‘Democratization’ extended to the grass roots, blanketing the Russian landscape with township and village committees, factory committees, and every imaginable variety of soviet, union, and professional organization. These organs—manned sometimes by plebeians, but often by white-collar workers—filled the power vacuum left by the
Amidst this ‘democratization’, the Provisional Government endeavoured to rule and reform. It granted virtual independence to Poland (in any event, under occupation by the Central Powers) and autonomy to Finland, freed political prisoners, drafted legislation on self-government, made plans for judicial reform, and established countless committees to consider other critical issues. Indeed, the government contemplated or initiated reform in virtually every imaginable sphere—in education (democratization of access and administration), labour relations (the eight-hour day and arbitration chambers), corporate law, and religion (secularization of schools, liberalization of divorce, and separation of Church and state).
It proved far easier, however, to appoint committees than to reform. Apart from the magnitude of its agenda, the government had to rely on the old tsarist bureaucracy and to operate in the absence of an elected, authoritative legislature. Typically, the government established a committee, with great fanfare, collected data and drafted laws, but inevitably elected to defer the main issues for resolution by the constituent assembly. Still, given its narrow timeframe, the government addressed a broad range of critical issues.
Meanwhile, the revolution did not stand still. Within a few weeks, it was clear that the Provisional Government must immediately address new problems (especially food shortages and greater industrial production) as well as old ones (such as land and labour reform). Ultimately, the government was driven to nullify its liberal Programme and adopt very different social and economic policies, essentially more corporatist and socialist than liberal. On 25 March, for example, the government established a grain monopoly to regulate prices for cereals and mandate deliveries to the state—in effect, declaring all grain to be state property. To manage this monopoly, it created a new hierarchy of provisioning committees and ultimately a Ministry of Food Supply. When the government entrusted provisioning (and much of consumer supply) to co-operatives, it undermined not only the market for foodstuffs but also the established commercial infrastructure of the empire. Thus a regime professing liberalism and tarred as ‘bourgeois’ asserted state authority over the economy, shoving aside entire business firms and an entire class. But in the case of land reform the government acted with less abandon: consigning this matter to resolution by the constituent assembly it merely created a Main Land Committee to ‘study’ the issue and directed local land committees to gather information and adjudicate land disputes over such matters as rents and competing land claims.
In the interim, the question of war eroded the foundations of ‘dual power’. At issue were war aims and hence the terms for stopping the carnage. On 14 March the Petrograd Soviet issued an ‘Appeal to All the Peoples of the World’, repudiating expansionist war aims and espousing instead ‘revolutionary defencism’, i.e. to prosecute the war only in defence of Russia and its revolution against German authoritarianism and imperialism. It became clear, however, that the government had not abandoned the tantalizing gains promised by its allies. To allay soviet apprehensions, on 28 March the Provisional Government issued a ‘Declaration on War Aims’ renouncing territorial claims, but on condition that peace cause neither humiliation nor the deprivation of ‘vital forces’. In fact, the government retained its original war aims: in a note to the allies on 18 April, the Foreign Minister (Miliukov) ascribed the government’s Declaration to domestic politics and reaffirmed its determination to observe all treaty obligations, with the implication that the allies must also honour their promises, especially on Constantinople and the Straits.
