Later initiatives of the parastatal complex extended to the food supply and the efforts to overcome the failings of the market in getting food to where it needed to be delivered. Ifwe add to this the previously mentioned organisations that arose to tend to the needs of refugees, we have a picture of tremendous, unprecedented self-mobilisation of society in the cause of war. This was as much a 'societalisation' of the military as it was a militarisation of society,[56] in which relations between the civilian and military elites were remarkably intimate. Characteristically, the chairman ofthe unions, Prince L'vov, was fond of extolling the 'unity ofthe army and the people', and the conflation of civilian and military spheres of the Russian state was proceeding at an alarming pace. The model for many in the public organisations was the wartime economy of Germany, but with less reliance on a far less-developed Russian market economy and an even larger role for the state than in Germany itself. As Nicholas II persistently undermined the legitimacy and functioning of the official state institutions, the military and the parastatal complex took over more and more of the state's actual functioning. In so doing, they also came to see themselves as a rival state and increasingly challenged the autocracy on its right to rule on the basis ofthat experience. Indeed, by 1916, the chairman ofthe Council of Ministers, B. V Shtiurmer, warned that Russia would soon have two governments; and in April 1916 the government banned all public congresses and conferences, but had to back down in the face of public pressure. Other government officials and members of the court also feared the ambitions of the war industries committees and saw in them a source of sedition, 'a second government' or even 'revolutionary organ'. That the centre ofboth the unions' activities and the war industries committees' most energetic opposition was in Moscow underlined the emerging split within the Russian ruling elite.
Revolution and the transformation of war
It was probably only the delegation from army headquarters that could have persuaded Nicholas II to abdicate 'for the sake of saving Russia and for the victorious ending of the war' in March 1917. And so the war that Nicholas had reluctantly embarked upon and almost wilfully mismanaged brought him down together with the dynasty itself. The Provisional Government that took power in Petrograd was nothing less than the new elite of the parastatal complex that had grown up in the interstices of government inefficiency during the wartime years. The new prime minister, Prince L'vov, was chairman of the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos; Russia's first-ever civilian war minister, Aleksandr Guchkov, was chairman ofthe Moscow War Industries Committee. Other ministers in the new cabinet (Tereshchenko, Manuilov) shared similar wartime experiences in the public organisations. The new government proceeded to dismiss local officials and replace them with 'their people', often introducing a great deal of confusion into local administration. At the same time, they appealed to 'society' to join with them in the new politics and to help consolidate the 'revolution'.
These appeals were heeded not only by educated society, but by organisations that quickly mobilised to speak for labour, peasants, soldiers, Cossacks and any number of other groups that had felt excluded or marginalised in the imperial political order: urban and rural soviets, trade unions, factory committees, workers' militias, food and land committees and others. They took advantage of the new freedoms to call organisational congresses and make their own claims to the revolution's agenda of transformation. The organisations took on themselves very practical functions largely out of self-defence when the traditional forces of law and order lost control over the country, but they also articulated various ideologies of self-rule and self-government (and freedom from external authorities) in their local affairs. This was a new type of parastatal complex emerging in response to the perceived elite politics of educated society and its organisations.[57]
In particular, workers and peasants, parallel to and often overlapping with various national groups, began arming themselves against marauders in Red Guards, factory militias and partisan detachments in a further stage of the inter- penetration of society and army and in a militarisation of the class divisions of imperial society. At the same time, the new political class, both the Provisional Government representatives of educated society and the self-proclaimed spokesmen of democracy (the soldiers, workers andpeasants) in the Petrograd Soviet coalition of moderate socialist parties, appealed to the soldiers to support the revolution and the new state. This change in attitude towards the army was remarkable and was the result of the wartime evolution of attitudes towards patriotism and the war itself on the part of nearly all the major political parties. Now that the autocracy was no more and the 'Revolution' was in power, society was expected to understand the need for continued mobilisation and sacrifice for the war against the German enemy. Revolutionary defencism permitted a good part of the socialist Left to join with the liberals of the Provisional Government in patriotic unity. The opposition to the war did not go away, however, and splits deepened among the socialists and anarchists between revolutionary defencists, internationalists who sought an honourable, democratic peace and a small but growing minority movement, led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who called for Russia's defeat and the radicalisation of the revolution.
The extension of political citizenship to the soldiers in Orders No. 1 and 2 in March 1917 marked a new stage in the conflation of political and military power in Russia. Soldiers made use of their new freedoms to demand democratic reforms of the army, including the election of soldiers' committees to run day-to-day affairs in units. Although intended only for the Petrograd garrison, this new military order spread throughout the disintegrating imperial army as soldiers entered political life as defenders of revolutionary Russia. There were alarming signs of the coming civil war in the army as well, as officers deemed insufficiently sympathetic to the revolution were executed by self-appointed revolutionary committees.
The return of emigres and exiles from years abroad or in Siberia contributed to a general radicalisation of politics towards the left. This included the rise of an important set of non-Russian national proto-elites who began to seize part of the local political resources that were available in the growing vacuum of central control. In Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Finland and elsewhere, the new elites began challenging the parastatal complex that had come to power in Petrograd over the terms of rule and governance. The Provisional Government preferred to postpone any restructuring of the former empire until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, but the continued deterioration of the centre's authority brought forth the response of escalating demands for autonomy for local decision makers. Here, too, soldiers played important, if sometimes conflicting, roles. The army, too, was not only not spared the general economic deterioration of the country, but probably suffered more and was asked a greater sacrifice. Deteriorating morale in the army led Aleksandr Kerensky, the prime minister of the third coalition Provisional Government, to conclude that a new offensive was the only solution to the further Bolshevisa- tion of the soldiers. That disastrous June offensive against the Central Powers marked the end of the imperial army as an institution and its transformation into a variety of successor militaries. Kerensky, incidentally, in a new stage of the conflation of military and civilian spheres, added to his responsibilities as prime minister those of war minister.
57
On these organisations, see John L. H. Keep,