Some of these desiderata might have sounded unacceptably radical to the guardians of bourgeois order imploring the Soviet to join them in ruling, but in fact these conditions were obligingly elastic, their time frames long, often indeterminate

His maverick theories, bitter and brutal polemics, abrasive personality and inveterate contrariness

When Martov attempted to speak from the platform, the audience howled contumely on him

An uneasiness, a dangerous ill temper escalated among soldiers, workers, and, most dramatically, peasants. For the most part it did not, yet, take explicitly politicised forms, but it was protean, destructive and very often violent.

The testeria of the reception was genuine, but it was neither deep nor lasting.

The old guard at the army’s top were deeply bitter at the direction of the war and the erosion of old nostrums.

the young Ukrainian Aleksandr Dneprovskiy execrated the patriotic press in the last months before the offensive as ‘tubs of printed slop … poured over the heads of long-suffering humanity’.

Perhaps they had been evasive, had elided distinct positions, and perhaps that had confused some audiences.

the party gave its hurried and flustered blessing to a march on the Tauride Palace, in an effort to spread its aegis over a fait accompli

As they approached, so too at the Neva’s mouth did a naval gallimaufry. A mad patchwork flotilla.