Winter of 1916 did not greet Russia with victory parades.
It greeted it with lines.
In Petrograd, queues grew longer with each passing week.
It did not yet feel like catastrophe.
But people increasingly returned home with less bread, sugar, flour, or kerosene than they had hoped to buy.
Women stood in line with children.
Elderly men brought small stools.
Some factory workers joined queues immediately after night shifts without even going home first.
The cold only made people more irritable.
Hours passed slowly.
Supplies disappeared quickly.
One woman who had waited nearly three hours finally reached the front.
—"Sugar is gone."
She stared at the shopkeeper for several seconds.
—"I've been standing here for three hours."
The shopkeeper looked exhausted.
—"There will be more tomorrow."
Someone farther back in line shouted:
—"At least bullets are more honest at the front!"
People began shouting.
Police quickly moved closer.
The crowd became quieter.
The anger did not disappear.
Moscow looked only slightly better.
Prices rose almost every week.
Meat.
Sugar.
Flour.
Kerosene.
A small shop owner argued with a regular customer.
—"You raised prices again."
—"Because my suppliers raised them again."
—"And tomorrow?"
The shopkeeper spread his hands.
—"I'll probably raise them again."
The customer gave a bitter smile.
—"Soon we'll be eating money."
Several nearby people laughed.
The shopkeeper did not.
Factories carried a different kind of anger.
War created jobs.
But it also consumed people.
Men were drafted.
Working hours increased.
Production quotas rose.
Wages failed to keep pace with inflation.
At one factory, workers argued during a short break.
—"They keep telling us to endure for victory."
—"What victory?"
—"The one we read about in newspapers but never actually see."
One older worker remained silent longer than the others.
Then he quietly said:
—"In 1905, people also thought they could simply wait things out."
The conversation immediately went quiet.
Everyone understood what he meant.
Railway stations had become permanent chaos.
Military trains.
The wounded.
Ammunition.
Refugees.
Food shipments.
Everyone demanded priority.
Nobody received enough.
One railway official shouted at an army officer:
—"I have twenty trains waiting to be unloaded!"
The officer shouted back:
—"My front needs shells!"
The official pointed toward the overcrowded station.
—"The entire empire needs something!"
Neither man could say who was right.
The countryside looked calmer.
But only on the surface.
Horses were gone.
Men were gone.
Part of every harvest went to the state.
A wounded soldier home on leave sat at the dinner table with his father.
The old man poured soup.
—"So how is it there?"
The soldier remained silent for a long time.
Then answered:
—"Mud."
His father frowned.
—"That's all?"
The soldier looked out the window.
—"Do you want the long truth or the short one?"
The old man exhaled heavily.
—"The short one."
The soldier looked at the empty yard where two horses once stood.
—"It's going to get worse."
Newspapers only added to the chaos.
Some wrote:
Russia Endures.
Others wrote:
Temporary Difficulties.
Liberal publications increasingly criticized government incompetence.
Radical papers wrote more carefully.
Censorship still existed.
But even censorship could no longer hide the scale of the problems.
Inside a Petrograd café, two officers on leave read different newspapers.
One threw his paper onto the table.
—"If you read the press, we're either winning or already dying."
The second officer took a sip of tea.
—"What's actually happening?"
The first looked out at the snow-covered street.
—"I think both at the same time."
Russia was still fighting.
The army still held the front.
The emperor still sat on the throne.
But after the Great Retreat, the country had begun speaking differently.
Quieter.
Angrier.
And increasingly about a future without old rules.
The war was weakening Russia not only at the front.
It was slowly radicalizing its enemies as well.
A small apartment in Switzerland.
Curtains closed.
Voices lowered.
People arrived one at a time.
Some changed routes before coming.
Others waited outside to make sure they were not being followed.
Habits of exiles.
Revolutionaries.
People who had spent years waiting for their opportunity.
At the center of the room stood a man many in Europe had already dismissed as a political ghost.
Vladimir Lenin looked irritated.
As usual.
—"They expected a short war."
He paced across the room.
—"Instead they received exhaustion."
Nobody interrupted him.
One of those present shook his head.
—"You speak as if the regime is already dead."
Lenin sharply pointed at a newspaper lying on the table.
—"They lost Poland."
He began counting on his fingers.
—"Hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees, a damaged economy, and now the emperor has personally tied himself to the war."
His voice grew quieter.
Which somehow made him sound even more dangerous.
—"They are still standing."
He leaned forward.
—"But now they fall much easier."
Leon Trotsky sat slightly apart from the others.
He spoke more calmly.
But no less dangerously.
He looked around the room.
—"The regime will not collapse on its own. We need the right moment, organization, and people inside the empire."
A silent Georgian revolutionary standing near the wall raised his eyes for the first time.
—"The army?"
Trotsky nodded.
—"Among others."
Lenin smirked.
—"When soldiers begin asking questions, empires do not survive for long."
One Menshevik shook his head.
—"You are still far too confident about a rapid uprising."
Lenin answered immediately.
—"And you are still too confident that history will wait for your permission."
Laughter spread through the room.
The argument quickly shifted into familiar ideological battles.
Reforms.
Revolution.
Terror.
Workers' movements.
The national question.
Lenin suddenly went quiet.
His gaze stopped on a young man who had barely spoken all evening.
—"And you, Volodymyr? You've been silent."
Everyone turned toward him.
The young Ukrainian calmly raised his eyes.
—"Because you still speak about Russia as if it will survive in its current form."
Several men frowned.
—"And what exactly does that mean?"
The young man answered without hesitation.
—"It means that when your revolution begins..."
He paused briefly.
—"...Ukraine will have its own."
The room fell silent.
One man gave a quiet laugh.
—"If Russia survives this war."
The young Ukrainian answered almost immediately.
—"And what if it doesn't?"
This time, nobody laughed.
Later that night, the meeting ended.
People left one by one.
The streets of Switzerland remained quiet.
Europe looked peaceful.
Almost calm.
But inside the minds of those leaving that apartment—future wars, civil wars, revolutions, and the collapse of the old world were already taking shape.
Kyiv moved at a calmer pace than Petrograd.
At least on the surface.
Cafés were still open.
Newspapers were still sold on street corners.
Students still argued in universities.
Government officials still pretended the empire remained stable.
But conversations were changing here as well.
People spoke more often about war.
About defeats.
About Ukraine's future.
More quietly.
But far more often.
Symon Petliura sat at a desk inside a small newspaper office, rewriting the same article for the third time.
The ink bottle was nearly empty.
Crumpled papers covered the floor.
The young journalist looked irritated.
—"If I remove everything controversial, all that remains is the weather."
The editor removed his glasses tiredly.
—"The weather is safer than the police."
Petliura sharply raised his eyes.
—"I'm writing about the fact that Ukrainians fight, work, pay taxes, and still need permission even for their own language."
The editor lowered his voice.
—"And that is exactly why this newspaper will be shut down if you keep writing it this directly."
Petliura stood from his chair.
—"Then we should write even more directly."
The editor let out a heavy sigh.
—"Do you want to become a martyr?"
Petliura smirked.
—"No."
He looked at the manuscript.
—"I want articles like this to stop being considered radical someday."
The editor remained silent for several seconds.
Then slowly pushed the article back toward him.
—"Rewrite the final paragraph."
Petliura frowned.
—"Why only the final paragraph?"
The editor looked directly at him.
—"Because the first three pages have already guaranteed me several sleepless nights."
Even Petliura laughed at that.
Later that evening, he walked through Kyiv's snow-covered streets.
Newspaper boys shouted headlines.
Soldiers passed by.
Students argued near the university.
The empire was still alive.
But it was no longer the same.
Petliura stopped in front of a bookstore window.
Inside were books in Russian.
French.
German.
There were far fewer in Ukrainian.
He stared at the glass for a long time.
Then quietly said:
—"One day this won't be enough."
He kept walking.
No longer thinking about the article.
But about a country that did not yet exist.
Winter of 1916 made more than workers, revolutionaries, and journalists nervous.
It also unsettled the people who had long considered themselves masters of the empire.
In Petrograd, sessions of the State Duma were becoming increasingly tense.
Liberal deputies criticized the government more openly with each passing month.
Ministers were replaced too quickly.
Accusations of corruption grew louder.
Rasputin's name was spoken more frequently in quiet corridors.
One deputy angrily threw a newspaper onto a table.
—"We discuss reforms as if we still have years."
Another answered tiredly.
—"And how much time do we actually have?"
The first man looked out the window.
—"Judging by reports from the front and the mood in the streets—far less than we would like."
Inside the capital's officers' clubs, conversations became more dangerous.
Some blamed generals.
Others blamed the government.
Others had already begun blaming the emperor himself for personally taking command of the army.
One colonel quietly said behind closed doors:
—"If this war ends badly, the throne will not survive it."
His companion immediately looked around.
Even whispers had become dangerous.
—"Be careful."
The colonel gave a grim smile.
—"If we're afraid of words now, things are even worse than I thought."
Conversations among bankers and industrialists sounded calmer.
But only on the surface.
Contracts grew larger.
War production brought profits.
But profits brought new risks.
Currency instability.
Transportation problems.
Growing worker unrest.
Some businessmen quietly moved part of their capital abroad.
Others invested even more heavily into wartime production, expecting a long conflict.
Nobody knew who was making the correct decision.
Inside an aristocratic home in Kyiv, a group of nobles discussed the future of the empire.
Wine remained expensive.
The conversation was even more expensive.
An elderly prince spoke irritably.
—"Russia has survived worse."
A younger noble answered calmly.
—"Yes."
He paused.
—"But people used to fear the state far more than they do now."
Several men remained silent.
Because that was also true.
Late that night, Oleksandra Skoropadska sat in her office surrounded by letters, financial reports, and military contracts.
The candles were nearly burned out.
She looked exhausted.
But she kept working.
One letter had arrived from Petrograd.
Another from Kyiv.
A third from one of the factory managers.
All of them said the same thing in different ways:
instability was growing.
She opened the final letter.
From Pavlo.
Short.
As almost all of his wartime letters were.
Alive.
Winter is quieter.
Hope to see you soon.
She stared at the letter for a long time.
Then she picked up a clean sheet of paper and began writing her response.
Not about family.
Not about personal matters.
He already knew she missed him.
Instead, she wrote:
—"The situation in the rear is changing faster than many realize. Too many influential people are beginning to prepare for different versions of the future."
She stopped.
Then added one final line.
—"And I think you should prepare as well."
Outside, snow continued falling.
Russia still looked enormous.
Powerful.
Stable.
But more and more people were already preparing for its possible end.