightmarish autumn of 1917:

For a while, I lost my faith in humanity. After arriving at Supreme Headquarters, I collapsed and remained in critical condition for several days. It was General Dukhonin who brought me back to my senses, telling me: “Kerensky, you cannot abandon your duties at such a critical time, you don’t have the right. Too much rests on your shoulders.” A day later, I was back on my feet, ready to carry on the struggle, my determination restored.

Kerensky bustled about, trying in vain to make headway against the winds of revolution. He created an odd creature called a “pre-parliament” that was supposed to exercise power until the Constituent Assembly could be convened. The Constituent Assembly did finally convene – in November. “Come on, Alexander Fyodorovich, hurry up, time is of the essence!” Alas, he cannot hear our voice from the future. In Russia, things move at a snail’s pace.

Holed up in Finland, hiding from the Provisional Government, Lenin was also annoyed by the slow pace of events. It is not entirely clear why he was still in Finland, since investigators had already closed his case. But the future leader of the world proletariat was, as usual, consumed by paranoia and moved from one Finnish town to the next, all the while bombarding his party comrades with letters, which, as a body, would later be immortalized as Lenin’s ingenious plan for an armed uprising.

The plan was basically that the Bolsheviks had to take control of “train stations, banks, the telegraph and telephone system, and bridges” – rather obvious; what else was there to take control of? In fact, what really worried Lenin was something else, something they didn’t teach us Soviet schoolchildren about. His most pressing thought was: “Hurry up! Don’t wait for the Congress of Soviets, don’t wait for the Constituent Assembly – we’ll only have to share power with them. Onward, to the train stations, banks, telegraph and telephone stations, the bridges…”

Other dramatis personae in the unfolding tragedy were caught in limbo.

The tsar and his family were being kept in Tobolsk. Nicholas spent his time wandering the garden, sawing wood, tutoring his son, and reading. He read the writer Nikolai Leskov almost daily. Could it be that he chose Leskov because of the writer’s insight into the psychology of the Russian people and revolutionaries? His diary gives us no clues as to what thoughts Leskov’s writings provoked. Nicholas’s entries from that period were, as always, rather bland, with little to offer in the way of either emotions or facts (unless you count weather reports).

September 11. Monday. Another excellent, sunny day that in every other respect passed as usual.

September 12. Tuesday. Warm, gray weather. During the day, I sawed firewood and the girls played with tennis balls on the wooden walkway.

September 13. Wednesday. It rained half the day, but it was warm. I finished the book On the Hills and started Leskov’s novel, Neglected People. At nine in the evening vespers were performed in our main room. We retired early.

September 14. Thursday. In order to avoid having a crowd gather outside the church, they scheduled mass for 8:00. Everything went smoothly; riflemen were positioned along the fence of the city gardens. The weather was bad – cold and damp; we did a lot of walking anyway.

Lavr Kornilov and the generals who had supported him in the tragic August stand-off that came to be known as the Kornilov Affair were still under arrest. They could see the bitter truth: that their failed efforts had only increased the Bolsheviks’ popularity. In November, after the revolution, the prison commandant enabled their escape, and they made their way to the Don region, future seat of the White movement. But for now, behind bars (albeit guarded by soldiers loyal to Kornilov), they watched helplessly as events unfolded.

Liberal politicians were at a loss. Pavel Milyukov, the renowned historian and leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party (aka the Kadets), suddenly abandoned his liberal principles and, according to the reminiscences of one of his contemporaries, “made it unambiguously clear that, given the phase that the revolution had now entered, the Provisional Government was doomed and the only thing that could save Russia from anarchy was a military dictatorship.” Now that Kornilov’s actions had failed, Milyukov could only give fiery speeches warning of the dangers of Bolshevism. What was the point? Nobody needed his speeches to see the dangers – they were plain as day.

Alexander Guchkov, leader of the Union of October 17 Party (the Octobrists) and someone often seen as a central organizer of the February Revolution, by now felt utterly incapable of organizing anything. He left for Kislovodsk, in the Northern Caucasus. Like Milyukov and Kerensky, he would ultimately wind up emigrating.

Kerensky, on the other hand, was not ready to give up the fight.

By the third week of October it was clear that the Bolsheviks were on the verge of carrying out their coup. Lenin finally arrived in Petrograd and again demanded that action be taken as soon as possible.

Members of the Provisional Government, meanwhile, tried to assure one another that all was not lost. As Kerensky remembered it:

After a brief meeting it was decided that I would immediately head in the direction of the approaching troop echelons. We were absolutely certain that the paralysis gripping democratic Petrograd would be overcome as soon as everyone understood that Lenin’s conspiracy was not the result of a misunderstanding but a treasonous blow that would put Russia fully at the mercy of the Germans.

By October 25, however, the rebels were already carrying out Lenin’s plan to take control of critical infrastructure.

That morning, Kerensky left the city.

Fully aware of the risk, I decided to traverse the city by car. This is how I was accustomed to traveling. When they brought around my excellent open-topped car, we told the soldier-driver what his task was. At the last moment, just when the assistant commander of the Petrograd Military District, my adjutant, and I were about to set out, officials from the English and American embassies pulled up and suggested that we leave the city in a car under the American flag. I thanked our allies for their proposal, but said that it did not befit the head of the government to drive through the streets of the Russian capital under an American flag.

I got underway… The driver was told to drive along the capital’s main street toward the checkpoints at the usual speed. This proved wise. My appearance on the streets of the city, already in the throes of an uprising, was so unexpected that the guards did not have time to react as they were supposed to. Many of the “revolutionary” guards stood at attention and saluted! Once we exited the city, the driver hit the accelerator pedal and we raced down the road. It was as if he had an instinctive impression that someone had already informed Lenin and Trotsky that I was leaving.

That is how the chairman of the Provisional Government departed the city he would never see again, leaving it in the hands of Lenin, Trotsky, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and a bunch of starry-eyed revolutionaries who firmly believed that this was the beginning of a glorious future.

the writer

In the autumn of 1917, Ivan Bunin was living with his wife on their estate, Ozyorki, in what is now Lipetsk oblast. Bunin was known for his stunning descriptions of nature and his unsentimental portraits of the Russian countryside, both of which are found in his diary entries from the months leading up to the revolution.

August 31. Around four o’clock I went to Zhilykh for rice. The weather had been fine, but turned damp and cool; everything was silent and still. Mud and vile desolation. The store was deserted; some loaves were stacked on straw in the corner. The first to show up was a besotted peasant, who asked me to “explain” something and seemed about to make a drunken scene. Then came the old man Semyon calls “Soldier,” and a young fellow with an accordion, a soldier, a wretched creature, a deserter who lost his mind and was now exhausted from staggering around drunk. He was silent, but then curtly, in a tone suggesting no would not be taken for an answer, barked out: “A smoke!” The peasants were indignant: “People should smoke their own!” He: “The stuff here is weak.” I wordlessly handed him a smoke. When he left, “Soldier” told me that they didn’t dare turn in the deserter: they’d had five meetings about it to no avail: “These days matches are cheap… He’ll burn us down and rob us.” Read the papers in the evening. My hands were trembling.

September 9. An awful storm last night, violent winds. Now it’s nice, breezy, sunny. A maple in the Zhadovsky garden is the color of a kinglet, an orangish dark red. In Skorodnoye, two or three maples and especially an aspen were stunning the day before yesterday: the forest is still all green – and suddenly there is one tree, all its leaves a crimson-pink tinged with violet blood. As I write, my hands and notebook are the yellow of the setting sun. It’s sinking behind the manor house, hitting the hill on the other side. About six by my watch.

On September 14, the All-Russia Democratic Conference opened in Petrograd, part of the government’s attempt to rally all political forces behind it. Bunin, however, was living in another world.

September 15. I awoke at 6:30; the sun hadn’t shown itself yet – an amazing morning, dewy. The day was even better. True summer. The alleys are strewn with leaves. The newspapers. Everyone seems to feel a growing hatred for the soviets. Kerensky should be hung. Impotent hatred.

At five Vera and I went over to Skorodnoye and rode around. Along the little road, through the aspens. The aspens haven’t turned yellow yet, but the road is strewn with their round leaves the color of morocco, raspberry, lemon, straw, and almost a canary yellow. When we drove out to make our right turn, someone was lying down at the edge of the forest doing something; by then only half of a red sun was left. The moon is rather high – greenish-white; the sky under it is almost heliotrope. It’s a fine road that’s always muddy! Deep ruts – everyone’s hauling heavy loads; everyone’s robbing the forest. We stood near the spot where there was a sentry station and I rolled myself a smoke, amazed at the beauty: we were facing the moon, and to the left, above the forest, the treetops were yellow in spots, magnificent trees (probably maples), the sunset to the right was almost colorless, bright. Under the moon, again heliotropes, lower down and to the left, the blue color of sugar paper. Vera looked to the right and was surprised how jagged the forest’s outline was against the sunset. We drove toward the forest’s edge to turn right (at the sentry station), stopped there, again were amazed – the bloody maple was spectacular. I took a leaf. It is sitting in front of me, as if someone dipped a pale yellow leaf into water with blood…

While Nicholas II was trying to better understand the Russian people by reading Leskov, Bunin was delving into Tolstoy, about whom he would later say: “For me, Lev Tolstoy was a god.” As his country was in the throes of upheaval, he was reading Anna Karenina, a book about love, about the search for God, about attempts by a nobleman to develop a spiritual connection with the people. Bunin found it hard to empathize with the emotional struggles of Tolstoy’s characters.

September 16. Still the same: an empty mind and soul and a rather dull-witted tranquility. I’ll finish Karenina. The last part is weak, even a little unpleasant, and implausible. I remember that I felt the same way about it before.

September 17. I finished Karenina. The ending is marvelously written. Maybe I was wrong about that part. Maybe it is particularly good, just particularly simple?

On September 27 the pre-parliament went into session. This temporary council created by the Democratic Conference included representatives from all its groups. At Ozyorki, Bunin continued to focus on changes in the natural rather than human world.

September 26. These two days have been exceptionally fine – sunny and warm. It rained! Now it’s cold, with low, bluish skies since morning… I was just at the mill. The peasants are filled with a deep rancor. There’s no point trying to talk to them!

By early October Lenin was back in Petrograd, impatient to start the revolution.

September 30. My throat’s better, thank God. Through the village to the woods. A summer day. I was struck by an aspen grove on the promontory – completely orange, and every tree and shape on the knoll stands out, creating the disturbing impression of a giant snake… The entire forest, is exceptionally dry, it rustles, and it’s impossible to express how wonderful the leaves burnt by the dry heat smell… The oaks keep rustling, all bronze and brown.

The government’s declaration is shocking, it begins: the anarchy started with Kornilov! Oh, the scoundrels! The brutality and baseness of the peasants are also awful, legendary.

October 1. I stepped outside this morning – how pale everything’s become: the garden, the sun, a pale sky. But then a wonderful day. And again torment! The forest is striking. How it has changed in two days: everything has rusted yellow (that’s how it looks from a distance). Off beyond Shcherbachevka the grove’s crown is a brownish purple, like where the fur has worn off an animal. But the forest where it slopes down from the hollow! A dry gold rubbed with brown and maple.

October 3. We were in Polskoye (a little village). Two clear blue ponds and, behind us, as we rode uphill, a low afternoon sun. We were struck by how picturesque and secluded the Logofetov estate was. A garden, and trees even closer – mostly rust and bronze. Our patrimony. It struck me that I could buy it. The windows sparkled like silver mica, from a distance the house lights shone like stars. There were two peasants in Osinoviye Dvory: a redhead with a potato nose, radiating kindness, a professor, and the other was striking: Boris Godunov, the size of the nose, the lips, fat nostrils, a profile that was almost threateningly crude, coarse black hair with streaks of silver from under his hat. Although in olden days people were probably different. How unimpressive and puny the features of young folk are! These two peasants said they were only vaguely aware of the new government. And why should they know anything? Their whole lives they’ve never seen anything but Osinoviye Dvory! They could hardly be interested in the state, theirs or any other. How can the people govern if they don’t even know anything about their own government, have no sense of the Russian land beyond their own fields?

On October 10, the Bolshevik leadership met in Petrograd and adopted a resolution to make immediate preparations for the uprising. The news from Petrograd drew Bunin out of his bucolic reverie.

October 12. In Yefremov, the newspapers for the 9th and 10th. The opening of the Republic Soviet, that scoundrel Kerensky’s banal drivel…

October 13. They’re holding elections to the Constituent Assembly. Not a single soul here is taking the slightest interest. The Russian people turn to God only in times of misfortune. Now they’re happy – where has all that religion gone?

October 16. The peasant says: “The masters’ll have to suffer some consequences too; you have to keep them in mind.” I got up at six. It’s been dark since morning, as if it was raining. Then a marvelous day, albeit damp and cold. The evening was amazing. Around six the moon was already like a mirror across the naked garden (if you stood at the main entrance, it shone through the alley…), and the afterglow in the West leaves a long pinkish-orange trail.

Shortly after this entry was written, Bunin and his wife were in Moscow, where the calm of the countryside was replaced by the alarming sound of gunfire. In a few months they would leave for Odessa, and from there, for France.

Ahead lay many years of painful emigration, intense work, and a Noble prize.

The Russian countryside, with all its beauty and squalor, would remain a vivid memory and source of inspiration for decades to come.

the poets

One might have thought that the circumstances faced by Russian poets during the fall of 1917 were not conducive to writing poetry. The whole country was falling apart, the economy was in a nosedive, world war was verging toward civil war – who had time for poetry?

But in the face of turmoil, great poets – and Russia had no shortage of them at the time – apparently feel a surge of inspiration. For all of them, life was difficult, even agonizing. Their personal lives were in a shambles (then again, what genius ever has a normal personal life?). Most of all, they, along with everyone else, were anxious about the events unfolding in the country. Nevertheless, they wrote and wrote.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok continued to keep his diary, although his entries stopped abruptly in late October for some reason, as if he had to pause and catch his breath (he began writing again only in 1918). His last entry, on October 19, was strange, gloomy, but full of hope – hope that would be cruelly disappointed:

Yesterday saw a major schism among the Bolsheviks. Zinoviev and Trotsky, among others, believed that it is necessary to take action on the 20th, whatever its result, and they were pessimistic about that result. Only Lenin believes that the takeover of power by democracy will really end the war and fix all the country’s problems. One way or another, both sides support taking action, but one side out of despair, and Lenin, in anticipation of good things to come... The workers say: “We’ll work at bourgeois newspapers at that price, but for a socialist one you need 25 percent extra.” Action could, nevertheless, be taken completely independent of the Bolsheviks – independent of everyone, spontaneously. The peasants aren’t giving the cities any grain, thinking that everyone’s well fed.

For Blok, the Bolshevik coup was still “a takeover of power by democracy,” and he, like many others, was certain that the takeover would occur. Furthermore, Lenin was sure that “good things” would come of it. But Blok includes in this entry a letter written to his mother by someone who worked at their estate, Shakhmatovo:

Your Excellency, Merciful Madam Alexandra Andreyevna,

They’ve made an inventory of the estate, taken away my keys, hauled away the grain, and left me a little flour, 15 or 18 poods. They have wreaked havoc on the house. They opened Alexander Alexandrovich’s desk with an axe and rummaged through it. The outrage and hooliganism are beyond description. They broke down the door to the library. These are savages, not free citizens, human animals. In my heart, I’m leaving the party ranks. May the fighting fools be damned. I sold the horse for 230 rubles. Probably I will leave soon; if you come, please let me know in advance, because they are making me inform them of your arrival, although I do not want to inform on you, and I’m afraid of the people’s wrath. Some people feel sorry for you, and others hate you. I don’t want anything to do with them.

Anyone who thinks this foretells “good things to come” has a very odd definition of “good.” The great poet made every effort to hear “the music of revolution” in unfolding events. In real life he could not quite manage to take a rosy view of the revolution, but his poetic life was another matter. January 1918 saw the publication of his poetic masterwork, “The Twelve,” in which Jesus Christ, wearing a crown of white roses, leads an armed detachment through revolutionary Petrograd.

Unlike for Blok, Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry was perfectly consistent with her real-life attitude toward the revolution. For now, in the fall of 1917, she headed for Crimea, where it was warmer and there was more food, and where she had friends. She had just given birth to her second daughter, Irina, in April. (Later, she would hand both her children over to an orphanage, in the hope that they would be better fed there than in her care. Irina starved to death in the orphanage in 1920.)

In Crimea, Tsvetaeva was confronted with unwanted attentions from another great poet, Osip Mandelstam, attention that irritated her and that she tried to avoid. More importantly, she witnessed the dawn of a new era, one in which drunken “revolutionary” soldiers break into liquor warehouses. Unlike Blok, she made no effort to hear “the music of the revolution” in the disorder. For her, “This was not just the faceless and silent masses, but a wild, unruly mob that had lost its human face and for which freedom boiled down to a chance to run riot.”

In late October, Tsvetaeva wrote:

Night. – Northeaster. – Roar of soldiers. – Roar of waves.
Wine cellars raided. – Down every street,
every gutter – a flood, a precious flood,
and in it, dancing, a moon the color of blood.
Tall poplars stand dazed.
Birds sing all night – crazed.
A tsar’s statue – razed,
black night in its place.
Barracks and harbor drink, drink.
The world and its wine – ours!
The town stamps about like a bull,
swills from the turbid puddles.
The moon in a cloud of wine. – Who’s that? Stop!
Be my comrade, sweetheart: drink up!
Merry stories go round:
Deep in wine – a couple has drowned.*

Ночь. – Норд-Ост. – Рёв солдат. – Рёв волн.
Разгромили винный склад. – Вдоль стен
По канавам – драгоценный поток,
И кровавая в нём пляшет луна.
Ошалелые столбы тополей.
Ошалелое – в ночи́ – пенье птиц.
Царский памятник вчерашний – пуст,
И над памятником царским – ночь.
Гавань пьёт, казармы пьют. Мир – наш!
Наше в княжеских подвалах вино!
Целый город, топоча как бык,
К мутной луже припадая – пьёт.
В винном облаке – луна. – Кто здесь?
Будь товарищем, красотка: пей!
А по городу – весёлый слух:
Где-то двое потонули в вине.

* Translated by Boris Dralyuk. From 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, edited by Boris Dralyuk, (London: Pushkin Press, 2017).

Mandelstam, ever nervous, ever conscious of the tragedy of existence, was also contemplating developments. For him, everything happening took on Biblical significance. Like many other young Jewish intellectuals, Mandelstam had wandered far from Judaism, and he saw the faith of his forefathers as something linking him to the Pale of Settlement, to shtetl life, to everything that deprived him of the spirit of freedom.

However, not long before the revolution, he became acquainted with the playwright Semyon Ansky, best known for his 1914 play, The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, a strange and mystical story about the soul of a dead man that takes up residence in the body of the young woman he loved. In 1922, by which time An-sky was already dead, his play was staged at the Habima Theater by the renowned director Yevgeny Vakhtangov. This striking play would remain Habima’s signature piece for many decades to come, first in Moscow and later in Israel.

Semyon Ansky introduced Mandelstam to a very different aspect of Judaism. Their relationship is reflected in a poem written during that dreadful autumn of 1917, a poem dedicated to another man, Anton Kartashev, a historian of the Orthodox Church who was also gripped by religious feelings, although in his case the religion was Christianity. This 1917 poem began with the words:

A young Levite among priests,
At morning vigil he lingered.
The Judaic night thickened overhead,
And the ruined temple was being sullenly raised.

Среди священников левитом молодым
На страже утренней он долго оставался.
Ночь иудейская сгущалася над ним,
И храм разрушенный угрюмо созидался.

Many years later, another great poet, Joseph Brodsky, asked Mandelstam’s widow to explain the meaning of this poem. Somewhat irritated at the idea that anyone could find her husband’s poetry obscure and unintelligible, she replied:

It’s about prophesies like the one made by the wife of Peter the Great, Yevdokiya, “May this place be empty.” In other words, this place will fall, the same way Jerusalem fell. Notice the line, “and the ruined temple was being sullenly raised.” …The temple was already destroyed, and the one being erected will also be destroyed... You could say that it symbolizes culture in general. It’s about what was called the “Petrine Petersburg period of Russian history.” The elders – those endowed with power – fail to see that the end is approaching; but an unofficial individual – a young Levite (Kartashev, or O.M. himself) does see it… The poem should be understood as an alarm signal.

Anna Akhmatova was also going through a difficult, anxious time. She had not yet divorced Nikolai Gumilyov, but their marriage had essentially ended. Not long before the revolution, she had parted ways with someone else who had a profound influence on her – Nikolai Nedobrovo. And September 1917 had seen the publication of a collection of Akhmatova’s poems, White Flock, that included many poems associated with Nedobrovo.

Also around the same time, her brief and tortured relationship with the artist Boris Anrep was playing out, a relationship that gave rise to countless reminiscences and legends. Anrep had been living off and on in England, and in April 1917 he moved there permanently. He took to his adopted country a black ring that Akhmatova had given him, a ring he kept until his house was destroyed by a German bomb during World War II. He also took with him Akhmatova’s reproach – for her emigration was unthinkable.

In the autumn of 1917, she wrote one of her best known poems:

I heard a voice. It called, consoling.
It said: “Come here,
Depart your sinful, hopeless land.
Depart your land once and for all.
I’ll cleanse the blood from off your hands,
And from your heart the blot of shame,
I’ll, with a new name, cover over
The insults, the inflicted pain.”
Indifferently and free of doubt,
I closed my ears to hear no more
And stifle out this sordid speech,
So it would taint my ears no more.

Мне голос был. Он звал утешно.
Он говорил: «Иди сюда,
Оставь свой край глухой и грешный.
Оставь Россию навсегда.
Я кровь от рук твоих отмою,
Из сердца выну черный стыд,
Я новым именем покрою
Боль порожений и обид».
Но равнодушно и спокойно
Руками я замкнула слух,
Чтоб этой речью недостойной
Не осквернился скорбный слух.

Akhmatova herself remained in Russia. She and Anrep did not see one another again until 1965, in Paris. By then, he had already created his famous mosaics that visitors walk across as they enter London’s National Gallery, including one showing Akhmatova as a symbol of Compassion. (See Russian Life, Sep/Oct 2016.)

Akhmatova, like Blok, lived through the October revolution in Petrograd.

On October 25 I was living on the Vyborg side in my friend Sreznevskaya’s home. I was walking from there along Liteyny and at the very moment I stepped onto the bridge, something extraordinary happened: right then, in the middle of the day, they raised the drawbridge. The trams, delivery wagons, cabs, and pedestrians all stopped. Everyone was perplexed.

Literary historians debate whether or not the drawbridge really was opened during the day on October 25, but Akhmatova remembers the bridge’s raising as a symbol of her own upended life.

Whatever the case may have been, the Baltic fleet did sail into the Neva, including the Aurora, the warship that fired the shot that signaled the storming of the Winter Palace (see Russian Life, July/Aug 2017).

In 1919, by which time life had been totally transformed, amid the hunger and horrors of the Civil War, Akhmatova wrote:

On the raised drawbridge
On what is now a holiday
My youth came to an end.

A terrible future awaited all these poets. For Blok, there was disillusionment with the revolution and an agonizing death. For Tsvetaeva, there were family tragedies, emigration, return to the Soviet Union, and suicide. For Mandelstam, there was the terrifying anticipation of arrest and, ultimately, death in a labor camp. For Akhmatova, there was the execution of her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov; the death of her third husband, the art scholar Nikolai Punin, in a camp; three arrests of her son; and hounding by the authorities, including attacks against her in the Soviet press.

In the fall of 1917 no one could possibly foresee what lay ahead. But poets are often endowed with the gift of foresight. They no doubt felt catastrophe racing toward them.