The German declaration of renewed unrestricted submarine warfare immediately prompted the breaking off of diplomatic relations by the US. More American lives were lost when the British Laconia was torpedoed on 26 February 1917.
Four more American vessels were sunk in March and the Entente cause also received a fillip through the abdication of the Tsar on 15 March 1917, since the new Russian provisional government could be regarded as sufficiently democratic to remove any moral objections to American participation in the Entente. In all, 197 Americans had been killed since 1914 by U-boats. Wilson finally requested a declaration of war from Congress on 2 April, the resolution passing the Senate by 82 votes to 6 on 4 April and the House of Representatives, by 373 to 50, two days later. In declaring war on 6 April, Wilson proclaimed ‘submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind’.25 Panama and Cuba declared war on Germany on 7 April 1917, as did Brazil on 26 October. Nine other Latin American states also broke off diplomatic relations with Germany between April and October, Peru citing the German sinking of a Peruvian vessel, the Lorton, by way of justification. The ‘last shot’ had failed but, like other manifestations of new technologies, submarines would prove more potent in the future.
Alfred Brown survived the Great War, going on to serve in the Dover Patrol. A butcher after the war, his stories proved sufficiently alluring for his son, Frederick, to join the Merchant Navy as a wireless operator. A few months past his twentieth birthday, Fred was lost, together with the rest of the crew, when SS Empire Jaguar, en route from Cardiff to Philadelphia, was torpedoed by U-103 some 296 miles west of Slyne Head on 8 December 1940. Alfred Brown had not escaped the shadow of the U-boat.26
CHAPTER 8
THE PATH TO REVOLUTION
The Abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, 15 March 1917
ONE POPULAR perception of the Great War remains the image of enthusiastic crowds welcoming the outbreak of war in Europe's belligerent capitals. To be sure there were such crowds, but it is now apparent that the European public had relatively little time to react to events. Enthusiasm for war was more an urban than a rural phenomenon. The crowds that did gather were more likely to be of younger and more middle-class composition. Often the national mood was subdued. One clear illustration is a photograph taken on Dvortsovaya Square behind the Winter Palace (now the Hermitage Museum) in St Petersburg, which was to be renamed Petrograd in August 1914 as more suitably Slavic. The date is 29 July 1914, following the announcement of partial Russian mobilisation.1 Rather than enthusiastic, this crowd is undoubtedly apprehensive.
As events were to prove, they were right to be apprehensive. While there were significant consequences from the collapse of all four empires destroyed by participation in the war – Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Turkey and Russia – that deriving from the collapse of Tsarist Russia had particular importance. It led to the emergence of the Bolsheviks, shaping and determining European and global development until the collapse of communism in Europe between 1989 and 1991. It is difficult to conceive communism triumphing but for the impact of the First World War on the Russian state. Though the causes were many, the train of events in March 1917 began simply enough as a riot among women workers queuing for bread in a Petrograd suburb. How the autocratic Tsar and his advisers reacted was symptomatic of the malaise within the Russian government. J. A. S. Grenville memorably suggested that, by 1917, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia were ‘racing each other to collapse’.2 It was Russia that was always likely to ‘win’ the race through the enormous additional pressure placed on the Tsarist system by the challenge of war.
Russia had experienced considerable social, economic and political tensions as a result of defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. In the aftermath, a nominally constitutional monarchy had emerged, with a Council of Ministers headed by a chairman and an elected assembly, or Duma, marking a distinct change in a state without democratic tradition. Reform was also begun in agriculture with the abolition of communes. In 1908 plans were announced for the progressive extension of universal primary education by 1922. Stimulated by a rearmament programme for both army and navy, industry grew, especially in metallurgy, engineering and shipbuilding, though the economy was still backward in terms of international competitiveness: productivity also remained relatively low, and there was a dependence upon imported raw materials.
Modernisation was not without its costs. In the countryside the impact of reform was limited and it did not diminish the desire for land redistribution. Rapid industrialisation came at the cost of concentrating the industrial workforce in a few key areas such as Moscow, Riga and St Petersburg. Industrialisation and accompanying urbanisation put considerable strains on housing, and there was already growing industrial militancy before the war. The 90 per cent of the population who were either workers or peasants possessed but 24 per cent of the country's wealth.
As yet, the revolutionary movement was too fractured to fully exploit any militancy, the Marxists of the Social Democratic Workers Party having split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903. The Socialist Revolutionaries, founded in 1901, were also divided over revolutionary tactics. The small middle class – generally liberals – was thwarted by a change in the franchise in 1907, which resulted in the return of a more conservative Duma and an end to expectations of further reform. As a result, there was increasingly less support for the Tsar. Neither the Orthodox Church, nor an army badly affected by mutiny in 1905, was quite the bulwark of autocracy it had proved to be in the past. Nonetheless, any revolutionary threat appeared slight.
As elsewhere in Europe in 1914, the fateful decision on war was taken by a relatively small group of individuals. There was some concept of a ‘public opinion’ as represented by the press and by the Duma. While this was a limited circle, it reinforced the view of the Council of Ministers that Russia could no longer yield to Austro-Hungarian or German demands in the way it had done so in previous diplomatic crises. Revolutionaries had assassinated one opponent of an aggressive foreign policy, Pyotr Stolypin, in 1911. Another, Stolypin's successor as chairman of the Council of Ministers, Vladimir Kokovtsov, had been dismissed in February 1914. Concerned at the possible loss of Russia's status as a great power, Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov placed too much confidence in the optimism of the Minister of War, Vladimir Sukhomlinov. The influential Minister of Agriculture, A. V. Krivoshein, also favoured a robust response. On 24 July 1914, therefore, the Council took the decision to advise the Serbs to make concessions, but also to mobilise partially in those frontier districts contiguous with Austria-Hungary as a diplomatic lever. The decision was then confirmed by the Tsar at a Crown Council on the following day. Partial mobilisation commenced on 29 July. Since the military warned that this left Russia hopelessly vulnerable in view of the inherent difficulties of only partial mobilisation, the Tsar then ordered full mobilisation. It went into effect on 31 July. On 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia.
The personality of the Tsar was to be a crucial factor in subsequent events. Meeting the Tsar for the first time in October 1914, Sir John Hanbury-Williams, the head of the British Military Mission, expected an austere autocrat. He discovered instead a man with ‘a bright, keen, happy face, plenty of humour and a “fresh-air man"’.3 Similarly, the British ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, found Nicholas to possess attractive attributes, with ‘quick intelligence, a cultivated mind, method and industry in his work, and natural charm’.4 Unfortunately, Buchanan also found the Tsar lacking in moral courage in his desire to avoid confrontation with those around him, and dominated by his wife.
Nicholas was just twenty-six when he succeeded his father, Alexander III, in 1894 and was due to marry the twenty-two-year-old German Princess, Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, a first cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The marriage duly took place just a week after the late Tsar's funeral, Alix becoming the Tsarina Alexandra. The couple always corresponded and spoke to one another in English – he was ‘Nicky’ and she was ‘Sunny’. As is well known, Ale
xandra, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, passed on haemophilia to the couple's youngest child and only son, Aleksei, born in 1904. Aleksei's condition was largely concealed. The resulting influence over Alexandra of the manipulative Siberian peasant mystic, Grigory Rasputin, led to increasing rumours of an improper relationship. Rasputin's influence rested simply on he alone appearing able to ease the boy's symptoms, possibly by some form of hypnosis. That Alexandra was both German-born – though from her Hessian background, she was actually violently anti-Prussian – and also considerably stronger willed than her shy husband added to the impression of the Tsar's weakness once war broke out. Coupled with her own shyness, the constant stress over her son's health made Alexandra appear an ever more distant figure to ordinary Russians. The couple remained passionately in love throughout their marriage, and devoted to their children, their four daughters – Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia – completing the family. On occasions Nicholas did give way to Alexandra's wishes. ‘Our Friend’ Rasputin, who was desperate to maintain his own position at the heart of government, often shaped those wishes. Kokovtsov was one of his victims. Another case in point was the continued support of Rasputin and Alexandra for the hopelessly inefficient Minister of the Interior appointed in September 1916, Alexandr Protopopov. Meriel Buchanan, the daughter of the British ambassador, memorably characterised Protopopov as ‘a small grey-haired man, with restless, nervous movements and bright, wild eyes that shifted all the time’.5 His inability to tackle the food shortages in Petrograd played a not inconsiderable part in the riots that triggered revolution.
Nicholas always remained an autocrat at heart, believing in a mythic bond between himself and his loyal people, often attributing discontent to those who were ‘alien’ elements in the population, or otherwise not truly Russian. He had an almost preternaturally orderly mind, his daily routine unvarying, and his desk always tidy. Arising from his own elevated concept of duty, Nicholas perceived more and more virtue in traditional Russian structures in the face of the forces of change. He had responded to one early expression of liberal expectation on his accession by proclaiming that he would maintain ‘the principle of autocracy just as firmly and unflinchingly’ as his father.6 His acceptance of the 1905 constitution was a reluctant one. In any case, the Tsar could dismiss the Duma and appoint or dismiss his ministers as he chose. Ministers were usually confined to departmental responsibilities so that the Council operated more as a bureaucracy than an executive. To give one example, whatever Rasputin's influence, the Tsar himself had believed that Kokovtsov was exceeding his authority. Indeed, where the Tsar was quite prepared to act decisively was in maintaining his own powers, which coincided with what he perceived to be in Russia's best interests.
If anything, Alexandra was even more convinced of the need to maintain the Tsar's supreme authority. In December 1916 she urged Nicholas to ‘be the Master’ for ‘we have been placed by God on a throne & we must keep it firm & give it over to our son untouched – if you keep that in mind you will remember to be the Sovereign – and how much easier for an autocratic sovereign than one who has sworn the constitution!’7 Just as orderly in her habits as her husband, the deeply religious Alexandra developed a belief not only in the virtue of suffering, but also in the basic loyalty of the Russian people to the Tsar.
The simple fact was that the government did not cope well with the war's demands. There was a spirit of ‘patriotic union’ in the Duma in August 1914. Only 21 out of 448 deputies in the Duma voted against the war: five Bolsheviks, six Mensheviks and ten Trudoviks (Labour Party). The political truce ended, however, with military failures in 1915, and the continued resistance of the Tsar to reform. Prorogued in January 1915, the Duma was recalled in July, with a new political alliance emerging within it in August 1915. This alliance was the so-called Progressive Bloc, orchestrated by Pavel Miliukov of the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats), a radical party representative of small businesses. Apart from the Kadets, it also embraced the Octobrists (Conservative-Liberals), led by Alexandr Guchkov, a wool manufacturer, which mostly represented the larger industrial concerns; and the Progressists, founded in 1912 by Moscow-based textile manufacturers to seek a wider political role for industry as a whole.
Within a few weeks, however, the Duma was prorogued ostensibly for six months as the Tsar left for the front in September 1915 to assume personal command of his armies. He took up quarters with Russian General Headquarters (Stavka) in Mogilev (the word literally means ‘grave'), a small and undistinguished town to the southwest of Moscow. In some respects, the Tsar's decision was logical. It removed the tension that had arisen in civil–military relations from the mutual animosity between the conservative Sukhomlinov, who had expected to have command, and the Tsar's actual commander-in-chief, his cousin, the urbane and liberally minded Grand Duke Nicholas. The Tsar had frequented Stavka since the beginning of the war and was at his most relaxed there, especially when Aleksei joined him. Unfortunately, the decision had been influenced by Alexandra's insidious dislike of the Grand Duke, who had threatened to hang Rasputin if he ever came near Stavka. It also consigned government in Petrograd to Alexandra and Rasputin. A letter from ten of his thirteen ministers objecting to the Grand Duke's removal from his command, which ‘shocked & horrified’ Nicholas, stemmed largely from their recognition of how the Tsar's absence would enhance Alexandra's influence.8 Ministers, indeed, were now to be chosen depending upon their acceptance of Rasputin, until he was murdered in December 1916 amid rumours of a wider palace coup aimed at replacing the Tsar.
In all, there were four chairmen of the Council, three war ministers, three foreign ministers, and six ministers of the interior between the Tsar's departure for the front and March 1917. The Bloc maintained a presence as a kind of rump parliament after the suspension of the Duma, but the Tsar declined to offer even the moderate concessions sought by Miliukov. Nicholas was bolstered in his opposition to reform by Alexandra. As she wrote in July 1915 of its recall, ‘I assure you only harm will arise – they speak too much. Russia, thank God, is not a constitutional country.’9 When Sir George Buchanan urged the Tsar to create a more representative government in January 1917, saying it would enable him to regain his people's confidence, Nicholas replied, ‘Do you mean I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain my confidence?’10 On 6 March 1917 Nicholas suggested that he was prepared finally to appoint a ‘responsible government’ but then changed his mind the following day and left for Mogilev.
Much actual day-to-day administration increasingly fell into the hands of so-called ‘voluntary’ organisations such as the All Russian Union of Zemstvos (rural councils), headed by a liberal monarchist, Prince Georgy L'vov, and the Union of Municipalities. Both emerged in August 1914, initially to organise relief of the sick and wounded. In June 1915 the two organisations, both of which were largely controlled from Moscow, created Zemgor as an agency to intervene in war supply. The emergence of Zemgor was followed by the creation in June 1915, in a further extension of the self-mobilisation process of business and industry, of the Central War Industries Committee (TsVPK), under Guchkov, and other similar local War Industries Committees (VPKs). The significance of these public organisations and of the Progressive Bloc, which was closely linked to them, was the assertion by the educated middle classes of their role in the state. Consequently, the government was intensely suspicious of the VPKs, of Guchkov's attack on state bureaucracy, and of the Moscow-based challenge to the monopoly of the metal industries centred on Petrograd.
Unfortunately, the duplication of effort between state and public organisations undermined the ability of both to maximise war production. Under the direction of Guchkov and his deputy, A. I. Konovalov, leader of the Progressists, the VPKs became increasingly politicised. By contrast, Miliukov lapsed into passivity in the expectation that only the recall of the Duma could solve Russia's problems. Guchkov addressed criticisms of the government to the army chief of staff, Mikhail Alekseev, in August 1916 and
attempted to draw other officers into some kind of action to force the Tsar to abdicate. Alekseev, who had been appointed by Nicholas in September 1915, was a modest man of relatively humble origins, his father having been only a junior officer. Despite the Tsar's presence, Stavka became far less aristocratic and far more effective under Alekseev for all that he appeared unable to delegate. He was honest and notably apolitical but even he called for a single minister to oversee the war economy in June 1916. The most politically damaging aspect of the VPKs, however, was their championing of labour representation within industry. It proved so because the resulting workers’ groups failed to achieve any worthwhile gains for labour. This so radicalised the central workers’ group in Petrograd that, under Menshevik influence in November 1916, it demanded the immediate establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. Both the Petrograd and Moscow central groups then called for a strike in January 1917 in commemoration of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ of the 1905 revolution. Most of the leadership was arrested in February 1917, but there was escalating strike action and general unrest in Petrograd through February and March 1917.
Strike action reflected the way in which industry had responded to the war. It has been sometimes assumed that Russian industry simply collapsed under the strain of wartime production. Initially, it was certainly affected by mobilisation and by the loss of Poland in 1915, 15 per cent of the territory, 23 per cent of the population, a fifth of coal and a tenth of iron-ore resources being lost to Germans. As elsewhere, Russia also suffered a shell shortage in 1915. This continued into 1916, the estimated monthly requirement being 1.5 million shells at a time when only 140,000 were being produced. The government itself declined to believe that its industry could cope, with the result that it ordered large amounts of munitions from Britain and the United States. In any case, the government took the view that resources would be better spent on purchasing shells overseas than in developing new factories, which would be idle in peacetime.
The Making of the First World War Page 19