The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened peacefully on the 4th of July but by the time it closed a few days later, the German Ambassador would have been killed by Left Socialist Revolutionaries (the Bolsheviks’ main remaining political rival) and most Left SR delegates would be under arrest.  The most shocking headline of the month, however, was still to come.  In the middle of July 1918, with White forces only days away from taking the city, the deposed tsar and his family were assassinated in Ekaterinburg.  July 1918 was also the month when Nestor Makhno and his anarcho-communist forces became major powers, and the last item in this section is Makhno’s memoir of the time.