Left: German troops enter Kiev in 1918. Right: Czechoslovak legionnaires in Russia
Sources: webpage (left), webpage (right) and Lunapic
1. NOTE ON THE NECESSITY OF SIGNING THE PEACE TREATY.
Not to conclude peace at the present moment means declaring an armed uprising or revolutionary war against German imperialism. This is either phrase-mongering or a provocation of the Russian bourgeoisie yearning for the arrival of the Germans. In reality we cannot fight because the army presently is against it and is unable to fight. The week when we engaged the Germans from February 18 to 24, 1918, fully proved this. In the face of the Germans our troops simply ran away.
We are the prisoners of German imperialism. No empty phrases about an immediate armed uprising against the Germans but systematic serious steady preparation for a revolutionary war, for the enforcement of discipline and the creation of an army, for fixing our railway and food problems. That is the point of view of the majority of the Central Executive Committee, including Lenin, and of the majority of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, and of Spiridonova and Malkin (the Left Socialist-Revolutionary minority of the Central Committee).
2. LENIN AND THE FIST: 1939 SOVIET FILM CLIP.
3. SPEECH IN THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS', PEASANTS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES ON MARCH 12, 1918.
Comrades, we are celebrating the anniversary of the Russian revolution at a time when it is passing through difficult days, when many are ready to give in to despondency and disillusionment. But if we look around us, if we recall what the revolution achieved over this past year and appraise the international situation presently, then not one of us, I am sure, will find room for despair or despondency. There should be no room for doubting that the world socialist revolution which began in October will surmount all the difficulties and obstacles, surmount all the efforts of its enemies.
Comrades, remember how the Russian revolution evolved. Remember how thanks to the joint action of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie who saw that not even a bourgeois society could exist under tsarism, thanks to the co-operation between workers and the more enlightened section of the peasants, namely, the soldiers who lived through all the horrors of war, remember how in a few days of February they overthrew the monarchy which in 1905, 1906 and 1907 had resisted incomparably heavier blows and had drowned revolutionary Russia in blood. And after the February victory, when the bourgeoisie found themselves in power, the revolution went forward with incredible speed.
The Russian revolution produced results which sharply distinguish it from the revolutions of Western Europe. It produced revolutionary people tempered by the events of 1905 to act independently; it spawned the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, bodies incomparably more democratic than all previous ones, capable of educating, elevating and leading the oppressed mass of workers, soldiers and peasants. Thanks to them the Russian revolution completed in a few months the period of compromise with the bourgeoisie that took entire decades in Western Europe.
The bourgeoisie now say that the working class and its representatives, the Bolsheviks, are to blame for the fact that the army did not measure up to the situation.
But we can now see that if at that time, in March and April, power had not been in the hands of the conciliators, of the bourgeoisie who secured cushy jobs for themselves and placed the capitalists in power while at the same time leaving the army ragged and starving, if power had not been in the hands of gentlemen who like Kerensky called themselves socialists but actually had in their pockets the secret treaties which bound the Russian people to fight on until 1918, then perhaps the Russian army and the revolution might have been spared those incredibly severe trials and humiliations we have had to endure.
If at that time power had passed to the Soviets, if the conciliators, instead of helping Kerensky drive the army into battle, had come forward with a proposal for a democratic peace, then our army would not have been shattered so badly.
They should have told the army: "stand off, hold in one hand the secret imperialist treaties and a proposal to all nations for a democratic peace, and in the other hold a rifle or gun cocked and bid the frontlines to stay absolutely quiet." If that had been done then, the army and the revolution might have been spared. Such a gesture made before German imperialism, before the whole capitalist world or before the representatives of every bourgeois party, might have been useful for it may have placed the enemy in the quandary of choosing between a proposed democratic peace laced with the exposure of the secret treaties or continued war.
Today we do not have such a strong asset. We cannot reinforce the front without artillery. The restoration is too difficult, proceeding too slowly, because we have never confronted such an enemy. It was one thing to struggle with that idiot Romanov or Kerensky the boaster, but here we face an enemy organized militarily and economically for staving off the revolution. We knew that in June 1917, and instead of tearing up the imperialist treaties, Kerensky's government hurled the soldiers into an offensive which sapped their strength completely.
And now when the bourgeoisie scream about unparalleled disorder and national disgrace, do they suppose that a revolution born out of war, born out of unprecedented destruction, can evolve calmly, smoothly, peaceably, without suffering, without torment, without horror? Anyone who thinks so is either a phrase-monger or a flabby intellectual unable to grasp the significance of this war and of the revolution. Yes, that is how they reason. But it is clear to us that a great national resurgence withal is underway, though those who scream about national disgrace fail to see it.
[...]
4. SPEECH AT A MEETING IN THE ALEXEYEVSKY RIDING SCHOOL ON APRIL 7, 1918.
(Lenin's appearance on the platform was greeted with a storm of applause)
"We are now passing through the toughest months of the revolution," said Lenin.
"There is famine, we must exert all our strength to combat it. Meanwhile the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks watch with malicious glee. Their tactics are the tactics of Dutov and Kornilov, the tactics of the officer cadets who rose up against the Soviet government in Moscow. In this respect the Mensheviks striving to overthrow the Soviet government are on their side, on the side of the bourgeoisie. Hence they are betraying us.
"When we apply the death penalty by shooting, they become Tolstoyans and shed crocodile tears and shout about our cruelty. They have forgotten how they and Kerensky drove the workers to the slaughter, all the while hiding the secret imperialist treaties in their pockets. They have forgotten this and turned into meek Christians fretting about mercy. We cannot overcome our enemies without weapons; they are very well aware of that, but all the same they try to discredit us.
"We have to put the national economy back on its feet, and this gigantic task is all the more difficult because our revolution is the first one to travel so far along the path of social transformation. To lighten this difficult task we have to learn not from books but from deeds, from experience. Only Soviet power is any good for building the national economy, and so I am proposing that you should bring thousands of our comrades into the Soviets all over the country. Moreover we have to foster comradely discipline. The workers and the peasants must realize that the land and the factories belong to them. They must care for them as for their own property.
"Only now, on looking back and seeing the utter helplessness of the bourgeoisie and the insignificance of the sabotaging intelligentsia, I am sure about the tremendous progress we have made. In order to keep advancing successfully we must get rid of ignorance and negligence. Withal it is much more difficult to do that than to overthrow the idiot Romanov or the fool Kerensky.
"Germany is strangling us, Japan is attacking us,1 and it is at this time of hardship that the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, those tender lambs, are shouting about our cruelty, forgetting the gallows they erected for Comrade Shahumyan.2
"In reply I can say to them: No, we do not withhold our use of force against the exploiters. These tears of the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries spilled over our cruelty are their last shot at taking part in the political life of the country and simultaneously expose their weakness. We shall fight them mercilessly.
"We must now pay for the entire legacy of tsarism, for Nicholas' and Kerensky's tenures of power. But once we overcome the disorder and the apathy through our constant toil we shall behold the great triumph of socialism."
(Loud applause)
On December 30, 1917 (January 12, 1918) a Japanese warship and a merchant ship entered the Port of Vladivostok without informing the local Soviet authorities. The same day the Japanese Consul General in Vladivostok sent a Note to the city authorities stating that Japanese warships had been dispatched to Vladivostok on behalf of the Japanese Government "for the purpose of protecting our nationals."
On March 29, 1918, the Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary municipal council fell in with the wishes of the Japanese military by declaring itself unable to maintain order in Vladivostok.
On April 4, two Japanese citizens were murdered in a planned act of provocation. With this as a pretext, Japanese troops assisted by Russian Whiteguards made their first landing and occupied Vladivostok on April 5. The occupation of the city marked the beginning of open intervention in the Far East by the countries of the Entente. When news of the Japanese intervention reached Lenin, he sent the Vladivostok Soviet specific instructions on how to fight the occupying forces (see this volume, p. 226).
2 forgetting the gallows they erected for Comrade Shahumyan - Shahumyan, S. G. (1878-1918) - Temporary Commissar Extraordinary for Caucasian Affairs and Chairman of the Baku Soviet. He was constantly persecuted by the Transcaucasian counter-revolutionary Menshevik government. In February 1918 it became known that the Mensheviks intended to murder him. This is what Lenin refers to when he speaks of gallows being erected for Comrade Shahumyan. He evaded capture then. However in August 1918 Shahumyan and other leading Party workers of Baku were arrested by British forces with the help of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Shahumyan was one of twenty-six Baku commissars shot.
5. SPEECH IN THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS', PEASANTS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES ON APRIL 23, 1918.
[...]
Presently we do not have sufficient forces for an active armed struggle against world reaction on the heels of the most reactionary war our tormented country has ever had to endure. We do not have an army, we do not have the strength needed to oppose the superbly organized contingents of the international counter-revolution which wield the power that comes from up-to-date equipment and superb discipline. For the time being we are isolated and surrounded by deadly enemies.
During the October uprising of the working people, when we unfurled the Red banner of the socialist revolution before the workers, we enjoyed a period of easy dazzling success. The workers of other countries heard the far-off roar of the Russian revolution and understood what was happening and realized that the deeds of the Russian proletariat profited their own vital cause.
At that time we coped easily with reactionary gangs, we suppressed easily the remnants of Menshevik gangs that rose up against the people and opposed us not with direct combat, weapon in hand, but with the unprincipled instrument of lies, slander and unprecedented treachery. Our struggle against the counter-revolution awarded us a big victory. Thus, for example, Kornilov the most audacious counter-revolutionary was slain by his own soldiers.1
We took advantage of the hitch the international bourgeoisie stumbled onto and delivered a well-timed powerful punch to the now-shattered counter-revolution on all fronts. We can affirm with confidence that the civil war is in the main over. There will be some skirmishes of course, and street fighting will flare up in some towns, here and there, due to isolated attempts by reactionaries to overthrow the Soviet system, bulwark of the revolution, but there is no doubt that the reaction has been smashed irreparably on the domestic front through the efforts of the revolutionary people. Thus we survived the first stage of evolution of the revolution whose starting point was the October days, a period of intoxicating success which went to the head of some people indeed.
I repeat once more that the most difficult, the toughest phase of our revolution has presently begun. The task before us is the steadfast use of all our strength in new creative work. Only iron endurance and labour discipline will let the revolutionary Russian proletariat, as yet alone in its gigantic revolutionary undertaking, hold out until the international proletariat comes to assist us.
We are a revolutionary working-class contingent on the front line, not because we are better than other workers, not because the Russian proletariat is superior to the working class of other countries, but solely because we were one of the most backward countries in the world. We shall obtain final victory only when we smash international imperialism decisively. Now imperialism relies on the tremendous power of its weaponry and discipline, hence final victory can only come in tandem with the workers of the entire world.
By the force of circumstances we had to sign an onerous peace in Brest-Litovsk, and we do not hide for a moment the possibility that this peace agreement may be broken treacherously by the numerous enemies of the revolution who are marching against us from all sides, and before whom we are currently defenceless.
Bear in mind that anyone who calls now for open armed struggle against international predatory imperialism betrays the people, is in truth a willing or involuntary agent provocateur and servant of this or that imperialist clique. Anyone even of the most "Left" (even super-Left) Communist camp who opposes our tactics in the current juncture is a bad revolutionary. I will say more: he is no revolutionary at all.
(Applause)
[...]
We have an extremely dangerous covert enemy, more dangerous than many open counter-revolutionaries; [...].
The enemy I have referred to is the anarchy of petty proprietors whose life is guided by this one law: "I grab all I can—the rest can go hang." This enemy is more powerful than all the Kornilovs, Dutovs and Kaledins put together. These petty kulaks, petty employers and proprietors, say: "We have always been oppressed, we have always been crushed; well then, how can we let such a favourable opportunity pass us by?" This outlook is a serious obstacle and unless we overcome it victory is inconceivable, for a new Kornilov will sprout from each petty proprietor, from each greedy grabber.
Beside this danger, the terrible spectre of approaching famine and mass unemployment confronts us. Yet we see that all class-conscious workers, whose numbers increase not daily but hourly, ponder and understand that the sole means of struggle against these grave dangers presently is the steadfast exertion of our strength and our powerful endurance. And let it be remembered by those who give in to despair and lose heart and vigour at difficult times that we have always said that we cannot cross over from capitalism to the full triumph of socialism via the bloodless and easy path of persuasion and conciliation, that we can reach our goal only after a furious struggle.
The dictatorship of the proletariat stands for the use of force against the exploiters. Our road demands endurance, proletarian solidarity and the iron dictatorship of the working people. There is no doubt that the Soviet government has in many cases not displayed enough resolve in the fight against counter-revolution, and in this respect, it has seemed not iron but jelly.
Socialism cannot be built on jelly. We have not vanquished petty-bourgeois anarchy. This country, pushed to the front line in the arena of world revolution by the course of history, a devastated country bled white, faces an extremely grave prospect, and we shall be crushed by it if we do not counter ruin, disruption and despair with the iron dictatorship of the class-conscious workers. We shall be merciless both to our enemies and to all the waverers and harmful elements in our midst who dare to disrupt our hard creative work of constructing a new life for the working people.
[...]
6. BASIC PROPOSITIONS OF ECONOMIC POLICY, ESPECIALLY ON BANKING.
I. Completion of the nationalization of industry and exchange.
II. Nationalization of the banks and a gradual transition to socialism.
III. Compulsory membership of everyone in consumer co-operative societies. {+ Commodity exchange}
IV. Accounting and control of production and distribution of goods. {+ Tax policy}
Measures for the transition to compulsory savings accounts or to compulsory keeping of money in the banks.
Compulsory membership of everyone in consumer co-operatives and measures for the transition to this.
Drafting the conditions of an agreement with co-operators on a gradual enrolment of the whole population in consumer co-operatives.
Compulsory labour service, starting from the top.
To be regarded as absolutely essential and urgent are the most ruthless measures to combat chaos, disorder and idleness together with the most vigorous and severe measures for honing the discipline and self-discipline of workers and peasants.
Transforming nominal state control into real control by setting up mobile groups of controllers in all spheres of economic life.
[...]
7. MAIN PROPOSITIONS OF THE DECREE ON FOOD DICTATORSHIP.1
The draft decision to be revised as follows:
1) delete the references to the international situation;
2) insert that after peace with the Ukraine we shall be left with only just enough grain to save us from famine;
3) insert that decisions of the dictator will be vetted by his collegium which has the right of appeal (without holding up implementation) to the Council of People's Commissars;
4) insert that decisions implicating the Commissariat for Ways of Communication or the Supreme Economic Council are to be adopted after consultation with the appropriate departments;
5) give a more precise legal definition of the rights appertaining to the Commissar for Food;
6) emphasize more strongly that for salvation from famine the basic idea is the necessity of conducting and carrying through a ruthless and terrorist struggle and war (bold font mine, EFC) against peasant or other bourgeois elements who retain surplus grain for themselves;
7) lay down precisely that owners of grain who possess surplus grain and do not send it to the depots and places of grain collection will be declared enemies of the people and will be subject to imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years, confiscation of all their property and expulsion from the community forever;
8) insert a note on the duty of working peasants who do not own land and do not have a surplus to join forces for a ruthless struggle against the kulaks;
9) define precisely the relationship between delegate committees and gubernia food committees, and the rights and duties of the former in carrying out the work related to the food dictatorship.
8. DRAFT OF A TELEGRAM TO THE PETROGRAD WORKERS ON MAY 21, 1918.1
The Soviet system—the victory of the toilers and exploited over landowners and capitalists—can be upheld and consolidated only by the stern iron rule of the class-conscious workers. Only such a system can attract and rally all the toiling people, all the poor, around it.
Comrades, workers, remember that the revolution is in a critical juncture! Remember that you alone can save it, nobody else can.
What we need is tens of thousands of picked, politically advanced workers loyal to the cause of socialism, incapable of succumbing to bribery or to the temptation of pilfering, capable of forming an iron-clad force against the kulaks, profiteers, racketeers, bribe-takers and disorganizers. That is what we urgently and insistently need.
Failing that, famine, unemployment and the doom of the revolution are inevitable.
Workers' strength and salvation lies in organization. Everybody knows that. Today we need a special organization of workers, the iron rule of workers, in order to vanquish the bourgeoisie.
Comrades, workers, the cause of the revolution, the salvation of the revolution, is in your hands! Time is short: an intolerably difficult May will be followed by an even more difficult June and July, and perhaps even part of August.
9. ON THE FAMINE. A Letter to the Workers of Petrograd.1
Comrades, the other day your delegate, a Party comrade, a worker in the Putilov Works, called on me. This comrade drew a detailed and extremely harrowing picture of the famine in Petrograd. We all know that the food situation is just as acute in many industrial gubernias, that famine is knocking just as cruelly there at the door of workers and the poor generally.
And side by side with this we observe an orgy of profiteering in grain and other food products. The famine is not due to the fact that there is no grain in Russia, but to the fact that the bourgeoisie and the rich generally are putting up a last decisive fight against the rule of the toilers, against the workers' state, against Soviet power, on this most important and acute of issues, the issue of bread.
The bourgeoisie and the rich generally, including the rural rich, the kulaks, are thwarting the [state's] grain monopoly; they are disrupting the distribution of grain undertaken by the state in the interest of supplying bread for the entire population, in first place to the workers, the toilers and the needy.
The bourgeoisie are infringing the fixed prices [fixed by the state], they are profiteering in grain, they are making a hundred, two hundred and more rubles' profit on every pood of grain; they are infringing the grain monopoly and the proper distribution of grain by resorting to bribery or corruption [of state officials] and by endorsing whatever undermines the power of workers to put into effect the prime basic and root principle of socialism: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".
[...]
Romanov and Kerensky left the working class a country utterly impoverished by their predatory criminal and most terrible war, a country picked clean by Russian and foreign imperialists. There will be enough bread for all only if we keep the strictest account of every pood, only if every pound is distributed most evenly.
There is also an acute shortage of "bread" for machines (i.e., fuel). The railways and the factories will come to a standstill, unemployment and famine will bring ruin on the whole nation if we do not bend every effort to establish a strict and ruthless economy of consumption and proper distribution. We are faced with disaster, it is very near. An intolerably difficult May will be followed by a still more difficult June, July and August.
Our state grain monopoly exists in law but is being shunted at every opportunity by the bourgeoisie in practice. The rural rich, the kulak, the parasite who has been robbing the whole neighbourhood for decades, prefers to enrich himself by profiteering and illicit distilling: it is so good for his pocket, and he can throw the blame for the famine on Soviet power. That too is the line of the political defenders of the kulak—the Constitutional-Democrats, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks—who are overtly and covertly "eroding" the grain monopoly and Soviet power.
The spineless faction, i.e., the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, manifests its cowardice here too. They are bowing to the covetous howls and shouts of the bourgeoisie, they are denouncing the grain monopoly, "protesting" the food dictatorship, letting themselves be intimidated by the bourgeoisie, afraid to fight the kulak and flapping about hysterically, urging that the fixed prices be raised and private trading allowed, and so forth.
[...]
When the people are starving, when unemployment is ever more terrible, anyone who conceals an extra pood of grain, anyone who deprives the state of a pood of fuel is an out-and-out criminal. At such a time every pood of grain or fuel is veritably sacred—and for a genuinely communist society this is true always—much more so than the sacred items priests use to confuse the mind of fools with, promising them the kingdom of heaven as a reward for slavery on earth. And in order to purge this genuinely sacred item of every remnant of priestly "sacrosanctity," we must grab it physically, we must arrange its proper distribution tangibly, we must collect all of it without exception; every particle of surplus grain must be brought into the state's warehouses, the whole country must be swept clean of concealed or ungarnered grain surpluses; likewise we need the firm hand of the worker to increase the production of fuel and secure its most efficient means of delivery and consumption.
We need a mass "crusade" of advanced workers marching to every field of grain or every refinery of fuel, to every important hub of supply and distribution; a mass "crusade" to intensify workloads tenfold, to assist local organs of Soviet power in the business of accounting and control, to curtail profiteering, graft and slovenliness by the use of armed force. This is not a new task. Properly speaking, History does not set down new tasks but magnifies the size and scope of old ones as the scope of the revolution, its difficulties and its great world-historic ambition likewise bourgeons.
[...]
We shall not be able to cope with the famine or with the unemployment single-handed and scattered. We need a mass "crusade" of advanced workers to visit every corner of this vast country. We need ten times more iron detachments of the class-conscious proletariat boundlessly devoted to communism. Then we shall triumph over the famine and unemployment. Then we shall make the revolution the real prelude to socialism and then too we shall be in a position to conduct a victorious war of defence against the imperialist vultures.
In a letter to A. D. Tsyurupa, Lenin wrote of his conversation with Ivanov: "I told him my opinion: if the best Petrograd workers do not create a picked reliable workers' army" for a campaign against the rural bourgeoisie, "famine and the doom of the revolution are inevitable."
Lenin instructed the People's Commissariat for Food to lend every assistance to the Petrograd workers' detachments. At the beginning of June 1918, the Petrograd workers sent off their first food detachment of four hundred men.
10. TELEGRAM TO J. V. STALIN.
July 7, 1:00 AM
Today at about 3:00 PM a Left Socialist-Revolutionary killed Mirbach with a bomb. This murder is obviously in the interests of the monarchists and Anglo-French capitalists.
The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, not wanting to surrender the assassin, arrested Dzerzhinsky and Latsis and began an uprising against us. We are liquidating it mercilessly this very night and we shall tell the people the whole truth: we are a hair's breadth away from war. We have taken hundreds of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries hostage. It is everywhere essential to crush these pitiful and hysterical adventurers mercilessly, who have become tools in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries. All who are against war will be for us.
As regards Baku, the most important thing is that you should be in continuous contact with Shahumyan,1 and that Shahumyan should know about the German proposal to Ambassador Joffe in Berlin to the effect that the Germans would agree to halt the Turks' offensive against Baku if we guaranteed the Germans part of the oil: Of course we shall agree.
And so, be merciless against the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and report more frequently.
Lenin
11. TO THE WORKERS OF PETROGRAD.
Dear Comrades,
I am taking advantage of the fact that Comrade Kayurov, an old acquaintance of mine and well known to Petrograd workers, is leaving for Petrograd to send you a few words.
Comrade Kayurov has been in Simbirsk Gubernia and has himself observed the attitude of the kulaks toward the poor peasants and toward our government. He has realized perfectly what no Marxist and no class-conscious worker can doubt, namely, that the kulaks hate the Soviet government, the government of the workers, and will inevitably overthrow it if workers do not immediately make every effort to forestall the attack of the kulaks on the Soviets and to smash the kulaks before they can unite.
Class-conscious workers can do this at the present moment; they can rally the poor peasants around themselves, defeat the kulaks and smash them, provided the vanguard of the workers realizes their duty, makes every effort and leads a mass foray into the rural districts. Nobody but the workers of Petrograd can do this, for there are no other workers in Russia as class-conscious as the Petrograd workers.
It is foolish and criminal to stay in Petrograd, starve, loiter around idle factories and cherish the absurd dream of restoring Petrograd industry or defending Petrograd. That will mean the ruin of our revolution. Petrograd workers must discard such guff, send the fools who advocate it packing, and set out in tens of thousands for the Urals, the Volga and the South, where there is plenty of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families, where they must help poor peasants organize and where the Petrograd worker is indispensable as an organizer, guide and leader.
Kayurov will recount his personal observations, and, I am certain, will convince all waverers. The revolution is in danger. Only a mass campaign of Petrograd workers can save it. Weapons and money we shall not stint.
12. THE FOREIGN INTERVENTION.
Stockholm: Finnish reports state that the White Guard is proceeding to the ruthless extermination of the Red Guard. Red guards are shot without trial. Many of their corpses were unearthed and thrown together in a separate mass grave.
Moscow: The Central Committee of the Cadet Party has reaffirmed its loyalty to the Allies and its refusal of any aid to the Germans.
Russian general Kuropatkin was defeated at Pultawa (Central Ukraine) by peasants in revolt.
Moscow: The Petrograd Soviet published a decree dissolving all workingman associations. The workers threaten to go on general strike if the measure is not rescinded.
Copenhaguen: Armies are being created in Siberia and in the Urals to march against the Bolsheviks.
Petrograd: The Russian littoral steamer "Tchiegief" (?) was torpedoed on the 17th between the ports of "Varda" and "Gulba" [in the vicinity of Arkhangel on the Barents Sea near Finland]. Its lifeboats were fired upon; eight occupants were killed, twelve wounded. Additionally several Norwegian fishing boats and the coastal telegraph line were shelled.
Moscow: The unrest in Kiev is widespread; the artillery depots have been ransacked. Street fighting has spread to Chernihiv, Poltava and "Cevantarduze" (?). Forty thousand armed peasants entered Kiev. The population is in a "terrible" panic. The authorities have fled.
Petrograd: The Czech-Slavs took Penza, Samara and other cities of Eastern Siberia. They founded a new government in lieu of the Bolsheviks.
German newspapers say that Lenin's policies are discredited in Russia and that it's necessary to quell all activities of his followers.
Copenhaguen: Grand Duke Michael and his secretary have managed to escape [both had actually been murdered on June 13].
Moscow: Lenin is bent on resigning.
London: News of the Red Guards' assassination of the former Czar has been confirmed. The Czech-Slavs were advancing over the Urals and there were demonstrations in Yekaterinburg calling for the liberation of the ex-Czar. That is when the Red Guards entered the residence of the former Czar and slew him [actually Nicholas II was murdered on July 17].
Paris: The assassination of the former Czar is confirmed. Russian newspaper "Yps" prints the news without giving details other than he died as the consequence of several revolver shots.
Berlin: News from Copenhaguen state that according to reports from Petrograd there are insistent rumours that former Czar Nicholas was assassinated inside a railway coach. The Russian government stated that official confirmation of the assassination was still pending.
London: Various reports affirm that the report on the assassination of the Czar is "inexact".
Russian news. A portion of Yekaterinburg has been conquered by the Czech-Slavs.
It is affirmed that Alexeyev's son died after a prolonged illness.
It is also said that Grand Duke Michael Romanov leads the counter-revolution and that he published a manifesto condemning Bolshevism; however he refused the throne and instead counselled that a popular All-Russia Assembly be convened.
Kerensky will visit Paris and America.
Kerensky in London. Kerensky is in favour of an Allied military intervention in Russia on condition that it be directed against the Germans without meddling in Russia's internal affairs.
Petrograd: The Red Guard patrols the streets, opening fire on the people.
Hunger in Russia. The Siberian Government refuses to send food to Russia where hundreds of people perish from starvation.
Copenhaguen: News from Russia paint a desperate situation. The fall of the Bolshevik regime is expected. Great excitement reigns.
Paris: Reports from Vladivostok state that the local government has deposed the Bolsheviks. Great turmoil reigns.
Moscow: A People's Commissar was shot dead on returning from a propaganda rally.
Kiev: Grand Duke Michael marches on Moscow at the head of an army of Czech-Slovaks.
Stockholm: Former Czar Nicholas II has written to an intimate friend in Petrograd. He says in the letter that his correspondence is censored and that he is not allowed to read books. Furthermore he is only permitted to speak Russian. The ex-Czarevicht is "extremely ill."
Moscow: The Czech-Slavs have taken over the Government of "Lifa" (?). The maximalists retreat in orderly fashion.
London: British courtiers are to wear funeral clothing over the death of former Russian Czar Nicholas II the cousin of the English king [George V].
London: Reports indicate that Petrograd is suffering a cholera epidemic. Doctors fearful of contagion refuse to report to the hospitals. Many thousands of ill patients perish in "terrifying" numbers without care and are left unburied. The epidemic spreads causing "horrible" havoc.
Paris: Reports from Vladivostok state that the Allies enjoyed a great success after two hours of fighting at "Nivonsk" (?). They dispersed an army composed of nine thousand Austro-Germans, a thousand Red Guards and a thousand workers.
Moscow: Ukrainian railwaymen have gone on a general strike; they demand the immediate departure of German occupation troops. The railway company director threatened to lock them out and deliver management of the railway to the German High Command.
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