Provisional Government Quotes

The Ganeva conference on Indochina agreements stated that the south of Vietnam would be handed over to a provisional administration after two years at the most and that general elections would be held in 1956 at the latest, giving Vietnam a single and united government. (due to American actions, the agreements were never put into place)

Dynasties and thrones are not half so important as workshops, farms and factories. Rather we may say that dynasties and thrones, and even provisional governments, are good for anything exactly in proportion as they secure fair play, justice and freedom to those who labour.” – John Mitchell, 1848

One of the essential characteristics of the state of exception-the provisional abolition of the distinction among legislative, executive, and judicial powers-here shows its tendency to become a lasting practice of government.

The Provisional Government had lost effective military control of the capital a full two days before the armed uprising began. This was the essential fact of the whole insurrection: without it one cannot explain the ease of the Bolshevik victory.

It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments,” Seán MacStiofáin, the provisional IRA’s first chief of staff, said once, looking back on those early years.

In the last analysis, however, the Provisional Government had expired even before the Bolsheviks finished it off.

A provisional government was appointed on April 1 (it consisted mainly of Talleyrand's whist partners), and the following day the Senate, on Talleyrand's urging, declared Napoleon deposed.

This the people showed firmly and cruelly when they abandoned, to the devil, the Provisional Government, the Constituent Assembly, and ‘everything that generations of the best Russians died for,’ as you yourself have expressed it, and ‘including your victorious end,’ to boot.

You will wonder at me, but these public affairs have half killed me. You know I can’t take things quietly. Your complaint and mine, Fanny, are just opposite. For weeks and weeks, in my feverish state, I never closed my eyes without suffering ‘punishment’ under eternal articles of peace and unending lists of provisional governments. Do you wonder?

This body of thought represents an almost total inversion of Westphalian world order. In the purist version of Islamism, the state cannot be the point of departure for an international system because states are secular, hence illegitimate; at best they may achieve a kind of provisional status en route to a religious entity on a larger scale. Noninterference in other countries’ domestic affairs cannot serve as a governing principle, because national loyalties represent deviations from the true faith and because jihadists have a duty to transform dar al-harb, the world of unbelievers. Purity, not stability, is the guiding principle of this conception of world order.

Liberalism and science are systems—not just neat little theories—because they are self-skeptical rather than self-certain, by design. This is a reasoned—not a radical—skepticism. They put the empirical first, rather than the theoretical. They are self-correcting. Liberal systems like regulated capitalism, republican democracy, and science resolve conflicts by subjecting human economies, societies, and knowledge-production to evolutionary processes that—over time, and with persistent effort—produce reliable societies, governments, and provisionally true statements about the world. The proof is that almost everything has changed over the last five hundred years, especially in the West. As Theory points out, that progress has sometimes been problematic, but it has still been progress. Things are better than they were five hundred years ago, for most people most of the time, and this is undeniable.

Lenin's reaction to this defence of what he called the 'predatory treaties concluded by the tsarist clique and the "Allied" bankers was predictable. 'The cards are on the table...[he wrote]. Short and clear. War to a decisive victory. The alliance with the British and French bankers is sacred...The new Note of the Provisional Government will pour oil on the flames. It can only arouse a bellicose spirit in Germany. It will help Wilhelm the Brigand to go on deceiving "his own" workers and soldiers and drag them into a war "to a finish". Fight- because we want to plunder. Die in your tens of thousands every day - because "we"... have not yet got our share of the spoils.

San Francisco, Monday, April 23 The newspapers, particularly the Hearst and Roy Howard press, are kicking up an unholy fuss over the deadlock on Poland. Anything for a headline. And strife makes headlines. And attacks on Russia make headlines. The question is: which Polish delegation shall be seated, the London government-in-exile or the “provisional government” in Poland? We and the British recognize the first; Russia the second. The sensation-mongers are predicting the conference may break up over Poland, but I do not believe it. The delegates are here to draw up plans for a world organization, not to deal with the numerous headaches arising from the present state of the war and the world. But an irresponsible press could wreck this meeting.

Courageous Belgian people, you have conquered decisively! Make sure now to take advantage of this victory, your enemies are dumbfounded, let us not lose a moment, let us unite around the provisional government that has been established thanks to you, do not doubt that the arsonists, who you have expelled from your capital in such a humiliating way, are already plotting new crimes. No more hesitating and sparing, we must chase away once and for all the murderers from our house who have worked here with fire and sword, raping and destroying. We must save our mothers, our wives, our children and our property; we must live as free men, or bury ourselves under a mountain of ashes. Let us be united dear compatriots, and we will be invincible, the true order, it is indispensable to preserve our independence. Long live Belgium!

The National Revolution has begun!” Hitler shouted. “This building is occupied by six hundred heavily armed men. No one may leave the hall. Unless there is immediate quiet I shall have a machine gun posted in the gallery. The Bavarian and Reich governments have been removed and a provisional national government formed. The barracks of the Reichswehr and police are occupied. The Army and the police are marching on the city under the swastika banner.

Admittedly, I advance some ambitious theories of my own in this book. But I must stress that I consider them provisional, and I would urge you to consider whether I might be mistaken. Please, I would ask, consider that I might be mistaken particularly if my book makes you feel really, really good inside. Feelings of exactly this type, shared between author and reader, seem likely to have led the entire discipline of political philosophy systematically astray for much of its history. Do not trust them.

Lenin's political strength was produced to a great extent by the sincerity of his anti-war attitude and by his oratorical ability in making his sincerity felt. It was evident'.....'when he spoke to soldiers of the Izmailovsky regiment. The Provisional Government, he stated, was continuing the war in the interests of the capitalists, whereas a government of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies would redistribute the land and remove the incentive for war. He went on: 'Do not allow the police to be re-established, do not let the state power or the administration of the state pass into the hands of the bureaucracy, who are non-elective, undisplaceable, and paid on a bourgeois scale; get together, unite yourselves, trusting no one, depending only on your own intelligence and experience - and Russia will be able to move with a firm, measured, unerring trend toward the liberation of both our own country and of all humanity from the yoke of capital as well as from the horrors of war.

In order to mount a revolution, numbers are never enough. Revolutions are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses. If you want to launch a revolution, don’t ask yourself, ‘How many people support my ideas?’ Instead, ask yourself, ‘How many of my supporters are capable of effective collaboration?’ The Russian Revolution finally erupted not when 180 million peasants rose against the tsar, but rather when a handful of communists placed themselves at the right place at the right time. In 1917, at a time when the Russian upper and middle classes numbered at least 3 million people, the Communist Party had just 23,000 members.19 The communists nevertheless gained control of the vast Russian Empire because they organised themselves well. When authority in Russia slipped from the decrepit hands of the tsar and the equally shaky hands of Kerensky’s provisional government, the communists seized it with alacrity, gripping the reins of power like a bulldog locking its jaws on a bone.

The monarchical form of government is the form most natural to man. How could it possibly happen that, universally and at all times, many millions, even hundreds of millions, of us men have subjected ourselves to and willingly obeyed one man, occasionally even a woman or, provisionally, a child, if there were not in man a monarchical instinct which drives him to it as to the condition most appropriate to him? . . . Republics are anti-natural, artificial, and derive from reflection: consequently there are also very few of them in the entire history of mankind...

When therefore the people sets up an hereditary government, whether it be monarchical and confined to one family, or aristocratic and confined to a class, what it enters into is not an undertaking; the administration is given a provisional form, until the people chooses to order it otherwise. It is true that such changes are always dangerous, and that the established government should never be touched except when it comes to be incompatible with the public good; but the circumspection this involves is a maxim of policy and not a rule of right, and the State is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its rulers than military authority in the hands of its generals. It is also true that it is impossible to be too careful to observe, in such cases, all the formalities necessary to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of a whole people from the clamour of a faction. Here above all no further concession should be made to the untoward possibility than cannot, in the strictest logic, be refused it. From this obligation the prince derives a great advantage in preserving his power despite the people, without it being possible to say he has usurped it; for, seeming to avail himself only of his rights, he finds it very easy to extend them, and to prevent, under the pretext of keeping the peace, assemblies that are destined to the re-establishment of order; with the result that he takes advantage of a silence he does not allow to be broken, or of irregularities he causes to be committed, to assume that he has the support of those whom fear prevents from speaking, and to punish those who dare to speak. Thus it was that the decemvirs, first elected for one year and then kept on in office for a second, tried to perpetuate their power by forbidding the comitia to assemble; and by this easy method every government in the world, once clothed with the public power, sooner or later usurps the sovereign authority.

With the declassed character of lumpenproletarians in mind, Marx had stated that they are as capable of “the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices, as of the basest banditry and the dirtiest corruption.”9 He emphasized the fact that the provisional government’s mobile guards under the Paris Commune—some 24,000 troops—were largely formed out of young lumpenproletarians from fifteen to twenty years of age. Too many Marxists have been inclined to overvalue the second part of Marx’s observation—that the lumpenproletariat is capable of the basest banditry and the dirtiest corruption—while minimizing or indeed totally disregarding his first remark, applauding the lumpen for their heroic deeds and exalted sacrifices.

cousin and double, who deferred to her in all things, was forced to abdicate. Nicky turned to Georgie for refuge, to which the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, agreed and

Liberal systems like regulated capitalism, republican democracy, and science resolve conflicts by subjecting human economies, societies, and knowledge-production to evolutionary processes that—over time, and with persistent effort—produce reliable societies, governments, and provisionally true statements about the world.

Religions and many theoretical constructions are metanarratives, but liberalism and science are not. Liberalism and science are systems—not just neat little theories—because they are self-skeptical rather than self-certain, by design. This is a reasoned—not a radical—skepticism. They put the empirical first, rather than the theoretical. They are self-correcting. Liberal systems like regulated capitalism, republican democracy, and science resolve conflicts by subjecting human economies, societies, and knowledge-production to evolutionary processes that—over time, and with persistent effort—produce reliable societies, governments, and provisionally true statements about the world. The proof is that almost everything has changed over the last five hundred years, especially in the West. As Theory points out, that progress has sometimes been problematic, but it has still been progress. Things are better than they were five hundred years ago, for most people most of the time, and this is undeniable.

The Pacific Northwest gained a reputation for its tolerance of people of color. Upon arrival many would learn such a reputation was mostly unfounded. Like the rest of the country, the region was deeply divided over slavery. The exception was Oregon's black exclusion laws. In 1844, the provisional government outlawed slavery as a tactic to preclude settlers from bringing their slaves into the territory. Later the exclusion law was written into the state constitution, which was to be submitted to the U.S. Congress in 1857.

he advocated a strategy of pressing forward from the stage of democratic revolution represented in the Provisional Government to that of socialist revolution via the seizure of power and establishment of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In an effort to validate this position ideologically, Lenin went back to his Marxist texts during an interval of forced inactivity during 1917 and wrote The State and Revolution, his principal work of political theory.

2. “Development that is solely defined in terms of external presence or absence of infrastructure is an: “Arrested/Provisional Development”. Its only goal is to mitigate immediate sufferings. The people’s emotions are played on, their current sufferings and hardship retards their vision, their sense of worth as humans and ultimately their expectations are miniaturized and capped. Development in other places we regard as developed nations actually is a crystallization of the collectively shared thoughts of the people on their Health, Education, Shelter, Security, Intelligence etc. We should really be asking ourselves these questions whenever we notice any so called developmental projects going on; What is our definition of schooling; what kind of schooling experience befits Humans who are Nigerians? What kind of facilities, facilitators befits Humans, Nigerians? What Objective and content should we as a people pursue? What is our definition of Market; what kind of market befits Humans, Nigerians; do you think a market should have functional drains, recycling plants, water facilities, paved parking lots, lighting facilities? Do you think Humans, Nigerians deserve these and more?

Prosecutor Soloviev in 2010 said Kaplan and Viktor Garsky were planning to assassinate Vladimir Alexandrovich Sukhomlinov, the local governor general. Sukhomlinov would later serve as minister of war, 1909–1915, but was sacked for failing to keep the Russian army sufficiently supplied with weapons. The provisional government convicted him of corruption and treason, and sentenced him to life in prison. The Bolsheviks freed him and he fled to Germany. Sukhomlinov dressed in heavily ornate uniforms with medals, plumes, ribbons, and gold braid. The “Sukhomlinov Effect” is named after him. It contends that armies with the most pretentious uniforms lose wars.

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle Charles de Gaulle a highly recognized French General and Statesman was born in Lille, France on November 22, 1890. During the First World War he was wounded several times, and later taken prisoner by the Germans near Verdun. During the Second World War, during the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armored division which successfully counterattacked the German troops. Towards the end of the war he headed the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946. In 1958, de Gaulle was elected as the 18th President of France, an office he held until his resignation in 1969. As a war hero of the Allied forces and France, his memory continues to inspire the French people. Charles de Gaulle died of a ruptured artery on November 9, 1970 leaving his wife Yvonne Vendroux and two of their three children. He is also credited with saying… “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

A Signal” Stealing an Election For a second time, Batista made a bid for the presidency of Cuba. Losing in the opinion polls, Batista, with military support and a still loyal labor force backing him, overthrew the legitimate government. On March 10, 1952, Batista forced President Carlos Prío Socarrás out of office, blatantly taking the seat of the presidency for himself and declaring himself the Provisional President. Shortly after the coup, the United States government officially accepted Batista as an ally, and officially recognized his new régime. Although he made many promises, Batista did not continue the progressive social policies of his first term as President of Cuba. Instead, he quickly turned democratic Cuba into a “Police State.” According to some perhaps questionable reports, Batista was accused of murdering 20,000 Cubans during the following seven years, thereby destroying individual liberty for the people. The Eisenhower Administration, influenced by “Special Interest Groups,” sent aid to his régime. To a great extent, it was American politics that enabled Batista, who had come to power illegally, to get financial support for his “Reign of Terror.” Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista, hailing him as a strong ally and a good friend to America!

The name Camp Columbia came from a historic and rather poetic name for the United States. It was founded in 1898, for the purpose of housing U.S. Army troops during the provisional American protectorate over Cuba. It was also considered “the First American occupation of Cuba,” established in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. After the withdrawal of American troops, the military establishment was turned over to the Cuban government and became the largest Cuban army base on the island. On September 4, 1933, at Camp Columbia, an army base in Havana, Batista with his inner circle of conspirators took over power as he forced a military coup. Labor leaders who had opposed Machado’s re-election, along with “The Student Directory” comprised of teachers as well as students, joined the sergeants in assuming control of the government. In this way, Batista turned the revolt within the military into the full-blown “Revolution of 1933.

At that moment Britain had reached the critical stage of negotiations, begun more than two years previously, with the Ottoman Empire, aimed at resolving the longstanding issues between the two governments over a whole range of matters, including those in the Persian Gulf. These issues included defining British and Ottoman territories and spheres of influence along the entire length of the Gulf, customs duties and terms for the completion of the long-projected Baghdad railway. One of the issues that had been provisionally resolved between the two sides was the question of Najd, which was to be recognised as an Ottoman province and to include Hasa. So Ibn Saud’s sudden seizure of Hasa and the renewal of arguments from British Officials in the Gulf and India, including both Cox and the Viceroy, for reaching some kind of agreement with Ibn Saud, were greeted in London with dismay. Sir Edward Grey, one of the longest-serving but least-travelled Foreign Secretaries in British history, had little knowledge of the world beyond Whitehall. He spoke no foreign languages and had never travelled further than France. One highly respected contemporary described him as so ignorant of the lands beyond Europe that ‘he hardly knew the Persian Gulf from the Red Sea and Europe’.11 At

As Fidel Castro’s M–26–7 forces increased their attacks, the Cuban army was forced to withdraw into the larger towns for safety. This caused ever-increasing pressure on Batista. The United States government stopped supplying the Batista régime with weapons and ammunition. In 1958, in spite of an all-out attack and heavy aerial bombings upon Castro’s guerrilla forces, known as “Operation Verano,” the rebels continued advancing. At that time Batista’s Army had 10,000 soldiers surrounding the Sierra Maestra Mountains and Castro had 300 men under his command, many of them former Batista soldiers who joined the rebels after being appalled by the abuses that they were ordered to carry out. By closing off the major roads and rail lines, Castro put Batista’s forces at a severe disadvantage. On January 1, 1959, with his pockets stuffed with money and an airplane full of art, Presidente Fulgencio Batista flew the coop. Flying to the Dominican Republic before continuing to Portugal some months later, he left Anselmo Alliegro Mila to serve as Acting President. The next day he was relieved and Carlos Manuel Piedra, who had served as the senior member of the Supreme Court, was appointed Provisional President for a day. It was in accordance with the 1940 Cuban constitution, but his appointment was opposed by the new leader, Fidel Castro…. Piedra was 92 years old when he died in 1988.

It may well be that the Bolsheviks' greatest strength in 1917 was not strict party organization and discipline (which scarcely existed at this time) but rather the party's stance of intransigent radicalism on the extreme left of the political spectrum. While other socialist and liberal groups jostled for position in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks refused to be co-opted and denounced the politics of coalition and compromise. While other formerly radical politicians called for restraint and responsible, statesmanlike leadership, the Bolsheviks stayed out on the streets with the irresponsible and belligerent revolutionary crowd. As the 'dual power' structure disintegrated, discrediting the coalition parties represented in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet leadership, only the Bolsheviks were in a position to benefit. Among the socialist parties, only the Bolsheviks had overcome Marxist scruples, caught the mood of the crowd, and declared their willingness to seize power in the name of the proletarian revolution.

As Fidel Castro’s M–26–7 forces increased their attacks, the Cuban army was forced to withdraw into the larger towns for safety. This caused ever-increasing pressure on Batista. The United States government stopped supplying the Batista régime with weapons and ammunition. In 1958, in spite of an all-out attack and heavy aerial bombings upon Castro’s guerrilla forces, known as “Operation Verano,” the rebels continued advancing. At that time Batista’s Army had 10,000 soldiers surrounding the Sierra Maestra Mountains and Castro had 300 men under his command, many of them former Batista soldiers who joined the rebels after being appalled by the abuses that they were ordered to carry out. By closing off the major roads and rail lines, Castro put Batista’s forces at a severe disadvantage. On January 1, 1959, with his pockets stuffed with money and an airplane full of art, Presidente Fulgencio Batista flew the coop. Flying to the Dominican Republic before continuing to Portugal some months later, he left Anselmo Alliegro Mila to serve as Acting President. The next day he was relieved and Carlos Manuel Piedra, who had served as the senior member of the Supreme Court, was appointed Provisional President for a day. It was in accordance with the 1940 Cuban constitution, but his appointment was opposed by the new leader, Fidel Castro.

In just a bony fistful of years, classical Russian food culture vanished, almost without a trace. The country's nationalistic euphoria on entering World War I in 1914 collapsed under nonstop disasters presided over by the 'last of the Romanovs': clueless, autocratic czar Nicholas II and Alexandra, his reactionary, hysterical German-born wife. Imperial Russia went lurching toward breakdown and starvation. Golden pies, suckling pigs? In 1917, the insurgent Bolsheviks' banners demanded simply the most basic of staples - khleb (bread) - along with land (beleaguered peasants were 80 percent of Russia's population) and an end to the ruinous war. On the evening of October 25, hours before the coup by Lenin and his tiny cadre, ministers of Kerensky's foundering provisional government, which replaced the czar after the popular revolution of February 1917, dined finely at the Winter Palace: soup, artichokes, and fish. A doomed meal all around.

Tomás Estrada Palma was a Cuban-born American citizen, who was a moderate and had worked with José Martí in New York. He became the leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Party after Marti’s death. On December 31, 1901, Tomás Estrada Palma was duly elected to become the first President of Cuba. Estrada Palma and the Cuban Congress assumed governance on May 20, 1902, which then became the official birthdate of the Cuban Republic. In 1906, Estrada Palma appealed to the United States to intervene in the revolt that threatened his second term. As Secretary of War during the Roosevelt administration, William Howard Taft was sent to Cuba, after having been the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines. For the short period of time from September 29, 1906, until October 13, 1906, Taft was the Provisional Governor of Cuba. During this time, 5,600 U.S. Army troops were sent to Cuba to reassert American authority, giving Taft the muscle to set up another provisional government. Later, on March 4, 1909, Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States.

Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, who was one of its authors, very properly says: "The whole document utterly negatives the idea, which so many have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of 'conspirators,' whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and the erection of a great 'slavery oligarchy,' instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. This work of the Montgomery Convention, with that of the Constitution for a Provisional Government, will ever remain, not only as a monument of the wisdom, forecast, and statesmanship of the men who constituted it, but an everlasting refutation of the charges which have been brought against them. These works together show clearly that their only leading object was to sustain, uphold, and perpetuate the fundamental principles of the Constitution of the United States.

Therefore the first bill which passed the provisional Congress provided for receiving troops for short periods—as my memory serves, for sixty days. The chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, the heroic Colonel Bartow, who sealed his devotion to the cause with his life's blood on the field of Manassas, in deference to my earnest remonstrance against such a policy, returned with the bill to the House (the Congress then consisted of but one House), and procured a modification by which the term of service was extended to twelve months unless sooner discharged.

On the same day (March 6, 1861) was enacted the law for the establishment and organization of the Army of the Confederate States of America, this being in contradistinction to the provisional army, which was to be composed of troops tendered by the States, as in the first act, and volunteers received, as in the second act, to constitute a provisional army.

To Brigadier-General G. T. Beauregard, "Commanding Provisional Army, C. S. A." "Montgomery, April 11th. "General Beauregard, Charleston. "We do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter, if Major Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree that, in the mean time, he will not use his guns against us, unless ours should be employed against Fort Sumter. You are thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable. (Signed) "L. P. Walker, Secretary of War.

The very first enactment, made on the 9th of February, 1861—the day after the adoption of the Provisional Constitution—was this: "That all the laws of the United States of America in force and in use in the Confederate States of America on the first day of November last, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the Confederate States, be and the same are hereby continued in force until altered or repealed by the Congress

The state’s racial animus dated to at least 1844, when the provisional government ordered all Black people out of the territory. After Oregon became a state in 1859, it banned nonwhites from living there. Following the Civil War, Oregon was one of only six states to refuse to ratify the 15th Amendment, which granted full voting rights to all male citizens, regardless of race. By the mid-1920s, there were more Klansmen, per capita, in Oregon than any state but Indiana.

And a few hundred people, who risked their lives working for the Government or the RUC, have been pulled out of the Province because their undercover work had been detected by the IRA.  It is always necessary in such situations to pull out the person immediately, and often their families as well, and re-settle them in different locations throughout the mainland.  They are then given houses or apartments, new identities and sometimes a job.  Often, as the IRA keeps up its attempts to find and target these families, they have to be moved three or four times in an effort to keep them one step ahead of the gunmen.  I understand that these rescue missions, which are still carried out, have so far cost the British taxpayer between £75-£100 million.

In 1933, Batista closely allied himself with the newly created, five-man Presidency of Cuba named “The Pentarchy.” Sergio Carbó y Morera, an influential member of the new Executive Commission of the Pentarchy, became Batista’s inside man. On the morning of September 8th, with the country in a precarious state of instability, and as the self-appointed head of the Provisional Government of Cuba, Carbó y Morera appointed Batista as “Chief of the Army” instantly promoting him from sergeant stenographer, to the rank of Colonel. This promotion was supposedly “for merits of war and exceptional services to the country.” Of course, everyone knew that this appointment was only made because of Batista’s successful sergeants’ rebellion and insistent demands. It also mysteriously happened, without the approval of the other four members of the Pentarchy. Ascending to the rank of Colonel without proper approval, Batista took over “Command and Control” of the Cuban army and unbelievably, summarily discharged the entire cadre of Commissioned Officers.

I don’t know yet whether you agree with the Provisional Government. But I know very well that when they give you sweet speeches and make many promises they are deceiving you and the whole Russian people. The people need peace. The people need bread and land. And they give you war, hunger, no food, and the land remains with the landowners. Sailors, comrades, you must fight for the revolution, fight to the end.

What most Oregonians knew of African Americans and Jews did not come from personal experience. Like Indiana, Oregon had only a small number of these minorities. The state’s racial animus dated to at least 1844, when the provisional government ordered all Black people out of the territory. After Oregon became a state in 1859, it banned nonwhites from living there. Following the Civil War, Oregon was one of only six states to refuse to ratify the 15th Amendment, which granted full voting rights to all male citizens, regardless of race. By the mid-1920s, there were more Klansmen, per capita, in Oregon than any state but Indiana.

The zone agent says we’ll be as happy there as we could be anywhere else, and that—above all—we’ll be safe. She doubts it, and I’m worried too, but what can we do? The government must be trusted, as provisional as it might be. The only alternatives are anarchy or death. Two things that neither of us really wants. I’m almost hopeful about this adventure that sounds so secure.