All night the soldiers argued. Then, at six in the morning, a Volinsky sergeant named Kirpichnikov killed a captain who had struck him the previous day. The other officers fled from the barracks and, soon after, the Volinsky marched out, band playing, to join the revolution. The mutiny spread quickly to other famous regiments, the Semonovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky, the Oranienbaum Machine Gun Regiment and, finally, to the legendary Preobrajensky Guard, the oldest and finest regiment in the army, created by Peter the Great himself. In all of these cases, the units that went over were recruit battalions of inferior quality; nevertheless, they carried the colors and wore the uniforms of the proudest regiments of the Russian army.
In most parts of the city, the morning of March 12 broke with deadly stillness. From a window of the British Embassy, Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, stared out at “the same wide streets, the same great palaces, the same gold spires and domes rising out of the pearl-colored morning mists, and yet … everywhere emptiness, no lines of toiling carts, no crowded scarlet trams, no little sledges.… [Only] the waste of deserted streets and ice-bound river … [and] on the opposite shore the low grim walls of the Fortress and the Imperial flag of Russia that for the last time fluttered against the winter sky.”
A few minutes later, from a window in his own Embassy, Paleologue witnessed the dramatic scene when the army confronted the mob: “At half past eight this morning just as I finished dressing, I heard a strange and prolonged din which seemed to come from the Alexander Bridge. I looked out; there was no one on the bridge which usually presents a busy scene. But almost immediately, a disorderly mob carrying red flags appeared at the end … on the right bank of the Neva and a regiment came towards them from the opposite side. It looked as if there would be a violent collision, but on the contrary, the two bodies coalesced. The army was fraternizing with the revolution.”
Two hours later, General Knox heard “that the depot troops of the garrison had mutinied and were coming down the street. We went to the window.… Craning our necks, we first saw two soldiers—a sort of advance guard —who strode along the middle of the street, pointing their rifles at loiterers to clear the road.… Then came a great disorderly mass of soldiery, stretching right across the wide street and both pavements. They were led by a diminutive but immensely dignified student. All were armed and many had red flags fastened to their bayonets.… What struck me most was the uncanny silence of it all. We were like spectators in a gigantic cinema.”
A few minutes later, Paleologue, trying to find out what was happening, went out into the street: “Frightened inhabitants were scattering through the streets.… At one corner of the Liteiny, soldiers were helping civilians to erect a barricade. Flames mounted from the Law Courts. The gates of the Arsenal burst open with a crash. Suddenly, the crack of machine-gun fire split the air; it was the regulars who had just taken up position near the Nevsky Prospect.… The Law Courts had become nothing but an enormous furnace; the Arsenal on the Liteiny, the Ministry of the Interior, the Military Government Building … the headquarters of the Okhrana and a score of police stations were in flames, the prisons were open and all the prisoners had been liberated.” By noon, the Fortress of Peter and Paul had fallen with its heavy artillery, and 25,000 soldiers had joined the revolution. By nightfall, the number had swollen to 66,000.
During Monday morning, the Imperial Cabinet held its last meeting. Protopopov, who was present, was urged to resign. He rose and walked out of the room, melodramatically mumbling, “Now there is nothing left to do but shoot myself.” The Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael arrived and, after listening to the ministers, decided to appeal to Nicholas himself. Leaving the meeting, he telephoned directly to Headquarters and urged the immediate appointment of a government which could command the nation’s confidence. General Alexeiev, at the other end of the line, asked the Grand Duke to wait while he spoke to the Tsar. Forty minutes later, Alexeiev called back: “The Emperor wishes to express his thanks,” he said. “He is leaving for Tsarskoe Selo and will decide there.” Hearing this, the Cabinet simply gave up. It adjourned itself—forever, as it turned out—and the ministers walked out of the building. By nightfall, most of them had arrived at the Tauride Palace to have themselves arrested and placed under the protection of the Duma.
At the Duma, events were moving with breathtaking speed. The Imperial order suspending the Duma had reached Rodzianko the previous night. At eight the next morning, he summoned the leaders of all the political parties to a meeting in his office. There it was decided that, in view of the collapse of law and order, the Imperial order should be ignored and the Duma kept in session. At half past one, the first large crowds of workers and soldiers, carrying red banners and singing the “
“I must know what I can tell them,” Kerensky cried to Rodzianko, as the mob jostled and crowded the uncertain deputies. “Can I say that the Imperial Duma is with them, that it takes the responsibility on itself, that it stands at the head of the government?”
Rodzianko had little choice but to agree. Still personally loyal to the Tsar, he protested to Shulgin, a monarchist deputy, “I don’t want to revolt.” Shulgin, a realist as well as a monarchist, overrode him, saying, “Take the power … if you don’t, others will.” Reluctantly, Rodzianko mounted a platform which creaked under his bulk, and assured the crowd that the Duma would refuse to be dissolved and would accept the responsibilities of government. At three in the afternoon, the Duma met and appointed a temporary executive committee for the purpose of restoring order and gaining control over the mutinous troops. The committee included the leaders of all the parties of the Duma except the extreme Right.
Nor was the collapse of the Imperial government and the rise of the Duma all that happened on that remarkable day. On the same day, there arose a second, rival assembly, the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, consisting of one delegate from each company of revolutionary soldiers and one delegate for each thousand workers. Incredibly, by nightfall, the Soviet was sitting under the same roof as the Duma.
It was Kerensky who created this astonishing situation. As he explained it later: “The entire garrison had mutinied and … the troops were marching towards the Duma.… Naturally a question arose … as to how and by whom the soldiers and workmen were to be led; for until then their movement was completely unorganized, uncoordinated and anarchical. ‘A Soviet?’ The memory of 1905 prompted this cry.… The need of some kind of center for the mass movement was realized by everyone. The Duma itself needed some representatives of the rebel populace; without them, it would have been impossible to reestablish order in the capital. For this reason the Soviet was formed quickly and not by any means as a matter of class war: simply about three or four o’clock in the afternoon, the organizers applied to me for suitable premises; I mentioned the matter to Rodzianko and the thing was arranged.”
The Tauride Palace, an eighteenth-century building presented by Catherine the Great to her favorite Prince Potemkin, possessed two large wings; one was the chamber of the Duma, the other, formerly the budget committee room of the Duma, was given to the Soviet. Thereafter, wrote Kerensky, “two different Russias settled side by side: the Russia of the ruling classes who had lost (though they did not realize it yet) … and the Russia of Labor, marching towards power, without suspecting it.”
Although Rodzianko assumed the chairmanship of the temporary Duma committee, from the first it was Kerensky who became the central figure. Only thirty-six years old, he became the bridge between the Soviet and the Duma committee. He was elected Vice-Chairman of the Soviet; within three days, he was also Minister of Justice in the new Provisional Government. “His words and his gestures were sharp and clear-cut and his eyes shone,” wrote Shulgin. “He seemed to grow every minute.” A stream of important prisoners—Prince Golitsyn, Sturmer, the Metropolitan Pitirim, all the ministers of the Cabinet—were brought in or presented themselves for arrest. It was Kerensky who saved their lives. “Ivan Gregorovich,” he said, striding up to one prisoner and speaking in a ringing tone, “you are arrested. Your life is not in danger. The Imperial Duma does not shed blood.”
With justification, Kerensky later took credit for averting a massacre. “During the first days of the Revolution, the Duma was full of the most hated officials of the monarchy …,” he wrote. “Day and night the revolutionary tempest raged around the arrested men. The huge halls and endless corridors of the Duma were flooded with armed soldiers, workmen and students. The waves of hatred … beat against the walls. If I moved a finger, if I had simply closed my eyes and washed my hands of it, the entire Duma, all St. Petersburg, the whole of Russia might have been drenched in torrents of human blood as [it was] under Lenin in October.”
Toward midnight, Protopopov came to ask for protection. After leaving the final meeting of the Council, he had spent the night hiding in a tailor shop. He arrived now in a makeshift disguise: an overlong overcoat and a hat down over his eyes. Sighting Kerensky in one of the corridors, he crept alongside and whispered, “It is I,
