In theory, the sale of domestic bonds covered slightly more than one-quarter of the Russian wartime deficit. This sum, estimated (through October 1916) at 8 billion rubles,8 was, however, in some measure fictitious, for neither the population nor the banks showed much enthusiasm for Russian war bonds. The government cajoled banks to make purchases, but even so, the bonds were difficult to move. A German expert estimates that the 3 billion bond issue of October 1916 brought in only 150 million rubles.9 Thus, the deficit had to have been larger than the official statistics indicated.
The overwhelming bulk of foreign loans incurred during the war, totaling between 6 and 8 billion rubles, came from England, which helped finance Russia’s purchases of war matériel from herself as well as the United States and Japan.
Russia was not immediately afflicted by inflation because the suspension of exports at the beginning of the war meant that for a while the quantity of goods on the market matched and even exceeded demand. Inflation made itself felt only toward the end of 1915, rising dramatically the following year. It fed on itself as owners of commodities, especially foodstuffs, withheld them from the market in anticipation of still higher prices. The following table depicts the relationship between the emissions of paper money and the movement of prices in wartime Russia:*
Inflation not only did not hurt but positively benefited the rural population, for the peasants commanded the most valuable commodity of all, food. Descriptions of the countryside in 1915–16 concur that the village basked in unaccustomed prosperity. The military draft had claimed millions of men, easing pressures on the land and, at the same time, raising wages for farm laborers. The conscripted millions were now on the governmental payroll. True, the same draft caused seasonal labor shortages, which the employment of prisoners of war and refugees from the combat zone only partly alleviated. But the muzhik managed to cope with these difficulties, in part by curtailing the area under cultivation. He was swimming in money. It came from a variety of sources: higher prices fetched by farm produce, payments made by the government for requisitioned livestock and horses, and allowances sent to the families of soldiers. The closing of taverns also left large sums at the peasants’ disposal. The peasant saved some of this “mad money,” as it came to be known, by depositing it in government savings accounts or hoarding it at home. The rest he spent on such luxuries as “cocofee” (kakava), “shchocolate” (shchokolat), and phonographs. The more industrious used excess cash to buy land and livestock: statistics compiled in 1916 indicate that peasants owned 89.2 percent of the cultivated (arable) land in European Russia.10 Contemporary observers were struck by the prosperity of the Russian village in the second year of the war: the war was said to have put an end to its “Chinese-like” immobility.11 Perhaps the best authority of all, the Department of Police, while growing increasingly alarmed over the situation in the cities, reported in the fall of 1916 that the village was “contented and calm.”12 Such sporadic violence as occasionally erupted in the countryside was directed against neither the government nor landlords, but against the owners of the detested otruba and khutora, fellow peasants who had taken advantage of the Stolypin legislation to withdraw from the commune.13
Inflation and shortages bore exclusively on the urban population, which had expanded considerably from the influx of industrial workers and war refugees and the billeting of troops. The urban population is estimated to have grown from 22 to 28 million between 1914 and 1916.14 The 6 million newcomers from the rural areas swelled the ranks of peasants who had moved into the cities before the war. Like them, they were not urban inhabitants in any meaningful sense, but rather peasants who happened to live in the cities: peasants in uniform waiting to be shipped to the front, peasants employed in war industries to replace workers inducted into the armed forces, peasant peddlers. Their roots remained in the village, to which they were prepared to return at a moment’s notice, and to which, indeed, most of them would return after the Bolshevik coup.
Russia’s urban inhabitants first suffered the effects of inflation and food shortages in the fall of 1915. These shortages grew worse in 1916 and came to a head in the fall of that year. Everyone was affected: the industrial and white-collar workers and, in time, the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and even police employees. Although it is impossible to determine the matter with mathematical precision, contemporary sources agree that during 1916 the rise in prices exceeded wages by a wide margin. The workers themselves believed that while their earnings had doubled, prices had quadrupled. In October 1916, the Police Department estimated that in the preceding two years wages had risen on the average 100 percent while prices of essential goods had gone up 300 percent.15 Inflation meant that many town residents could not afford to buy even those commodities that were available. And they became less and less available as the war went on, largely because of the deterioration of transport. Russia’s principal food-growing areas as well as deposits of fossil fuels (coal and petroleum) were in the southern, southeastern, and eastern regions, at some distance from the urban and industrial areas of the north. Before the war it had been more economical to bring coal to St. Petersburg from England than from the Donets Basin. When the sea lanes to England through the Baltic were closed to Allied shipping on the outbreak of the war, the Russian capital immediately experienced fuel shortages. The supply of food was affected by two additional factors: the unwillingness of peasants to sell and the shortage of farmhands to cultivate the private estates, in peacetime a major supplier of grain to the market. By 1916, while the grain-growing regions drowned in food, the northern cities suffered shortages: here as early as February 1916 it was common to see “long queues of poor people waiting for hours in the cold for their turn at the bread-shops.”16
Alexander Khvostov, who would soon be appointed Minister of the Interior, warned already in October 1915 of looming shortages of fuel and food in the central and northwestern regions. Petrograd, in his judgment, was especially vulnerable: instead of the 405 railway cars needed daily to meet the capital city’s needs, that month it received on the average only 116.17 During 1916, the transport situation grew worse still from breakdowns of equipment caused by overuse and inadequate maintenance. Rolling stock ordered in the United States piled up at Archangel and Vladivostok for lack of facilities to move it inland.
People grumbled, but they did not, as yet, revolt: Russians patiently bore deprivations. The government’s threat to induct troublemakers into the armed forces also had a sobering effect.
The recovery of the army in 1916 surprised everyone, including Russia’s allies, who had more or less written it off. This was in good measure due to the ability of Polivanov and his associates to secure the cooperation of the Duma and the business community. The military command was now staffed with able officers who had profited from the lessons of the 1914 and 1915 campaigns. The flow of war supplies from the West which had gotten underway in mid-1915 made a great difference: in the winter of 1915–16, Russia’s allies sent her over 1 million rifles, a quantity equal to the annual output of the home industries.18 Adequate supplies of artillery shells were also assured. After Polivanov had taken over the Ministry of War, Russia began to place orders for artillery shells abroad: in 1915–16, she obtained from the West over 9 million 76mm shells as well as 1.7 million medium-caliber shells: this compared with 28.5 million and 5.1 million such shells produced at home. Of the 26,000 machine guns delivered to the armed forces in 1915–16, nearly 11,000 came from abroad, mainly the United States.19
In early 1916, the Allies prepared for the Somme offensive, scheduled to begin on June 25. It was agreed with the Russian General Staff that ten days prior to its opening—that is, on June 2/15—the Russians would attack Galicia: this operation, it was hoped, would finish off the Austrians. The command of the four armies assigned to the operation was entrusted to General Aleksei Brusilov:
The preparations ordered by Brusilov’s staff were thorough beyond anything hitherto seen on the Eastern Front. The front-trenches
were sapped forward, in places to within fifty paces of the enemy lines—at that, on more or less the entire front. Huge dug-outs for reserve-troops were constructed, often with earth ramparts high enough to prevent enemy gunners from seeing what was going on in the Russian rear. Accurate models of the Austrian trenches were made, and troops trained with them; aerial photography came into its own, and the position of each Austrian battery noted …
20
In response to pleas from the Italians, who came under heavy Austrian pressure in the Trentino, the Russian operation was advanced to May 22/June 4. It began with an intense one-day bombardment, following which the Russians charged Austrian trenches north of Lemberg. As it unfolded, the offensive extended along a front 300 kilometers wide, from Pinsk to the Romanian border. The Austrians were caught napping: believing the Russians incapable of further offensive operations, they had drained the front to support their operation against the Italians. The Russians took 300,000 prisoners and killed and wounded possibly double that number. Austria-Hungary stood on the verge of collapse, from which she was saved, once again, by the Germans, who transferred fifteen divisions from the west to help her.
The Russian advance continued for ten weeks, after which it ran out of steam. It neither conquered much territory nor altered significantly the strategic position on the Eastern Front, but it did shatter the morale of the Austro-Hungarian army beyond repair: for the rest of the war, the Austrian armies had to be meshed with and reinforced by German units. The 1916 offensive marked the emergence of a fresh spirit in the Russian army, as officers with strategic insight and technical knowledge began to replace commanders who owed their posts to seniority and political patronage.
By departing for the front, Nicholas lost direct contact with the political situation in the capital. Much of his information on conditions there came from Alexandra, who did not understand much of politics to begin with and had a personal interest in persuading him that everything was under control. He was unaware of the grumbling in the cities and the mounting economic problems. He was, nevertheless, nervous and ill at ease. The outward composure which never left him was deceiving: the French Ambassador learned in November 1916 that the Tsar was suffering from insomnia, depression, and anxiety, for which Alexandra supplied sedatives prepared by a friend of Rasputin’s, the Tibetan healer P. A. Badmaev, believed to contain hashish.21
The Tsar’s absence left a great deal of power in the hands of Alexandra, who thought herself much more capable of handling the obstreperous opposition. She sent him reassuring letters:
Do not fear for what remains behind—one must be severe & stop all at once. Lovy, I am here, dont laugh at silly old wify, but she has “trousers” on unseen, & I can get the old man to come & keep him up to be energetic—whenever I can be of the smallest use, tell me what to do—use me—at such a time God will give me the strength to help you—because our souls are fighting for the right against the evil. It is all much deeper than appears to the eye—we, who have been taught to look at all from another side, see what the struggle here really is & means—you showing your mastery, proving yourself the Autocrat without wh[om] Russia cannot exist. Had you given in now in these different questions, they would have dragged out yet more of you. Being firm is the only saving—I know what it costs you, & have & do suffer hideously for you, forgive me, I beseech you, my Angel, for having left you no peace & worried you so much—but I too well know y[ou]r marvelously gentle character—& you had to shake it off this time, had to win your fight alone against all. It will be a glorious page in y[ou]r reign & Russian history the story of these weeks & days—& God, who is just & near you—will save your country & throne through your firmness.
*
In the final year and a half of the monarchy, Alexandra had much to say about who would and would not be a minister and how domestic policies would be conducted. She was heard to boast of being the first woman in Russia since Catherine II to receive ministers—an idea which could have been planted in her mind by Rasputin, who liked to compare her with Catherine.22 It is only now that Rasputin began to influence policies. He communicated with the Empress daily by telephone, visited her occasionally, and maintained indirect contact through her only intimate friend, Anna Vyrubova. Rasputin and Alexandra led Russia toward disaster by their refusal to acknowledge political and economic realities and blind insistence on the principle of autocracy.
With her lack of knowledge of politics and economics, Alexandra concentrated on personalities. In her view, placing in authority individuals of proven loyalty to the dynasty was the surest way of preserving the country and the Crown, between which she drew no clear distinction. With her encouragement, Nicholas carried out purges of high officials, usually replacing them with incompetents whose principal qualification was devotion to him and his wife. This “ministerial leapfrog,” as it came to be known, not only removed able and patriotic functionaries but disorganized the entire bureaucracy by making it impossible for ministers to remain in office long enough to master their responsibilities.
The dismissal in September 1915 of three ministers who had opposed Nicholas’s decision to go to the front has already been mentioned. In January 1916, Goremykin was let go. This step was taken, not in response to the almost universal clamor from both bureaucracy and parliament, but from a fear that he would be unable to cope with the Duma, which was scheduled to reconvene for a brief session in February. He was not only seventy-seven years old but, judging from his testimony the following year to a commission of inquiry, also in an advanced stage of senility. Worried about the Duma, Nicholas wanted as chief of cabinet a more competent and forceful personality. Goremykin wished to limit Duma debates to purely budgetary matters, which the Tsar thought unrealistic.23 He was replaced by Boris Stürmer (Shtiurmer), a sixty-eight-year-old bureaucrat with a background of service as governor and member of the State Council. Although Nicholas believed that Stürmer would get along with the Duma, this was not to be. He was a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist who had once been close to Plehve and was chiefly remembered for manhandling the Tver zemstvo. He also had a reputation for servility and corruption. The appointment to the highest administrative post of a man with a German surname at a time when anti-German feelings ran high testified to the insensitivity of the Court. But Stürmer was loyal and close to Rasputin.
27. Alexandra Fedorovna and her confidante, Anna Vyrubova.
Few regretted Goremykin’s departure, but the dismissals which followed were badly received. On March 13, 1916, Polivanov was let go. His splendid work in restoring the fighting capacity of the Russian armies did not save him: he was politically quite unacceptable. In the letter in which he informed Polivanov of his dismissal, Nicholas gave as the reason the minister’s insufficient “control” of the Military-Industrial Committees.24 This was a polite way of expressing displeasure with Polivanov’s closeness to Guchkov, the chairman of these committees, and through him to the business community. The authorities were especially chagrined that Guchkov had invited worker representatives to the Central Military-Industrial Committee: Alexander Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior, told Knox that the committee was a “dangerous syndicalist society.”25 Such was the reward given a man whom no less an authority than Hindenburg credited with having saved the Russian army.* Polivanov was replaced, again on Rasputin’s recommendation, by the decent but unqualified General Dmitrii Shuvaev. A specialist in military logistics, with particular expertise in footwear, he had neither combat nor command experience. (“They said about him,” according to one contemporary, “that in every question which he discussed he invariably turned to that of boots.”26) He had the advantage of being untainted by any political connections. He was also mindlessly devoted to the Imperial couple and was their “Friend”: he once told Colonel Knox, with tears in his eyes, that if the Tsar ordered him to jump from the window he would gladly do so.27 Since jumping out of windows was not part of his duties, the poor man found himself swamped by responsibilities beyond his
capacity to manage. He had no illusions about his merits. When the public began to complain of “treason in high places,” he is said to have exclaimed indignantly: “I may be a fool, but I am no traitor!” (“Ia byt’ mozhet durak, no ia ne izmennik”)—a bon mot that was to provide the rhetorical theme for Miliukov’s Duma address of November 1, 1916.
The next to go was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The ostensible reason for Sazonov’s dismissal was advocacy of Polish autonomy; the real one was contact with oppositional circles. His departure was badly received in London and Paris, where he was known as a reliable friend of the alliance. Stürmer took over Sazonov’s post, adding the Foreign Ministry portfolio to that of Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior—a heavy load indeed.
The Council of Ministers, considerably weakened after the death of Stolypin by the absence of strong chairmen, now reverted to its pre-1905 prototype—that is, an assemblage of individuals who no longer acted as a body. It met less and less frequently since it had less and less to do.28
The disorganization of the administrative machinery was not confined to the ministries. It now became practice also to shuffle governors, the main representatives of state authority in the provinces. In 1914, twelve new governors had been appointed. In 1915, the number of new appointees rose to thirty-three. In the first nine months of 1916 alone, forty-three gubernatorial appointments were made, which meant that in less than one year most of Russia’s provinces received a new head.29
The situation brought to mind the witticism of the Minister of Justice, Ivan Shcheglovitov, who in 1915 had spoken of “the paralytics in the government … struggling feebly, indecisively, as if unwillingly, with the epileptics of the revolution.”30
The scent of revolution, indeed, hung in the air. It took two forms: resentment of the government for its failure to deal with economic difficulties, and something new, animosity of the urban population toward the peasantry. The war produced tension between town and country which Russia had not experienced before. The city accused the village of hoarding and profiteering: Knox warned as early as June 1916 that the “town population may give trouble in the winter.”31
The Russian Revolution Page 39