By September 1915 the Ministry of War had mobilised 9.7 million soldiers, but this concealed a chronic lack of organisation, training, supplies and leadership. Russia’s industrial base was too small and its supply lines too long to ensure that all its soldiers had even basic weapons. It was not unknown for the second and third ranks of Russian infantry to advance into battle without rifles, only to retrieve them from their comrades in the first rank once they had been mown down.4 By January 1917 the Russian army had suffered nearly six million killed, wounded and missing. Wounded peasant soldiers returning to their villages told their families of the chaos at the front and were in turn told of the chaos at home.
In summer 1915 the Tsar assumed personal command of Russian forces and relocated to Army HQ at the front, thus personally associating himself with every military disaster. The government was left in the hands of the Tsarina Alexandra, a fanatical neurotic under the sway of the charismatic priest Rasputin. As a result, the administration of the country virtually ground to a halt. Prime Minister Trepov tried to warn the Tsar about the poisonous influence of Rasputin and the damage inflicted by the Tsarina’s disastrous meddling in government, but Nicholas refused to entertain any criticism of his wife or Rasputin. As transport of food and other supplies broke down there were severe shortages of bread and meat in the cities. Inflation rocketed and the basic staples of life, rare to find even on the black market, became unaffordable for most people.
In August 1914 the fourth Duma had voluntarily adjourned and the few anti-war deputies were arrested. In February 1916 the Duma was recalled and for the first time since 1907 began to seriously oppose the government. Under the leadership of President of the Duma and Octobrist Mikhail Rodzianko, Kadet leader Paul Miliukov, and Trudovik leader Alexander Kerensky, the “Progressive Bloc” watched aghast as the Tsar’s government, run by utter mediocrities and riddled with corruption, literally self-destructed. From this point there was never a chance that monarchy, even a constitutional one, had a future in Russia, for “by stubbornly refusing to reach any modus vivendi with the Progressive Bloc of the Duma, Nicholas undermined the loyalty of even those closest to the throne and opened an unbridgeable breach between himself and public opinion”.5 The Romanov dynasty, three hundred years old, was in its death throes.
In October 1916 the head of the Moscow Political Police wrote to the Ministry of the Interior, “Privation is so great that not only are many people undernourished, but are actually starving. I am sure such bitterness and exasperation have never been witnessed before. Compared to conditions in 1905 the present state of affairs is of far greater portent to the government”.6 These reports were kept from the Tsar, but warnings of the imminent collapse of the government were relayed directly to Nicholas by Rodzianko and his uncle Grand Duke Nikolai, who told his nephew to his face, “Come to your senses before it is too late. Appoint a responsible ministry”.7 All warnings were ignored. The assassination of Rasputin by disaffected aristocrats in December 1916, though dramatic, had no impact on events.
The most radical element of the Progressive Bloc, the socialist Trudoviks, now openly called for the removal of the Tsar and a democratic government. The charismatic but mercurial Kerensky emerged as the leader of the anti-Tsarist forces in the Duma. His speeches were widely reported and he became an extremely popular figure with discontented peasants and workers. On 1st November, 1916 Miliukov, in a devastating and rapturously received speech, delivered a fatal blow to the government. Forensically listing the many instances of the government’s incompetence, and playing to the wide-spread belief that the German-born Tsarina and highly placed Germanophiles within the government were actively sabotaging the war effort, Miliukov asked rhetorically after each example, “Is this stupidity, or is this treason?” Duma deputies bellowed back either “treason!” or “stupidity!” or “both!” Miliukov himself thought it was mainly stupidity, but that was not how the speech played to the public, who devoured thousands of illegally printed copies. The Duma was now on a head-on collision course with the government and the Tsar.
Whilst the Duma argued, the initiative moved to the streets. Since 1915 strikes and work stoppages had been escalating. These were mainly protests against the privation of war and stagnation of wages rather than against the war itself. It was now apparent to all that the Duma’s attempts to persuade the Tsar’s government to address the situation were failing and that only force would bring change. In that sense, “the strikes that broke out in January and February 1917 were inspired primarily by economic motives”8 and not by a desire to restructure society. On the contrary, marches by women workers in St Petersburg in February simply demanded cheaper bread. But although that was the immediate goal, the fact that female workers, the most economically and socially downtrodden part of the workforce, were no longer passively accepting their lot, said much about the fragility of the Tsarist social order.
By 1917, there were nearly 20 million women in the paid labour force of the Russian Empire, and one fifth of these worked in industry (i.e. factories, sales and services, communication and transportation) making up 40% of that part of the overall workforce.9 Paid less than men and treated as social and sometime sexual serfs by male employers and factory managers, these women had seen their living standards plummet during the war. When they took to the streets to protest many male workers left their workplaces to join in.
In response the management of the Putilov Works locked out all its workers.
On 23rd February, International Women’s Day, most of the 30,000 Putilov workers joined the women on a massive march through the city. This action was unsanctioned by the Bolshevik caucus at the factory. According to Trotsky, the Bolshevik committee in the Putilov met on the eve of the mass action on the 23rd and “since the committee thought the time unripe for militant action–the party not strong enough and the workers having too few contacts with the soldiers–they decided not to call for strikes but to prepare for revolutionary action at some indefinite time in the future”.10
While they prevaricated the unofficial action escalated, epitomised in the experience of Alexandra Rodionova, a young tram conductress, who joined the women workers’ march through a city in which trams had been halted and upended across the tracks. “I yelled along with everyone, ‘Down with the Tsar’ but when I thought, ‘but how will it be without the Tsar?’ my heart sank”, she recalled years later. “Nevertheless I yelled again and again, ‘Down with the Tsar!’ I felt that all my familiar life was falling apart, and I rejoiced in its destruction”.11
Workers like Rodionova did not wait for the vanguard and did not require its direction. As Trotsky himself conceded, “The fact is that the February Revolution was begun from below, overcoming the resistance of its own revolutionary organisations, the initiative being taken of their own accord by the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat–the women textile workers, among them no doubt many soldiers’ wives”.12 For the first time demonstrators carried banners that read “Down with the war!” and “Down with the Tsar!” On 24th February, as 200,000 workers took to the streets to protest, the government sent Cossacks to beat them back. Although policemen fired from rooftops to disperse the strikers, the hitherto loyal Cossacks refused to charge the marchers. Two days later the soldiers of the Pavlovsky Regiment in St Petersburg (unpaid, maltreated and housed in barracks built for far smaller numbers) announced they would not fire on protestors. On 27th February, when ordered out of their barracks to do precisely that, they shot their commander and joined the strikers.