The proximate causes of February 1917
The immediate events leading to the abdication began with the confluence of several factors to bring large numbers of people into the Petrograd streets. First, heavy snows in early February 1917 slowed trains, exacerbating chronic wartime problems with flour supply to the cities. Many bakeries temporarily closed due to shortages of flour or fuel. On 19 February, the government announced that bread rationing would be introduced on 1 March, leading to panic-buying and long lines. Fuel shortages led several large factories to close down and the temperature suddenly rose after a long cold spell, both contributing to the number of people in the streets. On 23 February, walkouts and demonstrations to protest against bread shortages coincided with a small International Women's Day protest march. The next day, these events led to strikes of nearly 200,000 workers. For the first time since 1905, massive demonstrations were held in the centre of the city, on the squares of Nevsky Prospect.
On 25 February, events on the streets remained difficult to classify. Was it another in the series of wartime demonstrations and strikes - which were growing in frequency in late 1916 to early 1917 but still tended to be of short duration because workers preferred not to undermine the troops at the front - or was it the beginning of a revolution? This case exceeded all previous wartime demonstrations and strikes in scale, and people from all walks of life filled the streets, not only protesting against the shortage of bread, but also raising banners calling for the downfall of the monarchy, singing the Marseillaise, cocking their caps to the side and struggling with police for control of public space. In several instances, Cossack soldiers showed their sympathy for the crowd. The proliferation of symbolic acts and the sheer number of people involved already by 25 February gave the sense that a revolution was under way.[114]
But many observers thought that the disorders were primarily focused on the bread shortages and even Aleksandr Shliapnikov, the leading Bolshevik in Petrograd, dismissed the idea that a revolution was at hand on the evening of 25 February. Recent bread riots had eventually run their course, and the commander of the Petrograd garrison, General Sergei Khabalov, thought that the correct course of action would be to continue to avoid confrontation with the crowds.
However, that night the tsar sent the fateful order to Khabalov to use troops to restore order. A small group of the most trusted soldiers was deployed on Sunday morning 26 February. In several places, they fired into the crowds, killing hundreds and invoking parallels to the 1905 Bloody Sunday massacre that had set that revolution in motion. Troops had fired into crowds on other occasions during the war; most seriously when the Moscow garrison was ordered to fire into crowds on the third day of a massive 1915 riot against Germans. That time it succeeded in restoring order; this time it did not.[115]
The bulk of the Petrograd garrison remained in the barracks on 26 February, but heated discussions led to mutinies which spread rapidly through the garrison. By the twenty-seventh, the commanders and loyal officers completely lost control of the soldiers, many of whom joined the revolution in the streets. Soldiers freed prisoners, broke into the secret police headquarters and took over government buildings.
For four days, the situation in the capital was uncertain. Power flowed to the soldiers and the authority of the government rapidly melted away. By most accounts, the leaders of socialist parties only began to mobilise and play an active role on the twenty-seventh. A small group of party leaders declared themselves to be an executive committee ofthe Petrograd Soviet and claimed to speak for the workers and soldiers. It sent an appeal to workers to send representatives to an assembly of the Petrograd Soviet. The process of choosing delegates was extremely informal, resulting in a massive body, two- thirds of which were soldiers. It was such an unwieldy assembly that in practice, the executive committee ended up making nearly all decisions. The executive committee included representatives from a broad array of socialist parties, and they quickly decided not to make an outright bid for power. Some of the party leaders were influenced by the Marxist theory that Russia had to pass through a bourgeois stage (with a presumably bourgeois Duma government) before conditions would be ripe for a proletarian revolution. Many socialists (including the Menshevik defensists, who played a prominent part in these crucial days) feared the anarchy and violence that was already emerging on the streets, and wanted a restoration of order and governmental authority, in order to prevent a collapse of the war effort.
In an all-night negotiation, the executive committee ofthe Petrograd Soviet worked out a joint programme with the Provisional Committee of the Duma for the creation of a new provisional government. The result, declared early on 2 March, became the basic programme of the revolution. It fulfilled the liberal dream of full equality before the law for all citizens, declaring the immediate abolition of all legal differentiation based on religious, ethnic or social origins. It also granted amnesty for all political prisoners, freedom of speech, assembly, right to strike, and declared elections to organs of local self-government.[116]
While this new polity was forming, the tsar was isolated in Pskov. He remained obstinately opposed to abdication and even refused to make political concessions to the Duma late on 1 March. He changed his mind only when the army command turned against him. A small group of army commanders, in close communication with the president of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, decided early on 2 March that the only solution was abdication.
That morning, the commander-in-chief of the army, Mikhail Alekseev, conducted something close to a coup d'etat, sending a circular to the leading army commanders making the case for Nicholas to abdicate and requesting that each send their response directly to the tsar. The commanders of the fronts, including the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, unanimously supported abdication. Nicholas consented, insisting only that he abdicate in favour of the Grand Duke Michael rather than his haemophiliac son Alexis. The next day, the Grand Duke Michael met with the Provisional Government leaders and acquiesced to their majority opinion that he should also abdicate. This left government authority solely in their hands until the convocation of a constituent assembly, which was to determine the future governmental system. The promulgation of the two abdication manifestoes marked the formal political end of the old regime.
To reiterate, the immediate chain of events leading to the regime change began with the declaration of bread rationing, followed by the large number of people demonstrating, striking and observing events in the streets. The proximate cause of greatest weight in explaining the end of the monarchy was the mutiny of the Petrograd garrison and, consequently, the pressure applied by the military commanders upon Nicholas to abdicate on 2 March.
Without the mutiny, the demonstrations were probably not sufficient to cause the revolution - as the apparent success of the initial military intervention showed. The mutiny dramatically raised the stakes, radicalising and arming the streets, and making it likely that the only way to preserve the monarchy was to send troops from the front to put down the rebellion forcibly. The tsar was willing to do this up to nearly the last moment, but the army commanders balked. The final crucial factor was the formation of the Provisional Government even before the actual abdication occurred. In a sense, it was stepping into the void left by the absence of the tsar from the capital and the more serious widely shared sense that the tsar and the monarchy had become a barrier to the effective mobilisation of society and industry for the war effort. Recognition of the willingness and ability of the moderate Duma leaders to take over the government in turn helped convince the army commanders to support the revolution.
114
Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii,
116
F. Golder (ed.),