But now that it had, at long last, the opportunity to do so, the Duma took refuge in legalities. Nicholas was still sovereign: after he had ordered the Duma adjourned, it no longer had legal existence. Some deputies, from the left and right, urged that the Tsar’s wishes be ignored, but Rodzianko refused: instead, he cabled Nicholas asking authorization for the Duma to form a cabinet. In the early afternoon Rodzianko consented to the Council of Elders deciding on the course of action. The senior statesmen of the Duma were very nervous. They did not want to inflame popular passions and contribute to anarchy by defying the Tsar. At the same time, they thought it impossible to do nothing because mobs were converging on the Duma building, demanding action. On February 27, a crowd of 25,000 filled the space in front of Taurida; some of the demonstrators penetrated the building.
Faced with this predicament, the Elders settled on a weak compromise. Deferring to the Tsar’s wishes, they asked the deputies to assemble at 2:30 p.m. in another chamber of Taurida—the so-called Semicircular Hall—as a “private body.” Present were most members of the Progressive Bloc, with the addition of socialists, but without the conservatives. This is how Shulgin describes the scene:
The room barely accommodated us: the entire Duma was on hand. Rodzianko and the Elders sat behind a table. Around them sat and stood, crowding, the others in a dense mob. Frightened, excited, somehow spiritually clinging to one another. Even enemies of Jong standing suddenly sensed that there was something which was equally dangerous, threatening, repulsive to them all. That something was the street, the street mob.… One could feel its hot breath.… With the street approached She to whom very few then gave any thought, but whom, certainly, very many unconsciously sensed. That is why they were pale, their hearts secretly constricted. Surrounded by a crowd of many thousands, on the street stalked Death …61
After a chaotic discussion, in the course of which proponents of immediate assumption of power by the Elders clashed with the more cautious adherents of legitimacy, it was decided to form an executive of twelve Duma members, still of a “private” nature, to be known as the “Provisional Committee of Duma Members for the Restoration of Order in the Capital and the Establishment of Relations with Individuals and Institutions.” Chaired by Rodzianko, it initially consisted of representatives of the Progressive Bloc with the addition of two socialists (Kerensky and Chkheidze)—a coalition that extended from the moderate Nationalists to the Mensheviks. The ludicrously cumbersome name given the organization reflected the timidity of its organizers. The revolutionary upheaval which they had so long anticipated had caught them unprepared: experienced at dueling with ministers they had no idea how to handle raging mobs. They did not even know how to claim power. The writer Zinaida Gippius, observing the timidity of the Duma leaders and contrasting it with the resolute behavior of the radical intelligentsia in the Soviet, remarked in her diary on the psychological inhibition that held them back:
36. Provisional Committee of the Duma. Sitting on extreme left, V. N. Lvov, and on extreme right, M. Rodzianko. Standing on extreme left, V. V. Shulgin, and second from right, A. F. Kerensky.
They could only ask “legitimate authority.” The Revolution has abolished this authority without their participation. They did not overthrow it: they have only mechanically remained on the surface, on top—passively, without a prior arrangement. But they are
It has been argued63 that the failure of the Duma to proclaim at once, in an unequivocal manner, the assumption of power had disastrous consequences because it deprived the Provisional Government which issued from it of legitimacy. However, such importance as one can attach to this fact derives less from the legal aspects of sovereignty, which the population at large did not care about, than from the mentality which it revealed—namely, a dread of responsibility. An eyewitness says that the Duma group decided to constitute its Provisional Committee in an atmosphere not unlike that in which, in normal times, the Duma might have appointed a Fisheries Committee.64 The onetime head of the Petrograd Okhrana, A. V. Gerasimov, thought that in adhering to the fiction that it was not taking power, but forming a private body to deal with the disorders, the Duma leaders wanted also to protect themselves against criminal prosecution in the event that the crown succeeded in suppressing the rebellion—for in the course of the day they were apprised of the approach of General Ivanov’s punitive expedition.65
