A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

by Orlando Figes

  Coming as it did after a long year of defeat in the east, and of bloody stalemate in the west, Brusilov's offensive turned him overnight into a hero not just in Russia but throughout the Allied countries. Giliarovsky wrote a collection of panegyric poems 'To Brusilov' which sold in their tens of thousands in leaflet

  form. French and Italian composers dedicated cantatas, marches and songs to the war hero. And throughout Europe people flocked to see the film called Brusilov. The General himself later wrote:

  I received hundreds of telegrams congratulating and blessing me from every class of Russian society. Everyone would have his say; peasants, mechanics, aristocrats, the clergy, the intelligentsia, and the children in the schools, all wanted to let me know that the great heart of the country was beating in sympathy with the well-loved soldiers of my victorious armies.

  Brusilov had shown that under competent commanders the imperial army was still capable of military success. Had it not been undermined by Stavka, his offensive might have served as the springboard for the restoration of the army's morale — perhaps even one day leading towards its eventual victory. But it is doubtful whether even this would have been enough to save the tsarist regime, such was the extent of the political crisis in the country at large. In any case, with the failure of the offensive it now became clearer than ever, even to a monarchist like Brusilov, that, in his own words, 'Russia could not win the war with its present system of government.'51 Victory would not stop the revolution; but only a revolution could help bring about victory.

  For Brusilov the final damning proof of the old regime's incompetence had come at the start of July, when Alexeev transferred the elite Imperial Guards to his Front in a last desperate bid to save the offensive. These young blue-bloods were described by Knox as 'physically the finest human animals in Europe'. In their dark-green parade uniforms, trimmed with golden braid, each guard stood over six feet tall. But they came with a gormless commander, General Bezobrazov, another favourite of the court, who disobeyed Brusilov's orders and sent them into attack through an exposed swamp. As the warriors waded chest-high through the mud, the German planes flew overhead, raking them with their machine-guns. Knox watched in horror as the planes swooped down to hit their targets and 'the wounded sank slowly into the marsh'.52 In one stupid action the core of the country's finest fighting force had been lost, and with it the final chance of victory under the old regime.

  * * * Brusilov's impatience with the government was increasingly shared by the rest of society as 1916, the third long year of the war, dragged on. Patriotic nobles like Brusilov and Lvov had hoped that a successful war campaign would bring the government and society together and thus forestall the need for radical reforms. They now realized that the opposite was true: radical reforms were a necessary precondition for military success. The growing shortages of food, fuel and basic

  household goods, the rapid inflation of prices, the breakdown of transport, the widespread corruption of the government and its military suppliers, and the steep increase in crime and social disorder — all these combined with the endless slaughter of the war to create a growing sense of public panic and hysteria. 'More and more', Gorky wrote to a friend in November 1915, 'people are behaving like animals and madmen. They spread stupid rumours and this creates an atmosphere of universal fear which poisons even the intelligent.' Among the propertied classes there was a general feeling that Russia was on the brink of a terrible catastrophe, a violent social explosion, against which the government was totally unprepared to defend them. People spoke of the Tsar and his government with open contempt. The word 'revolution' was on everybody's lips. A deluge is approaching,' Guchkov wrote to Alexeev in August 1916, 'and a pitiful, wretched and flabby Government is preparing to face that cataclysm by taking measures only good enough to protect oneself from a shower. It puts on galoshes and opens an umbrella!'53

  Sensing the coming disaster, the rich and the high-born lost themselves in a last desperate binge of personal pleasure. They drank their stocks of champagne, spent huge sums of money on black-market caviar, sturgeon and other peacetime delicacies, threw lavish parties, deceived their wives and husbands and gambled away fortunes in casinos. Foreigners were shocked by their luxurious lifestyles and, even more so, by the indiscretion with which they flaunted their enjoyment. 'Their wealth and the lavish use they made of it dazzled me after the austere conditions of wartime life in England,' wrote Sir Samuel Hoare, the British intelligence officer in Petrograd. This hysterical hedonism was best expressed in some anonymous satirical verses of early 1916:

  We do not take defeat amiss, And victory gives us no delight The source of all our cares is this: Can we get vodka for tonight.

  The victories we can do without. No! Peace and quiet is our line, Intrigues and scandal, evenings out Trimmed up with women and with wine.

  We only want to know, next day What Ministers will be on view, Or who takes who to see the play, Or who at Cuba's sat next who:...

  And does Rasputin still prevail Or do we need another saint, And is Kshesinskaya quite well, And how the feast at Shubin's went:

  If the Grand Duke took Dina home, What kind of luck MacDiddie had — Oh, if a Zeppelin would come. And smash the whole or Petrograd.54

  Much of the public hysteria was focused on the court, where a pro-German clique around the Tsarina was widely believed to be conspiring to bring about Russia's defeat. The idea of treason in high places, which started with the Miasoyedov affair and the Great Retreat, gained momentum in 1916 as rumours spread of the existence of a 'Black Bloc' at court, which was said to be seeking a separate peace with Berlin. The growing domination of the Tsarina (the 'German woman'), the anti-war sentiments of Rasputin, the large number of German names at the court, and the Tsar's promotion of Sturmer to the status of a virtual 'dictator' (by June he had assumed the powers of Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, Foreign Minister and Supreme Minister for State Defence) all helped to fuel speculation. It was widely claimed that the Tsarina and Rasputin were working for the Germans; that they had a direct line to Berlin; and that Nicholas regularly warned his uncle, the Kaiser Wilhelm, of the movements of his troops. Such rumours became even more distorted by the time they reached the Front. Judging from their letters home, demoralized soldiers were prepared to believe that Sturmer had been paid by the Germans to starve the peasants to death; and that Count Fredericks, the Minister of the Imperial Court, had agreed to sell the western half of Russia to the enemy.

  Similar credence was given to rumours of various sexual scandals surrounding the Tsarina. Alexandra's 'sexual corruption' became a kind of metaphor for the diseased condition of the tsarist regime. She was said to be a slut, the mistress of Rasputin and the lesbian lover of Anna Vyrubova, her lady-in-waiting, who was said to share her bed with Rasputin and the Tsar. None of these rumours had any basis in fact. Vyrubova was a naive and dim-witted spinster, infatuated with the mystical powers of Rasputin and the cosy domestic lifestyle of the imperial family. In 1917 she was medically certified to be a virgin by a special commission appointed by the Provisional Government to examine the charges against her. As for the Tsarina, she was much too strait-laced to indulge in any sexual act that was not strictly necessary for the reproduction of the dynasty. Nor was there any foundation to the charges of treason against her, although it is possible that German agents picked up information from Rasputin's

  loud and boastful talk. He regularly dined at the house of a Petrograd banker whom the French Ambassador believed to be the leading German agent in Russia.

  The point of these rumours was not their truth or untruth, but their power to mobilize an angry public against the dynasty. In a revolutionary crisis it is perceptions and beliefs that count rather than realities. The demonization of the Romanov court enabled its opponents to point the finger of blame at conspicuous culprits for the people's wartime hardships. Condemning the court as 'German' was a way of defining and legitimizing this revolutionary anger as the patriotic mood of 'th
e nation', as if all the country's problems were due to the evil influence of a few highly placed foreigners and could be solved by getting rid of them. The February Revolution of 1917 was identified as a patriotic revolution. Anti-German and anti-monarchist attitudes were closely interwoven in the new democratic consciousness which February's leaders sought to cultivate as the basis for Russia's national renewal. In this sense the anti-German riots of June 1915, at the height of the Great Retreat, were the first sign of an upswing in the popular revolutionary mood. Angry Moscow mobs burned and looted German shops and offices. Piano stores were attacked and Bechsteins and Bluthners hurled from the windows. Anyone suspected of being German (which often meant no more than being well dressed) was attacked and robbed. In Red Square crowds shouted insults at the 'German woman' and called for her to be shut up in a convent. There were also calls for the Tsar to abdicate in favour of the Grand Duke Nikolai. The hysterical public was determined to see German sabotage in everything, from the shortage of shells to the corruption of minor officials, and by raising the battle-cry of 'treason in high places' the new pretenders to power became popular national heroes.55

  It was difficult for the liberals, despite their fear of the masses, to resist this opportunity for political gain. By speaking for 'the nation' against the dynasty they might place themselves once again at the head of the opposition movement. This seemed increasingly important now that the protests against the war and its economic hardships were taking a more radical form, with mass strikes and demonstrations, many of them led by the socialists. 'I am afraid', one Kadet leader told his colleagues in the autumn of 1916, 'that the policy of the government will lead to a situation in which the Duma will be powerless to do anything for the pacification of the masses.' The reports of the secret police made it clear that 'the broad mass of the people' were becoming increasingly hostile to the Duma and were accusing it 'of deliberately refusing to come to the aid of the masses; the most bitter accusations in this respect are levelled not only at the Octobrists, but at the Kadets too'. If the Duma was to avoid becoming obsolete and ineffective, it would have to move closer to the mood of the streets and add its own voice to the revolutionary movement. That was the

  view of the left Kadets, of Kerensky's Trudoviks, and of a growing number of public figures, including Prince Lvov, who told a meeting of the Progressive Bloc that Russia's only hope of salvation lay in a revolution. 'Abandon all further attempts at constructive collaboration with the present government,' he wrote in December; 'they are all doomed to failure and are only an impediment to our aim. Do not indulge in illusion; turn away from ghosts. There is no longer a government we can recognize.'56

  Such arguments were strengthened by the continued intransigence of the regime. The appointment in September of A.D. Protopopov as acting Minister of the Interior had raised the hopes of the moderate liberals, men like Miliukov, who still sought to win reforms from the government through conciliation. Protopopov was an Octobrist landowner and textile manufacturer, a member of the Progressive Bloc, and Deputy Chairman of the Duma. His appointment was widely seen as government capitulation to the liberal opposition — one soon to be followed by the appointment of a Duma ministry. But in fact it was no more than a clever political manoeuvre by the court. The Duma was due to convene on I November and Protopopov, as a 'Duma man', was seen as the best man to control it. 'Please take Protopopov as Minister of the Interior,' the Tsarina had urged her husband. 'As he is one of the Duma it will make a great effect and shut their mouths.' Protopopov was a fanatical mystic (he once told Kerensky that he ruled with the help of Jesus Christ) and, unknown to the liberals, a protege of Rasputin (who, as he once told Brusilov, was 'saving Russia from a revolution'). He was ambitious and ridiculously vain — he was clearly overwhelmed by the honour bestowed on him by the Tsar — and was thus unlikely to endanger his own position by making common cause with the opposition. When the real nature of his role became clear — he soon donned the uniform of the Imperial Gendarmerie, an archetypal symbol of tsarist oppression — an old Duma colleague begged him to resign. Protopopov replied: 'How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a Vice-Governor, and here I am a Minister.'57

  Disillusionment with the new minister set in very quickly. Hope gave way to hatred in Duma circles. Protopopov's obsequiousness to the imperial couple was nauseating. Instead of providing a bridge between the liberal opposition and the government he turned himself into a lackey of the court and was roundly condemned as a traitor to the parliamentary cause. On Rasputin's request, he ordered Sukhomlinov's release from prison — most of the country would have had him hanged for treason — and banned public organizations from meeting without the police in attendance.

  By the time the Duma reassembled, on I November, even the moderate Miliukov was finally forced to acknowledge that the time for co-operation with the government was rapidly passing. With the radicals in his own Kadet party

  calling for open revolt, he now decided to seize the initiative by condemning the government in his opening speech to the Duma. He listed its abuses of power, denouncing each in turn and ending each time with the question: Is this folly or treason?' The effect of his speech, as Miliukov later recalled, was 'as if a blister filled with pus had burst and the basic evil, which was known to everyone but had awaited public exposure, had now been pinpointed'. He succeeded in turning the Tauride Palace into the Tribune of the Revolution once again. There were other more fiery speeches in the Duma that day — from Kerensky, for example — but the fact that a statesman as cautious as Miliukov, and one, moreover, with such close connections to Allied diplomats, had openly used the word 'treason' was enough for the public to conclude that treason there had been. This had not been Miliukov's aim. To his own rhetorical question he himself would have answered 'folly'. Yet the public was so charged up with emotion that by the time it read his speech it was almost bound to answer 'treason'. The fact that the speech was banned from the press and had to be read in well-thumbed typescripts passed from hand to hand only further inclined people to read it as being more radical than it was. In some versions of the typescript a particular social grievance would appear inserted into the middle of the speech (for example, claiming that in addition to its other abuses the government treated teachers very badly). 'My speech acquired the reputation of a storm-signal for the revolution,' Miliukov recalled. 'Such was not my intention. But the prevailing mood in the country served as a megaphone for my words.'58 It was to be a salutary lesson for any future liberals — especially those of 1917 — trying to halt a social revolution by the power of words. Having stoked up his rhetoric in order to help his Duma colleagues let off steam, Miliukov had succeeded in firing the engines of radical protest in the country at large.

  What Miliukov had failed to appreciate was the extent to which a revolution had now come to be seen as unstoppable, and even desirable, not just by the radicals but by conservatives too. His own strategy of conciliation and parliamentary struggle, with the aim of reaching a compromise with the government, was rapidly losing ground. As one general at Stavka remarked, there was a 'widespread conviction that something had to be broken and annihilated, a conviction that tormented people and gave them no peace'.59 Even the Tsar's immediate family were now lining up behind the liberal opposition. On 7 November the Grand Duke Nikolai urged him to let the Duma appoint a government. The Moscow and Petrograd branches of the United Nobility, since 1905 the firmest pillar of the autocracy, gave him similar advice. In short, there was practically no one outside the narrow ruling clique at the court who did not see the need for a fundamental change in the structure of the government.

  Yet again Nicholas tried to manoeuvre himself out of a corner by

  making half-hearted concessions. On 8 November Sturmer was dismissed, to the Duma's rejoicing, and A. F. Trepov became the new Prime Minister. Here was a final chance for the liberals to make their peace with the government. For Trepov, who saw himself as a latter-day Stolypin, was determi
ned to win the support of the moderate elements in the Duma by making concessions. Miliukov was ready to accept his olive branch (and no doubt a seat in his cabinet). But the radical and socialist deputies, spurred on by the inflammatory speeches of the Trudovik Kerensky and the Menshevik Nikolai Chkheidze, were determined to bring down the government and called for an alliance with 'the masses' in preparation for a popular revolt.

  This was essentially how the Duma remained divided through the following weeks of complex political manoeuvring between November and the February Revolution. Miliukov's Kadets, in the words of the secret police, looked on the prospect of a revolution 'with feelings of horror and panic', and 'if the government offered the slightest concession would run to meet it with joy'. Yet the hope of concessions was fading fast. For the Tsarina was flatly opposed to Trepov (she wanted him hanged like Guchkov), while the threat of the radical left was growing all the time. This increasingly gave the initiative to Kerensky and the other Duma radicals, who would open the doors of the Tauride Palace, if not directly to the crowds on the streets, then at least to their more polite representatives. The language of their speeches became increasingly violent, as they sought to express — and thus capture — the mood on the streets. They openlv called on the people to overthrow the regime and ridiculed the moderates' calls for calm as a pretext, in the words of Kerensky, to stay in their 'warm armchairs'. Yet they also had cause to worry that the popular mood was passing over their heads too, that the crowds on the streets were becoming contemptuous of the Duma and looking elsewhere for their leaders. For as Vasilii Shulgin, the Nationalist leader, put it, 'no one believes in words any longer'.60