“FREE RUSSIA ON THE FIGHT WITH GERMANY: (1) russian soldiers wearing gas masks; (2) a russian

“FREE RUSSIA ON THE FIGHT WITH GERMANY: (1) russian soldiers wearing gas masks; (2) a russian artillery post in the forest (P.S. — down under it there is a complex system of tunnels composed by 12 chambers)” 

Source: La Guerre Illustrée, july, 1917.

Note how the magazine reffers to the russian imperial troops as “Free Russia”. By july 1917 russia had already begun its revolutionary process, with some serious clashes in Petrograd and the arrest of Leon Trotsky.