Such “defeatist” arguments were ignored. When the Duma Defense Committee expressed concern over Russia’s industrial unpreparedness for war, the Court expressed displeasure and the matter had to be dropped.35 Sukhomlinov got rid of Polivanov and the other Young Turks precisely because they wanted to establish working relations with the leaders of the nation’s economy, whom the Court suspected of political ambitions.
The Court and its bureaucracy, both civilian and military, were determined not to allow “society” to profit from the war to enhance its political influence. This attitude explains a great deal that would otherwise be inexplicable in the behavior of the tsarist regime in preparing for and conducting the war. The patrimonial spirit remained very much alive despite the introduction of a constitutional regime. Deep in their hearts, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their entourage continued to regard Russia as the dynasty’s private domain and to treat every manifestation of patriotic concern on the part of the population as intolerable “meddling.” A general recalled an incident illustrative of this attitude. During one of their conversations at Army Headquarters, the Tsar let drop the phrase “I and Russia.” The general had the temerity to correct: “Russia and you.” The Tsar looked at him and replied in a low voice, “You are right.”36 But the patrimonial mentality would not die and there were times when the government found itself waging war on two fronts: a military one against the Germans and Austrians and a political one against domestic opponents. It was only under the pressure of military disasters that the Court finally and grudgingly made concessions to society and agreed to involve it in the management of the war.
Unfortunately for Russia, the attitude of society, as articulated in the Duma, was even more uncompromising. The liberal and socialist deputies undoubtedly wanted to do everything possible to bring victory, but they were also not averse to taking advantage of the war to promote their political interests. In 1915 and 1916, the opposition would prove unwilling to meet the Crown halfway, aware that the discomfiture of the government offered unique opportunities to strengthen parliament at the expense of the monarchy and bureaucracy—opportunities unlikely to recur once the war was over. In a sense, therefore, the liberals and socialists entered into an unwritten alliance with the Germans, exploiting German victories at the front to gain political advantages at home.
Thus, in the final analysis, Russia’s collapse in 1917 and withdrawal from the war was due, first and foremost to political causes—namely, the unwillingness of government and opposition to bury their differences in face of a foreign enemy. The absence in Russia of an overriding sense of national unity was never more painfully in evidence.
The tsarist government entered the war confident of its ability to keep society at bay. It counted on a quick triumph and a surge of patriotism to silence the opposition: its formula was “no politics until victory.” These expectations were initially fulfilled. Swept by an outburst of xenophobia not seen since 1812 when foreigners had last set foot on Great Russian soil, the country rallied behind the government. But the mood proved ephemeral. With the first major reverses, in the spring of 1915, as the Germans swept into Poland, Russia exploded with fury—not so much against the invader as against her own government—with a vehemence experienced by no other belligerent power in the face of defeat. This was the price tsarism had to pay for the semi-patrimonial system of government under which the bureaucracy, appointed by and responsible to the Tsar, had to bear the brunt of responsibility for whatever went wrong. This allowed the Duma to accuse the Crown of hopeless incompetence and even worse, treason. Military defeats, instead of drawing government and citizenry closer, drove them further apart than ever.
Such wartime rivalry between the establishment and society was unique to Russia. It had a disastrous effect on the mobilization of the home front. The unconquerable aversion with which the country’s political and business leaders and the bureaucracy viewed one another precluded effective cooperation. The bureaucrats felt certain—and they were not entirely mistaken—that the politicians meant to take advantage of the war to capture the entire political apparatus. Opposition politicians, for their part, believed—also with some justification—that in their eagerness to keep power the bureaucrats would risk military defeat, and in the event of victory liquidate the constitutional regime and restore unalloyed autocracy.
This rivalry is illustrated by an incident which occurred in the summer of 1915, at the height of the crisis caused by the debacle in Poland. As will be detailed below, in response to these reverses, believed caused by shortages of artillery ammunition and other matériel, the business community launched, with the government’s approval, an effort to organize private industry for war production. The leader of this effort was Guchkov. Though no stranger to political ambitions, Guchkov proved more than once that he was a devoted patriot. In August 1915 he received an invitation—as it turned out, the first and only one—to join the cabinet in a discussion of the role of private enterprise in the war. A participant described the scene that ensued as follows:
Everyone felt tense and uneasy. Guchkov looked as if he had wandered into the den of a band of robbers, and stood in danger of some frightful punishment.… As a result, the discussion was short, everyone seeming to be in a hurry to finish this not very agreeable encounter.37
In the forefront of the forces determined to resist the attempts of the Duma and the business community to become involved in the war effort stood the Court, dominated by the Empress, and its most devoted servitors, led by Prime Minister Goremykin and General Sukhomlinov. When, in April 1915, at the start of the German offensive, Guchkov, accompanied by some Duma deputies, went to Army Headquarters at Mogilev to familiarize himself with the situation at the front, Sukhomlinov noted in his diary:
A. I. Guchkov is really sticking his paws into the army. At headquarters they cannot be unaware of this and yet they do nothing, apparently attaching no importance to the visit of Guchkov and some members of the State Duma. In my opinion, this may produce a very difficult situation for our existing state system.38
Some bureaucratic diehards went so far as to regard the “enemy on the home front”—that is, opposition politicians—as more of a threat than the enemy on the battlefield. This “war on two fronts” proved more than the country could bear.
Few intellectuals realized Russia’s political unfitness for a war which most of them enthusiastically endorsed. At its outbreak, Russia’s literary establishment was seized with patriotic frenzy: virtually to a man they supported the war effort and exhorted the nation to victory.39 Only some of the more experienced bureaucrats seem to have been aware of the immense dangers which war posed because of the fragility of the country’s political structure, its vulnerability to external humiliations, and the need for a strong army to preserve domestic order. One of them was Sergei Witte, who argued that Russia could not afford to risk defeat in battle because the army was the mainstay of the regime. He so eagerly pursued a Russo-German accord even after leaving office that his loyalties came under suspicion.40 Stolypin, too, had urged an isolationist course to give Russia time to carry out his reform program; so did Kokovtsov.41
No one articulated more eloquently the foreboding of the high officialdom than the onetime Minister of the Interior and director of the Police Department, Peter Durnovo. In February 1914, Durnovo submitted a memorandum to Nicholas II on the dangers of war for Russia. This document, discovered and published after the Revolution, so accurately foretold the course of events that if its credentials were not impeccable one might well suspect it to be a post-1917 forgery. In Durnovo’s estimate, if the war went badly “a social revolution in its most extreme form will be unavoidable in Russia.” It will begin, he predicted, with all strata of society blaming the government for the reverses. Duma politicians will take advantage of the government’s predicament to incite the masses. The army’s loyalty will weaken after the loss in combat of professional officers: their replacements, freshly commissioned civilians, will have neither the authority nor the will to restrain the yearning of the peasants in uniform to head for home to take part in land seizures. In the ensuing turmoil, the opposition parties, which, according to Durnovo, enjoyed no mass support, will be unable to assert power, and Russia “will be thrown into total anarchy, the consequences of which cannot even be foreseen.”42