During the first month of its existence, the Petrograd Soviet served only the capital city, but then it expanded its authority over the entire country. The All-Russian Consultation of Soviets, convened in Petrograd in late March, voted to have the Ispolkom admit into its membership representatives of the provincial city soviets and frontline army units, which transformed the Petrograd Soviet into the All-Russian Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.171 Sixteen delegates from other parts of Russia were added to what now became the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK or CEC). By now its membership had grown to seventy-two, among whom were twenty-three Mensheviks, twenty-two SRs, and twelve Bolsheviks.
To direct and systematize its work, the Ispolkom created on March 14 another bureaucratic body, a Bureau. In mid-April, the Bureau had twenty-four members (eleven Mensheviks, six SRs, three Trudoviki, and four “non-faction” Social-Democrats). The Bolsheviks initially refused to join on the grounds that they had been offered insufficient places.172
The Ispolkom and its Bureau supplanted the incorrigibly undisciplined Soviet Plenum, which convened less and less frequently; when it did, it was to approve by acclamation the decisions of the Executive. In the first four days of its existence (February 28-March 3), the Plenum met daily. In the rest of March it met four times, in April six. No one paid much attention to its noisy proceedings. The separate Workers’ Section and Soldiers’ Section met somewhat more frequently.
Although the Ispolkom, with its Bureau, and the Soviet, which followed their bidding, posed as the authentic voice of the country’s masses, they had among their members no representatives of peasant organizations. The peasants, 80 percent of the population, had their Peasants’ Union, which kept aloof from the Soviet. The All-Russian Soviet thus spoke for only a fraction of the country’s inhabitants, 10 to 15 percent at best, if allowance is made for the peasantry and the “bourgeoisie,” neither of which was represented.
Operating under such difficult conditions, the Provisional Government concentrated on “democratic” legislation, which was easy to turn out and certain to secure the approval of the Soviet. Cabinet meetings took place in the evening and sometimes late at night. The ministers arrived exhausted and were observed to doze off.
In the weeks that followed its assumption of power, the government passed numerous laws, some designed to rectify the abuses of the old regime, others to implement the eight-point program. Soldiers received full civil rights, and those serving in the rear were no longer subject to courts-martial. All civil disabilities due to religious or ethnic affiliation were lifted. The death penalty was abolished. The right of association and assembly was assured. Poland was promised full independence after the war (although qualified to the extent that it would remain “united with Russia in a free military union”) and Finland was guaranteed the restoration of her constitutional rights. This legislative industry was the most productive sector of the Russian economy.173 The trouble was that whereas laws that enhanced freedom were promptly acted upon, no one paid attention to those that imposed new obligations.
On the three issues that mattered most—land reform, the Constituent Assembly, and peace—the government acted in a dilatory manner.
Except for the areas adjacent to the large cities, the news of the Tsar’s abdication traveled at a snail’s pace to the rural districts, held in the grip of a savage winter. Most villages first learned of the Revolution four to six weeks after it had broken out, i.e., in the first half of April, with the onset of the spring thaw.174 The peasants interpreted the news to mean they were free to resume assaults on private landed property halted ten years earlier by Stolypin. The Black Repartition got underway once again, as the communal peasants, at first cautiously and then with increasing boldness, raided landed property, first and foremost that belonging to fellow peasants who had withdrawn from the commune and taken title to private land. The earliest reports of agrarian disturbances reached Petrograd in the middle of March,175 but they assumed mass proportions in April. The instigators were often army deserters and criminals released from prison in February; sometimes whole communes fell under their influence. In this initial phase of the agrarian revolution, the peasants attacked mainly isolated households and estates, cutting down trees, stealing seed grain, and chasing away prisoners of war employed as farmhands.176 As in 1905, physical violence was rare. The government appealed on April 8 to the peasants to desist from illegal seizures. It also appointed a commission under A. I. Shingarev, the Minister of Agriculture, to draft a program of agrarian reform for submission to the Constituent Assembly.177
