A Polish proverb has it that where there are no fish crayfish will do. In the eyes of the Petrograd mob, the Duma was the government, and from February 27 to March 1 numerous deputations made their way to Taurida to pledge support and loyalty. Among them were not only workers, soldiers, and intellectuals but also thousands of officers, the military units guarding the Imperial palaces, and, strangest sight of all, a detachment of the Corps of Gendarmes, which marched to Taurida to the strains of the “Marseillaise” bearing red flags.66 On March 1, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich, the commandant of the Palace Guard at Tsarskoe Selo and a cousin of Nicholas, announced that he and his men acknowledged the authority of the Provisional Government.* 67
The sudden shift of sentiment on the part of the most illiberal elements of Petrograd society—right-wing officers, gendarmes, policemen—who only a few days before were pillars of the monarchy, can only be explained by one factor: fear. Shulgin, who was in the thick of events, had no doubt that the officers in particular were paralyzed with it and sought the protection of the Duma to save their lives from the mutinous troops.68
The Provisional Committee sent cables to the commanders of the armed forces informing them that to put an end to the crisis of authority it had assumed power from the old cabinet. Order would soon be restored.69
In the evening, Rodzianko visited Prime Minister Golitsyn to inquire whether the Tsar would consent to the formation of a Duma ministry. Golitsyn told him of Nicholas’s negative answer. When Rodzianko returned with this information to Taurida at 10 p.m. there followed lengthy discussions in the Provisional Committee which led to the inexorable conclusion that there was no choice but to assume de facto governmental authority. The alternative was either the complete collapse of order or the assumption of power by a rival and radical body, the Petrograd Soviet, which had come into existence the very same day.70
The revival of the Petrograd Soviet was first discussed by the Mensheviks on February 25, but the initiative came from two members of the Central Workers’ Group, who, having been jailed in January on orders of Protopopov, were freed by the insurgent mob on the morning of February 27: K. A. Gvozdev, its chairman, and B. O. Bogdanov, its secretary, both Mensheviks. An appeal was issued to the soldiers, workers, and other inhabitants of Petrograd to elect representatives to an organizing meeting of the Soviet that evening at Taurida. It was signed: “The Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Worker Deputies.”71 This allowed almost no time for elections, and when the meeting opened that night few elected representatives were on hand. Although according to some accounts as many as 250 people showed up, most were onlookers; only forty to fifty were considered eligible to vote.72 The meeting chose a Provisional Executive Committee, or Ispolkom, of eight or nine persons, mostly Mensheviks: Chkheidze took over as chairman, with Kerensky and M. I. Skobelev as deputies. Since no protocols were kept, it cannot be established exactly what transpired. Some soldiers spoke and it was decided to admit soldiers into the Soviet in a separate section. There followed discussions of the food problem, of the need to create a militia to maintain order. It was resolved to publish
37. Troops of the Petrograd garrison assembling in front of the Winter Palace to swear loyalty to the Provisional Government.
38. A sailor removing an officer’s epaulettes.
On February 28 the factories and military units elected representatives to the Soviet. They chose overwhelmingly moderate socialists: the extremist parties (Bolsheviks, SR Maximalists, and Mezhraiontsy) received between them less than 10 percent of the votes.74 Voting procedures were chaotic: they followed the traditional practices of Russian popular assemblies, which strove to secure not a mathematically accurate representation of individual opinions but a sense of the collective will. Small shops sent as many representatives as large factories, army units from regiments down to companies did likewise, with the result that the Soviet was overwhelmed by delegates from small enterprises and the garrison. In the second week of its existence, of the Soviet’s 3,000 deputies more than 2,000 were soldiers75—this in a city in which industrial workers outnumbered soldiers two or three times. In photographs of the Soviet, military uniforms dominate.
