There were around nine million men in uniform in 1917 and soldiers were to become a force of huge importance in promoting the social revolution.[78]Though they lacked the high level of organisation ofworkers, they were crucial in weakening the Provisional Government, in politicising the peasantry and, after October, in establishing soviet power. Soldiers and sailors greeted the downfall of the tsar with joy, seeing in it a signal to overthrow the oppressive command structure of the tsarist army. Tyrannical officers were removed and sometimes killed - lynchings being worst in the Baltic Fleet, with Kronstadt sailors killing about fifty officers. Soldiers celebrated the fact that they were now citizens of free Russia, and demanded an end to degrading treatment, the right to meet and petition, and improvements in condition and pay. Crucially, they formed committees at each level of the army hierarchy. This drive to democratise relations between officers and men was authorised on 1 March by Order No. i of the Petrograd Soviet, which proved to be its most radical undertaking. General M. V Alekseev pronounced the Order 'the means by which the army I command will be destroyed'.[79] In practice, the soldiers' committees were dominated by more educated elements, including non-commissioned officers, medical and clerical staff, who had little desire to sabotage the operational effectiveness of the army. Most soldiers wanted a speedy peace, but did not wish to expose free revolutionary Russia to Austro-German attack. At the same time, if democratisation did not mean - at least in the spring and early summer - the disintegration of the army as a fighting force, it was clear that it could no longer be relied upon to perform its customary function of suppressing domestic disorder.
Industrial workers were the most politicised, organised and strategically positioned of all social groups in 1917.[80] Something like two-thirds were recent recruits to industry, either peasant migrants or women who had taken up jobs in the war industries. Yet this was a working class defined by an unusual degree of class consciousness. From the end of the nineteenth century, a layer of so-called 'conscious' workers, drawn mainly from the ranks of skilled, literate young men, had emerged, partly under the tutelage of revolutionary intellectuals, who provided leadership in moments of conflict, and, crucially, served as the conduit through which class politics touched a wider lower-class constituency. During the revolution workers determined that the overthrow of tsarism be followed by the overthrow of 'autocracy' on the shop floor. Hated foremen and administrators were driven out, the old rule books were torn up and factory committees were set up, especially among metalworkers, to represent workers' interests to management. Russian industrialists were not as well organised as their employees, mainly because they were divided by region and branch of industry. Moscow textile manufacturers favoured a more liberal industrial relations policy than the metalworking and engineering manufacturers of Petrograd, who had been far more supportive of tsarism, because of their dependence on state orders.27 For a brief period following February, sections of employers came out in favour of a liberal policy that entailed a formal eight-hour day (perhaps the most pressing demand oflabour), improved wages and conditions, arbitration of industrial disputes, and co- responsibility of factory committees in regulating workplace relations.28 The factory committees took on a wide range of tasks, including overseeing hiring and firing, guarding the factory, labour discipline and organising food supplies. They were the most influential of the plethora oflabour organisations that emerged. Significantly, they were the first to register the shift in lower-class support away from the moderate socialists to the Bolsheviks. In late May the first conference of Petrograd factory committees overwhelmingly passed a Bolshevik resolution on control of the economy.29
in Russia, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); R. A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers' Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984).
27 Ziva Galili, 'Commercial-Industrial Circles in Revolution: The Failure of "Industrial Pro- gressivism" ', in Frankel et al., Revolution inRussia, pp. 188-216; P. V Volobuev, Proletariat i burzhuaziia v 1917 godu (Moscow: Mysl', 1964).
28 V I. Cherniaev, 'Rabochii kontrol' i al'ternativy ego razvitiia v 1917 g.', in Rabochie i rossiiskoe obshchesttvo: vtoraiapolovina XIX-nachalo XXveka (St Petersburg: Glagol', 1994), pp. 164-77; D. O. Churakov, Russkaia revoliutsiia i rabochee samoupravlenie 1917 (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1998), pp. 35-41.
29 S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-18 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), chs. 3-4.
In I9I7 gender was not a category ofpolitical mobilisation in the same way as class, youth or nationality. Despite their role in triggering the events that led to the February Revolution, women soon found themselves on the margins of revolutionary politics.[81] In March middle-class feminists mobilised to ensure that women received the vote; but as soon as this was granted, their movement lost influence. Most of its leaders were nationalistically inclined and some went on to form the women's 'death battalions', the only instance of women playing a combat role in the First World War. Many educated women threw themselves into work in educational and cultural organisations, the cooperatives and political parties. The one partial exception to the rule of women not organising as women were food riots in which mainly lower-class housewives, especially soldiers' wives, clashed with traders and shopkeepers over the price and availability of goods and with local governments over the miserable allowances paid to combatants' families.[82] Women workers, who comprised a third of the workforce, participated in strikes and trade unions, but were not prominent in the labour movement, partly because of their responsibilities as wives and mothers, partly because of their lower levels of literacy and partly because they were perceived as 'backward' by labour organisers, who unwittingly forged an organisational culture which marginalised them. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks would not countenance separate organisations for working women, they did most to group them into class organisations, thanks to the initiative of a few leading women, such as Aleksandra Kollontai.[83] In the Constituent Assembly elections, interestingly, turn-out was higher among rural women than among rural men (77 per cent against 70 per cent).[84]
The politics of war, March to July 1917
Despite the talk of 'unity of all the vital forces of the nation', the issue of war divided the Soviet leaders and the Provisional Government. The minister of foreign affairs, Pavel Miliukov, typified government thinking in believing that the revolution would unleash a surge of patriotic feeling that would carry Russia to victory in the war. By contrast, the Soviet leaders wished to see a 'democratic' peace entailing the renunciation of annexations and indemnities, although pending that, they were anxious not to leave Russia vulnerable to Austro-German attack. It was the Georgian Menshevik, I. G. Tsereteli, who crafted a compromise, known as 'revolutionary defencism', designed to uphold national defence while pressing the Provisional Government to work for a comprehensive peace settlement.[85] However, on 18 April Miliukov sent a note to the Allies that spoke of prosecution of war to 'decisive victory' and gave a heavy hint that Russia would stand by the terms of the secret treaties, which included annexations and indemnities. Soldiers and workers came out onto the streets of the capital to demand Miliukov's resignation, and Bolsheviks bore banners declaring 'Down with the Provisional Government'. With Miliukov's resignation on 2 May, Prince L'vov pressed members of the Soviet EC to join a coalition government. Tsereteli managed to overcome the reluctance of Mensheviks to participate in a 'bourgeois' government, convincing them that this would strengthen the chances for peace. Socialists accepted six places in the new government, alongside eight 'bourgeois' representatives. It proved to be a ruinous decision, since in the eyes ofthe masses it identified the moderate socialists with government policy.
78
The following is based on A. K. Wildman,
79
R. P. Browder and A. F. Kerensky (eds.),
80
The following is based on Tim McDaniel,
81
The followingis based on: Linda H. Edmondson,
82
Barbara Alpern Engel, 'Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War One',
83
MoiraDonald, 'BolshevikActivity among Working Women ofPetrogradin 1917',
84
L. G. Protasov
85
Rex A. Wade,