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Troops radicalised or gave up hope or both in the grinding war. They wrote bitter, raging letters now to the country’s leaders. One soldier, Kuchlavok, and his regiment sent Izvestia a long, near-glossolalic sermon of despair that their revolution had been in vain, a deflected apocalypse, catastrop…

The mood grew ugly. Chernov shrank precariously back as suspicious men and women surrounding him jostled closer to where he balanced. A big worker pushed his way through and came up close and shook his fist in Chernov’s face.

‘Take power, you son of a bitch,’ he bellowed, in one of most famous p…

The situation had long ceased to be a matter of individuals, or even whole battalions, disobeying orders. Now there was mass movement of Russian troops in both directions: forward from the trenches, not belligerently but in more fraternisation, shouting greetings, picking a way through the landscap…

Nomenclature was tangled: Russia that year was riddled with committees, caucuses, congresses, permanent and semi-permanent, standing and not-standing. Meetings proliferated ad well-minuted infinitum. [...]

7) abolition of officers' honorary titles and of officers' use of derogatory terms for their men.