Everyone in the country felt that major changes were imminent and unavoidable—everyone except the revolutionaries. As Shulgin was to say, the revolution was ready but the revolutionaries weren't.
On February 10 Mikhail Rodzyanko, president of the Duma, arrived at the tsar's country palace with a report on the situation and a warning that if the Duma were dissolved, as Nicholas intended, revolution would break out. This revolution, Rodzyanko warned the tsar, "will sweep you away and you will rule no more." "God will provide," answered Russia's last autocrat. In reply he was told: "God will provide nothing. You and your government have made a total mess. Revolution is inevitable."39
The disturbances in Petrograd began even earlier than the president of the Duma had anticipated. On February 23 groups began to gather in various parts of Petrograd demanding bread. Workers walked off the job and joined the demonstrators. On February 26 the Fourth Company of the Pavlovsky Regiment opened fire on the mounted police. The soldiers began siding with the demonstrators.
The parliamentary opposition hoped that the situation could be saved through the creation of a "responsible ministry." In a telegram, Rodzyanko told the tsar:
Anarchy rules in the capital. The government is paralyzed. The transportation of food and fuel is completely disorganized. Social unrest is mounting. The streets are the scene of disorderly shooting. Military units are firing on one another. It is necessary to appoint someone who enjoys the nation's confidence to form a new government. Any delay is out of the question; it would mean death. I pray to God that in this hour, the responsibility does not fall on the monarch.
Upon reading the telegram, Nicholas II said to his minister of the court, Count Frederiks: "Once again, this fat-bellied Rodzyanko has written me a lot of nonsense, which I won't even bother to answer."40 The tsar contented himself by giving the Duma a two-month vacation.
Taken by surprise by the burgeoning, spontaneous movement, the revolutionary opposition did not know what to do and limited itself to discussion. At Kerensky's house, where the representatives of all the revolutionary parties gathered (all Menshevik tendencies, the SRs, the Trudovik, or Labor, group, and the Bolsheviks, represented by Shlyapnikov), the general enthusiasm was soon cooled off by Yurenev, who was close to the Bolsheviks. There is not and there will not be a revolution, he said. The reaction is growing. The soldiers and the workers have different objectives. Preparations must be made for a long period of reaction. We must adopt a wait- and-see attitude.41 It was evident to all present that Yurenev was articulating the Bolshevik party's point of view. In his memoirs, the Bolshevik worker V. Kayurov, a member of the party's Petrograd Committee, explained how unexpected the events were for the party. He noted that the center had not issued any instructions. The Petrograd Committee had been detained, and Shlyapnikov, the representative of the Central Committee, found himself unable to issue any instructions for the following day. On the evening of February 26 Kayurov had no doubt that the revolution would be crushed. The demonstrators were unarmed; no one would be able to reply to the government when it took energetic measures.42 The Bolsheviks held fast to a wait-and-see position, for in the autumn of 1916 Lenin had rigorously forbidden Shlyapnikov to collaborate in any way with the other socialist parties.
If revolutionary agitation in the capital was on the rise without any leadership, it was not because the revolution was strong but because its enemy, the tsarist regime, was extremely weak. "The problem," said Shul- gin, "was that in this immense city it was impossible to find even a few hundred people who sympathized with the ruler."43
By noon on February 27, some 25,000 soldiers—slightly more than 5 percent of all troops and police forces concentrated in Petrograd and its surroundings—had gone over to the side of the demonstrators. But this was enough for the rebellion to become a revolution. It is true that the victors were not yet aware of their victory—no more than the defeated were aware of their defeat. On the evening of February 27, roughly 30,000 soldiers arrived at the Tauride Palace, where the Duma held its sessions, looking for some form of governmental authority. The Duma, which had dreamed of much power, barely had the courage to form a Provisional Committee, which proclaimed that it had assumed the task of restoring order. On February 28 this proclamation was pasted up around the city.
A few hours before the formation of the Duma Committee, a Soviet had been organized in another part of the same Tauride Palace. Addressing itself to the workers of Petrograd, the Soviet asked them to send deputies that same afternoon, on the basis of one deputy per thousand workers. That evening the Soviet elected as its president the Menshevik Chkheidze, and as vice presidents two left-wing deputies from the Duma, Kerensky and Skobelev. The number of Bolsheviks in the Soviet was so small that they were unable to organize themselves as a faction. Shlyapnikov, who was elected to the Soviet's Executive Committee, recalls that its very first meeting heard a report on the food situation in Petrograd. It turned out that the situation was "by no means catastrophic."44 Thus, the initial cause of the disturbances in the capital leading to the overthrow of the tsar proved to be nonexistent.
While two opposing powers emerged in Petrograd, the Duma Committee and the Soviet, the emperor was traveling from General Headquarters at Mogilev toward the capital. His train was stopped at the station of Dno by insurgent soldiers, and Nicholas was compelled to sign his abdication on March 2, after General Alekseev, supported by the commanders of all five fronts, told him that his abdication was the only possible way to assure the continuation of the war against Germany. Only two corps commanders, Count Keller and Khan Nakhichevansky, spoke on behalf of the tsar. The Duma Committee sent Guchkov and Shulgin, both of them monarchists, to accept the abdication.
Thus, with the agreement of revolutionaries, liberals, and monarchists alike, the monarchy departed. Russia became a democratic republic.
These events unfolded at a very rapid pace, in a way that astounded the participants. And the casualties were very small compared to what they would be later on. In February a total of 169 were killed and less than 1,000 wounded.45
From 1916 on, especially in Petrograd, there was constant discussion of plots of one kind or another—revolutionary, liberal, and monarchist— all aimed at rectifying the situation. The only successful plot was the assassination of Rasputin in December 1916. However, this plot can be considered "successful" only in the sense that the "holy father" actually was killed, albeit with difficulty.
When the revolution transferred power to those who were called plotters and who in fact were, consciously or unconsciously, trying to destroy the tsarist regime, it was discovered that none of them had a program.
The Provisional Government created by the Duma Committee was headed by Prince Georgy Lvov, former president of the Union of Zemstvos, and consisted mainly of representatives of the former parliamentary opposition. Its proclaimed purposes were to continue the war and to convoke a Constituent Assembly to decide Russia's future. The socialist parties firmly believed that, in accordance with Marxist doctrine, Russia was on the eve of a bourgeois democratic revolution, so that they did not aspire to power themselves. The bourgeoisie had to fulfill its historic task, they believed; only after that would the socialists have their turn. Lenin, however, distrusted the February revolution. For him, in Zurich, the Petrograd events looked like the result of a "conspiracy of the Anglo-French imperialists."46 His first orders had a familiar ring: no reconciliation with the other parties.47
The Provisional Government's weakness, which was evident from the very first day of its existence, its lack of a clear program, its lack of confidence, allowed the Soviet to become a second power in the country. However, the Soviet did not follow a determined course either. On March 1 it issued the famous Order No. 1, which established elected committees in the Petrograd barracks, with the authority to distribute weapons and to withhold them from officers, and abolished the traditional forms of military discipline. This order was immediately extended to the entire army, despite the Soviet's explanation that it was intended for rear echelon units only. This was a major factor in the army's decomposition. However, the Soviet was relying on the army to continue the war against Germany, particularly since Germany had not responded to proposals for "a peace without annexations or indemnities." The Bolsheviks too were inconsistent on this question. On March 12 three Bolshevik leaders arrived in Petrograd from internal exile—Muranov, a former Duma deputy; Lev Kamenev, a former member of PravdcCs editorial board; and Stalin, a member of the Central Committee. They immediately took editorial control of Pravda, which on March 15 published an article by Kamenev containing the following sentences: "When one army opposes another, the most absurd policy would be to propose that only one lay down its arms and go home. ... A free people will stand firmly at their posts and will answer bullet for bullet."48