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
