On Thursday, March 8, as Nicholas’s train was carrying him away from the capital back to Headquarters, the silent, long-suffering breadlines suddenly erupted. Unwilling to wait any longer, people broke into the bakeries and helped themselves. Columns of protesting workers from the industrial Vyborg section marched across the Neva bridges toward the center of the city. A procession, composed mainly of women chanting “Give us bread,” filled the Nevsky Prospect. The demonstration was peaceful; nevertheless, at dusk a squadron of Cossacks trotted down the Nevsky Prospect, the clatter of their hoofs sounding the government’s warning. Despite the disorders, no one was seriously alarmed. At the French Embassy that night, the guests threw themselves into a passionate argument as to which of the reigning ballerinas of the Imperial Ballet—Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina or Mathilde Kschessinska—was supreme in her art.
On Friday morning, March 9, the crowds poured into the streets in greater numbers. More bakeries were sacked and again the Cossack patrols appeared, although without their whips, the traditional instrument of mob control in Russia. The crowd, noting this absence, treated the Cossacks cheerfully and parted readily to let them pass. The Cossacks, in turn, bantered with the crowd and assured them, “Don’t worry. We won’t shoot.”
On Saturday, most of the workers of Petrograd went on strike. Trains, trolley cars and cabs stopped running, and no newspapers appeared. Huge crowds surged through the streets, carrying, for the first time, red banners and shouting, “Down with the German woman! Down with Protopopov! Down with the war!” A sense of alarm began to speed through the city. That night the violinist Georges Enesco gave a recital in the concert hall of the Maryinsky Theatre. The theatre was practically empty; not more than fifty people sat in the audience, and there were wide gaps in the orchestra. Enesco came up to a corner of the huge stage and played an intimate, private concert for the few people sitting close together in the front of the deserted hall.
The Cabinet, trying desperately to solve the problem of food supply, met all day and through the night. By telegram, they begged Nicholas to return. With the exception of Protopopov, the entire Cabinet also offered to resign, urging the Tsar to appoint a new ministry acceptable to the Duma. Nicholas refused. Five hundred miles away, misinformed by Protopopov as to the seriousness of the situation, believing the crisis to be only another of the turbulent strikes which had plagued his entire reign, he replied to Prince Golitsyn, the Prime Minister, that Cabinet resignations were out of the question. To General Khabalov, Military Governor of Petrograd, he telegraphed brusquely: “I order that the disorders in the capital, intolerable during these difficult times of war with Germany and Austria, be ended tomorrow. Nicholas.”
The Tsar’s order clearly meant that, where necessary, troops were to be used to clear the streets. The sequence, arranged by Protopopov, entailed meeting disorders first with the police, then with Cossacks wielding whips and, as a last resort, with soldiers using rifles and machine guns. Ultimately, of course, the plan and the security of the capital depended on the quality of the troops available.
As it happened, the quality of the troops in Petrograd could not have been worse. The regular soldiers of the pre-war army—the proud infantry and the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, the veteran Cossacks and regiments of the line—had long since perished in the icy wastes of Poland and Galicia. The best men who remained were still in the trenches facing the Germans. The Petrograd garrison in the winter of 1917 consisted of 170,000 men, most of them raw recruits crowded into training barracks. The Cossacks of the garrison were young country boys, fresh from the villages, wholly inexperienced in street fighting. Many of the infantry recruits were older men, in their thirties and forties, drawn in part from the working-class suburbs of Petrograd itself. Poor fighting material, not wanted by the generals at the front, they were left in the capital, where it was hoped that their proximity to home would keep them from stirring up trouble. There were too few officers; those on hand had been invalided back from the front or were boys from military schools incapable of maintaining discipline in a crisis. Lacking both officers and rifles, many units of the garrison never bothered to train.
Despite the caliber of his garrison, General Khabalov prepared to obey the Tsar’s command. Early risers, venturing into the city’s streets on Sunday morning, found huge posters bearing Khabalov’s orders: All assemblies and public meetings were forbidden and would be dispersed by force. All strikers who were not back at their jobs the following morning would be drafted and sent to the front.
The posters were ignored completely. Huge crowds swarmed from the Vyborg quarter across the Neva bridges into the city. In response, lines of soldiers began issuing silently from their barracks. At 4:30 p.m. there was shooting on the Nevsky Prospect opposite the Anitchkov Palace. Fifty people were killed or wounded; throughout the city that day, two hundred people died. Many of the soldiers were bitter, and only reluctantly obeyed orders. Before the Nicholas Station, a company of the Volinsky Regiment refused to fire into a crowd, and emptied its rifles into the air. A company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards refused to fire at all and, when its commander insisted, turned and shot the officer instead. The situation was quickly restored when a loyal company of the crack Preobrajensky Guard moved in to disarm the mutineers and send them back to their barracks.
That night, Rodzianko, who had been meeting with the helpless ministers, sent an anguished telegram to the Tsar: “The position is serious,” he said. “There is anarchy in the capital. The government is paralyzed. Transportation of food and fuel is completely disorganized…. There is disorderly firing in the streets. A person trusted by the country must be charged immediately to form a ministry.” Rodzianko ended with a heartfelt plea: “May the blame not fall on the wearer of the crown.” Nicholas, scornful of what he considered hysterics, turned to Alexeiev and declared, “That fat Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense which I shall not even bother to answer.”
Instead of concessions, Nicholas decided to send reinforcements. He ordered General Ivanov, an elderly commander from the Galician front, to collect four of the best regiments from the front line, march on the capital and subdue it by force, if necessary. He telegraphed Prince Golitsyn to instruct Rodzianko that the Duma session was to be suspended. And he decided to return to Petrograd himself within a few days. “Am leaving day after tomorrow [the 13th],” he telegraphed Alexandra. “Have finished here with all important questions. Sleep well. God bless you.” In Petrograd that night, although two hundred people lay dead, most of the city was quiet. Buchanan, returning at last from his Finnish holiday, noted that “the part of the city through which we passed on our short drive to the Embassy was perfectly quiet and, except for a few patrols of soldiers on the quays and the absence of trams and cabs, there was nothing unusual.” Paléologue, returning home at eleven p.m., passed the Radziwill mansion, blazing with the lights of a gala party. Outside, among a long line of elegant cars and carriages, Paléologue happened to spot the car of Grand Duke Boris.
Monday, March 12, was the turning point in Petrograd. On Monday morning, the Tsar’s government still clung to a last shred of power. By Monday night, power had passed to the Duma.
The key to this swift, overwhelming change was the massive defection of the Petrograd soldiery. Many of the workers had had enough of going to the Nevsky Prospect to be killed. Indeed, on Sunday night, Iurenev, the leader of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd, had gloomily concluded that the uprising had failed. “The Reaction is gaining strength,” he said to a group of extreme Left party leaders meeting in Kerensky’s study. “The unrest in the barracks is subsiding. Indeed, it is clear that the working class and the soldiery must go different ways. We must not rely on day dreams … for a revolution, but on systematic propaganda at the works and the factories in store for better days.”
Iurenev was wrong: the unrest in the barracks was not subsiding. On Sunday afternoon, the Volinsky Regiment, which had displayed reluctance to fire on the crowd, had retreated to its
barracks in confusion and anger. All night the soldiers argued. Then, at six in the morning, a Volinsky sergeant named Kirpichnikov killed a captain who had struck him the previous day. The other officers fled from the barracks and, soon after, the Volinsky marched out, band playing, to join the revolution. The mutiny spread quickly to other famous regiments, the Semonovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky, the Oranienbaum Machine Gun Regiment and, finally, to the legendary Preobrajensky Guard, the oldest and finest regiment in the army, created by Peter the Great himself. In all of these cases, the units that went over were recruit battalions of inferior quality; nevertheless, they carried the colors and wore the uniforms of the proudest regiments of the Russian army.
In most parts of the city, the morning of March 12 broke with deadly stillness. From a window of the British Embassy, Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, stared out at “the same wide streets, the same great palaces, the same gold spires and domes rising out of the pearl-colored morning mists, and yet … everywhere emptiness, no lines of toiling carts, no crowded scarlet trams, no little sledges…. [Only] the waste of deserted streets and ice-bound river … [and] on the opposite shore the low grim walls of the Fortress and the Imperial flag of Russia that for the last time fluttered against the winter sky.”
A few minutes later, from a window in his own Embassy, Paléologue witnessed the dramatic scene when the army confronted the mob: “At half past eight this morning just as I finished dressing, I heard a strange and prolonged din which seemed to come from the Alexander Bridge. I looked out; there was no one on the bridge which usually presents a busy scene. But almost immediately, a disorderly mob carrying red flags appeared at the end … on the right bank of the Neva and a regiment came towards them from the opposite side. It looked as if there would be a violent collision, but on the contrary, the two bodies coalesced. The army was fraternizing with the revolution.”
Two hours later, General Knox heard “that the depot troops of the garrison had mutinied and were coming down the street. We went to the window…. Craning our necks, we first saw two soldiers—a sort of advance guard—who strode along the middle of the street, pointing their rifles at loiterers to clear the road…. Then came a great disorderly mass of soldiery, stretching right across the wide street and both pavements. They were led by a diminutive but immensely dignified student. All were armed and many had red flags fastened to their bayonets…. What struck me most was the uncanny silence of it all. We were like spectators in a gigantic cinema.”
A few minutes later, Paléologue, trying to find out what was happening, went out into the street: “Frightened inhabitants were scattering through the streets…. At one corner of the Liteiny, soldiers were helping civilians to erect a barricade. Flames mounted from the Law Courts. The gates of the Arsenal burst open with a crash. Suddenly, the crack of machine-gun fire split the air; it was the regulars who had just taken up position near the Nevsky Prospect…. The Law Courts had become nothing but an enormous furnace; the Arsenal on the Liteiny, the Ministry of the Interior, the Military Government Building … the headquarters of the Okhrana and a score of police stations were in flames, the prisons were open and all the prisoners had been liberated.” By noon, the Fortress of Peter and Paul had fallen with its heavy artillery, and 25,000 soldiers had joined the revolution. By nightfall, the number had swollen to 66,000.
During Monday morning, the Imperial Cabinet held its last meeting. Protopopov, who was present, was urged to resign. He rose and walked out of the room, melodramatically mumbling, “Now there is nothing left to do but shoot myself.” The Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael arrived and, after listening to the ministers, decided to appeal to Nicholas himself. Leaving the meeting, he telephoned directly to Headquarters and urged the immediate appointment of a government which could command the nation’s confidence. General Alexeiev, at the other end of the line, asked the Grand Duke to wait while he spoke to the Tsar. Forty minutes later, Alexeiev called back: “The Emperor wishes to express his thanks,” he said. “He is leaving for Tsarskoe Selo and will decide there.” Hearing this, the Cabinet simply gave up. It adjourned itself—forever, as it turned out—and the ministers walked out of the building. By nightfall, most of them had arrived at the Tauride Palace to have themselves arrested and placed under the protection of the Duma.
At the Duma, events were moving with breathtaking speed. The Imperial order suspending the Duma had reached Rodzianko the previous night. At eight the next morning, he summoned the leaders of all the political parties to a meeting in his office. There it was decided that, in view of the collapse of law and order, the Imperial order should be ignored and the Duma kept in session. At half past one, the first large crowds of workers and soldiers, carrying red banners and singing the “Marseillaise,” arrived at the Duma to offer their support and to ask for instructions. Swarming through the unguarded doors, they surged through the corridors and chambers and engulfed the parliament. It was a motley, exuberant mob. There were soldiers, tall and hot in their rough wool uniforms; students shouting exultantly; and here and there a few gray-bearded old men, just released from prison, their knees trembling, their eyes shining.
“I must know what I can tell them,” Kerensky cried to Rodzianko, as the mob jostled and crowded the uncertain deputies. “Can I say that the Imperial Duma is with them, that it takes the responsibility on itself, that it stands at the head of the government?”
Rodzianko had little choice but to agree. Still personally loyal to the Tsar, he protested to Shulgin, a monarchist deputy, “I don’t want to revolt.” Shulgin, a realist as well as a monarchist, overrode him, saying, “Take the power … if you don’t, others will.” Reluctantly, Rodzianko mounted a platform which creaked under his bulk, and assured the crowd that the Duma would refuse to be dissolved and would accept the responsibilities of government. At three in the afternoon, the Duma met and appointed a temporary executive committee for the purpose of restoring order and gaining control over the mutinous troops. The committee included the leaders of all the parties of the Duma except the extreme Right.
Nor was the collapse of the Imperial government and the rise of the Duma all that happened on that remarkable day. On the same day, there arose a second, rival assembly, the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, consisting of one delegate from each company of revolutionary soldiers and one delegate for each thousand workers. Incredibly, by nightfall, the Soviet was sitting under the same roof as the Duma.
It was Kerensky who created this astonishing situation. As he explained it later: “The entire garrison had mutinied and … the troops were marching towards the Duma…. Naturally a question arose … as to how and by whom the soldiers and workmen were to be led; for until then their movement was completely unorganized, uncoordinated and anarchical. ‘A Soviet?’ The memory of 1905 prompted this cry…. The need of some kind of center for the mass movement was realized by everyone. The Duma itself needed some representatives of the rebel populace; without them, it would have been impossible to reestablish order in the capital. For this reason the Soviet was formed quickly and not by any means as a matter of class war: simply about three or four o’clock in the afternoon, the organizers applied to me for suitable premises; I mentioned the matter to Rodzianko and the thing was arranged.”
The Tauride Palace, an eighteenth-century building presented by Catherine the Great to her favorite Prince Potemkin, possessed two large wings; one was the chamber of the Duma, the other, formerly the budget committee room of the Duma, was given to the Soviet. Thereafter, wrote Kerensky, “two different Russias settled side by side: the Russia of the ruling classes who had lost (though they did not realize it yet) … and the Russia of Labor, marching towards power, without suspecting it.”
Although Rodzianko assumed the chairmanship of the temporary Duma committee, from the first it was Kerensky who became the central figure. Only thirty-six years old, he became the bridge between the Soviet and the Duma committee. He was elected Vice-Chairman o
f the Soviet; within three days, he was also Minister of Justice in the new Provisional Government. “His words and his gestures were sharp and clear-cut and his eyes shone,” wrote Shulgin. “He seemed to grow every minute.” A stream of important prisoners—Prince Golitsyn, Stürmer, the Metropolitan Pitirim, all the ministers of the Cabinet—were brought in or presented themselves for arrest. It was Kerensky who saved their lives. “Ivan Gregorovich,” he said, striding up to one prisoner and speaking in a ringing tone, “you are arrested. Your life is not in danger. The Imperial Duma does not shed blood.”
With justification, Kerensky later took credit for averting a massacre. “During the first days of the Revolution, the Duma was full of the most hated officials of the monarchy …,” he wrote. “Day and night the revolutionary tempest raged around the arrested men. The huge halls and endless corridors of the Duma were flooded with armed soldiers, workmen and students. The waves of hatred … beat against the walls. If I moved a finger, if I had simply closed my eyes and washed my hands of it, the entire Duma, all St. Petersburg, the whole of Russia might have been drenched in torrents of human blood as [it was] under Lenin in October.”
Toward midnight, Protopopov came to ask for protection. After leaving the final meeting of the Council, he had spent the night hiding in a tailor shop. He arrived now in a makeshift disguise: an overlong overcoat and a hat down over his eyes. Sighting Kerensky in one of the corridors, he crept alongside and whispered, “It is I, Protopopov.” Shulgin, at that moment, was in the adjoining room. “Suddenly,” he wrote, “there was coming something especially exciting; and at once the reason was whispered to me. ‘Protopopov is arrested,’ and at that moment I saw in the mirror the door burst open violently and Kerensky broke in. He was pale and his eyes shone, his arm was raised; with this stretched out arm, he seemed to cut through the crowd; everyone recognized him and stood back on either side. And then in the mirror I saw that behind Kerensky there were soldiers with rifles and, between the bayonets, a miserable little figure with a hopelessly harassed and sunken face—it was with difficulty that I recognized Protopopov. ‘Don’t dare touch that man!’ shouted Kerensky—pushing his way on; pallid, with impossible eyes, one arm raised, cutting through the crowd, the other tragically dropped, pointing at ‘that man.’ … It looked as if he were leading him to execution, to something dreadful. And the crowd fell apart. Kerensky dashed past like the flaming torch of revolutionary justice and behind him they dragged that miserable little figure in the rumpled greatcoat surrounded by bayonets.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 51