Before the Bolsheviks attained power in October 1917, there
was a prior popular revolution in which the Russian Romanov Monarchy fell in
February 1917. It was replaced by the Provisional Government composed of democratic
elements. This fall of the Russian Monarchy was a catastrophe in the making.
At the time Russia was in a terrible war. Some 1.7 million
soldiers would be killed and many more wounded and captured by the enemy. Russia
had experienced massive defeats, losing Poland and Western Ukraine. Russia was
straining to maintain the massive cost of this war.
There are three basic ways to finance a war. Tax the
country. Finance the war through war bonds or loans. Or print money.
Governments chose the last option, since it requires only starting up the
printing presses. Russia used that option. At first economic activity was
booming as is the case when governments fool people with cheapened money, then
it becomes known that the prices are rising all around and so people try to
beat the rise by raising prices in anticipation. Prices rose by 4 times from
1914. Wages earners are hurt the worst since they can’t set their own prices
and will begin to fall behind the inflation spiral. This was the case in
Petrograd, where most of the war munitions were produced.
What precipitated the
revolution was the food shortage. Fundamentally the Russian Government
could not afford to feed both the soldier and the city resident. The peasant
sold grain through middlemen and didn’t receive the requisite increase in price
for their grain they required; inflation was raising prices of everything that
the peasant bought. So the peasant had little incentive to sell grain; they
reverted to subsistence farming and hoarded their grain. As an indication the
economic system was collapsing, the Russian government had begun to requisition
gain. This was no real solution and the cities continued to be short of food. Nonetheless,
the Russian government had to feed the army as well. In addition the
transportation rail system was strained as well. Transportation of goods had to
be rationed between the war at the front and the populace further contributing
to food shortages.
There was much political and labor unrest after the initial
euphoria of the first year of war. In fact October 1916 was the heighth of
political demonstrations by far with 177 strikes involving 175,000 strikers. In
the last 18 months of war labor strikes were common ranging from 13 to 48
strikes a month involving 6,000 to 53,000 workers.
Already, experiencing regular shortages of food, on February
23, 1917 International Women’s Day triggers a strike of the women textile
workers that spreads to the metal workers and then to demonstrations on the
streets.
The Okhrana, the oppressive and omnipresent secret police, that
had infiltrated virtually a aspects of society, warned of the danger of a
social explosion. They gave word to the authorities the situation in the
working class districts was a tinder box. Living with constant unrest had left
the authorities deaf to the real peril that was forth-coming.
The only response by the authorities was crackdowns.
Striking workers were being drafted and sent to the front. Labor leaders were
arrested and imprisoned or sent into exile. It was at this time that the
Bolshevik party was decimated, since all radical groups were infiltrated by Okhrana.
The Russian Empire was suspicious of civil society. So even,
labor mutual aid groups were suppressed deemed to be vehicles of political
activity and hives for radicals. Despite the authorities opposition Liberal
charitable organizations like All-Russian Union of Zemstvos (Local Councils)
organized for the sick and the wounded and the All-Russian Union of Towns for
municipal self-governments became deeply involved in food supply.
Critically, the Cossacks, a southern Russian nomadic peoples
frequently used as the regime’s enforcers, acted with indifference, when asked
to suppress the strikes of February 23. Strikes mushroom across all districts
of Petrograd on the next day. Cossacks are once again no use to the regime and
even chased away the police.
On the third day of strikes, February 25 there is a general
strike and the city of Petrograd is paralyzed. Police under provocation fire on
demonstrations and 9 are killed. Some soldiers called to quell the rioting
defect. Police chiefs, Shalfeev and Krylov are killed by the rioters. General
Khabalov, head of the Petrograd military district, got a telegram from Czar
Nicholas to quell the demonstrations by any means necessary. Police arrested
100 leaders of the demonstrations.
On the 26th what were presumed to be loyal Troops
began firing on demonstrators. There were some 300,000 troops stationed in
Petrograd. Czar Nicholas was confident that they could restore order. Chairman
of the State Duma (assembly) Rodzianko contacted the Czar to let him know “the
situation is serious. The capital is in a state of anarchy” and to beg him to
recognize a consultative body, a cabinet, in efforts to calm the populace. This
of course was the weakest step towards reform regarding the upheaval of the
populace. This tentative step of a consultative cabinet wouldn’t be close
enough to quench popular unrest. Nicholas’ comment was, “Again this fat
Rodzianko has written me all sorts of nonsense, to which I will not even
reply.” Nicholas, forever the autocrat, refused this conciliation and called
for the elected Duma to be prorogued or closed instead. Doing away with the
Duma at this point was an ineffectual, belated move and the misguided thing to
do anyway. Unbeknownst to him Nicholas would cease to be Czar in four days.
The next day the soldier’s insurrection began in earnest in
Petrograd and the military began to disintegrate. Arms are seized, so
insurrecting soldiers couldn’t be restrained by their officers. Officers were killed
or forced to flee by their subordinates most importantly the NCO’s. Discipline in the Czarist Army was very harsh,
the officer core being alienated from their soldiers. The common soldier
demanded to select his own officers. Additionally, prisons are forced open,
releasing prisoners.
On February 28 all military units in Petrograd have joined
the insurrection. The military leader of the Petrograd district, Khabalov, is
arrested and the hated leader of the all too power Ministry of Interior,
Protopopov, surrenders to the insurrectionists. The military high command
decides to strike back and Nicholas feels compelled leave the war command
center at Mogilev near the front to join his wife in the Tsarskoe Selo palace
near Petrograd. He would begin a train journey that would end with his
abdication.
Nicholas II was hidebound; he wouldn’t budge from the
principle of ruling Russia as an autocrat. The Autocrat was designated by God,
a divinely appointed regent, with freedom to rule with little or no constraint.
He said he promised his father upon his death to maintain this autocracy. In
the upheaval of 1905 a Duma, an assembly was granted but Nicholas always
insisted it was at his pleasure. He refused to recognize a monarchy constrained
by a constitution or allow any designated advisory body or council or any
representative cabinet. Liberals urged this upon him throughout the war as a
means to reduce the social tensions that were building up. Russia’s only
reaction under Nicholas was to use surveillance and crackdown on unrest as a
response to social unrest. Ironically,
Russia got her autocrat a decade later with Stalin as General Secretary of the
Communist party. He would send millions to their deaths.
Czar Nicholas would spend part of two days attempting to
reach Tsarskoe Selo, first heading directly to Petrograd but then shunted east
to reach a village, Bologoe, southeast of the capital the next day only to be
told the route to Petrograd was blocked as well. He traveled west to Pskov,
arriving 8 pm on March 1.
During his meanderings the situation in Petrograd had
completely fallen apart, a fragile Provisional government had been coalesced
under the idea the Czar Nicholas had to go. This is the only thing that could
conceivably quell the populace. With control of the railroad transport there
was manipulation of the routing of the Czar’s train schedule to delay his
arrival to the capital. They had been in communication with the military and
convinced them that an attack on Petrograd would cause Civil War. Russia was in
the middle of a war already with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. To
preserve Russia they needed to jettison the monarchy.
Czar Nicholas II was convinced in Pskov that his abdication
would bring the social unrest to an end. At first it would be his hemophiliac
son who would be the next Czar but Nicholas decided his son would abdicate too
and the crown would fall to his Uncle Michael Alexandrovich. Unfortunately, he
acquiesced to the Provisional government, saying he would wait on them to
determine the upcoming form of government. The Romanov Russian monarchy was
over. They had written their own death sentences. Czar Nicholas and his whole
family were butchered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.
The fall of the monarchy precipitated a chain of events that
led to the rise of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Stalin and a mass of atrocities. This
is the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.
Much of the blame for the fall of the monarchy I am afraid
to say can be placed on Czar Nicholas II himself. He insisted on rejecting any
accommodation with reform, a reform that was desperately called for. It must be
remembered that the society was tragically divided, which included a
revolutionary element, the left Social Revolutionaries who engaged in assassinations
of Russian governmental officials, as a matter of policy, which included the
assassination of two ministers of interior and the Czars’ uncle Sergei.
Nicholas’s grandfather, Alexander II, who freed the serfs and who had a benign
policy towards Finland, was assassinated in 1881. Nonetheless, a constituent
assembly, much like Germany’s Bundestag with a responsible cabinet would have
given the Russian monarchy firmer footing. Czar Nicholas rejected it all and
chose to rule with the secret police, Okhrana and oppression. I suspect
Nicholas relied on his belief that the vast peasantry supported the monarchy,
but they turned out to be simply spectators in the social upheaval. (Richard
Pipes [See below.] provides a far more sophisticated analysis of Russia and its
collapse, some of which highlights Russia’s unpreparedness for a deliberative parliament
with which the Monarchy could work. For example nearly all elements of the
political spectrum were quite sympathetic to Social Revolutionaries reign of
terror on the Czarist regime administration. Thousands were said to have been assassinated
before the War. The peasants on the other hand, which owned 90% of the land,
were organized under thousands of communes, led under a patriarchal setup, that
was devoid of patriotic allegiance to the monarchy.)
Nicholas in 1915 after devastating loses of Poland and
western Ukraine decided to propagate the war at the front, dismissing his
cousin Nikolay Nikolayovich. It was a mistake to remove himself from the
capital and isolate himself at the front. And leave himself open to the
vagaries of the military events.
The entrance itself into World War I was nothing less than
idiocy. Russia had no vital interests in the Balkans other than prestige, acting
on the violation of the integrity of Serbia that ignited the conflict. It
wasn’t ready for the war and shortly proved it really couldn’t afford a modern
war, which caused the death and disability of millions and bankrupted the
country. These were colossal blunders that destroyed Russia and brought down
the monarchy. Nicholas made that final
decision to declare war, against not a few who cautioned restraint.
I point you to the brilliant works of Richard Pipes, the Russian Revolution and Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. These
offer far more nuance, insight and analysis than this humble monograph presumes
to offer.
