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Dictator Kishkin rushed to the military headquarters to take command. His first action was to dismiss the chief of staff, Polkovnikov, and replace him with Bagratuni. This provoked the first crack in his absolute authority: miraculously resistant to awe at Kishkin’s power, Polkovnikov’s associates …

With all the seriousness in the world, like burnt-out matches telling grim stories of the conflagration they will soon start, the ashes of Russia’s Provisional Government debated which of them to make dictator.

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…