The Russian Revolution полностью

Given the sentiments of the Ispolkom, it was unlikely ever to have approved the government’s plans to allow Nicholas to leave for England. Nevertheless, it came as something of a shock when at the end of March (OS) Britain informed the Provisional Government that she was withdrawing her invitation to the ex-Tsar. It was believed then and for a long time afterward that it was Prime Minister David Lloyd George who had dissuaded George V from following his generous impulses. Lloyd George himself liked to perpetuate this impression.²¹¹ But it has since become known that he did so to protect the King, who had vetoed the earlier decision for fear that it would embarrass the Crown and irritate Labor MPs who were “expressing adverse opinions to the proposal.”²¹² The King’s role in this dishonorable action was kept in strict secrecy: instructions went out “to keep an eye on anything that may be put into the War Cabinet minutes likely to hurt the King’s feelings.”²¹³ It subsequently became Britain’s stated policy not to allow any member of the Russian royal family on her soil while the war was on, with the exception of the Empress Dowager Marie, the Danish-born sister of Edward VII’s widow, Alexandra.*

According to Kerensky, Nicholas was shattered to learn of the British refusal²¹⁴—not because he wanted to leave Russia, but because it was further proof of the “treason and cowardice and deception” with which he felt surrounded. He spent the next four months in forced idleness—reading, playing games, taking walks, and working in the garden.

The February Revolution had many striking features that distinguish it from other revolutionary upheavals. But the most striking of all was the remarkable rapidity with which the Russian state fell apart. It was as if the greatest empire in the world, covering one-sixth of the earth’s surface, were an artificial construction, without organic unity, held together by wires all of which converged in the person of the monarch. The instant the monarch withdrew, the wires snapped and the whole structure collapsed in a heap. Kerensky says that there were moments when it seemed to him that

the word “revolution” [was] quite inapplicable to what happened in Russia [between February 27 and March 3]. A whole world of national and political relationships sank to the bottom, and at once all existing political and tactical programs, however bold and well conceived, appeared hanging aimlessly and uselessly in space.²¹⁵

Rozanov described the phenomenon in his own pungent style:

Russia wilted in two days. At the very most, three. Even Novoe vremia could not have been shut down as quickly as Russia shut down. It is amazing how she suddenly fell apart, all of her, down to particles, to pieces. Indeed, such an upheaval had never occurred before, not excluding “the Great Migrations of Peoples” … There was no Empire, no Church, no army, no working class. And what remained? Strange to say, literally nothing. A base people remained.²¹⁶

By late April, eight weeks after the Revolution had broken out, Russia was foundering. On April 26 the Provisional Government issued a pathetic appeal in which it conceded it was unable to run the country. Kerensky now voiced regrets that he did not die when the Revolution was still young and filled with hope that the nation could manage to govern itself “without whips and cudgels.”²¹⁷

Russians, having gotten rid of tsarism, on which they used to blame all their ills, stood bewildered in the midst of their newly gained freedom. They were not unlike the lady in a Balzac story who had been sick for so long that when finally cured thought herself struck by a new disease.

*According to E. I. Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia v fevral’skom perevorote (Leningrad, 1927), 85, the troops used machine guns, but this is almost certainly wrong. A noncommissioned officer who took part in the incident claimed that the troops fired into the air and that the killing was done by a drunken officer: Byloe, No. 5–6/27–28 (1917), 8–9.

*In April-June 1917, mutinies broke out among French troops on the Western Front. They were fueled by soldier resentment of the heavy casualties suffered in the Nivelle offensive, but the news of the Russian Revolution, which led to a rebellion of Russian units in France, also played a part. Eventually, fifty-four divisions were affected: in May 1917 the French army was incapable of offensive operations. And yet the mutiny, which the French government managed to keep secret for decades, was eventually contained and at no time threatened to bring down the state—a telling commentary on the national and political cohesion of France as compared with that of Russia. See John Williams, Mutiny 1917 (London, 1962), and Richard M. Watt, Dare Call It Treason (New York, 1963).