By this time, however, several things had happened to undermine the plans for a counter-revolution. For one thing, the last remaining loyalist forces in the capital had singularly failed to organize resistance. General Khabalov clearly lacked the nerve for a serious fight and did almost nothing, although there was still much that he might have done. From the Admiralty, where he and his entourage had bunkered themselves in, there was a straight path to the three main railway stations (the Baltic, the Warsaw and the Nikolaevsky): loyalist troops, brought in from the Front, might have succeeded in fighting their way through. But Khabalov did not even think of this. Drinking cognacs to keep his hands from shaking, he merely wrote out a proclamation in which he declared the obvious — that the city was in a state of siege. But there was no one with the courage, let alone the brushes or the glue, to post up the printed version in the streets. Instead the leaflets were thrown out of the windows of the Admiralty, and most landed in the garden below. The efforts of Khabalov’s men to link up with the loyalist forces in the other parts of the city centre ended in a similar farce. One detachment fought its way across to the Winter Palace — only to be ordered back by the palace commandant, outraged by the sight of the soldiers’ dirty boots on his newly polished floors. It later turned out that the Grand Duke Mikhail, who had been in the palace at the time, had ordered the soldiers to be turned away because he had been afraid that they might damage its chinaware. And for that he lost an Empire! Demoralized and unfed for several days, most of the soldiers ran off to the people’s side rather than return to the Admiralty.
There was a second development to foil the plans for a counter-revolution on 1 March. Ivanov’s troops had arrived in Tsarskoe Selo to find that the mutiny had even spread to the Imperial Guards, who were garrisoned there. Some of Ivanov’s own troops had already begun to show signs of disaffection, answering in a ‘surly fashion’ when addressed by the Empress during a review. Meanwhile, back in Petrograd, the Temporary Committee had resolved that Nicholas would have to abdicate. Early in the morning on 2 March Guchkov and Shulgin departed for Pskov with instructions to impose the abdication and ensure the Law of Succession with Alexei as Tsar and the Grand Duke Mikhail as Regent. Rodzianko, meanwhile, who still had hopes of persuading the Tsar to make concessions, was prevented from going by a Soviet railway blockade.46
But the most important development was the decision of General Alexeev, as the acting Commander-in-Chief, to order a halt to the counter-revolutionary expedition. One of the reasons for this crucial decision was the assurance Alexeev had been given by Rodzianko on 1 March that the Duma leaders, rather than the Soviet ones, would form the new government in Petrograd. Alexeev himself had long been party to the palace coup plots of the Progressive Bloc. Instinctively he trusted Rodzianko, and seemed to believe that the liberals might still be prepared to negotiate a political settlement which retained the monarchical basis of Russia. But there was another motive for Alexeev’s change of mind: he was afraid that if the army was used to attack the revolutionary capital, it might become engulfed in a general mutiny, leading to the country’s defeat in the war. Already, on 1 March, there were mutinies in several northern garrisons, and there was a real danger that they might soon spread to the units at the Front. He preferred to isolate his front-line soldiers from Red Petrograd rather than send them there and run the risk of having them fall under its revolutionary influence. On 1 March Alexeev ordered General Ivanov to halt his expedition against Petrograd. He then sent a cable to the Tsar begging him to let the Duma form a government for the restoration of order. ‘A revolution throughout Russia’, he warned prophetically, ‘would mean a disgraceful termination of the war. One cannot ask the army to fight while there is a revolution in the rear.’47
