have been transformed into a perfect type of “Red” that deceived and terrorized the Russian population and gave credence to the Bolshevik assertion that “former officialdom is now acting with the proletariat.”  How well the diarist deceives the Bolsheviki and sustains this claim of Trotzky is fully revealed in the dramatic incidents recorded:  nowhere in literature is found a better illustration of social metempsychosis,—­of the abasement of moral and intellectual refinement to the elemental and unconscious vulgarity and irresponsibility of predatory Communism and mob indifference to shame!  It is the devolution of Moral Responsibility into organized iniquity and characterizes primordial Passion released from sentiment and law,—­and it was the necessary camouflage of the diarist in his struggle for life and in his efforts to promote the Czar’s escape.

In translating Part Two, or the memoranda of this Imperial rescuer, from Russian into English, or the frequent French, to characterize the event recorded, there were found to be many situations, phrases and expressions that may shock the sensitive reader; in the conceptions of the diarist, however, in his cynicism and degradation he photographs Red Russia and reveals the characteristics necessary to visualize the horror that accompanied the event.  A truthful picture of this unique segment of human history can be preserved only in a word-for-word translation of this document.  Therefore, with the exception of a few letters involving the name of A.F.  Kerensky, nothing has been withheld from the inspection of the reader to view the conduct of nobility subjected to privations, temptation and the fascinating power of sin.

TRANSLATOR.

I. PETROGRAD

1.

... and, post factum, everybody claims that “he (or more often she) predicted it long ago, but they would not listen.”  It is a lie; we all knew that the war has been conducted abominably, that Rasputin and Stuermer were plotting, that the administration was greatly inclined to graft,—­all gossip of the town.  But no one whom I had seen since the execution of the monk was aware of the real fact:  the revolution was in the air.  Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right.  In fact, the Court, and people around it,—­were much better posted; perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception.  Maroossia was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral’s death; they said that the danger was expected from the “Town and Country Union.”  But all these whispers and chatterings were always of the category of a “so-and-so, whose brother’s friend knew a man who....”