The Russian Revolution полностью

Resort to force produced the desired result: by nightfall the capital was calm. Nicholas Sukhanov, the author of the best eyewitness account of 1917 in Petrograd, thought that the government had succeeded in regaining control of the center of the city.²⁵ That evening Princess Radziwill held her soiree, which had had Petrograd society talking for weeks. To the French Ambassador the sight of her brilliantly illuminated palace on Fontanka brought to mind similar scenes in the Paris of 1789.²⁶

To remove the main source of political opposition, Nicholas ordered the Duma to adjourn until April. Golitsyn communicated this news to Rodzianko late at night on February 26.

As night fell, on the surface everything seemed in order. But then a succession of events occurred which to this day astonish with their suddenness and scope: a mutiny of the Petrograd garrison which in twenty-four hours transformed half the troops into rioters and by March 1 had the entire contingent of 160,000 uniformed men in open rebellion.

To understand this development, one must bear in mind the composition as well as living conditions of the Petrograd garrison. It consisted of freshly drafted recruits and superannuated reserves assigned to the reserve battalions of the Guard Regiments normally stationed in Petrograd but now away at the front. They were meant to stay in Petrograd for several weeks of basic training and then leave for the front. Organized into training units, they were heavily overmanned: some reserve companies had more than 1,000 soldiers, and there were battalions with 12,000–15,000 men; 160,000 soldiers were packed into barracks designed to hold 20,000.²⁷ The reservists drawn from the National Militia, many in their thirties and early forties, felt unfairly inducted. In Petrograd, they were subjected to the usual indignities inflicted on Russian soldiers, such as being addressed by officers in the second-person singular and being forbidden to ride inside streetcars.²⁸ Although dressed in uniform, they did not differ in any significant way from the workers and peasants crowding the streets of Petrograd, whom they were now ordered to shoot. Rodzianko, who observed them at close range, said one week after the events:

Unexpectedly for all, there erupted a soldier mutiny such as I have never seen. These, of course, were not soldiers but muzhiki taken directly from the plow who have found it useful now to make known their muzhik demands. In the crowd, all one could hear was “Land and Freedom,” “Down with the Dynasty,” “Down with the Romanovs,” “Down with the Officers.” In many units officers were beaten. This was joined by the workers and anarchy reached its apogee.²⁹

In view of the fact that the February Revolution is often depicted as a worker revolt, it is important to emphasize that it was, first and foremost, a mutiny of peasant soldiers whom, to save money, the authorities had billeted in overcrowded facilities in the Empire’s capital city—in the words of one eyewitness, like “kindling wood near a powder keg.”

The survival of the tsarist regime ultimately depended on the loyalty of the army since the usual forces of order—the police and the Cossacks—did not have the numbers to cope with thousands of rebels. In February 1917, these forces consisted of 3,500 policemen, armed with antiquated Japanese rifles, and Cossack detachments which, for an unaccountable reason, had been divested of nagaiki, their dreaded whips.³⁰ Nicholas showed that he was aware of his dependence on the troops when he assured the British Ambassador the army would save him. But the troops’ loyalty wavered when ordered to fire on unarmed crowds. The Russian army never liked being used against civilians; it liked this role less than ever now because its green recruits shared the grievances of the crowds. Observing the Cossacks and troops during these critical days, Sukhanov felt they were merely looking for a pretext to join the demonstrators.³¹ One of the very last reports filed by the Okhrana on February 26, just before it was shut down by the rioters, shared this assessment: