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Alexandra Exter paints "Futurist composition" in Kiev

Blok longs for his wife

Herbert George Wells with James Joyce

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a book to buy and read and lock up, but it is not a book to miss.

The value of Mr. Joyce's book has little to do with its incidental insanitary condition. Like some of the best novels in the world it is the story of an education; it is by far the most living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing. It is a mosaic of jagged fragments that does altogether render with extreme completeness the growth of a rather secretive, imaginative boy in Dublin. The technique is startling, but on the whole it succeeds. Like so many Irish writers from Sterne to Shaw Mr. Joyce is a bold experimentalist with paragraph and punctuation. He  breaks away from scene to scene without a hint of the change of time and place; at the end he passes suddenly from the third person to the first; he uses no inverted commas to mark off his speeches.

Ge Hailun

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Zinaida Gippius

 Sergievskaya 83, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Petersburg is full of evil rumours. And not only rumours, either. There is some very vague talk of a workers’ demonstration arranged to coincide with the opening of the Duma on 27th. I think this is unlikely. I don’t imagine we will see anything of the sort. There are many reasons, but the most important, (which makes it quite unnecessary to list the others) is the fact that the workers will not support the Duma coalition.

Jernej Komac, Ge Hailun

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

 Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire

I was called to the Empress, to find that she looked unwell and tired. I did not stay long; she was quite affectionate but it was clear her mind was elsewhere. I told her I should like to go to Petrograd for a longer period of time. I shall pass the Lenten fast with them if the Lord sees fit. I see that this will be a good thing to do: there is no resentment, but the situation has become more or less clear.

Jernej Komac

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Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich

 Petrograd, Russian Empire

The bread queues in Petrograd have been getting longer and longer, although the wheat and rye has been rotting all along the Great Siberian Railroad and in the south west regions. The city garrison, which consisted of new recruits and reserves was not, of course, a reliable enough force to maintain order in the event of serious disturbances. I asked the military command if they were planning to bring more dependable regiments back from the front line. I received the reply that thirteen guard cavalry regiments were expected to come from the front shortly.

Jernej Komac, Lisa May Davidson

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W. Somerset Maugham

 Tahiti, France

in Tahiti

Maria V. Zolotukhina, Kleber Oliveira

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Vasily Gurko

 Hotel "Evropeyskaya", 1, Mikhailovskaya street, Petrograd, Russian Empire

Having found out that I was to present a report to the Emperor on the following day, Rodzianko called on me in my hotel. Our conversation stretched deep into the night and finished at 2am. Wishing him a good night, I promised once again to try and make the Tsar see sense and issue the reforms of the so-called “Progressive Bloc”.

The “Progressive Bloc” was the name given to an assembly of party leaders and influential statesmen from the State Duma and State Council. Given the state of the country, their demands in early 1917 were very modest. The most important of these demands was that the Tsar would issue a decree granting full authority to Prime Minister Alexander Trepov to select cabinet ministers for the government. After the selection, the cabinet was to be accountable not to the Duma but to the Tsar personally.

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Peter Kropotkin

 9, Chesham Street, Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom

We’ve had the most unbearable frosts. I have shut the library, which I am not heating, and am working in my bedroom, which I can barely keep above eight degrees. I’m feeling bitter about my 74 years, and about the fact that, while the horizons for constructive and creative minds are endlessly expanding, I personally cannot work for more than four or five hours in a day.

Jernej Komac

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Alexander Blok  Lyubov Mendeleeva-Blok

 Parohonsk, Brest uyezd, Belorussia

I do not know whether it will be possible to leave soon, for thousands of reasons, but I really want to and I want to see you. I'm quite through with stupidity, which here abounds.

Ge Hailun, Maria V. Zolotukhina

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Ivan Bunin

 26, Povarskaya street, Moscow, Russian Empire

I’m having a very bad winter this year. I’ve been in poor health for 6 weeks already and the last bout had me feeling especially awful; I suffered from a terrible pain in the bony ridge of my brow.

Ge Hailun, Maria V. Zolotukhina

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Alexandra Exter

works on "Futurist composition"

 27, Bogdana Khmel'nitskogo (Fundukleyevskaya) street, Kiev, Russian Empire

Julio Mariutti, Ge Hailun and 5 others

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Maurice Paleologue

 10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

This evening I gave a dinner to the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna and her son, the Grand Duke Boris. My other guests were Sazonov, Shebeko, the former ambassador to Vienna, Princess Marie Troubetzkoï, Princess Bielosselsky Prince and Princess Michael Gortchakov, Princess Stanilas Radziwill, M. and Madame Polovtsov, Count and Countess Alexander Shuvalov, Count and Countess Joseph Potocki, Princess Gagarin, M. Poklevski, Madame Vera Narishkin, Count Adam Zamoïjski, Benckendorff, General Knorring and my staff. See more

Leyla Latypova, Jernej Komac

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23 February

How Russian soldiers differ from their French brothers-in-arms

The incredible account of the last attempt to save the Romanov dynasty

The leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party implores the workers of Petrograd not to strike

Maurice Paleologue

 10, Kutuzova embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire

The foreign delegates have hardly left Petrograd before the horizon of the Neva is darkening anew.

The Imperial Duma is to resume its labours on Tuesday next, the 27th February, and the fact is causing excitement in industrial quarters. To-day, various agitators have been visiting the Putilov works, the Baltic Yards and the Viborg quarter, preaching a general strike as a protest against the government, food-shortage and war. See more

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The Lovington Leader

With his three sons a russian who lives ordinarily just ten hours by rail from Petrograd is now en route to that capital. To get there he was obliged by the German captors of Vilna to go by way of America. He estimates that the ordinary ten-hour journey will cost him $2,000. And that is just another instance of the old saying that the longest way round is the shortest way through.

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Pierre Pascal

 Mogilev, Stavka, Russian Empire

Russians don’t like to preen or to put on airs, even on the subject of their own nation. A Russian loves his country profoundly and knows its worth, but keeps it to himself. A Frenchman will boast about having been at the front and will tell you of his heroic feats, his sufferings and his injuries. He will do all this because he thinks he has done something extraordinary. The Russian may tell you has been at the front if there is some reason do so, but for him this is an absolutely ordinary fact. He won’t think for a minute of bragging about it.