March 22 – March 9, 1917: Under House Arrest

At the insistence of the Soviet, and against the recommendation of Kerensky for exile to England, the tsar and his family are detained in the Winter Palace. The soldiers would have preferred that he be held in the Peter and Paul fortress.

The Council of the United Nobility put its resources at the disposal of the Provisional Government. This, coming immediately after the arrest of the tsar, completed the realignment of big bourgeoisie and landowning elements from the autocracy to the liberal-bourgeois government.

March 21 – March 8, 1917: The Tsar Arrested

Kerensky, Justice Minister of the Provisional Government, declares the tsar is “in my hands”; he wants to escort him to England. What really happened is that the railroad workers would not let the tsar pass. A Menshevik delegated by the Soviet placed the tsar under arrest at Moghilev, near the front.

Meanwhile, the Provisional Government declared amnesty for political prisoners, most of whom had already been freed anyway.

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.

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 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 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.”