8 June 1919     One day, when these things are discussed with a concern for justice and truth, when, in the society of the future that we shall ultimately build, where all the wounds of humanity will have been healed, then the revolution will be praised because it never, even in the most tragic days, lost the concern for art; it never neglected rhythms, fine gestures, beautiful voices full of pathos, dream-like settings, poems, anthems played on the organ, the sobbing notes of violins. Never. And I cannot help discovering in this obstinate quest for beauty, at every hour of the civil war, stoicism, strength and confidence. Doubtless it is because the Red city is suffering and fighting so that one day leisure and art shall be the property of all.

Certainly no other city at war has the solemn countenance of Petrograd today. Elsewhere often even under shellfire you find musical cafes, drunkenness, women dolled up in bars to distract those whose job it is to kill others of to get themselves killed. Here, on this grey, rainy Sunday I have seen only two things — and I have travelled all over the city — art and mourning.

It is an austere mourning. In an almost deserted street — there is very little movement on Sundays, outside the main thoroughfares — I met Communists who were going to the funeral. Young men and women, all with simila clothes and similar hair-styles, in military dress of greenish brown and black leature, with revolvers at their side and red flags in their hands — each group of brave young people looks the same, with candid faces in many of which there is still something childlike.

We shall not be destroyed! This soul of the revolutionary city contains too much beauty, this flesh and blood of the city contain too much energy!

Red Guards in 1919 during the civil war

10 June 1919     Lull. Yudenich is forty miles away at the most. The situation is imperceptibly getting ever more tense. Work carries on without excessive excitement, and the roads show the normal signs of life. Just now, not far from the Warsaw Station… I passed a regiment on the way to the front, that is, to the outer suburbs…. Men no longer go off to the front drunk, singing patriotic songs, with panic in their hearts and madness in their brains. That was all right for the other war, for the insane war. This one, where they understand why they are fighting, is a dirty job, nothing more, which they accept without weakness — but with sadness, because now it’s not a question of being soldiers but simply of being men…. This evening at the Great Dramatic Theater, Smirnova dances…. On the Kerelian front, White bands have appeared. If a serious attack were launched in the north, we could well be lost.

22-24 June 1919     The point of greatest danger has passed, although neither Yudenich’s offensive nor that of the White Krelian bands have been halted. In the north, the British are also attacking in the direction of Lake Onega; in the south-west the Poles have inflicted losses on us and captured positions. But Petrograd has overcome its surprise, and is on its guard; at every moment it is becoming more confident. By a sort of acquired momentum, the energy devoted to defense, above all internal defense, is developing and rapidly increasing.

A decision by the central committee of the Communist Party, published June 14, when militants were being sent to the front, requires all party members to learn immediately how to handle a machine-gun.

Now extraordinary precautionary measures are coming one after the other. In all this we are aware of the strong hand of the head of internal security, Peters…. Peters has issued a poster which reiterates that “anyone found in possession of weapons or ammunition after June 24 will be immediately shot.” And thus we are brought back to the question of the terror, which is the logical conclusion of all these measures.

I believe I have seen the birth of the terror during these anxious days. A list of sixty-six people who have been shot has just been published by the Special Commission….Less than the number of our people that they shot in the Krasnaia Gorka fort immediately after the betrayal….

The other night I was at the Special Commission headquarters, perhaps at the very time when the fate of those sixty-six was being decided. Peters was there, in army  uniform, following by telephone the various internal and external defense operations which are still in an indeterminate state. The news arrive, one item after another: ” A certain fort at Kronstadt is on fire. British planes are bombing the fleet. On a certain battleship treachery is being planned. At Krasnaia Gorka, the Whites are systematically shooting their prisoners and transmitting appeals to the British fleet by radio. The general staff of a certain Red regiment have been captured by Yudenich and shot. Balakhovich has burned a village. In a certain street a clandestine printing press has been discovered with manifestos in favor of the Constituent Assembly. In a certain house, a stock of guns and grenades has been found. Here there is a machine-gun in an attic. There, bombs in a cellar. An agent of the National Center has been arrested on the Finnish frontier: he was carrying messages from the Whites in the city. In Karelia the Whites have won a victory. In X. Street, speculators will have no sugar for the next fortnight. Somewhere else a bad Communist has committed a theft. There has just been an attack on the Moscow railway line, with the aim of cutting off food supplies.” Such are the reports which a man invested with the highest responsibility for the defense of the revolutionary capital receives from morning to evening and from evening to morning. He knows that the slightest mistake, error, hesitation, or weakness can lead to a fatal betrayal. Everywhere there are concealed hatreds. Only a small numner of men can be relied on…. And now the revolutionary, at his post amid this enormous danger, is brought this list of sixty-six Whites, treacherous officers, intellectuals who support the Entente, starvers of the people, shady ‘Communsists’. Did he have any choice? Was not terror imposed upon him by implacable necessity? Perhaps this very evening the revolution will collapse in our blood and in the blood of the whole people. The old law is: kill or be killed. But for us it is nonetheless something higher and less cruel: Break the past of lies, oppression, exploitation, authority, so that the future shall belong to the free workers in a free society. Crush this handful of backward-looking reactionaries — sixty-six, one hundred or three hundred, what does it matter! — in order to spare the tens of thousands of workers whom they will slaughter if they come out on top. Crush this incipient reaction at whatever cost, because if it were to triumph even for a moment it would be a calamity for the whole of humanity.

And then let those who have not lived through these hours of civil war, let those who are living peacefully in bourgeois servility, cast the first stone!

End of June 1919     The history of all revolutions contains similar pages…. it is the fact that the course of world wars obeys general laws which science will codify later on, but which we can already glimpse at present time. Besides, we don’t need to evoke the epic of 1793 to understand that a rich and powerful class will not let let itself be dispossed without a fight to the death.

This fight to the death, in Red Russia, has many victims. At certain times these days of hatred are so painful that one feels on the brink of despair, and one loses faith in humanity, and in ideas, and in oneself. The horizon seems to block out all light. The evil madness of humanity seems so great that there is no way out. The Russian revolutionaries have all gone through such doubt and anguish…. For the essential thing is that during the days when the nightmare overed above the Red city, thousands and thousands of people lived there supported by the awareness that they were carrying out a vast, necessary and noble task, that they were working for the future and for the whole of humanity.

Two or three ideas, but lofty, radiant ideas, struck obstinately in their brains: the principle of the commune, the fraternity of workers, the International, fraternity between races. And they applied themselves to the liberation of women, to ensuring the security and well-being of children