Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  Prewar Russia had fed both Germany and England, accounting for 42 percent of global wheat exports. The empire functioned as a giant grain-exporting machine, from silos to railways, moving harvests over very long distances in large amounts to far-off markets, until the war shut down foreign trade—which, in theory, meant more food for Russia’s domestic consumption (whose norms were low).137 True, sown acreage declined slightly as peasants moved to the front or cities, and western territories fell under foreign occupation. Moreover, the army, made up of men who had previously grown grain, were now consuming it—half of the country’s marketable grain in 1916.138 But that was not the key problem. Nor was the problem primarily the transportation system, which nearly everyone scapegoated. True, the rail network was not organized to circulate grain to markets within the empire. More fundamentally, however, many peasants refused to sell their grain to the state because the prices were low, while prices for industrial goods peasants needed (like scythes) had skyrocketed.139 Perhaps even more fundamentally, wartime state controls, driven by a deep anticommercial animus, had squeezed out the maligned but essential middlemen (petty grain traders), and failed to serve as an adequate substitute, thereby disorganizing domestic grain markets.140 Thus, although Russia had food stocks, by late January 1917, grain shipments to the capital in the north, from grain-producing regions in the south, did not even reach one sixth of the absolute lowest daily-consumption levels.141 The government had long resisted rationing, fearing that an announcement of rationing would bring expectations for supplies that could not be met. Finally, on February 19, however, the government belatedly announced that rationing would commence on March 1. This attempt to calm the situation induced panicked shelf stripping. Bakery windows were smashed. Bakery personnel were observed hauling off supplies, presumably for speculative resale. Petrograd’s inhabitants also learned through word of mouth that although many bakeries, lacking flour, remained open just a few hours a day, freshly baked white bread was uninterruptedly available in high-priced dining establishments.142 An okhranka agent surmised that “the underground, revolutionary parties are preparing a revolution, but a revolution, if it takes place, will be spontaneous, quite likely a hunger riot.”143

  A mere four days after the tsarist government’s announcement of impending rationing was when the women had marched through Petrograd demanding bread; within seven days of their march, the centuries-old Russian autocracy was dissolved.

  In the winter of 1917, Russia did not suffer famine, as the empire had in 1891 or 1902, two episodes that were within living memory and had not caused the political regime’s overthrow. (The 1891–92 famine had claimed at least 400,000 lives.)144 During the Great War, food shortages in Germany—partly caused by a British blockade designed to starve civilians and break Germany’s will—had already provoked major urban riots in late fall 1915, and such riots continued each year, but the German state would hold up until the German regime would lose the war in 1918. Neither food marches nor even general strikes constitute a revolution. It is true that socialist agitators had been swarming the factories and barracks, finding receptive audiences.145 Revolutionary songs—like the ones Stalin had sung each May Day in Tiflis—new forms of address (“citizen” and “citizenness”), and above all, a compelling story of senseless wartime butchery and high political corruption had conquered the capital, filling the symbolic void that had opened up in tsarism and empowering the people with solidarity.146 Some Petrograd demonstrators took to looting and drinking, but many others placed towels, rags, and old blankets inside their jackets to face the anticipated whip blows of Cossack cavalrymen. The raucous crowds that seized hold of Petrograd’s streets in late February 1917 were brave and determined. Still, protesting crowds are often resolute and courageous, and yet revolution is very infrequent. Revolution results not from determined crowds in the streets but from elite abandonment of the existing political order. The food demonstrations as well as strikes revealed that the autocratic regime had already hollowed out. Almost no one would defend it.

  Critically, it was not just the women in the streets: General Brusilov was warning that the army had no more than ten days’ supply of foodstuffs—and there could be no doubt that he, and the rest of the brass, blamed the autocracy. “Every revolution begins at the top,” wrote one tsarist official, “and our government had succeeded in transforming the most loyal elements of the country into critics.”147 Desperate high-level plots to unseat the tsar proliferated, even among the Romanov grand dukes. Already in late 1916, Alexander Guchkov, a former president of the Duma, in cahoots with the deputy Duma president, initiated discussions with the high command to (somehow) force out Nicholas II in favor of Alexei under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, and appoint a government answerable to the Duma. (One of Guchkov’s ideas involved “capturing” the tsar’s train.) In a parallel plot, General Alexeyev, chief of staff, discussed with Prince Georgy Lvov arresting Alexandra and, when Nicholas II objected, forcing him to abdicate in favor of Grand Duke Nikolasha (by then in Tiflis). Still more seriously, in January 1917, before the food demonstrations and strikes, Lieutenant General Alexander Krymov—highly decorated for valor—requested a private meeting with Duma president Mikhail Rodzyanko as well as select deputies and told them, “The feeling in the army is such that all will greet with joy the news of a coup d’etat. It has to come . . . we will support you.”148 It can never be known, of course, whether one of the palace coup schemes against Nicholas II would have come to fruition even if the workers had not gone on strike. But with the masses having seized the capital’s streets, elites seized the opportunity to abandon the autocrat.

  CRACKDOWN AND DESERTION

  On the eve of the women’s bread march, Nicholas II had made a short visit home to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, just outside the capital, but on February 22 he returned to his Mogilyov sanctuary. There he buried himself in a French history of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. (Never mind that France was Russia’s ally.) “My brain feels rested here—no ministers & no fidgety questions to think over,” the tsar wrote to Alexandra on February 24–25.149 During those days of no fidgety questions, half of Petrograd’s workforce, up to 300,000 angry people, went on strike and occupied the Russian capital’s main public spaces. Alexandra—among the key sources informing the tsar about the disturbances—dismissed the strikers as “a hooligan movement, young boys & girls running about & screaming that they have no bread,” assuring her husband the disturbances would pass, along with the unseasonably warm weather.150 But the tsar had other sources of information. And although he has been nearly universally derided as indecisive, Nicholas II, from the front, issued an unequivocal order for a crackdown.

  The previous mass uprising in the capital, in connection with the Russo-Japanese War, had been terrifying, but it had failed.151 Nicholas II’s apparent lack of grave concern may have been related to the successful use of force back in 1905–6.152 Of course, that had been under Pyotr Durnovó, and before the agonies of Stolypin’s five strenuous years had ended in failure, and before the debacle of Rasputin had stripped the autocracy of its remaining shreds of legitimacy. This time, Major General Sergei Khabalov, head of the Petrograd military district, oversaw security in the capital. Admittedly, he was a desk general who had never commanded troops in the field. Khabalov was assisted by people like Major General Alexander Balk, who had been displaced from Warsaw by the German occupation and whom Nicholas II named Petrograd city commandant only after all other candidates had fallen through. A favorite of Alexandra and Rasputin, Balk, in turn, reported to Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov, Russia’s fifth interior minister in thirteen months. Erratic, voluble, smitten with serial manias, he had previously driven his textile business to near bankruptcy, and now followed advice at seances with the spirit of the deceased Rasputin.153 Nicholas II had had immediate second thoughts and had wanted to dismiss Protopopov, but could not overcome the resistance of Alexandra, to whom he had wr
itten: “I feel sorry for Protopopov; he is a good and honest man, but a bit hesitant. It’s risky to leave the ministry of the interior in such hands nowadays. I beg you not to drag Our Friend in this. This is only my responsibility and I wish to be free in my choice.”154

  Instead, the dubious interior minister Protopopov was handed near dictatorial powers—“Do what is necessary, save the situation,” the tsar told him. But Protopopov was no Durnovó. Later, the cronyism in Protopopov’s appointment—a favorite not just of Alexandra and Rasputin, but also of Rodzyanko and other government officials—would be scapegoated for the February Revolution.155 But Khabalov and Balk had been preparing for a crackdown. True, Russia, universally viewed as a police state, had a mere 6,000 police in the capital in 1917, far too few to forestall the mass gatherings. But Russia maintained gigantic army garrisons in the rear for political as well as military purposes: Petrograd alone garrisoned at least 160,000 soldiers, with another 170,000 within thirty miles. That was double the peacetime number.156 In 1905, when the regime survived, the entire St. Petersburg garrison had numbered a mere 2,000157; 1917’s bloated soldiery in the rear included mere school cadets and untrained conscripts, but the majority of the capital garrison comprised cavalry (Cossacks) and elite guard units. It was a formidable force. Indeed, a Petrograd military district had been separated from the northern front in early February 1917 precisely in order to free up troops for quelling anticipated civil disorders.158 Now those demonstrations were at hand: on the morning of February 24, people again marched for bread.

  Around 9:00 p.m. on February 25, Nicholas II telegrammed Khabalov, “I order you to suppress the disorders in the capital at once, tomorrow. These cannot be permitted in this difficult time of war with Germany and Austria.”159 Khabalov and Balk had already observed some Cossacks hesitating to confront the crowds in Petrograd. “The day of February 25 was lost by us in every sense,” Balk would later recall, noting that “the crowd felt the weakness of authority and got impudent.”160 Now, with the tsar’s order to hand, Khabalov and Balk informed a meeting of government ministers toward midnight on February 25–26 about the next day’s coming crackdown. Doubts ricocheted around the private apartment where the government meeting took place. Hearing of the impending crackdown, the foreign minister advised that they all “immediately go to the Sovereign Emperor and implore His Majesty to replace us with other people.” A ministerial majority inclined toward trying to find “a compromise” with the Duma.161 But in the wee small hours, the okhranka went ahead and swept up more than 100 known revolutionaries, and later that day (February 26), at the sound of bugles, imperial troops fired on civilian demonstrators, in some cases using machine guns. Around 50 people were killed and 100 or more wounded (in a city of 3 million).162 The show of force appeared to puncture the festive crowds. It also stiffened the government ministers’ spines.163 On the evening of February 26, 1917, the chief of the okhranka phoned Petrograd city commandant Balk to report that he expected “a decline in the intensity of disorders tomorrow.” As in 1906, the crackdown seemed to have worked.164

  Such confidence was misplaced, however. Correctly, okhranka analysts had concluded that back in 1905–6 only the loyalty of the troops had saved the tsarist regime. And now, surmised one okhranka agent, “everything depends upon the military units. If they do not go over to the proletariat the movement will die down quickly.”165 Ominously, however, one elite guards regiment—the Pavlovsky Guards reserve battalion—had tried to stop the killing of civilians. Another guards unit, the Volhynian, had carried out its orders.166 But those Volhynian Guards stayed up overnight discussing their killing of unarmed civilians, and on February 27, when street crowds defiantly massed again, the Volhynians—24,000 soldiers—went over to the protesters.167 The suddenly rebellious Volhynians visited the nearby billets of other units, too, recruiting the rest of the capital garrison to mutiny. Giddy insurgents ransacked and set aflame the okhranka headquarters.168 They also emptied the prisons of criminals and comrades—many arrested only days before in okhranka sweeps—and broke into arsenals and weapons factories. Armed men started careering about Petrograd in commandeered trucks and armored carriers, wildly shooting in whatever direction.169 “I’m doing all I can to put down the revolt,” Khabalov telegrammed staff headquarters. Yet he also begged them “to send reliable troops from the front at once.” Later that evening he informed staff headquarters that “the insurrectionists now hold most of the capital.”170 Khabalov contemplated bombing Russia’s own capital with airplanes.171 He turned out to be far out of his depth, but even a well-executed crackdown is only as good as the political authority behind it—and tsarist political authority was long gone.172

  Events moved rapidly. Duma president Rodzyanko, ambitious for himself and fearful of the crowds, was frantically telegraphing staff headquarters in Mogilyov about “the state of anarchy” in the capital, urging that the tsar reverse his prorogue order so the Duma could legally meet and form a Duma-led government. “Again, this fat Rodzyanko has written to me lots of nonsense, to which I shall not even deign to reply,” Nicholas II remarked.173 While waiting in vain for the tsar, the Duma leaders refused to break the law and assemble on their own. But two socialist Duma deputies goaded some 50 to 70 of the 420 Duma deputies to gather for a “private” meeting in the Duma’s regular building, the Tauride Palace, but outside their usual venue of the ornate White Hall. These deputies declared themselves not a government, but a “Provisional Committee of the State Duma for the Restoration of Order.”174 In the very same Tauride Palace at the same time, hundreds of leftists—including many freed from prison that morning—met to reconstitute the 1905 Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.175 The Provisional Committee had competition. The ministers of the government, for their part, telegrammed Mogilyov headquarters with their resignations, which the tsar refused to accept, but the ministers began to make themselves scarce anyway. “The trouble was that in all that enormous city [Petrograd], it was not possible to find a few hundred people sympathetic toward the government,” recalled one rightist deputy in the Duma. “In fact, there was not a single minister who believed in himself and in what he was doing.”176 The autocracy was deserted not just in the capital’s streets and in the capital garrison, but also throughout the corridors of power.

  TREASON

  From police reports, Nicholas II knew that the British in Petrograd—the embassy of his ally, for whom he had gone to war—were assisting the Duma opposition against him.177 At staff headquarters that February 27, he received urgent messages, including from his brother Grand Duke Mikhail, the regent for the underage Alexei, pleading that he announce a new “Government of confidence” comprising Duma deputies.178 Instead, blaming Khabalov for botching the crackdown, the tsar made two decisions: first, early the next morning, he would return to the capital (a fourteen-to-sixteen-hour train ride)—actually to the capital’s outskirts, Tsarskoe Selo—where he and Alexandra lived with the children; second, an expeditionary force from the front (800 men) commanded by General Nikolai Ivanov would ride to the capital “to institute order.”179 General Alexeyev, the chief of staff, ordered many additional units—at least eight combat regiments—to link up with Ivanov’s expedition. Nicholas II granted the sixty-six-year-old General Ivanov dictatorial power over all ministries.180 But the tsar himself never made it back to the capital. Deliberate disinformation spread by a wily representative of the Duma’s Provisional Committee exaggerated the extent of worker disorders on the railroad, which made the tsar’s train shunt to and fro for nearly two days. He finally alighted on the evening of March 1 at the staff headquarters of the northern front in Pskov. General Ivanov easily reached Tsarskoe Selo, but in the meantime, his superior, General Alexeyev, had changed his mind and telegrammed Ivanov not to take action in the capital. Instead, amid reports of the formation of the Duma’s Provisional Committee and of diminished anarchy in Petrograd, Alexeyev now began to urge Nicholas II to concede a Duma-led g
overnment.

  The commander of the northern front in Pskov, General Ruzsky, had already come out in favor of a Duma-led government well before Alexeyev; now, with Alexeyev’s urging, Ruzsky pressed this idea on his unexpected guest—the sovereign.181 Nicholas II agreed to allow Duma president Rodzyanko to form a government, but insisted that it would report to him, not to the Duma. Later, after more telegrams from Alexeyev, however, the tsar finally granted a government responsible to the Duma. Nicholas II also personally instructed Ivanov, at Alexeyev’s request, to “please undertake no action” (for the time being)—and then Nicholas II retired to the sleeping car.182 Having conceded a real constitutional monarchy and parliamentary regime after so many years of tenacious resistance, the tsar stayed awake in torment.183 Unbeknownst to a sleepless Nicholas II, beginning around 3:30 a.m., and for the next four hours, Ruzsky communicated with Rodzyanko in the capital over the torturously slow direct wire, or Hughes apparatus (which was capable of transmitting about 1,400 words per hour). Rodzyanko shocked the general with the news that it was already too late for a constitutional monarchy, at least for Nicholas II, given the radicalism in the capital.184