Thirty-seventh installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

March 5, 1917

My mind is racing trying to understand the meaning of recent events. An event unheard of in human history has occurred, something as if out of a storybook, impossible. In the space of 24 hours two rulers rejected the throne. The Romanov dynasty, which ruled from Russia’s helm for 300 years, has been forced to abdicate the throne and power over the land. The power from the people has united in one call: Down with the Czar!

A big conference has taken place in Petrograd, where the vice-prosecutor requested to have the Czar’s throne removed from the hall, as a symbol of the end of Czarism. All of the old government men have been arrested, big ministers, who everyone feared, are now sitting locked up in prisons. Political prisoners have been released from jail. The police officials and deputies have been relieved of their weapons, patrols are being done in their place. The Red flag, for whose sake so many have suffered, is now raised across Russia. But what will happen to Russia, what will happen to us? Now we stand at the eve of big changes, which everyone is awaiting with troubled minds.

We are the children of a crazy age, what all have we experienced, and what more will we survive? What kind of a life will our children have?

WW1 Diary – March 5, 1917
Tagged on:             

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove that you\'re a human! *