The formation of the Progressive Bloc and the Provisional Government
One reason the generals thought such a choice could be made in the middle of the war was that a broad-based political opposition that supported the war had firmly established itself as an alternative to the tsar. The crucial turning point in the rise of the political opposition was the abandonment of the 'internal peace' (the pledge of most political and nationality parties to stop all oppositional activities and to stand firmly in support of the tsar) and the creation of a united opposition to the government in the form of the 'Progressive Bloc', a broad coalition of parties in the Duma.
This in turn was a direct result of the German decision to launch a major offensive against Russia in the spring of 1915 in an attempt to force Russian capitulation. Taken by surprise, outnumbered and vastly outgunned, the Russian armies suffered defeat after defeat, retreating in rapid order from April to September 1915 until most of previously occupied Austrian Galicia, all of Russian Poland, Lithuania and much of Latvia had been lost. This 'Great Retreat' had enormous implications for domestic politics. First, it caused a massive wave of refugees to flee the front zones for the Russian interior. Estimates vary widely but likely exceeded 6 million civilians during the war.[126] The refugee crisis was greatly exacerbated by the military command, which had nearly unlimited powers over civilian affairs in a massive zone declared under military rule. While many refugees left of their own volition, the army also conducted targeted mass expulsions of at least a million civilian Jews, Germans and foreigners. Briefly in the summer of 1915 the army turned to a disastrous 'scorched-earth' policy that included driving the entire civilian population of certain regions to the interior. The army did little to stop a wave of dozens of violent pogroms against Jews in the front zones primarily instigated by Cossack army units with substantial participation of local populations. These policies stirred up ethnic tensions both in the predominantly non-Russian areas of refugee creation near the front and in the internal provinces inundated by millions of impoverished displaced people. Not only did inter-ethnic tensions often run high between refugees and native populations, but the refugees put an enormous financial and administrative strain on local governments and administrations throughout the country.
The retreat also caused a great wave of popular anger. The press - on all sides of the political spectrum - turned much more critical of the government. The defeats at the front were in part caused by shortages of key weaponry, and industrialists and Duma members alike began to call on the government to do more to organise and stimulate defence production - above all, to include society more closely in the process. In early June, the tsar made a series of key concessions, replacing conservatives in the Council of Ministers with moderates who were more willing to work with society. In July, the Duma reopened to a series of blistering speeches attacking the government for incompetence in its prosecution of the war. Behind the scenes, negotiations began for the formation of a broad national coalition of parties to form a political opposition. This opposition united nearly three-quarters of the Duma membership in the Progressive Bloc, with representatives from moderate socialists on the left to Russian nationalists on the right. The Progressive Bloc renewed many of the liberal demands of 1905, demanding more powers for the Duma, more legal limitations on the state and military's extraordinary wartime powers in civilian affairs, amnesty for political prisoners, and full equality before the law for all religious and national groups.
The programme was classically liberal, and it expressed the growing sense that the tsar and his government stood in the way of a successful war effort. Only the granting of full civic equality and rights, and the granting of a fully representative government could inspire society and the army to mobilise with true enthusiasm and patriotism for the war effort. Nothing was more instructive of this underlying notion than the negotiations between the notorious right-wing Russian nationalist leader Vasilii Shulgin and Pavel Miliukov, leader of the radical liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) party during the formation of the Progressive Bloc. As Shulgin recalls, he had been deeply suspicious ofMiliukov, whom he regarded as an unpatriotic political opponent until he heard Miliukov's ardently patriotic logic based on the idea that only a truly national effort that included society could bring victory.[127] If anything, the leader of the socialist Trudovik faction, Aleksandr Kerenskii (later the head of the Provisional Government), was an even stronger proponent of these ideas than Miliukov.
These moves were followed in the summer of 1915 by the creation of special councils with officials, private entrepreneurs and Duma deputies to deal with the economic crisis and co-ordinate national responses to the war effort. Four special councils - on transport, fuel, grain and, most importantly, war- industry - were created. The war councils included representatives of elected municipal and local government, from private industry, and even worker representatives. It was an important concession to the demands of liberals for a truly national war effort in which society had a significant role to play. The councils made significant contributions to turning around the dire situation in defence production.
At the same time, the government finally dropped its opposition to the formation of a national association to represent local elected bodies, allowing the All-Russian Union of Zemstvo and Municipal Councils (Zemgor) to form. Zemgor took on such tasks as caring for the welfare and needs of the massive wave of refugees that appeared in internal provinces and providing aid and nursing for convalescent soldiers. The special councils and Zemgor together not only helped bring thousands of employees and volunteers directly into the war effort but also gave the leaders of both these national organisations leadership experience and national recognition. They also worked in close cooperation with some of the more progressive branches of the administration such as the food supply administration ofthe Ministry of Agriculture, assuming what one historian has called 'parastatal' functions.[128] In some measure, liberal society was simply taking over the state.
In i905 the tsar granted constitutional concessions and appointed strong and competent ministers who accepted the new political realities. Ten years later, the tsar turned in the opposite direction. When the crisis of the German offensive passed, Nicholas misread it as the passing of the larger political crisis. His first move was to take personal command of the army in August 1915. His ministers saw this as a potential disaster. Not only would it create a power vacuum in the capital which they rightly feared might be filled by Alexandra and her favourite Rasputin, but they also saw the replacement of the popular Grand Duke Nicholas with the tsar - who had no real military qualifications for the post - as a move that would directly tie the fate and legitimacy of the monarchy itself to the fortunes of war. But they were unable to convince him to rethink his decision. Within months, the tsar had replaced the competent ministers that he had appointed in June with reactionaries who had no ties to liberal society - perhaps as a result of Empress Alexandra's prodding on behalf of Rasputin.[129] The most significant change was the replacement of the reasonable N. B. Shcherbatov as minister of interior with Khvostov, leader of the radical Right faction in the Duma, a chauvinist who used every chance to expound on his paranoiac conspiracy theories of Jewish, German and foreign domination of Russians. His repressive policies did much to undermine any remaining spirit of co-operation between the government and society. From late 1915 to February 1917, conflict between the government and society grew more and more intense.
126
P. Gatrell,
127
V V Shulgin,