The Russian Revolution полностью

*A leading proponent of this theory was I. S. Bliokh, whose six-volume study appeared in an English condensation as The Future of War (New York, 1899).

*Rennenkampf was captured in early 1918 by the Bolsheviks near Taganrog while helping General Lavr Kornilov. According to a contemporary newspaper, he was frightfully tortured and then shot: NZh, No. 83/298, May 4, 1918, p. 3.

*E. von Falkenhayn, Die Oberste Heeresleitung, 1914–1916 (Berlin, 1920), 17. In evaluating Falkenhayn’s assessment, however, it must be borne in mind that, convinced that Germany could gain victory only in the west, he had strenuously opposed offensive operations against the Russians. In his memoirs he could have hardly been expected to show impartiality toward Hindenburg, who in August 1916 replaced him as chief of staff.

†It must also be remembered that Hindenburg and Ludendorff destroyed the Russian Second Army without the help of reinforcements from the west. The latter arrived in time to help expel the Russian First Army from East Prussia.

*Sources on the Progressive Bloc have been published in KA, No. 1–2/50–51 (1932), 117–60, No. 3/52 (1932), 143–96, and No. 1/56 (1933), 80–135, as well as in B. B. Grave, ed., Burzhuaziia nakanune fevral’skoi revoliutsii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), 19–32. See further V. S. Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914–17 (Leningrad, 1967), passim.

*Nikolai Nikolaevich went to the Caucasus as viceroy. He would play a minor role in the events leading up to the February Revolution.

*Sidorov, Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie, 117–19. As will be noted in the next chapter, a significant portion of the shells available in 1916–17 came from foreign suppliers.

7

Toward the Catastrophe

The whole purpose of the Progressive Bloc was to prevent revolution so as to enable the government to finish the war.

—V. V. Shulgin¹

In the second year of the war, Russia succeeded in solving her most pressing military problems. The shortages of artillery shells and rifles were largely made good by the efforts of the Defense Council and imports. The front which in the late summer of 1915 had seemed close to collapse, stabilized once the German High Command decided to suspend offensive operations in the east. By the summer of 1916, the Russian army had recovered sufficiently to launch a major offensive. But just as the front stiffened, the rear displayed alarming symptoms of malaise. In contrast to 1915, when disaffection had been largely confined to the educated elite, it now spread to the mass of the urban population. Its causes were primarily economic—namely, growing shortages of consumer goods, especially foodstuffs, and inflation. The government, treating these problems as transitory and self-correcting, did next to nothing to correct them.

The urban inhabitants of Russia, having had no previous experience with shortages and rising prices, had difficulty grasping their causes. Their instinct was to blame the government, an attitude in which they were encouraged by the liberal and radical intelligentsia. By October 1916 the discontent in the cities reached such intensity that the Department of Police in confidential reports compared the situation to 1905 and warned that another revolution could be in the offing.

In the hope of averting an explosion, the Duma resumed pressures on the government to concede it the power to make ministerial appointments, something that had become an idée fixe with a good part of its membership. This demand, which Nicholas and Alexandra stubbornly resisted, added fuel to popular passions, with the result that economic discontent acquired a political dimension. The sudden contact between the restless urban masses, with the mutinous military garrisons, and the frustrated politicians which occurred in the winter of 1916–17 produced the short circuit that sent the Imperial regime up in flames.

Although compared with the major industrial powers, Russia was poor, before the war her currency was regarded as one of the soundest in the world. The Russian Treasury followed stringent rules for the issuance of paper money. The first 600 million rubles of notes had to be backed 50 percent with gold reserves: all bank-note emissions above that sum required 100 percent gold backing. In February 1905, the Treasury had in its vaults 1,067 million rubles’ worth of bullion; with 1,250 million paper rubles in circulation, the ruble was 85 percent gold-backed.² On the eve of World War I, Russian bank notes were 98 percent backed by gold. At the time, Russia had the largest gold reserve in Europe.³

The outbreak of World War I threw Russia’s finances into disarray from which they never recovered.