While the victors up above were rejoicing over their success, counting up the losses of the revolution and mobilising their forces for a new blow, feverish activity was proceeding down below. Workers went from factory to factory recounting the bloody events of the day. Eye-witnesses of the shooting told of the savage brutality of the gendarmes, inspiring their hearers with hatred of the butchers and a passionate desire for vengeance. Working women who had seen the demonstration broken up urged their brothers and husbands to continue the struggle.
Profound unrest prevailed in the barracks that night. The soldiers discussed their impressions of the day’s events, and their meaning became more and more clear.
In these tense days of revolutionary struggle the Bolsheviks were everywhere—in the factories and workshops, in the barracks and on the streets—carrying on ceaseless agitation, sounding the call to battle and uniting the workers and soldiers. Severed from their leading bodies, which had been smashed by the secret police, the Bolsheviks created local committees in the factories, rapidly established contacts and infected the workers with their courage and their firm belief in victory.
“I took an active part on the eve of open action, i.e. on the night of February 24,” recounts a Petrograd worker, who had been mobilised for the army for having gone on strike. “At a conference of soldiers it was resolved to join the workers together with the First Semyonovsky Regiment, and in this way to correct the mistake made in 1905. But the next day it was found that gendarmes had disguised themselves in the uniform of the Semyonovsky Regiment, while the regiment had been confined to barracks.”(1)
That same day, February 26, a meeting was held of the Bolshevik Committee of the Vyborg District, which had assumed the leadership after the arrest of the Petrograd Committee. Comrades reporting from the localities told of the growing revolutionary spirit and the eagerness to continue the fight. The Vyborg District Committee resolved to extend the armed struggle, to seize depots of arms and to disarm the police.
The persistent demonstrations of the proletariat, which were fired on point-blank, the fraternisation between the workers and the soldiers, and, finally, the direct influence of the Bolsheviks, who frequently penetrated into the very barracks, resulted in the cases of insubordination among the soldiers assuming the character of open mutiny. The soldiers began to act against their commanders as peasants against landlords. On the night of February 26, the non-commissioned officers’ training Company of the Volhynia Regiment, which had fired on the workers on Znamenskaya Square, resolved to refuse to use arms against the demonstrators. But this seemingly passive resistance suddenly assumed the form of an active offensive. When the commander of the training company, accompanied by a junior officer, appeared at the barracks early that morning, they were fired on from rifles and killed, amidst the cheering of the soldiers—so deeply had the influence of the revolution already penetrated. The age-old hatred of the peasant for the feudal landlord, now clad in officer’s uniform, burst forth in relentless fury.
One of the soldiers who took part in the mutiny of the Volhynia Regiment relates his outstanding incident of the revolution in the following terms:
“Sergeant Kirpichnikov read us an order to form company again the next day at 7 a.m. At this time eighteen men—the more active rank-and-file soldiers and several squad and platoon commanders promoted from the ranks—got together in a dark, out-of-the-way corner of the barracks and earnestly discussed the situation. And the whole eighteen of them firmly resolved: ‘To-morrow we shall turn matters our own way!’ They drew up a programme of action: the company was to form not at 7 a.m., as Vice-Captain Lashkevich had ordered, but at 6 a.m., and in the meanwhile efforts were to be made to win over the whole company. . . .
“Dawn was already breaking when the eighteen quietly and swiftly dispersed to their places.
“At 6 a.m. on February 27, the company, consisting of 350 men, already stood at attention. Kirpichnikov spoke: he described the general situation and explained how we were to act and what was to be done.
“Hardly any agitation was required. The minds of the soldiers were already made up. It seemed that they had only been waiting for this, and all the men expressed their firm determination to support the workers.
“‘Even if we have to die for it,’ they said, ‘we will not fire on our own people.’
“At this moment the jingling of spurs was heard in the corridor.
“The men pricked up their ears and for a moment fell tensely silent.
“It was Ensign Kolokolov entered. He was a former student and had only recently joined the regiment. The company replied to his greeting in the usual manner. He was followed by the commander, Lashkevich. The men became tense. Silence ensued.
“In reply to his greeting, we all shouted ‘Hurrah!’ [which was not the prescribed response to the greeting of a superior officer—Trans.]—as we had previously agreed among ourselves.
“When the cheer died down, Lashkevich seemed to sense that something was wrong, but he repeated his greeting. And again the response was a loud and menacing ‘Hurrah!’
“Lashkevich turned to Sergeant Markov and angrily demanded what this meant.
“Markov, taking his rifle in his hand, replied in a firm voice: ‘The cheer was a signal not to obey your orders!’
“Rifle butts resounded on the asphalt floor, there was a rattle of rifle locks. ‘Get out while you are still alive!’ the soldiers cried.
“Lashkevich tried to cry ‘Attention!’ But no one would listen to his command. Lashkevich begged for silence so that he could read a telegram received through General Khabalov from ‘His Majesty Nicholas II,’ but this had no effect whatever on the soldiers.
“Losing all hope of pacifying the company, Lashkevich and Kolokolov made for the door. In the corridor they met Ensign Vorontsov-Velyaminov, and all three began to run. Markov and Orlov threw open the ventilating pane in the window, raised their rifles, and as the three officers came up level with the window, two reports rang out.
“Lashkevich fell at the gate, The other officers dashed through the gate and immediately reported the mutiny to regimental headquarters.
“Seizing the regimental chest and the standard, all the officers left the barracks immediately.
“The road was clear. The whole company, under the command of Kirpichnikov, emerged into the courtyard.
“A volley fired into the air served as an alarm signal. Prisoners were released from the guardroom. Delegates were immediately dispatched to nearby companies to call upon them to join our mutiny. The first to respond without hesitation was a company of evacuated soldiers, consisting of 1,000 men, who joined us. Soon afterwards we were joined by the preparatory training company.”(2)
Workers appeared among the soldiers.
The men of the Volhynia Regiment flocked into the street. Cheering and firing into the air, they proceeded to the nearby quarters of the Preobrazhensky and Lithuania Regiments. At the barracks of these regiments they immediately stirred up the hatred of the soldier-peasant for the landlord. Here, too, the regimental commanders were killed. The men of the Preobrazhensky and Lithuania Regiments joined the Volhynia men and proceeded in an armed body to the Vyborg District, the centre of the revolutionary movement in Petrograd. Ever since the morning the workers from the Vyborg Side had been swarming across the ice of the Neva. Towards midday the Vyborgites overwhelmed a company of the Moscow Regiment which held the Liteiny Bridge with machine guns, and swept into the town, carrying the soldiers with them. On the way, the arsenal was taken by storm. Armed squads were hastily formed on the spot. About 40,000 rifles were distributed in the space of an hour. The unorganised mutiny of the soldiers directly merged with the revolutionary movement of the proletarians. Armed workers headed the mutinous soldiers. The movement was transformed into a revolution, which overthrew tsarism by force of arms.
The mutiny of the soldiers and the demonstrations of the workers were not fortuitous and independent paths of the February Revolution. The Workers’ demonstrations were paving the way for and stirring up the mutiny of the soldiers at a time when the troops were still obeying the tsarist authorities. Without the political leadership of the workers there would have been no mass revolt of the soldiers. It is not for nothing that the men of the Volhynia and Lithuania Regiments proceeded not to the centre of the city, not to the Duma, but to the working-class district of Vyborg. But the way for both the action of the workers and the mutiny of the soldiers had long been paved by the persistent and self-sacrificing work of the Bolshevik Party. Before its arrest the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party had printed a leaflet which said:
“We cannot wait and hold our peace any longer. The working class and the peasants, clad in grey greatcoat and blue blouse, joining a hand, must wage a fight against the tsarist clique, in order to put an end for ever to the shame that is oppressing Russia. . . . The time for an open struggle has arrived.”(3)
The two streams, directed by the Party, came closer and closer, until they merged into the flood of victorious revolution.
The city was soon filled with automobile trucks and cars carrying armed soldiers and sailors. Gendarmes and recalcitrant officers were hunted out, disarmed and, in the passion of the fight, exterminated. Prisons were wrecked. Hundreds of active revolutionaries obtained their freedom and immediately took their place in the ranks of the fighters.
Police stations were set on fire. Endless cheers resounded, sweeping from district to district.
Brief and stormy meetings were held. Bolshevik leaflets passed from hand to hand.
“Call upon everybody to join the struggle,” an appeal of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks stated. “Better to die a glorious death fighting for the cause of the workers, than to perish at the front for the sake of capitalist profits or to die from hunger and unendurable toil. . . . Everybody rally to the red banner of revolution! Down with the tsarist monarchy! Long live the democratic republic! . . . The landed estates for the people! . . . Down with the war! . . . Long live the Socialist International!”(4)
The tsarist Ministers met at the Mariinsky Palace. Reports of revolt poured in from every quarter. Cossack patrols reported that a government detachment, consisting of a thousand men under the command of Colonel Kutyepov, which had been sent against the Volhynia men, was unable to advance. The soldiers were fraternising with the insurrectionaries.
The perplexed Ministers permitted General Khabalov, the Commander of the Petrograd Military Area, to proclaim a state of emergency in the capital. But the order could not be printed: the printshop of the Governor of the City was in the hands of the rebels. A thousand copies were finally printed in the Admiralty. Two police officers succeeded in pasting up a few copies of the order, but they were quickly torn down by the crowd and trampled underfoot.
The Ministers were sitting in perplexity listening to the new reports, when firing was heard in the distance. It was decided to extinguish all lights in the palace and to assemble at least some of the loyal troops in order to put up a resistance. But there was no attack and the lights were put on again. “After the light was put on, to my utter astonishment, I found myself under the table,”(5) one of the Ministers subsequently told Rodzyanko, the President of the State Duma.
It was a false alarm. The armed crowd moved towards the Taurida Palace. The Council of Seniors—representatives of all the fractions—was holding a meeting in the Duma. Rodzyanko reported on the insurrection and on the panic of the government. He sent the following telegram to the tsar:
“The situation is growing worse. Measures must be taken immediately, for to-morrow will be too late. The last hour is at hand, the hour in which the fate of the fatherland and the dynasty will be decided.”(6)
In place of a reply from General Headquarters Rodzyanko found on his table the tsar’s ukase dissolving the Duma. What was to be done? Not to obey the ukase and to meet in session would be to disobey the monarch and to adopt the path of revolution. Of this the Duma was incapable. Accept the ukase and disperse? But the noise of shots and the roar of the approaching crowd could be heard outside. The loyal landlords and bourgeois decided to submit to the ukase of the Emperor and to dissolve the State Duma as an institution; the members of the Duma, however, were not to disperse but to meet as “private citizens” at an “unofficial” conference. In this way they obeyed the ukase but left their hands free.
They did not meet in the White Hall, where they usually assembled, but in the Semi-Circular Hall in order to stress by this detail the “private” character of the meeting. More than two hundred deputies crowded around the table, where Rodzyanko, raising his hands in perplexity, kept asking: “What is to be done?” One of the Cadets, Nekrasov, who was regarded as the most Left of them all, proposed that one of the “popular generals” should immediately be appointed dictator, for the suppression of the revolt. This was pooh-poohed; it was angrily remarked that the Ministers and generals were so scared that they would have to be dragged out from under their beds. Dzyubinsky, a Trudovik (member of the Group of Toil), recommended that a plenipotentiary commission for the restoration of order should be formed from members of the Duma. Milyukov opposed both these suggestions. He advised waiting until it became clear which side the majority of the soldiers and workers would take.
At the height of the discussion the captain of the guard burst into the hall, crying: “My assistant has been badly wounded, protect me!”(7) The deputies looked out of the window and saw a crowd surrounding the palace. The sound of rifle butts was soon heard on the stairs. The revolution was at the threshold of the Duma. A Provisional Committee of ten persons was hastily elected “to restore order in Petrograd and to maintain contact with institutions and persons.” The committee consisted of, M. V. Rodzyanko, V. V. Shulgin (Nationalist), P. N. Milyukov (Cadet), N. V. Nekrasov (Cadet), S. I. Shidlovsky (Octobrist), I. I. Dmitryukov (Octobrist), A. I. Konovalov (Progressivist), V. A. Rzhevsky (Progressivist), V. N. Lvov (Right), A. F. Kerensky (Trudovik) and N. S. Chkheidze (Menshevik).
The insurgent people blocked all the streets abutting on the Taurida Palace. The courtyard was filled by an immense crowd. Armed soldiers and workers flocked through the palace.
The monarchist Shulgin, in his reminiscences depicts the state of mind of the scared bourgeoisie as follows:
“Machine guns—that is what I wanted, because I felt that the language of machine guns was the only language the mob could understand, and that lead alone could drive the fearsome monster that had broken loose back into his lair. . . . Alas, this monster was . . . His Majesty the Russian People! . . .
“That which we had feared so much, that which we had desired to avoid at all costs, was already a fact. The revolution had begun.”(8)
At General Headquarters the morning of February 27 passed as usual. Tsar Nicholas II appeared quite composed when he went to receive the daily reports. The events in Petrograd were known. A letter had arrived the day before from the tsarina describing the incidents in the capital on February 25.
“It’s a hooligan movement,” the tsarina wrote, “young boys and girls running about and screaming that they have no bread—only to excite—then the workmen preventing others from work—if it were very cold they would probably stay in doors.”(9)
It was believed that “hunger riots” were taking place in Petrograd, and at General Headquarters they were accustomed to pay no attention to the starvation of the workers. Nicholas endeavoured to reassure the alarmed tsarina:
“The disorders among the troops come from the convalescent company, according to news I got. I wonder what Paul [Commander of the Guards—Ed.] is doing? He ought to keep them in hand.”(10)
Troops were transferred to Petrograd from behind the front. Khabalov was ordered to put a stop to the disorders immediately.
But by midday more alarming news began to arrive. The tsarina wired:
“The revolution yesterday [February 26—Ed.] assumed frightful proportions. I know that other army units have joined. The news is graver than ever before.”(11)
Within an hour a second telegram arrived:
“Concessions are essential. The strikes continue. Many troops have joined the revolution.”(12)
Thereafter Petrograd almost ceased to reply to calls.
The courtiers at General Headquarters grew alarmed. The tsar held a long conference with General Alexeyev, Chief of Staff, on what measures should be adopted. It was proposed to send troops to Petrograd under the command of a general who had seen service. By the evening Nicholas had made up his mind to depart for Petrograd himself. At 7 p.m. Nicholas informed his wife:
“Leave to-morrow 2.30. Guard cavalry from Novgorod ordered at once for town.”(13)
Events moved at catastrophic speed.
News was received from the outskirts of Petrograd that all the troops had raised the red flag. There were no reliable troops left in the capital.
General Headquarters was in a feverish state. The commanders of the various fronts were summoned to the direct wire. Troops were withdrawn from the front-line trenches. When his assistant inquired what had happened, General Alexeyev impatiently answered: “Petrograd is in revolt.”(14)
It was realised at General Headquarters that the “food riot” had assumed the dimensions of a revolution.
Tsarism was in its last throes, but it still attempted to resist the revolution. Khabalov hastily selected a shock battalion from “loyal” regiments; the battalion consisted of six companies of infantry and one and a half squadrons of cavalry with fifteen machine guns. But even this detachment went over to the insurrectionaries at the first encounter. General Khabalov, with another detachment selected from the Lithuania, Keksholm and Izmailovsky Regiments, sought refuge in the Admiralty and endeavoured to take action against the rebels. But this select detachment, too, melted away under his very eyes. On the morning of February 28, Khabalov informed General Headquarters over the direct wire:
“The number of troops remaining loyal to their duty has been reduced to 600 infantry and 500 horse with 15 machine guns and 12 guns. . . . The situation is grave in the extreme.”(15)
He had scarcely concluded his conversation with General Headquarters when the last of the “loyal” troops went over to the workers.
The rapidity with which the revolution spread in the army may be judged from the records of the Military Commission of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma:(16)
| Date | Time of Day | Number of Insurrectionaries |
|---|---|---|
| February 26 | 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. | 600 |
| February 27 | morning | 10,200 |
| February 27 | midday | 25,700 |
| February 27 | evening | 66,700 |
| February 28 | morning | 72,700 |
| February 28 | midday | 112,000 |
| February 28 | evening | 127,000 |
| March 1 | morning | 144,700 |
| March 1 | midday | (about) 170,000 |
Lenin, explaining why the revolution succeeded so rapidly, wrote:
“But while the defeats in the war were a negative factor hastening the outbreak of the crisis, the connection of Anglo-French finance capital, of Anglo-French imperialism, with the Octobrist and Constitutional-Democratic capital of Russia was a factor that speeded the crisis.
“This highly important aspect of the situation, is, for obvious reasons, not mentioned by the Anglo-French press, but is maliciously emphasised by the German. We Marxists must face the truth soberly, and not allow ourselves to be confused either by the official lies, the sugary diplomatic and ministerial lies of the first group of imperialist belligerents, or by the sniggering and smirking of its financial and military rivals of the other belligerent groups. The whole course of events in the February-March Revolution clearly shows that the British and French embassies, with their agents and ‘connections,’ who had for a long time been making desperate efforts to prevent ‘separate’ agreements and a separate peace between Nicholas II (who, let us hope and endeavour, will be the last) and Wilhelm II, directly strove to replace Nicholas Romanov.
“Let us harbour no illusions.
“The fact that the revolution succeeded so quickly and—at the first superficial glance—so ‘radically’ is due to the fact that, as a result of a unique historical situation, absolutely dissimilar movements, absolutely heterogeneous class interests, absolutely contrary political and social tendencies have merged, and merged in a strikingly ‘harmonious’ manner. There was the conspiracy of the Anglo-French imperialists, who impelled Milyukov, Guchkov and Co. to seize power for the purpose of continuing the imperialist war, for the purpose of conducting the war still more ferociously and obstinately, for the purpose of slaughtering fresh millions of Russian workers and peasants in order that the Guchkovs might obtain Constantinople, the French capitalists Syria, the British Capitalists Mesopotamia, and so on. This on the one hand. On the other, there was a profound proletarian and mass popular movement of a revolutionary character (a movement of the entire poor population of town and country) for bread, for peace, for real freedom.”(17)
All was over in Petrograd. But General Headquarters and the tsar continued to send troops from the front. They were placed under the command of General Ivanov, who had distinguished himself in the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt in 1905. General Ivanov was invested with dictatorial powers. But his troop train reached Tsarskoye Selo with difficulty, and here his soldiers immediately began to fraternise with the revolutionary soldiers. General Ivanov himself barely managed to escape arrest. On the return journey his train was driven into a siding. Communication with the front had already been severed.
Returning from General Headquarters, the tsar got no further than the station of Dno. Trains coming from the other directions were crowded with soldiers, who spread the news of the revolt in the capital. It was useless to proceed further. Nicholas II turned and went to Pskov, where the headquarters of the Northern Front were located, with the object of raising the army against Petrograd. In Pskov he was informed of the victory of the revolution, and telegrams received from all the commanders of the fronts advised him to give way. A manifesto issued by the revolutionary organisations was transmitted from Petrograd. Resistance would have been futile, and Nicholas resolved to abdicate.
While the tsar and General Headquarters were flinging their last reserves into the fight, the Petrograd workers and soldiers set about forming their own political and organisational centre—the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. On the evening of February 27 the first sitting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies opened.
[1] I. S. Chumakov, “Reminiscences,” Manuscript Records of the History of the Civil War, No. 1284.
[2] K. I. Pazhetnykh, “The Volhynia Regiment in the February Revolution. Reminiscences,” Manuscript Records of the History of the Civil War, No. 488.
[3] To All the Working Men and Women of Petrograd. Leaflet of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, Petrograd Committee, 1916.
[4] “The February Revolution in Documents,” Proletarskaya Revolutsia, 1923, No. l (13), p. 285.
[5] M. V. Rodzyanko, The State Duma and the Revolution of February 1917, Rostov-on-Don, 1919, p. 41.
[6] Ibid., p. 42.
[7] V. Shulgin, “Days,” Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought), Prague, 1922, Book VIII—XII, p. 93.
[8] Ibid., p. 96.
[9] Letter of February 25, 1917.—Trans.
[10] Letter of February 27, 1917.—Trans.
[11] A. Blok, The Last Days of the Imperial Power. Unpublished Documents, Petrograd, 1921, pp. 77-8.
[12] Ibid., p. 78.
[13] Telegram No. 12—Trans.
[14] A. Blok, The Last Days of the Imperial Power. Unpublished Documents, Petrograd, 1921, p. 78.
[15] “The Revolution of February 1917,” Krasny Arkiv, 1927, No. 2 (21), p. 19.
[16] Bolshevisation of the Petrograd Garrison. Materials and Documents, Leningrad, 1932, p. vi.
[17] Lenin, “Letters From Afar,” Selected Works, (Eng. ed.), Vol. VI, pp. 7-8.
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