The Russian Revolution полностью

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 authorities 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.