February Revolution

February 27 – February 14, 1917: Last State Duma. The State Duma had first been convened in May 1906 as part of a program of civil and political reforms addressing the issues raised by the failed 1905 revolution. This would be the last one.

Tsar Nicholas II granted this elective body certain legislative and oversight functions. However, he retained all executive powers, including the power to appoint state ministers and to dismiss the Duma itself. The Russian state remained effectively an autocracy.

The workers were already aroused. Some 90,000 were on strike in Petrograd, and others had closed plants in Moscow.

March 1 – February 16, 1917: Bread Rationing. Authorities issue cards for rationing bread in Petrograd. Food shortages were widespread in Russia during World War I. Not only had many agricultural workers been conscripted into the armies, but the armies themselves still had to be fed.

March 4 – February 19, 1917: Bread. Within a few days after rationing starts, people – mostly women – mass around Petrograd shops demanding bread.

March 5 – February 20, 1917: Bakeries. The next day, people ransack bakeries in several parts of Petrograd.

March 8 – February 23, 1917: International Women’s Day. A strike by female textile workers celebrating International Women’s Day begins the February Revolution. The Women’s Day observance had been created in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America to commemorate a strike by the Ladies Garment Workers the previous year.

The want of bread continued to be an issue. Though the Bolsheviks had not called for strikes, the women asked the metal workers of the Vyborg district to support theirs. Soon, with the Bolshevik, Menshevik, and Social Revolutionary party machineries behind them, 90,000 workers were in the streets. The demonstrations began on the mainly industrial Vyborg side of the frozen Neva River. Later they poured over to the Petersburg side, which held the imperial palace and the seats of government.

Meanwhile, the tsar Nicholas II is at the front with his marshals. He is not sent word of the strikes until the third day.

At this time, Lenin was an émigré in Berne, Switzerland, Trotsky in New York. Stalin, having flunked the physical for induction into the Russian army, was held a political prisoner in Krasnoyarsk on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

March 9 – February 24, 1917: The Strike Spreads. Two hundred thousand workers, about half the industrial labor force, are on strike in Petrograd. Among others, students joined them. The slogans cried for bread, but also against tsarist autocracy and the war.

On the first day of strikes, only police were sent to control the crowds. But on the second day, the authorities took the second step in a long-planned escalation: they sent Cossacks to drive the workers back with horses and whips. But the plan of the tsar’s Council of Ministers failed. The Cossacks, instead of driving away the workers, in some cases simply filed through them, or let them pass under their horses. Nor did they fire on the workers, but some of them broke up police formations that were. Trotsky says, “…one of them gave the workers a good wink.”

March 10 – February 25, 1917: General Strike. The strike in Petrograd becomes general. By now, 240,000 workers have joined it. Even small factories, and commerce generally, are affected.

The authorities responded with another of their planned escalations, in which the city’s military garrison forms line of battle and opens fire. The result was not at all according to plan. The workers did not confront the soldiers. Rather, one of them, cap in hand, asked the Cossacks to help against the police. Reportedly, some Cossacks attacked the mounted police instead, and one of the police was sabered.

Confrontation was reserved for the police. To the soldiers, the women said, according to Trotsky, “Put down your bayonets – join us.” With the result to be seen in the sequel.

Meanwhile the tsar’s Minister of War telegraphs him about the strikes. Naturally the tsar would like the disorders to be put down. The commander of the Petrograd garrison threatened to send all workers who had registered for the draft to the front – in three days. But the situation would be very different by then.

March 11 – February 26, 1917: Countermeasures Fail. Overnight police arrest revolutionist leadership, including Molotov, Schliapnikov, and Zalutsky of the Bolshevik Committee. The revolution goes on without them.

Workers have gained physical control over parts of the city; all government apparatus in those neighborhoods, including police stations, had been abandoned. The bridges over the Neva being blocked, workers crossed into Petersburg on the ice. Police were firing from concealed positions.

An alarmed tsarina Alexandra, German by birth, telegraphs her husband from the imperial palace in Petersburg. The Minister of War considered asking for troops from the front, but decided to use firehoses instead. That tactic was unsuccessful.

The President of the Duma, Rodzianko, asks the head of the Council of Ministers, Prince Golytsin, to resign. The latter responds by revealing the tsar’s undated edict dissolving the Duma.

Some of the soldiers, or their officers, fired on the demonstrators. Chagrined that trainees from their regiment had done so, a company of the Imperial Guards garrison refuses orders. This was mutiny. Meanwhile the leaders of the Vyborg workers were discussing whether to end the strike.

March 12 – February 27, 1917: The Garrison Mutinies. The morning starts quietly. The tsarina, relieved, telegraphed her husband to that effect. But the workers were meeting at the factories and deciding to continue the insurrection. They issued a declaration to the soldiers …

… but some of them had already refused orders to march into the streets. Instead the regiment leading the mutiny sent messages to the other regiments calling on them to join it. By evening there was scarcely a battalion of loyal troops left to the commander of the garrison, who nevertheless felt it his duty to declare martial law. Meanwhile soldiers had helped the Vyborg workers destroy the police barracks. The Moscow regiment armed some of the workers. They spread throughout the city in armored cars, sacked the arsenal, freed the political prisoners, and arrested the commander of the garrison.

Telegrams to the tsar communicated alarm. Rodzianko thought “the last hour has come,” but the tsar said it’s nonsense. Troops from the front were dispatched to the capital. Golytsin resigned but the tsar refused to appoint a replacement. When part of the Duma assembled in the Tauride Palace (the Progressive Bloc held back), the tsar’s edict of dissolution was revealed. Fearing to remain in session, the deputies could only resolve not to leave town quite yet. Miliukov addressed them, then Kerensky warned that a crowd was approaching.

It was, led by soldiers. As the assembly evaporates, Rodzianko’s motion to form a Provisional Committee of the State Duma cannot be voted on, but this does not stop him from forming it. In another part of the palace, by now occupied by soldiers and workers, the revolution, with the help of leadership just released from the prisons, formed the Soviet of Workers Deputies. The soldiers’ deputies were added the following day. A Menshevik, Cheidze, was named president of the Soviet and its Executive Committee.

The Soviet met that evening amid chaos and ratified the membership of its self-appointed Executive Committee. They assumed control of the distribution of food. In the hours and days that followed, the Soviet occupied the State Bank, Mint, Treasury, and Printing Office; it took control of Petrograd’s postal and telegraph services, the wireless, rail stations, and printing plants. It also arrested those of the tsar’s ministers it could lay its hands on.

The same things happened in Moscow. There were strikes and demonstrations. Soldiers came forward asking how they could become part of the revolution. Political prisoners were freed.

March 13 – February 28, 1917: The Provisional Committee and the Soviet. Neither the leadership of the Progressive Bloc, including the socialist and communist parties in the Duma, much less that of the Bolsheviks, attempts to lead the establishment of the revolutionary state. That was left to the bourgeois liberal parties under Rodzianko, Miliukov, and Kerensky.

The tsar was by then trying to make his way back into Petrograd, from where the thoroughly alarmed tsarina was trying to telegraph him. Neither the telegraphs nor the railways were working for the imperial family by then; they were in the hands of the workers and the Soviet. The tsarina’s telegrams were never sent; the tsar was held up at a suburban station and eventually had to return to the front. The Soviet had also closed down the monarchist press and began to print its own newspaper Izvestia – “The News of the Soviet.”

Troops sent earlier from the front turned back of their own accord. The situation in the capital was too completely lost for them to restore it.

Even the Peter and Paul fortress in the middle of the Neva River, hitherto undisturbed by the insurrection, offered to surrender. Schlusselberg prison was also taken.

March 14 – March 1, 1917: The Provisional Committee and the Tsar. Rodzianko wants to telegraph the tsar. Fearing arrest by the workers, he asked for an escort to the telegraph office by deputies of the Soviet.

The Provisional Committee, on the one hand, accepted the power to form the state that the revolution had won, but on the other, continued to negotiate with the tsar. Though the tsar’s ministers had been placed under arrest and brought before the Duma, he nevertheless proposed a deal that would allow him to continue to fight the war, while the Provisional Committee would administer all other government functions. But it was too late for the tsar. Abdication was broached in an exchange of telegrams that also made the situation in the capital clear to the tsar. He may have offered to appoint new ministers; he definitely agreed to submit the question of abdication to his marshals at the front.

For their part, Miliukov and other bourgeoisie now being named or naming themselves ministers of the Provisional Committee did not want to part with the monarchy entirely, preferring to keep it in name as a shield against the revolution. But the demand of the Soviet’s Executive Committee when it met with the Provisional Committee was modest: only to be allowed to continue agitation among the workers, soldiers, and peasants. The rest of the revolutionary program – land reform, an end to the war, the eight-hour day, etc. – was not put on the table. Even the Bolsheviks on the committee went along with this.

Meanwhile the revolution is complete in Moscow, where the Moscow Soviet holds its first session. It was also spreading to the provincial cities. At Novgorod, the mayor made a speech in its favor; political prisoners are freed. The workers of Samara and Saratov organized Soviets. The chief of police in Kharkov cried, “Long Live the revolution!”

Back in Petrograd, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries of the Executive Committee issued Order No. 1 for the benefit of the soldiers who had joined the revolution. It called for each regiment to elect members to the soviets and to form regimental committees of enlisted men. It also regulated control of weapons and social interactions with officers, who in every case came from a different social stratum than the peasant soldiery.

March 15 – March 2, 1917: The Tsar Abdicates. The tsar makes one final offer to appoint a new cabinet of ministers. Rodzianko informed him that, no, the question is now “the dynasty itself.” Having received the same advice from his marshals, the tsar agreed. But the Provisional Committee did not insist on getting rid of the whole dynasty. The deputies sent to meet with the tsar returned with an abdication in favor of his brother the Grand Duke Michael, as regent for his son Alexei. One of them said, “Long live the Emperor Michael!” and was promptly arrested.

The Provisional Committee completed its work for becoming a Provisional Government. Prince Lvov was made head of state; Miliukov became Foreign Minister; Kerensky became Minister of Justice. Kerensky was the only minister with any socialist credentials whatsoever. Many ministers – of agriculture, of labor, for example – came from among the big landowners and bourgeoisie. In other words, it resembled Mr. Trump’s cabinet. So much so that the big bourgeois organ, the Council of Trade and Industry, put its resources at the service of the Provisional Government.

Meanwhile the Bolshevik Central Committee resolved that the Provisional Government was counter-revolutionary, but also not to oppose it.

March 16 – March 3 1917: Right and Left Bolsheviks. The Provisional Government next asks Grand Duke Michael to abdicate. He complies. The revolution was announced to the world by radio.

The Bolshevik leadership on the scene, Molotov and self-educated workers Schliapnikov and Zalutsky formulated the party’s response to the measures of the bourgeois liberal Provisional Government. There were still left and right Bolsheviks, with “defensists,” who wanted to continue the war, on the right.

Among the left Bolsheviks were the workers of the Vyborg district. They wanted to depose the Provisional Government in favor of the Soviet. But this precariously balanced “dual government,” as Trotsky calls it, was held together by mutual suspicions in the weeks and months that followed.

Meanwhile “compromisers” on the Executive Committee of the Soviet issued Order No. 2, intended to annul Order No. 1 by limiting it to the Petrograd garrison. Order No. 2 was ineffective, being ignored by the revolutionary soldiery.