The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  There were all kinds of rumors of “Decembrist” conspiracies among Guard officers and of a terrorist plot on the Imperial couple,144 but none of these ever seems to have gone beyond the talking stage.

  Protopopov, basking in his moment of glory as de facto Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, exuded confidence—a fact that caused many contemporaries to question his sanity. He did not worry about the plots against the Imperial family reported by the police: he dismissed the plotters, with good reason, as idle talkers. The village was quiet. It was another threat that troubled him, although he felt confident he could handle it. The Duma was scheduled to reconvene on February 14 for a twelve-day session. The police informed him that “society” talked of nothing else and that convening the Duma could provide an occasion for massive anti-government demonstrations; proroguing it, however, could produce a wave of popular protests. The police felt it essential to prevent street demonstrations, lest they provoke clashes with the police and trigger a revolt. K. I. Globachev, the highest police official in Petrograd, advised Protopopov on January 26 that the leaders of the opposition, among whom he listed Guchkov, Konovalov, and Lvov, already regarded themselves as the legitimate government and were distributing ministerial portfolios.145 Protopopov wanted authority to arrest Guchkov, Konovalov, and the other political oppositionists, along with the Central Workers’ Group, which they intended to use for mass demonstrations.146 He would dearly have liked to take into custody Guchkov and three hundred “troublemakers” whom he viewed as the soul of the incipient rebellion, but he did not dare. So he did the next-best thing and ordered the arrest of the Workers’ Group, which by this time (the end of January) had turned into an openly revolutionary body. Under the leadership of Gvozdev, the Workers’ Group pursued a double policy, typical of the Mensheviks and, later, of the revived Petrograd Soviet, of which it was in some respects the immediate forerunner. On the one hand, it supported the war effort and helped the Central Military-Industrial Committee to maintain labor discipline in defense industries. On the other hand, it issued inflammatory appeals calling for the immediate abolition of the monarchy and its replacement by a democratic provisional government—that is, for a political revolution in the midst of the very war they wanted to pursue.147 One of their proclamations, released on January 26, claimed that the government was exploiting the war to enslave the working class. Ending the war, however, would not improve the latter’s situation “if carried out not by the people themselves but by the autocratic authority.” Peace achieved by the monarchy will bring “yet more terrible chains”:

  The working class and democracy can wait no longer. Every day that is allowed to pass brings danger: the decisive removal of the autocratic regime and the complete democratization of the country are tasks that must be solved without delay.

  The proclamation concluded with a call for factory workers to prepare themselves for a “general organized” demonstration in front of Taurida Palace, the seat of the Duma, to demand the creation of a provisional government.148

  This appeal stopped just short of calling for a violent overthrow of the government: but it was by any standard seditious. It is known that the Workers’ Group indeed planned, almost certainly with the encouragement of Guchkov and other members of the Progressive Bloc, on the day of the opening session of the Duma to bring out hundreds of thousands of workers on the streets of Petrograd with calls for a radical change in government, the demonstration to be accompanied by massive work stoppages.149 Protopopov was determined to prevent this.

  On January 27, one day after the Workers’ Group had issued its proclamation, its entire leadership was arrested and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Protopopov ignored the expressions of outrage from the business community, convinced that he had nipped in the bud a revolutionary coup planned for February 14. One month later, when the mobs freed the Workers’ Group leaders from their prison, they would proceed directly to Taurida Palace and there help found the Petrograd Soviet.

  After the arrest of the Workers’ Group, Nicholas asked the onetime Minister of Justice Nicholas Maklakov to draft a manifesto dissolving the Duma. Elections to the new Duma—the Fifth—were to take place in December 1917, nearly a year later.150 News of this proposed move reached the Duma, causing a great deal of excitement.151

  To insure Petrograd against disturbances in connection with the opening of the Duma, Protopopov withdrew military control of the capital city from the Northern Front, whose commander, General N. V. Ruzskii, was regarded as sympathetic to the opposition. It was placed under a separate command headed by General S. S. Khabalov, an ataman of the Ural Cossacks.152

  The measures produced the desired effect. The arrest of the Workers’ Group and the stern warnings of Khabalov caused the February 14 pro-Duma demonstration to be called off. Even so, 90,000 workers in Petrograd struck that day and marched peacefully through the center of the city.153

  In the meantime, the administration of the country was grinding to a halt. The Council of Ministers virtually ceased to function, as members absented themselves under one pretext or another, and even Protopopov failed to attend.154 At this, the monarchy’s most dangerous moment, the Department of Police was decapitated: General P. G. Kurlov, a personal friend of Protopopov’s, whom the minister had invited to assume the post of director, met with strenuous opposition from the Duma, and after serving as acting director for a short time, retired without being replaced.155 The chief of the Special Department (Osobyi Otdel) of the Police Department, charged with counterintelligence, I. P. Vasilev, later wrote that under Protopopov his office received no specific assignment.156 The opposition was flouting government prohibitions on meetings and assemblies. Military censorship broke down in January 1917, as editors of newspapers and periodicals no longer bothered to submit advance copy to the Censor’s office.157

  None of this much troubled Protopopov, who was in regular communication with the spirit of Rasputin.158

  *Rudolf Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft Russlands (Bonn-Leipzig, 1922), 15. A. L. Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914–1917 gg. (Moscow, 1960), 147, gives the higher figure.

  †Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft, 156–57. The London currency market registered a similar decline: Emil Diesen, Exchange Rates of the World, I (Christiania, n.d.), 144.

  *Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie, 147. Of the sum for the first half of 1914, 1,633 million rubles was in paper currency, the remainder in coinage.

  *Bernard Pares, ed., Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–16 (London, 1923), 114. “The old man” refers to Goremykin.

  *Pares, Letters, xxxiii. After his dismissal, Polivanov was appointed to the State Council. In 1918–19, he helped Trotsky organize the Red Army. He died in 1920 while serving as adviser to the Soviet delegation at the Polish peace talks in Riga.

  *Protopopov was initially made acting minister; he was promoted to minister in mid-December, following the assassination of Rasputin: V. S. Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917) (Leningrad, 1967), 265.

  *A. I. Shingarev was a prominent Kadet and expert on agrarian problems. He served as Minister of Finance in the Provisional Government and was murdered in early 1918 by pro-Bolshevik sailors.

  *Because they were suspected of German sympathies, numerous Jews living near the combat zone—estimates run as high as 250,000—were forced in 1915 to move into the interior of the country.

  *E. D. Chermenskii, IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma i sverzhenie tsarizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1976), 204–6; Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 241. On the unpopularity of Stürmer due to his German name: IA, No. 1 (1960), 207. If not for that they would have targeted Protopopov, making an issue of his talks with a German representative in Stockholm.

  *According to the French Ambassador, this was done at Stunner’s request: Maurice Paléo-logue, La Russie des Tsars pendant la Grande Guerre, III (Paris, 1922), 86–87.

  *Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 251. The most vociferous of
the hecklers, Kerensky and Chkheidze among them, were suspended by Rodzianko for fifteen days.

  *Archive of S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Box 5, File “Rasputin,” Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. Vyrubova dismisses gossip of his alleged sexual excesses, saying that he was entirely unlovable and that she knew of no woman who had had an affair with him: Anna Viroubova, Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris, 1927), 115.

  *There exist two eyewitness accounts of Rasputin’s murder. Purishkevich wrote down his recollections in diary form two days after the event, which he published in southern Russia in 1918; this version was reprinted in Moscow in 1923 as Ubiistvo Rasputina. Iusupov’s memoirs, Konets Rasputina, came out in Paris four years later. Of secondary accounts, the most informative is that by A. S. Spiridovich (Raspoutine, Paris, 1935): the author, a general in the Corps of Gendarmes, was Commandant of the Guard at the Imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo.

  *According to Miliukov and Maklakov, however, tales of popular rejoicing at Rasputin’s death are “an aristocratic legend”; in reality, ordinary people were troubled by the murder: Spiridovich, Raspoutine, 413–15.

  †The absence of poison in Rasputin’s remains must mean that, in fact, it had not been inserted into the wine and pastries. The records of the judiciary inquiry into the Rasputin murder were offered for sale in Germany sometime in the interwar period by the firm of Karl W. Hiersemann (Originalakten zum Mord an Rasputin, Leipzig, n.d., Library of Congress, DK 254.R3H5), but their present whereabouts are unknown. The advertisement (pp. 8–9) confirms that the autopsy revealed no traces of poison.

  *“The assassins of Rasputin were never tried, apparently owing to the intercession of the Dowager Empress. After spending some time with the Russian forces in Persia, Dmitrii went to England, where he led a carefree life among the British aristocracy. He later married an American heiress. His diaries, deposited at the Houghton Library, Harvard, show no concern for his native country. Iusupov, who was exiled to one of his estates, eventually made his way to the West. Purishkevich was arrested by the Bolsheviks and then released. He later joined the White armies and died in France in 1920.

  *G. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II (Boston, 1923), 45–46; cf. A. I. Spiridovich, Velikaia voina ifevra’skaia revoliutsiia, 1914–1917 gg., III (New York, 1962), 14. Buchanan, however, is not an entirely reliable witness. According to his Buchanan’s daughter, Nicholas further said that rumors of impending unrest were exaggerated and that the army would save him: Meriel Buchanan, Petrograd, the City of Trouble (London, 1918), 81. Nicholas received from the police information that the British Embassy was in contact with anti-government groups in the Duma and even providing them with financial assistance: V. N. Voeikov, S tsarem i bez tsaria (Helsingfors, 1936), 175.

  8

  The February Revolution

  Following two mild winters, the winter of 1916–17 turned unseasonably cold: in Petrograd, the temperature in the first three months of 1917 averaged 12.1 degrees below zero centigrade (10 Fahrenheit) compared with 4.4 (40 F) degrees above zero the same time the previous year. In February 1917 it dropped to an average of minus 14.5 degrees (6 F). In Moscow it sank even lower, to 16.7 below zero (2 F).1 The cold grew so severe that peasant women refused to cart food to towns. Blizzards piled mountains of snow on the railway tracks, where they lay untouched for lack of hands to clear them. Locomotives would not move in the freezing weather and sometimes had to stand in place for hours to build up steam. These climatic conditions aggravated further the serious transport difficulties. In the thirty months of war, the rolling stock had declined from wear and inadequate maintenance. By mid-February 1917, Russia had in operation only three-quarters of its peacetime railway equipment, and much of it stood immobilized by the weather: during the winter of 1916–17, 60,000 railroad cars loaded with food, fodder, and fuel could not move because of the snow—they represented about one-eighth of all the freight cars available.2

  The breakdown of supply had a devastating effect on the food and fuel situation in the northern cities, especially Petrograd. The capital seems to have had sufficient stocks of flour: according to General S. S. Khabalov, the city’s military commander, on February 25 the warehouses held 9,000 tons of flour, more than enough for several days.3 But fuel shortages had idled many bakeries. Around February 20, rumors spread that the government was about to introduce bread rationing and limit purchases to one pound per adult. In the panic buying that ensued, the bakery shelves were stripped bare.4 Long queues formed: some people braved the freezing weather all night to be first when the bakeries opened. The crowds were irritable and scuffles were not uncommon. Even police agents complained that they could not feed their families.5 Fuel shortages also forced factories to close: the Putilov Works shut down on February 21. Tens of thousands of laid-off workers milled on the streets.

  Nothing better illustrates the extent to which the government had lost touch with reality than the Tsar’s decision, at this tense and difficult moment, to leave for Mogilev. He intended to stay there one week consulting with Alekseev, who had just returned from a period of convalescence in the Crimea. Protopopov raised no objections. On the evening of February 21, he assured the Tsar he had nothing to worry about and could leave confident that the rear was in good hands.6 Nicholas left the following afternoon. He would return two weeks later as “Nicholas Romanov,” a private citizen under house arrest. The security of the capital city was entrusted to very unqualified personnel: the Minister of War, General M. A. Beliaev, who had made his entire career in the military bureaucracy and was known to his colleagues as “dead head” (mertvaia golova); and the city’s military commander, General Khabalov, who had spent his professional life in chanceries and military academies.

  30. International Women’s Day in Petrograd, February 23, 1917. The sign reads: “If woman is a slave there will be no freedom. Long live equal rights for women.”

  Suddenly, the temperature in Petrograd rose to 8 degrees centigrade (46 F), where it would remain until the end of the month.7 People whom the freezing weather had for months kept at home streamed outdoors to bask in the sun. Photographs of the February Revolution show gay crowds under a brilliant sky. The climatic accident played no small role in the historic events of the time.

  The day after Nicholas’s departure, disorders broke out in Petrograd: they would not subside until the monarchy was overthrown.

  Thursday, February 23/March 8 was International Women’s Day. A procession, organized by the socialists, marched on Nevsky, toward the Municipal Council, demanding equality for women and occasionally clamoring for bread. All around rode Cossacks; here and there, the police dispersed crowds of onlookers. At the same time, a group of workers, variously estimated at between 78,000 and 128,000, went on strike to protest food shortages.8 But the day passed reasonably quietly, and by 10 P.M. the streets were back to normal. The authorities, although unprepared for a demonstration of this size, succeeded in containing it without resorting to force. The governor of Petrograd, A. P. Balk, and Khabalov did all they could to avoid clashes with the population out of fear of politicizing what was still a strictly economic protest. The Okhrana, however, reporting on the events of February 23 and the following day, remarked that the Cossacks were reluctant to confront the crowds. Balk made a similar observation.9

  The atmosphere was exacerbated by the attacks on the government from the halls of Taurida, where the Duma had sat in session since February 14. The February Revolution took place against the steady drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric. The familiar cast was on hand—Miliukov, Kerensky, Chkheidze, Purishkevich—accusing, demanding, threatening. In their own way they behaved as irresponsibly as Protopopov and those officials who treated the riots as a provocation instigated by a handful of agitators.

  On February 24, the situation in Petrograd deteriorated. By now between 160,000 and 200,000 workers filled the streets, some striking, others locked out. Having gotten wind of the mood in the industrial quarters across the Neva, the authorit
ies set up barriers on the bridges connecting them with the city’s residential and business centers, but the workers got around them by walking across the frozen river. The catalytic agents were radical intellectuals, mainly the so-called Mezhraiontsy, Social-Democrats who favored the reunification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and whose program called for an immediate end to the war and revolution.10 Their leader, Leon Trotsky, was at the time in New York. All day long skirmishes occurred between rioters and police. The crowds sacked some food stores and inflicted other damage.11 The air was thick with that peculiar Russian air of generalized, unfocused violence—the urge to beat and destroy—for which the Russian language has coined the words pogrom and razgrom. On Nevsky, crowds formed themselves into a procession, shouting “Down with the autocracy!” and “Down with the war!” The Cossacks again displayed a reluctance to obey orders.

  Aware of the gravity of the food situation, the authorities held a high-level meeting on the subject in the afternoon of February 24. Present were most members of the Municipal Duma and the ministers, save for Golitsyn, who had not been notified, and Protopopov, who was said to be attending a spiritualist séance.12 The Petrograd Municipal Council was at long last granted its request to take charge of food distribution.