On February 18, 1918, the Germans violate the armistice and begin an offensive on Petrograd. The city is filled with soldiers and officers fleeing from the front. All types of transport are overcrowded with people in gray overcoats, trains are stormed, and famine begins in the city... Late in the evening, on March 9, 1918, all the people's commissars receive an envelope in Smolny marked "Secret": "Departure for Moscow will take place on March 10 of this year, Sunday, exactly at ten o'clock in the evening from the Flower Square." The last train with members of the government, special train No. 4001, departs exactly at the appointed time from the Tsvetochnaya Ploshchad platform, on the connecting tracks of the Nikolaevskaya (now Oktyabrskaya) railway.
