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View of Moscow, the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral along the Moskva River. The message on the reverse was dated from Moscow May 29, 1914 (new style); multiple postmarks May 17 (old style; May 30 new style) and May 21 (old style; June 3 new style).
Alexander Kerensky, leader of Russia's Cadet party and a member of the Provisional government in 1917 as Minister of Justice, War, and Prime Minister. From 'The War of the Nations Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings Compiled from the Mid-Week Pictorial Published by the New York Times Co. New York City N.Y.' © Copyrighted 1919 by the New York Times Company 1914 - 1919
Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
Western Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
"Early in the morning of the 28th cadets seized all the key communication points and demanded that the troops in the Kremlin surrender or face an artillery bombardment. The Kremlin garrison capitulated, only to be machine-gunned by the score when the cadets thought they were being fired on. This was the first great atrocity presaging the coming terror by Whites and Reds alike.Bitter fighting ensued for the rest of the day and during the 29th, and the superior numbers and artillery of the pro-soviet regiments and Red Guards began to be felt." ((1), more)
"By the morning of the twenty-ninth we should have been in Petrograd, but we had only gotten as far as Tsarskoye Selo. That same day an anti-Bolshevik revolt broke out in the capital. At four in the afternoon I was called to the telephone. It was the Mikhailsky Castle calling from the very center of the city, where the headquarters of the government supporters were located. They begged me to send help, but we were unable to give it.The final act in the tragedy of the Provisional Government's struggle for the freedom and honor of Russia was played out on October 30, near Pulkovo, the site of the famous observatory. Against us were arrayed 12,000 men variously armed. The so-called Pulkovo Heights were occupied by Kronstadt sailors. We had 700 Cossacks, one armored train, the first infantry regiment to reach us from the front, and a few field guns." ((2), more)
"French officers addressing units of its 30th ID were met with shouts of 'Russians make war for France' and 'Peace and nothing more.' Their reports described Russian officers as demoralized and humiliated. In the 117th Regiment, officers of one battalion were arrested by their men and forced to march at command. Men of the 119th Regiment stormed their officers' mess, sacked the place, and forced its occupants to flee out a window. '30 Division is not the only [Russian] division . . . in a state of anarchy,' Colonel Ion Antonescu commented. 'The Russian 6th Army does not wish to fight and the troops of this army . . . would retreat at the first move of the enemy.'Consequently, Romanian reserves were channeled into strategic areas behind the 6th Army. Neighboring Romanian commanders made contact with their Russian counterparts to work out a plan of operations in the event of an enemy attack. On 13 November, after one regiment of the 30th ID left the line and its replacement refused to man it, a Romanian regiment took its place." ((3), more)
"The 14th. The Painlevé Ministry fell on the 13th at ten o'clock in the evening. It is the first Cabinet during the war to be defeated on a division. Painlevé has fallen a victim to his friendships." ((4), more)
". . . the anti-Bolshevik forces had the demoralizing news that Kerensky's drive on Petrograd had failed, while the soviet side could count on a steady flow of reinforcements. The cadets were gradually pressing into a tighter circle, and finally on November 2 troops of the soviet stormed back into the Kremlin itself. Recognizing the hopelessness of further fighting, the Committee of Public Safety surrendered to the MRC. Moscow was won for the soviets, but at the cost of civil war in earnest; some five hundred men had been killed on the Bolshevik side alone." ((5), more)
(1) Forces supporting the Bolshevik Revolution did not immediately secure Moscow, Russia's second city, but were opposed by a conservative Committee of Public Safety that included the officer cadets who took the Kremlin and slayed some of its defenders on October 28 (November 11 New Style). Support for the Bolsheviks was strong in the army and its many soviets. The Red Guards was the military wing of the Bolsheviks initially apart from the army, though many of its members were former soldiers.
Red October: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 by Robert V. Daniels, page 207, copyright © 1967 Robert V. Daniels, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1967
(2) Alexander Kerensky was head of the Provisional Government that the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew. He managed to escape Petrograd, and spent the following days trying to rally troops to retake the capital. As he writes in his memoir, Russia and History's Turning Point, he gathered half-hearted support that was defeated. Tsarskoye Selo was the summer palace of the deposed Tsar. His dates, October 29 and 30 are November 11 and 12, New Style. Kronstadt was an island naval base in the gulf west of Petrograd, and strongly supported the revolution.
Russia and History's Turning Point by Alexander Kerensky, page 443, copyright © 1965 by Alexander Kerensky, publisher: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, publication date: 1965
(3) Until being ordered on July 25,1917 by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky to stop all offensive action, the Russians had participated in a Romanian offensive. France had helped rebuild the Romanian army after its defeat in 1916, providing materiel and training. One of the demands of the Bolshevik Revolution was an immediate end to the war. Without Russian support, what remained of the Romanian army would not be able to hold what remained of unoccupied Romania: Moldavia, the northern part of the country. 'ID' is an infantry division.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 261–262, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(4) Entry for November 14, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. French President Raymond Poincaré served through the entire war, but the prime ministers and their governments were less stable. Stable or not, they maintained a Union Sacrée across the political spectrum. The fall of Paul Painlevé's government was different, and came after mutinies in much of the French army in May and June and the Bolshevik Revolution a week before Corday wrote, in a storm of charges of collaboration with Germany and outright treason directed against pacifists, socialists, the leftist press, and some close to Painlevé.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, pp. 292–293, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) Forces supporting the Bolshevik Revolution did not immediately secure Moscow, Russia's second city, but were opposed by a conservative Committee of Public Safety that included officer cadets who took the Kremlin and slayed some of its defenders on October 28 (November 11 New Style), 1917. The Military Revolutionary Committee that recaptured the Kremlin on November 2 (15 N.S.) was the counterpart of the one that had been victorious in Petrograd. Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government that fell to the Bolsheviks, unsuccessfully tried to rally troops to retake the capital. Bolsheviks dominated many of the soviets that represented military units, workers, factories, cities, and towns.
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