Fifty-fifth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated (again) to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.

January 14, 1918

Now it is time to work hard – men need to be cared for, fed, things must be tidied. In the evenings we sit together and read. And so the days pass and we await miracles. The Bolsheviks want to make peace agreements, but they are stretched too thinly – they have seized power in words, but in work? Little progress. Who knows what else we will have to experience!