There were all kinds of rumors of “Decembrist” conspiracies among Guard officers and of a terrorist plot on the Imperial couple,144 but none of these ever seems to have gone beyond the talking stage.
Protopopov, basking in his moment of glory as de facto Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, exuded confidence—a fact that caused many contemporaries to question his sanity. He did not worry about the plots against the Imperial family reported by the police: he dismissed the plotters, with good reason, as idle talkers. The village was quiet. It was another threat that troubled him, although he felt confident he could handle it. The Duma was scheduled to reconvene on February 14 for a twelve-day session. The police informed him that “society” talked of nothing else and that convening the Duma could provide an occasion for massive anti-government demonstrations; proroguing it, however, could produce a wave of popular protests. The police felt it essential to prevent street demonstrations, lest they provoke clashes with the police and trigger a revolt. K. I. Globachev, the highest police official in Petrograd, advised Protopopov on January 26 that the leaders of the opposition, among whom he listed Guchkov, Konovalov, and Lvov, already regarded themselves as the legitimate government and were distributing ministerial portfolios.145 Protopopov wanted authority to arrest Guchkov, Konovalov, and the other political oppositionists, along with the Central Workers’ Group, which they intended to use for mass demonstrations.146 He would dearly have liked to take into custody Guchkov and three hundred “troublemakers” whom he viewed as the soul of the incipient rebellion, but he did not dare. So he did the next-best thing and ordered the arrest of the Workers’ Group, which by this time (the end of January) had turned into an openly revolutionary body. Under the leadership of Gvozdev, the Workers’ Group pursued a double policy, typical of the Mensheviks and, later, of the revived Petrograd Soviet, of which it was in some respects the immediate forerunner. On the one hand, it supported the war effort and helped the Central Military-Industrial Committee to maintain labor discipline in defense industries. On the other hand, it issued inflammatory appeals calling for the immediate abolition of the monarchy and its replacement by a democratic provisional government—that is, for a political revolution in the midst of the very war they wanted to pursue.147 One of their proclamations, released on January 26, claimed that the government was exploiting the war to enslave the working class. Ending the war, however, would not improve the latter’s situation “if carried out not by the people themselves but by the autocratic authority.” Peace achieved by the monarchy will bring “yet more terrible chains”:
The working class and democracy can wait no longer. Every day that is allowed to pass brings danger: the decisive removal of the autocratic regime and the complete democratization of the country are tasks that must be solved without delay.
The proclamation concluded with a call for factory workers to prepare themselves for a “general organized” demonstration in front of Taurida Palace, the seat of the Duma, to demand the creation of a provisional government.148
This appeal stopped just short of calling for a violent overthrow of the government: but it was by any standard seditious. It is known that the Workers’ Group indeed planned, almost certainly with the encouragement of Guchkov and other members of the Progressive Bloc, on the day of the opening session of the Duma to bring out hundreds of thousands of workers on the streets of Petrograd with calls for a radical change in government, the demonstration to be accompanied by massive work stoppages.149 Protopopov was determined to prevent this.
On January 27, one day after the Workers’ Group had issued its proclamation, its entire leadership was arrested and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Protopopov ignored the expressions of outrage from the business community, convinced that he had nipped in the bud a revolutionary coup planned for February 14. One month later, when the mobs freed the Workers’ Group leaders from their prison, they would proceed directly to Taurida Palace and there help found the Petrograd Soviet.
After the arrest of the Workers’ Group, Nicholas asked the onetime Minister of Justice Nicholas Maklakov to draft a manifesto dissolving the Duma. Elections to the new Duma—the Fifth—were to take place in December 1917, nearly a year later.150 News of this proposed move reached the Duma, causing a great deal of excitement.151
To insure Petrograd against disturbances in connection with the opening of the Duma, Protopopov withdrew military control of the capital city from the Northern Front, whose commander, General N. V. Ruzskii, was regarded as sympathetic to the opposition. It was placed under a separate command headed by General S. S. Khabalov, an ataman of the Ural Cossacks.152
The measures produced the desired effect. The arrest of the Workers’ Group and the stern warnings of Khabalov caused the February 14 pro-Duma demonstration to be called off. Even so, 90,000 workers in Petrograd struck that day and marched peacefully through the center of the city.153
In the meantime, the administration of the country was grinding to a halt. The Council of Ministers virtually ceased to function, as members absented themselves under one pretext or another, and even Protopopov failed to attend.154 At this, the monarchy’s most dangerous moment, the Department of Police was decapitated: General P. G. Kurlov, a personal friend of Protopopov’s, whom the minister had invited to assume the post of director, met with strenuous opposition from the Duma, and after serving as acting director for a short time, retired without being replaced.155 The chief of the Special Department (Osobyi Otdel) of the Police Department, charged with counterintelligence, I. P. Vasilev, later wrote that under Protopopov his office received no specific assignment.156 The opposition was flouting government prohibitions on meetings and assemblies. Military censorship broke down in January 1917, as editors of newspapers and periodicals no longer bothered to submit advance copy to the Censor’s office.157
None of this much troubled Protopopov, who was in regular communication with the spirit of Rasputin.158
*Rudolf Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft Russlands (Bonn-Leipzig, 1922), 15. A. L. Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914–1917 gg. (Moscow, 1960), 147, gives the higher figure.
†Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft, 156–57. The London currency market registered a similar decline: Emil Diesen, Exchange Rates of the World, I (Christiania, n.d.), 144.
*Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie, 147. Of the sum for the first half of 1914, 1,633 million rubles was in paper currency, the remainder in coinage.
*Bernard Pares, ed., Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–16 (London, 1923), 114. “The old man” refers to Goremykin.
*Pares, Letters, xxxiii. After his dismissal, Polivanov was appointed to the State Council. In 1918–19, he helped Trotsky organize the Red Army. He died in 1920 while serving as adviser to the Soviet delegation at the Polish peace talks in Riga.
*Protopopov was initially made acting minister; he was promoted to minister in mid-December, following the assassination of Rasputin: V. S. Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917) (Leningrad, 1967), 265.