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Anatoly Lunacharsky's Revolutionary Silhouettes, based on the author's personal recollections, contain valuable information on the leaders of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

On the morning of 30 December 1916, the people of Petrograd woke up to the news that the infamous priest Gregori Rasputin had been killed with poison. Rasputin was a charlatan, drunkard and serial-womaniser of upper class wives and daughters, but most importantly he was the closest adviser to the royal couple.

The First World War was becoming a catastrophe for Russia. From the front line there was news of defeat after defeat. The breakdown of the economy produced a shortage of bread. Crowds of half-starved and desperate women queued outside shops for bread that never arrived. But at the top of Russian society things were very different.

"If you want to do more than merely complain about the counter-revolution, if you want to fight it, you must join us in saying: Down with the ten capitalist Ministers!"

"The fact is there: the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are the ruling party now. And this ruling party is voluntarily ceding power (the majority in the government) to the party of the Cavaignacs!!"

"To be really revolutionary, the democrats of Russia today must march in very close alliance with the proletariat, supporting it in its struggle as the only thoroughly revolutionary class."

A feature appeared recently in the London Evening Standard (10th February, 2017) by a certain Victor Sebestyen about the exhibition Russian Art 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy.

"We are decidedly against all imperialist wars and all bourgeois governments waging such wars, including our own Provisional Government; we are decidedly against “revolutionary defencism” in Russia."

 Written: the Decision—December 30, 1917 (January 12, 1918); the Addendum—January 1 (14), 1918.

"A person who holds an important post in the trade union movement and is debauching that movement with shoddy bourgeois ideas..."

"The revolutionary movement of the Ukrainian working classes for the transfer of all power to the Soviets is assuming ever greater proportions in the Ukraine itself and holds out the prospect of an early victory over the Ukrainian bourgeoisie."

"We must fight against the old habit of regarding the measure of labour and the means of production from the point of view of the slave whose sole aim is to lighten the burden of labour or to obtain at least some little bit from the bourgeoisie."