The day after Nicholas’s departure, disorders broke out in Petrograd: they would not subside until the monarchy was overthrown.
Thursday, February 23/March 8 was International Women’s Day. A procession, organized by the socialists, marched on Nevsky, toward the Municipal Council, demanding equality for women and occasionally clamoring for bread. All around rode Cossacks; here and there, the police dispersed crowds of onlookers. At the same time, a group of workers, variously estimated at between 78,000 and 128,000, went on strike to protest food shortages.8 But the day passed reasonably quietly, and by 10 P.M. the streets were back to normal. The authorities, although unprepared for a demonstration of this size, succeeded in containing it without resorting to force. The governor of Petrograd, A. P. Balk, and Khabalov did all they could to avoid clashes with the population out of fear of politicizing what was still a strictly economic protest. The Okhrana, however, reporting on the events of February 23 and the following day, remarked that the Cossacks were reluctant to confront the crowds. Balk made a similar observation.9
The atmosphere was exacerbated by the attacks on the government from the halls of Taurida, where the Duma had sat in session since February 14. The February Revolution took place against the steady drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric. The familiar cast was on hand—Miliukov, Kerensky, Chkheidze, Purishkevich—accusing, demanding, threatening. In their own way they behaved as irresponsibly as Protopopov and those officials who treated the riots as a provocation instigated by a handful of agitators.
On February 24, the situation in Petrograd deteriorated. By now between 160,000 and 200,000 workers filled the streets, some striking, others locked out. Having gotten wind of the mood in the industrial quarters across the Neva, the authorities set up barriers on the bridges connecting them with the city’s residential and business centers, but the workers got around them by walking across the frozen river. The catalytic agents were radical intellectuals, mainly the so-called Mezhraiontsy, Social-Democrats who favored the reunification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and whose program called for an immediate end to the war and revolution.10 Their leader, Leon Trotsky, was at the time in New York. All day long skirmishes occurred between rioters and police. The crowds sacked some food stores and inflicted other damage.11 The air was thick with that peculiar Russian air of generalized, unfocused violence—the urge to beat and destroy—for which the Russian language has coined the words pogrom and razgrom. On Nevsky, crowds formed themselves into a procession, shouting “Down with the autocracy!” and “Down with the war!” The Cossacks again displayed a reluctance to obey orders.
Aware of the gravity of the food situation, the authorities held a high-level meeting on the subject in the afternoon of February 24. Present were most members of the Municipal Duma and the ministers, save for Golitsyn, who had not been notified, and Protopopov, who was said to be attending a spiritualist séance.12 The Petrograd Municipal Council was at long last granted its request to take charge of food distribution.
The following day, the crowds, emboldened by the lack of vigorous repressive measures, grew still more aggressive. The demonstrations on that day were evidently organized, for they assumed a pronounced political coloration. Red banners appeared, with revolutionary slogans, some of which read “Down with the German Woman!” By now, virtually all the industrial plants in the city were closed, and between 200,000 and 300,000 idled workers filled the streets. A crowd of students and workers gathered at Kazan Square, in the middle of Nevsky, shouting slogans and chanting the “Marseillaise.” Not far from there, at the shopping center known as Gostinyi Dvor, three civilians were killed. Elsewhere a grenade was thrown at gendarmes. A crowd separated a police officer from his men and beat him to death. Attacks on policemen occurred especially frequently in the Vyborg District, sections of which the radicals declared “liberated.”13
Alexandra recounted the day’s events as follows:
This is a hooligan movement, young people run & shout that there is no bread, simply to create excitement, along with workers who prevent others from working. If the weather were very cold they would probably all stay home. But all this will pass and become calm if only the Duma will behave itself.14
The socialist intellectuals sensed a revolution in the making. On February 25, the Menshevik Duma deputies discussed convoking a “workers’ soviet.”15 And still it could be argued that the early disorders in Petrograd—and they had yet to occur in another city—were essentially a golodnyi bunt, a hunger riot, and that the political significance which the Menshevik and Mezhraiontsy intellectuals tried to give it reflected mainly their own aspirations. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of the leading Bolshevik in Petrograd, Alexander Shliapnikov. Told that a revolution was underway, he scoffed: “What revolution? Give the workers a pound of bread and the movement will peter out.”16
Whatever chance there was of containing the riots was destroyed by the arrival in the evening of February 25 of a telegram from Nicholas to Khabalov demanding that the disorders be suppressed by military force. To understand Nicholas’s action it must be borne in mind that neither he nor the generals in Mogilev realized the gravity of the situation in the capital because Protopopov had instructed the police to “soften” the reports sent to headquarters.17 The dispatches from Khabalov to Mogilev of February 25 and 26 depicted the turbulence as manageable.18 As a result, as late as February 26 no one in Mogilev knew how serious the situation really was.19
On the basis of such information as headquarters had at its disposal, it was not unreasonable to assume that a show of force would restore order. In his telegram, Nicholas wrote that at a time of war, with soldiers freezing in the trenches and about to risk their lives in the spring offensive, unrest in the rear could not be tolerated: “I order you to stop tomorrow the disorders in the capital, which are unacceptable at the difficult time of war with Germany and Austria.”20 Khabalov said later that he was dismayed by the Tsar’s instructions, which called for a military confrontation with the rioters21—something he had so far managed to avoid. Obeying orders, he posted two proclamations. One outlawed street gatherings and warned that the troops would fire at crowds. The other ordered striking workers to return to work by February 28: those who failed to obey would have their deferments canceled and be liable to immediate induction for front-line duty.22 Many of these posters were torn down the instant they went up.23 In one of three communications to her husband on February 25, Alexandra advised against shooting demonstrators. She expressed surprise that rationing was not introduced and that the factories had not been militarized: “This supply question is enough to drive one out of one’s mind.”24
31. Crowds on Znamenskii Square, Petrograd, the scene of the first violence of the February Revolution.
During the night of February 25–26, the authorities lost control of the workers’ quarters, especially in the Vyborg District, where mobs sacked and set fire to police stations.
On Sunday morning, February 26, Petrograd was occupied by military units in combat gear. A total curfew was imposed. The bridges over the Neva were raised. In the morning all was quiet, but at midday thousands of workers crossed the river into the center of the city, milling around and waiting for something to happen. That afternoon, in several districts troops fired at crowds. The bloodiest incident occurred at Znamenskii Square, in the center of which stood Trubetskoi’s famous equestrian statue of Alexander III, a favorite gathering place of political agitators. When the crowd refused to disperse, a company of the Volynskii Guard Regiment opened fire, killing forty and wounding as many.*