At the beginning of 1917, there was a strong possibility of renewed trouble in Petrograd. Workers had for years been discontented about conditions that had worsened in wartime. Although wages rose with the expansion of armaments production, they failed to keep pace with rampant financial inflation. Housing, sewerage facilities and healthcare deteriorated. In December 1915 and again in December 1916 there was a wave of strikes which were broken with difficulty by the political police. Although revolutionary activists were regularly arrested, working-class grievances remained strong.
The grumbling persisted in the Duma, where disappointment mounted about Nicholas’s refusal to compromise after the Rasputin murder. At court, it was understood that the imperial couple wanted no mention of the monk by name: they found the whole matter acutely painful.1 However, liberal and conservative politicians wanted action. Talks grew about the desirability of a coup d’état in the light of the emperor’s intransigence. On 27 February the Duma sessions reopened and, as Minister of Internal Affairs Alexander Protopopov discovered, seditious plans were soon under consideration. What made the situation doubly volatile was the fact that the strike movement had begun to escalate again in the armaments factories which were crucial to the army’s chances on the Eastern Front at a time when the Germans were setting up a fresh offensive. Moreover, the female workers in the textile enterprises that produced greatcoats for the soldiers were angry at the deterioration in food supplies. Nicholas was with Alexandra at Tsarskoe Selo and received warnings from the Department of Police about the rapidly worsening situation. The imperial couple took these with a pinch of salt, believing that the security agencies had an interest in trying to scare them.2 This was not entirely fanciful. Secret services everywhere try to justify the powers and resources bestowed upon them, and it is not uncommon for them to play up threats to the status quo.
Nicholas II consequently saw no reason to put off returning to Mogilëv on 5 March.3 He told Sophie Buxhoeveden that a pressing message from Alexeev was the reason for his departure:
He is insisting that I go immediately. I cannot imagine what’s the matter since it mustn’t be anything important in my opinion, but he’s telegrammed a second time and perhaps he really does need to discuss something personally with me that he can’t write down for an army courier to deliver. In any case I’ll go for three or four days and then come back. A lot of stupid things have been going on here while I was away.
This had stirred Alexandra into making a protest against his trip to general headquarters, but she made no fuss after learning that Nicholas had already informed Alexeev that he would soon join him in Mogilëv, and nothing was going to change his mind.4 Alexandra was unhappy about his decision, but she did not try to stop him. Nicholas was a stubborn character and once he had resolved to do something, it was seldom easy to deflect him.
Both Nicholas and Alexandra drastically underestimated the growing political dangers. Alexandra herself was preoccupied with the care of her children, who had gone down with measles. Protopopov phoned the palace and reported on the street disturbances to the tsar’s valet, Andrei Volkov. Alexandra refused to accept that there was an emergency, telling Volkov: ‘No, it’s not like that. There cannot be a revolution in Russia. The Cossacks won’t mutiny.’5 She deluded herself. Shots were fired near the Alexander Palace three days after Nicholas’s departure, and the building’s water supply was cut off.6 Even if the Cossacks were to stay loyal, other troops were already showing defiance of the monarchy.
Strikes and demonstrations spread next day to every district of the capital and the army garrisons had difficulty in controlling the crowds. Clandestine organizations of revolutionaries – Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks – saw a renewed opportunity to destabilize the political order and began to call for the monarchy’s overthrow. On 7 March, the Putilov arms factory workers joined in a general strike and it became evident that some of the troops were going over to the demonstrators. Nicholas ordered the immediate arrest of the rebel leaders, which was his usual reaction to challenges from the labour movement, but the garrison commanders and the police were unable to quell the surge in both industrial conflict and army mutiny. The ban on demonstrations proved impossible to enforce. Petrograd had become ungovernable, and the troops sent out to suppress the workers were instead joining in the protests and lending it their armed support. Duma politicians met privately to discuss how to deal with the crisis. Regiment after regiment turned against the monarchy. Commanders who strove to maintain order were ignored; some were even lynched. All the grievances that had festered since the 1905–1906 revolutionary emergency rose back to the surface.
When talking to officers of the Alexander Palace bodyguard, the empress described the insurgents as fools who would soon have second thoughts and calm down. When reports grew ever more depressing, she exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake, let there be no bloodshed on our account!’7 Even more dramatically, she said to the guards: ‘Don’t repeat the nightmare of the French Revolution by defending the marble staircase of the palace!’8 She feared the worst when shots were heard in the park outside: in fact, the gunfire was from garrison troops shooting at black swans on the pond. They also killed some goats and gazelles as they grazed. No violence was threatened against the imperial family, but Alexandra saw it as a sign of things to come, declaring: ‘It’s starting!’9 Although she bore everything stoically, her servants noticed that she had been crying when alone. Her toughness was nonetheless exceptional and was reinforced by her Christian faith. When chambermaid Maria Tutelberg tried to console her, she replied: ‘Our sufferings are nothing. Look at our Saviour’s sufferings and how he suffered on our behalf. If this is necessary for Russia, we’re ready to sacrifice our life and everything.’10
Grand Duke Mikhail, the emperor’s younger brother, phoned Duma Chairman Mikhail Rodzyanko from his residence in Gatchina on 10 March in despair about the Petrograd situation. Rodzyanko could offer him no comfort. The two of them agreed to meet in the capital for a discussion in front of witnesses, and Rodzyanko laid bare what he thought was the minimum that urgently had to be done and advised Mikhail to cable his brother and tell him that he was standing on the edge of an abyss. Nicholas had to accept the need to transfer Alexandra to his palace at Livadia by the Black Sea so that people could see that she no longer influenced public policy. At the same time he should permit the State Duma to announce the intention to form a ‘responsible government’.11
Rodzyanko wrote to plead with Nicholas to get rid of his government and appoint a new one, warning that, if Protopopov remained in office, there would be trouble on the streets. Golitsyn, chairman of the Council of Ministers, gave eager support to Rodzyanko, and they both urged the emperor to recognize the urgency of the situation. A cabinet had to be formed that might command broader political backing, and the idea was proposed that either Prince Lvov or Rodzyanko himself should head it. Grand Duke Mikhail called Alexeev on the direct line, begging him to contact Golitsyn and put the same case to Nicholas. Although Alexeev was suffering from a fever at the time, he found the strength to leave his bed and seek an audience, and he pleaded with Nicholas along the lines that Rodzyanko and Golitsyn had asked.12 Nicholas heard him out but refused to change his position: he had made up his mind that people were out to deceive him or were themselves deceived. He left Rodzyanko’s telegram without an answer. He did, though, write to Golitsyn stating briskly that a change of government was inappropriate in the current situation.13
He was reacting to public political challenge as he had always done. In time of war, moreover, he was even less patient about the revolutionary threat than usual. He always assumed that swift repression was the best option. Although he was in regular contact with Petrograd by telegram, his ministers did not give him a timely warning about the sheer scale of the revolt. He took it for granted that loyal troops would quell the insurgents while he focused on Alexeev’s plans for the Eastern Front. He was hopelessly out of touch. On 12 March he prorogued the Duma session in an attempt to quieten the political situation in Petrograd. But the leaders in the Duma refused to remain passive observers. In the afternoon of 12 March they formed a Provisional Committee under Rodzyanko’s chairmanship with a view to intervening in events regardless of Nicholas’s orders. Socialist militants were active on the same day. Responding to the mood on the streets, they made arrangements to elect a Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and an Executive Committee was established that evening. With workers and soldiers flouting the will of government with impunity, it was a revolutionary situation.14
While the Provisional Committee already regarded itself as the embryo of a future government, it saw that it needed to obtain approval from the soviet. A framework of ‘dual power’ was in the making, and the soviet’s socialist leaders were determined to maintain their influence over the course of events.