Sweet Father and Mother,

It was already clear to me about a week ago that there was no way out. Without a doubt the country is heading for a general slaughter, famine, the collapse of the front, where half the soldiers will perish, and the ruin of the urban population. The cultural inheritance of the nation, its people and civilization, will be destroyed. Armies of migrants, then small groups, and then maybe no more than individual people, will roam around the country fighting each other with rifles and then no more than clubs. I will not live to see it, and, I hope, neither will you.

Prince Lvov on the eve of his resignation, July 1917 ^[1]

 

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Page Notes:

^[1] Source: Orlando Figes A People's Tragedy (1996) http://waggish.org/2009/12/29/russian-revolution-quotes.

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