The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  During the summer and fall of 1916, the Police Department was in receipt from its provincial branches of a steady flow of disturbing reports. They stated with near-unanimity that in the cities of the Empire inflation and shortages gave rise to dissatisfaction and wild rumors. Industrial workers, after long hours in the factory, went shopping only to find the shelves bare. The strikes which occurred with growing frequency at this time were mostly one-day stoppages to enable workers to buy provisions. The department denied any political motives behind the economic unrest: it felt confident that it was spontaneous in origin and that the professional revolutionaries, most of whom were in prison, Siberian exile, or abroad, had no influence on the masses. But it warned that the economic unrest could easily assume political forms. A police report to the Ministry of the Interior in October 1916 summarized the situation as follows:

  It is essential to concede as an unqualified and incontrovertible fact that at present the internal structure of Russia’s political life confronts the very strong threat of the relentless approach of great turbulence brought about and explainable exclusively by economic factors: hunger, the unequal distribution of food and articles of prime necessity, and the monstrous rise in prices. For the broadest strata of the population of the vast empire, the problem of food is the one dreadful inspiring impulse that drives the masses toward gradual affiliation with the growing movement of discontent and hostility. There exist in this case concrete and precise data that make it possible to assert categorically that until now this entire movement has had a purely economic basis, virtually free of any affiliation with strictly political programs. But this movement needs only to take a concrete form and find expression in some specific act (a pogrom, a large-scale strike, a major clash between the lower strata of the population and the police, etc.) to assume at once, absolutely, a purely political aspect.

  32

  In the fall of 1916, the chief of the Petrograd Corps of Gendarmes reported:

  The exceptional seriousness of the period which the country is living through and the countless catastrophic disasters with which the possible imminent rebellious actions of the lower classes of the Empire, angered by the difficulties of daily existence, can threaten the entire vital structures of the state, urgently demand, in the opinion of loyal elements, the extreme necessity of speedy and comprehensive measures to remove the existing disorder and to relieve the excessively laden atmosphere of social dissaffection. As recent experience has shown, under existing conditions, halfway decisions and some palliative, accidental measures are entirely inappropriate …

  33

  Especially disturbing to the security organs were indications that popular discontent was beginning to focus on the monarchy. The police chief of Petrograd reported toward the end of September 1916 that in the capital opposition sentiment among the masses had attained a level of intensity not seen since 1905–6. Another high-ranking police official noted that for the first time in his experience, popular anger directed itself not only against the ministers but against the Tsar himself.34

  In sum, in the view of the best-informed as well as most loyal observers, Russia in October 1916 found herself in a situation which the radical lexicon classified as “revolutionary.” These assessments should be borne in mind in evaluating allegations of pro-monarchist politicians and historians that the February Revolution, which broke out a few months later, was instigated by liberal politicians and foreign powers. Contemporary evidence indicates that it was mainly self-generated.

  While the rear was beginning to seethe, the morale of the front-line troops remained reasonably satisfactory, at least on the surface. The army held together. Such is the verdict of two foreign observers most familiar with the subject from personal observation. Knox says that as late as January-February 1917 the “army was sound at heart,” and Bernard Pares concurs: “the front was clean; the rear was putrid.”35 But even among the troops destructive forces were quietly at work. Desertions assumed massive proportions: Grand Duke Sergei, the Inspector General of Artillery, estimated early in January 1917 that one million or more soldiers had shed their uniforms and returned home.36 There were problems with military discipline. By 1916, most of the professional officers had fallen in battle or retired because of wounds: the casualties were especially heavy among junior staff who lived in closest contact with the troops. These had been replaced with freshly commissioned personnel, many of them of lower-middle-class background, who had the reputation of “throwing their weight around” and on whom the troops, especially combat veterans, looked with disdain. Instances occurred of officers refusing to lead troops into combat for fear of being shot by them.37 The inductees taken into service in 1916 were largely drawn from the older categories of reservists in the National Militia who had believed themselves exempt from conscription and served very grudgingly.

  Another troubling factor involved rumors current in the trenches and rear garrisons. In the letters which the soldiers sent home and received from home at the end of 1916, military censors found a great deal of malicious gossip about the Tsar and his wife. The police reported the wildest rumors circulating at the front: that soldiers’ wives were evicted and thrown out on the streets, that the Germans gave the ministers a billion-ruble bribe, and so on.38

  These disturbing trends affected the 8 million troops deployed at the front, but they were especially troublesome among the 2 to 3 million reservists and recruits stationed in the rear. Living in overcrowded barracks and in contact with the increasingly disaffected civilian population, they constituted a highly volatile element. In Petrograd and environs alone there were 340,000 of them: disgruntled, excitable, and armed.

  The authorities realized the social dangers of scarcities and inflation, but had no solutions: there was a great deal of talk and hand-wringing but no action.

  As noted, the landlords, for lack of farm labor, were unable to fulfill their traditional role as suppliers of food to the cities. The peasants had a surplus, but did not want to part with it since they already had more money than they knew what to do with, manufactured goods having become virtually unobtainable. Rumors circulated in 1916 that grain prices would soon rise sky-high: from the two and a half rubles per pud (16.38 kilograms) which grain was then fetching to twenty-five rubles and more. Naturally, they preferred to hoard.

  The government discussed imposing fixed prices for grain, forceful requisitions, and even nationalizing grain and the related branches of agriculture and transport.39 In September, the new Acting Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, took steps to transfer the management of food supply to his ministry on the grounds that it was acquiring a political dimension and affecting internal security. It was also planned to ensure industrial workers, especially those engaged in war production, of adequate food. But nothing came of these good intentions. Protopopov, a businessman and believer in laissez-faire, who disliked requisitions and other forms of regimentation, preferred to let things take their course. Instead of organizing the supply of foodstuffs to the cities, he persuaded the Minister of Agriculture, A. A. Bobrinskii, to restrain his provincial agents from showing excessive zeal in extracting grain from the peasants.

  The possibility existed of allowing private bodies to collect and distribute food. On a number of occasions, the Municipal Councils offered to assume responsibility for this matter, but they were always turned down. Even though it lacked the ability to do the job, the government was afraid to entrust it to elected bodies.40

  As a consequence, in late 1916 the food and fuel situation in the major cities became critical. By then, Petrograd and Moscow were getting only one-third of their food requirements and faced hunger: the reserves covered at best a few days’ consumption.41 Fuel shortages compounded the difficulties: Petrograd could obtain only half of the fuel it needed, which meant that even when bakeries got flour they could not bake. The Petrograd Municipal Council petitioned the government for authority to organize the distribution of foodstuffs, only to be once again t
urned down.42 To prevent an explosion of popular fury, Stürmer drafted plans to evacuate from Petrograd 60,000–80,000 soldiers, as well as 20,000 refugees, but as with all the other good intentions of the Imperial Government in its last days, this proposal came to naught.

  Petrograd, which by virtue of its remoteness from the food-producing areas suffered the most, entered the winter of 1916–17 in desperate straits. Factories had to be repeatedly shut either for lack of fuel or in order to enable their workers to scour the countryside for food.

  These developments alarmed also liberal and conservative circles, because they threatened revolution, which they were desperately anxious to prevent. They blamed Nicholas and Alexandra, especially the latter. For the first time ever, liberals and monarchists made common cause in opposition to the Crown. In late 1916, the oppositional mood spread to the generals, the upper bureaucracy, and even some Grand Dukes who went over in order, as it was said, “to save the monarchy from the monarch.” Russia had never known such unity and the Crown such isolation. The 1917 Revolution became inevitable once the uppermost layers of Russian society, which had the most to lose, began to act in a revolutionary manner.

  They were inspired by diverse motives. The conservatives, including right-wing politicians, Grand Dukes, bureaucrats, and generals, rallied against the Crown from fear that it was dragging Russia either to defeat or to a disgraceful separate peace. The liberals worried about riots, which would enable the socialists to stir the masses. The Progressive Bloc, which revived in the fall of 1916, kept on expanding to the right and left, until it came to embrace virtually the entire political spectrum, including much of the official establishment. In early February 1917, in a memorandum prepared for a visiting English delegation, Struve wrote: “The old cry ‘struggle with the bureaucracy’ has lost meaning. In the present conflict, all the best elements of the bureaucracy are on the side of the people.”43

  Persistent rumors that the monarchy was secretly negotiating a separate peace added to the unhappiness of upper society. They were not entirely groundless, for the Germans and Austrians did, indeed, put out feelers to Petrograd. One such approach was made through Alexandra’s brother, Prince Ernst Ludwig of Hesse.44 Protopopov, while traveling in Sweden, was contacted by a German businessman. These and similar approaches met with no response from the Russian side. Researches in Russian and Western archives after the Revolution have failed to reveal any evidence that the Imperial Government desired or even contemplated a separate peace.45 Nicholas and Alexandra were determined to wage war to the bitter end regardless of the domestic consequences. But the rumors caused the monarchy untold harm, alienating its natural supporters among the conservatives and nationalists who were ferociously anti-German.

  Even more harmful was gossip about the alleged treasonous activities of the Empress and Rasputin. This also lacked any substance. Whatever sins Alexandra had on her conscience, she deeply cared for her adopted homeland, as she would prove later, after the Revolution, when her life was at stake. But she was a German and hence regarded as an enemy alien. Her reputation was further sullied by Rasputin’s contacts with suspicious individuals from the Petrograd demimonde, some of whom were rumored to have German connections. The root of the problem was that even if Alexandra and Rasputin did not actually engage in demonstrable treason, in the eyes of many patriotic Russians they could not have worked more effectively for the enemy if they were full-fledged enemy agents.

  The liberal opposition faced a problem with which it did not quite know how to cope. The Kadets knew as well as the police of the popular discontent; they feared that unless they acted promptly and decisively to take charge, things would get out of control. They also were aware of the fact, reported on by the police, that the masses were losing faith in the Duma because it was not acting energetically enough.46 From this assessment they concluded that unless they challenged the government, they would dissipate their prestige and lose out to the radicals. Some Kadets worried that even if Russia somehow muddled through the war without a revolution, she would certainly have one when it was over because peace would bring with it massive unemployment and peasant land seizures.47 So it appeared essential to act in a bold, even revolutionary manner. And yet, pressing the government too hard would disorganize still further what was left of the administrative apparatus and fuel the very anarchy the liberals wished to prevent. One had to push the authorities hard enough to win over the masses and compel the government to yield power, but not so hard as to bring the state structure crashing down—a most delicate undertaking.

  Unexpectedly, the monarchy seemed to make this task easier with the appointment in mid-September of Alexander Protopopov as Minister of the Interior.* This move aroused the most exaggerated hopes. The extraordinary aspect of Protopopov’s appointment was that he was entrusted with the second most important post in the Imperial administration although he had neither bureaucratic experience nor rank. He was not the first private citizen to be given a ministerial post—he had been preceded in July 1916 by the Minister of Agriculture, Bobrinskii—but it was entirely without precedent for an individual without chin to be put in charge of the country’s administrative machinery. This was the Crown’s supreme effort at compromise, a step to meet the demand of the Duma for control of the cabinet, for Protopopov, a well-to-do landlord and textile manufacturer, an Octobrist and member of the Progressive Bloc, was not only a member of the Duma but also its deputy chairman. Rodzianko and Guchkov had a good opinion of him, as did other parliamentarians.48 Given this background, Protopopov’s appointment could have been reasonably interpreted as a surrender to the Progressive Bloc—the first of a succession of ministerial appointments which would result in a cabinet enjoying the Duma’s confidence. This is how A. I. Konovalov, a leading Kadet and member of the Progressive Bloc, viewed the Tsar’s move. At a private gathering of Kadets and associates early in October, he characterized Protopopov’s appointment as a complete “capitulation” of the regime:

  By capitulating to society, the authorities have taken a giant, unexpected leap. The best that one might have expected was the appointment of some liberal-minded bureaucrat. And all of a sudden it is the Octobrist Protopopov, a man essentially alien to the bureaucratic world. For the authorities, this capitulation is almost tantamount to the act of October 17. After an Octobrist minister, a Kadet minister will no longer be such a fright. Perhaps in a few months we will have a ministry of Miliukov and Shingarev.

  *

  It all depends on us. It is all in our hands.

  49

  28. Alexander Protopopov.

  This assessment was shared by much of the press. The unofficial Petrograd stock exchange rose sharply when Protopopov took office.

  Such sanguine expectations were soon shattered. The appointment of Protopopov was not a capitulation by the monarchy but a clever political maneuver. The Court had called on the Duma to convene on November 1 because the constitution required it to approve the budget. It was expected that the opposition would use this opportunity to renew the assault on the government. Protopopov seemed to the Court the ideal man to handle the legislature. His membership in the October Party and the Progressive Bloc gave him credibility in the eyes of the opposition; at the same time, the Court knew Protopopov for what he really was—a devoted monarchist. The strong endorsement which Rasputin gave Protopopov served as a guarantee of his loyalty. He was an exceedingly vain man, overwhelmed by the honor which the Imperial couple had bestowed on him, and unlikely to make common cause with the opposition. Alexandra understood well why and how Protopopov would serve the dynasty’s interests: “Please, take Protopopov as Minister of the Interior,” she urged Nicholas on September 9, “as he is one of the Duma it will make a great effect amongst them & shut their mouths.”50 In the words of Pares, she wanted to use “a Duma man to curb the Duma.”51 Here was an ideal minister—endorsed by Rasputin and yet acceptable to Rodzianko and Guchkov. He had also made an excellent impression on King George V and the Fren
ch the preceding summer while heading a diplomatic mission in the West. Nicholas gave Protopopov carte blanche to run the country: “Do what is necessary, save the situation,” he asked.52 Backed by the Tsar, who appreciated his polite manner and charm, and Alexandra, who is said to have wanted to run Russia as if it were “their farm,”53 exuding boundless optimism in an atmosphere of widespread gloom, Protopopov became a virtual dictator.

  He proved a disastrous choice. The only qualification Protopopov had for high office was a “talent for adapting himself to people of different political views,” a relative rarity in Russia.54 It gained him many supporters. But his driving force was vanity. Flattered by his appointment, he enjoyed to the limit its perquisites: access to the Court, the opportunity to treat condescendingly his onetime Duma colleagues, the power to conceive ambitious reform projects. It was the psychic gratifications of power that he held dear. Later, when things turned sour, to a friend who urged him to resign, he said indignantly: “How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a Deputy Governor, and here I am a Minister!”55

  He had no administrative talents: he had even managed to drive his textile business to the brink of bankruptcy.56 He spent little time at his desk, and ignored the remarkably prescient analyses of the country’s internal situation prepared by the Department of Police. His achievement as the most important civil servant of the Empire at a critical juncture in its history was all image-building and public relations: his testimony given after the Revolution revealed a thoroughly confused man.57 His erratic behavior spawned suspicions that he was mentally ill from the effects of venereal disease.