The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

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  [rebellion], mindless and pitiless, will sweep everything, turn everything to dust. What kind of Russia will emerge from this unexampled trial surpasses human imagination: the horrors of the Russian

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  may exceed everything known to history. It is possible that foreign intervention will tear the country apart. Attempts to put into practice the ideals of theoretical socialism—they will fail but they will be made, no doubt about it—will destroy the family, the expression of religious faith, property, all the foundations of law.

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  To prevent such a catastrophe, Witte proposed to satisfy the demands of the liberals and in this manner detach them from the revolutionaries. The united front of the opposition broken up, the liberals could be pacified and the radicals isolated. The only realistic course of action—it had to be taken at once, there was no time to lose—was for the government “boldly and openly to take charge of the Liberation Movement.” The government should adopt the principle of constitutionalism and democratize the restricted franchise adopted for the consultative Duma. It should consider having ministers chosen by and responsible to the Duma, or at least enjoying its confidence. Neither a constitution nor a legislative parliament, Witte assured Nicholas, would weaken his authority: they would rather enhance it. Witte further proposed, as a means of calming social unrest, improvements in the condition of workers, peasants, and the ethnic minorities, as well as guarantees of the freedom of speech, press, and assembly.

  It was a revolutionary program, born of desperation, for Witte realized that the government did not dispose of the military strength required to restore order by force.* Although on October 9–10 and the days that followed he would list military repression as an alternative, he did so pro forma, knowing full well that the only realistic option was surrender.

  His proposals were subjected to intense discussions at the Court and in high bureaucratic circles. Because Nicholas could not decide on the drastic changes that Witte had suggested, he initially agreed only to a bureaucratic measure which had long been urged on him—namely, creating a cabinet of ministers. On October 13, Witte received a telegram appointing him Chairman of the Council of Ministers “for the purpose of unifying the activity of all the ministers.”103 Assuming that this meant his reform proposals had been turned down, he requested to see the Tsar. He told him he saw no possibility of serving as Prime Minister unless his entire program was adopted. But on October 14 he was invited to return to Peterhof the next morning with the draft of a manifesto.

  While Nicholas was mulling over Witte’s suggestions, the country was coming to a standstill. The week that followed Witte’s first visit to Peterhof (October 10–17), critical in the history of Russia, is difficult to disentangle because of contrary claims of various oppositional groups which the sources presently available do not make it possible to sort out. In the eyes of the well-informed police authorities, the general strike and the St. Petersburg Soviet were the work of the Union of Unions. Trepov unqualifiedly credited the Union with creating the St. Petersburg Soviet and serving as its “central organization.”104 Such was also the opinion of the chief of the St. Petersburg Okhrana, General A. V. Gerasimov, for whom the Union exerted its impact in October 1905 by providing the scattered oppositional groups with a common program: “The principal initiative and organizational work in the aforementioned strikes belongs to the Union of Unions.”105 Nicholas wrote his mother on November 10 that “the famous Union of Unions … had led all the disorders.”106 Miliukov in his memoirs endorsed this view although he preferred to credit the parent organization, the Union of Liberation. He states that the initial meetings of the workers which led to the creation of the Soviet took place in the homes of members of the Union of Liberation and the first appeal to convoke the Soviet was printed on the Union’s presses.107 The Mensheviks hotly denied this claim, insisting it was they who had launched the Soviet; in this, they received support from some early Communist historians.108 There is, indeed, evidence that on October 10 the Mensheviks, mostly students, appealed to the workers of St. Petersburg to elect a Workers’ Committee to direct their strike.109 But indications also exist that the workers, following the precedent established by the Shidlovskii Commission, independently chose their representatives, whom they called starosty, the name given elected village officials: some of these had served on the Shidlovskii Commission.110 The most likely explanation is that the Union of Unions initiated the Soviet and that Menshevik youths helped rally factory workers in its support. This was the conclusion reached by General Gerasimov.111

  On October 10 communication workers and service employees of public as well as private enterprises in St. Petersburg went on strike. The following evening, over 30,000 people, mostly workers and other non-students, filled the assembly halls and lecture rooms of the university. The crowd voted to join the railroad strike.112 By October 13 virtually all rail traffic in Russia stopped; the telegraph lines were also dead. More and more industrial workers as well as white-collar employees joined the strike.

  On October 13, the Soviet held its first session in the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. On hand were some forty intellectuals and workers’ representatives. The meeting was called to create a center to direct the strike. Initially, the Soviet was no more than that, a fact reflected in the names which it used in the first four days of its existence: Strike Committee (Stachennyi komitet), United Workers’ Soviet (Obshchii rabochii sovet), and Workers’ Committee (Rabochiii komitet). The name Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was adopted only on October 17.* Fifteen of the workers’ representatives present were elected that day, the remainder having been chosen earlier in the year to serve on the Shidlovskii Commission.113 The opening session dealt with the strike. An appeal was issued calling on workers to maintain the work stoppage in order to force the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the adoption of the eight-hour working day.

  At the second meeting of the Soviet, on October 14, the Menshevik George Nosar (Khrustalev) was elected permanent chairman. (In 1899, he had been one of the leaders of the student strike at St. Petersburg University.) By then, public life in St. Petersburg had come to a standstill. Nevsky Prospect was illuminated by projectors mounted on the Admiralty spire.

  At this point (October 14) Trepov issued a warning against further disorders, threatening to resort to firearms.114 He had St. Petersburg University surrounded by troops and after October 15 allowed no more rallies there. A few days later, he shut down the university for the rest of the academic year. Right-wing elements began to beat up Jews, students, and anyone else who looked like an intellectual. It became dangerous to wear eyeglasses.* This was the beginning of mob violence, which after the proclamation of the October Manifesto would assume massive proportions, claiming hundreds if not thousands of lives and causing immense destruction of property.

  At its third session on October 15, the Soviet acquired a formal organization. Present were 226 delegates from 96 industrial enterprises. Socialists came in force, too, among them the Bolsheviks, who had initially boycotted the Soviet because they opposed the formation “of organs of proletarian self-rule before power had been seized.”†

  At the October 15 session an organizational step was taken which, although hardly noticed at the time, would have the most weighty consequences in February 1917, when the St. Petersburg Soviet was resuscitated. An Executive Committee (Ispolnitenyi Komitet, or Ispolkom for short) of thirty-one persons was formed: fourteen from the city’s boroughs, eight from the trade unions, and nine (29 percent) from the socialist parties. The latter allotted three seats each to the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the Social-Democratic Party and three to the Socialists-Revolutionaries. The socialist intellectuals were not elected by the Soviet but appointed by their respective parties. Although they had only a consultative vote, their experience and organizational skills assured them of a dominant role in the Ispolkom and, through it, the Soviet at large. In 1917, the Executive Commi
ttee of the Petrograd Soviet would consist exclusively of intellectuals nominated by the socialist parties.115 The rising influence of the radical intelligentsia found expression in an appeal to the workers issued by the Soviet on October 15 with an explicit threat of physical coercion against strikebreakers. “Who is not with us is against us, and to them the Soviet of Deputies has decided to apply extreme methods—force.” The appeal urged the strikers forcibly to shut down shops which ignored the strike and to prevent the distribution of government newspapers.116

  At the meeting of October 17, the Soviet adopted the name Soviet of Workers’ Deputies (Sovet rabochikh deputatov) and expanded the Executive Committee to fifty, with the socialist parties being allotted seven seats each, for a total of twenty-one (42 percent). It was decided to issue Izvestiia as the Soviet’s official organ.

  Similar soviets sprang up in some fifty provincial cities, as well as certain rural areas and in a few military units, but the St. Petersburg Soviet enjoyed from the beginning a position of undisputed primacy.

  In the evening of October 14, Witte was in receipt of a telegram from Peterhof asking him to appear the following morning with the draft of a manifesto. Witte claims that he was unable to write the manifesto because he was feeling unwell, and entrusted the task to Alexis Obolenskii, a member of the State Council who happened to be spending the night at his home.117 Since it is unlikely that he failed to realize the importance of this document, and he appeared healthy enough both before and after the event, the more likely explanation for his missing this unique opportunity to make history was the fear of bearing the blame for a step which he knew the Tsar took with the utmost distaste. If one is to believe him, he first familiarized himself with the manifesto the following morning aboard a ship which was taking him and Obolenskii to Peterhof (the railroads being on strike).118*

  For his basic text, Obolenskii drew on the resolutions of the Zemstvo Congress held in Moscow on September 12–15. The zemtsy had rejected the Bulygin Duma as entirely inadequate, and offered their own program:

  1. Guarantees of personal rights, freedom of speech and publication, freedom of assembly and association;

  2. Elections to the Duma on the basis of a universal franchise;

  3. The Duma to be given a determining voice in legislation as well as control over the state budget and the administration.

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  In drafting his text, Obolenskii borrowed not only the contents but also the format of the September Zemstvo Congress resolutions. As a result, the substantive part of the October Manifesto turned out to be little more than a paraphrase of the zemstvo demands.

  The Tsar spent most of October 15 with Witte and other dignitaries discussing and editing the manifesto. Among those he consulted was Trepov, in whose judgment and good faith he retained unbounded confidence. He forwarded to him Witte’s memorandum and the draft of the manifesto, requesting his frank opinion. Even while getting ready to sign the manifesto, Nicholas must still have contemplated resort to military force, for he also asked Trepov how many days he thought it possible to maintain order in St. Petersburg without bloodshed and whether it was altogether feasible to reassert authority without numerous victims.120

  In his response the next day (October 16), Trepov agreed in general with Witte’s proposals, even as he urged restraint in making concessions to the liberals. To the question whether he could restore order in the capital without risking a massacre, he answered that

  he could give no such guarantee either now or in the future: rebellion [

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  ] has attained a level at which it was doubtful whether [bloodshed] could be avoided. All that remains is faith in the mercy of God.

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  Still unconvinced, Nicholas asked Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich to assume dictatorial powers. The Grand Duke is said to have responded that the forces for a military dictatorship were unavailable and that unless the Tsar signed the manifesto he would shoot himself.122

  On October 17, Witte presented the Tsar with a report (doklad) summarizing the rationale for the manifesto which was to be issued jointly with it. Here he restated the conviction that the unrest afflicting Russia resulted neither from specific flaws in the country’s political system nor from the excesses of the revolutionaries. The cause had to be sought deeper, “in the disturbed equilibrium between the intellectual strivings of Russia’s thinking society and the external forms of its life.” The restoration of order, therefore, required fundamental changes. In the margin, Nicholas wrote: “Adopt for guidance.”123

  That evening, having crossed himself, Nicholas signed the manifesto. Its operative part consisted of three articles paralleling the three-part resolution of the September 1905 Zemstvo Congress:

  We impose on the government the obligation to carry out our inflexible will:

  1. To grant the population inviolable foundations of civil liberty [based] on the principles of genuine inviolability of person, the freedoms of conscience, speech, assembly, and association;

  2. Without postponing the projected elections to the State Duma, insofar as possible, in view of the short time that remains before the convocation of that body, to include in its work those classes of the population which until now have been entirely deprived of the right to vote, and to extend in the future, through the new legislature, the principle of universal franchise; and,

  3. To establish as inviolate the rule that no law shall acquire force without the approval of the State Duma and that the people’s representatives shall have an effective opportunity to participate in supervising the legality of the actions of the authorities whom We have appointed.

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  Before retiring, Nicholas wrote in his diary: “After such a day, the head has grown heavy and thoughts have become confused. May the Lord help us save and pacify Russia.”

  The proclamation of the October Manifesto, accompanied by Witte’s report of October 17, set off tumultuous demonstrations in all the cities of the Empire: no one had expected such concessions. In Moscow, a crowd of 50,000 gathered in front of the Bolshoi Theater. Thousands also assembled spontaneously in the other cities, singing and cheering. On October 19, the St. Petersburg Soviet voted to end the general strike.124 The strike also collapsed in Moscow and elsewhere.

  Two aspects of the October Manifesto call for comment, for otherwise a great deal of the political history of the last decade of the Imperial regime will be incomprehensible.

  The manifesto was extracted from Nicholas under duress, virtually at the point of a gun. For this reason he never felt morally obligated to respect it.

  Second, it made no mention of the word “constitution.” The omission was not an oversight. Although the claim has been made that Nicholas did not realize he had committed himself to a constitution,125 contemporary sources leave no doubt that he knew better. Thus, he wrote his mother on October 19 that granting the Duma legislative authority meant “in essence, constitution.”126 Even so, he wanted at all costs to avoid the detested word in order to preserve the illusion that he remained an autocrat. He had been assured by the proponents of liberal reforms that under a constitutional regime he would continue as the exclusive source of laws and that he could always revoke what he had granted.* He believed this explanation because it helped assuage his conscience, which was troubled by the thought that he might have violated his coronation oath. This self-deception—the absurd concept of a constitutional autocrat—would cause no end of trouble in relations between the Crown and the Duma in the years to come.

  But when the October Manifesto was proclaimed, these problems were not apparent to the liberals and liberal-conservatives who felt confident that a new era had dawned. Even high police officials were telling each other, only half in jest, that they would soon have nothing left to do.127

  Witte agreed to assume the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers only on condition that he be permitted to act as a genuine Prime Minister and select his cabinet. Like Ermolov, Kryzhanovskii, and other e
xperienced officials, he felt that a cohesive, disciplined ministry was an absolute necessity in view of the government’s imminent confrontation with an elected legislature.128 Although there was no reason why such a ministry could not consist exclusively of bureaucrats, Witte believed that the cabinet would be much more effective if it included some respected public figures.

  On November 19, he initiated talks with Dmitrii Shipov, Alexander Guchkov, a prominent industrialist, Prince E. N. Trubetskoi, a professor of philosophy and the brother of the recently deceased rector of Moscow University, and several other public figures.129 The persons he approached with offers of posts in the government were liberal-conservatives, on good terms alike with the opposition and the bureaucracy. The mere fact of a minister choosing a cabinet was without precedent (and, one may add, without sequel): “For the first time in tsarist history someone beside the tsar had single-handedly dictated the identity of most of the ministers.”130

  The negotiations collapsed within a week. Those whom Witte had approached turned down his offer on the ostensible ground that they could not work together with Peter Durnovo, whom Witte had offered the Ministry of the Interior. Durnovo had once been implicated in a sordid affair involving his mistress and the Spanish Ambassador. He was further mistrusted because of his long-standing connection with the police. But the country was in chaos, virtually in a condition of civil war, and it required an experienced administrator to restore order. Durnovo happened to have the experience and the practical intelligence needed for the job. Witte refused to yield to Durnovo’s critics, for he realized that the fate of the reforms hinged on his ability to pacify the country as quickly as possible. But judging by the fate of subsequent attempts to bring public figures into the government, all of which would also fail, it is questionable that Durnovo was anything more than a pretext. The leaders even of the moderate, liberal-conservative opposition feared being accused of betrayal by the liberals and the socialists, for whom the October Manifesto was only a stepping-stone toward a Russian Republic. By entering the government they risked isolating themselves from society without gaining effective influence on policy, for they had no guarantee that the bureaucracy would not use them for its own purposes. But concern over physical safety also played its part: “I would not be candid,” Witte wrote in retrospect,