Spies and Commissars

Petrograd Soviet clamoured for his release as an honourable fighter against the hated monarchy. At first Milyukov had favoured this step. But then he pressed Sir George Buchanan, the United Kingdom’s ambassador in Petrograd, to get the British to keep Trotsky in detention. This they duly did. But when the political left in Petrograd started a press campaign for Trotsky to be freed, Buchanan sensed a danger to the physical security of Britain’s many businessmen in Russia. He leant on Milyukov to stress that the British were not responsible for the situation in Halifax. On 21 April the Provisional Government made clear its lack of objection to Trotsky’s release, and he was reunited with his family and they were allowed to take the next scheduled boat — the Helig Olaf — across the Atlantic.²⁹ They reached Christiania (Oslo) without mishap and made for Haparanda before the last stage across Finland to Petrograd. Like others before him, he was greeted warmly at the Finland Station a month after Lenin’s arrival. His close comrade Moisei Uritski and the Bolshevik Central Committee member G. F. Fedorov had gone out to accompany him and help acclimatize him to Russian revolutionary politics.

He never forgave the British for his experience in Halifax. His Marxist doctrines and analysis should have told him that the leading capitalist powers were hardly any different from each other and that the French would have done the same in similar circumstances; indeed, from his own doctrinal viewpoint, it was little short of incredible that the American authorities had allowed him out of New York City harbour in the first instance. But Trotsky moaned that the British authorities had had the impertinence to strip-search him; he noted that even the Imperial Russian government had never subjected him to this degrading treatment. It was as if the compulsion to take off his clothes for inspection by a medical doctor was the ultimate barbarity. For a man who was about to introduce a harsh dictatorship this was remarkably over-sensitive.

With Trotsky’s arrival in Petrograd, the Provisional Government was faced by not one but two exceptional troublemakers. He and Lenin set about exploiting the political situation. Even before returning, both had denounced the cabinet as being militarist and imperialist; and they had dismissed those Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders in the Petrograd Soviet who supported Georgi Lvov and fellow ministers and passed up the opportunity to take power in the name of socialist revolution. Russia after the fall of the Romanovs was like no other great power in the world. Restrictions on freedom had vanished. Lenin, the lifelong enemy of the Imperial government and its oppressiveness, was impressed by the reforms undertaken by the Provisional Government. Famously he declared before his return that Russia was the freest country in the world at that time. He and Trotsky could write fluently and get their pieces quickly published. Lenin had a ready-made faction of followers which he could turn into a mass party. He was as yet a nervous speaker, but Trotsky — along with Kerenski — was a talented orator who could stir vast audiences whenever he appeared. And though Trotsky did not immediately join the Bolsheviks, he and Lenin knew they had to bury their past disputes. They wanted the same thing: supreme power in revolutionary Russia.

2. RUSSIA ON ITS KNEES

The returning emigrants came upon a disorientating mixture of the old and the new in Petrograd. The statue of Catherine the Great had a red flag flying from her sceptre. At noon every day without fail the bells of the Peter- Paul Fortress rang out the Glinka melody of ‘God Save the Tsar’. Much also remained unchanged in Moscow and it was still possible to catch sight of the younger grand dukes near the Spasski Gates on Red Square going out for the evening. The brilliant ballerina Tamara Karsavina gave performances in both cities. The world-famous bass Fedor Shalyapin sang in Verdi’s Don Carlos at Petrograd’s Bolshoi Opera; he had never been a supporter of the old regime and was enjoying his acclaim as a champion of the people. Despite the wartime evacuation of the Hermitage art collection from Petrograd to Moscow, there were weekly exhibitions of paintings as well as public lectures on painting and literature in the capital. Plays were put on which had long been banned. At the Alexandrinski Theatre there was a revival of Alexei Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan the Terrible. The censorship office ceased to function. The Salvation Army, which had been prohibited on Imperial soil by Nicholas II’s government, plastered announcements of its gospel meetings on the walls. A vegetarian restaurant was doing a lot of business by enticing customers with a huge poster of the writer and Christian anarchist Lev Tolstoy and a sign that stated: ‘I Eat Nobody’.¹

The conventions of society were being turned inside out. Domestic servants became less likely to obey when their masters or mistresses made demands on them. Many waiters refused to accept gratuities because the practice offended their dignity: ‘Just because a man has to make his living waiting on table is no reason to insult him by offering him a tip!’ Social deference was disappearing. Tram conductors addressed passengers as ‘comrades’ regardless of social status — an innovation that middle-class passengers often found unnerving.²

The most remarkable phenomenon was the influence wielded by organized labour. Workers elected their own soviets in the factory yards. Many cities acquired their own Red Guards to fill the gap left by the gendarmes who had fled. The entire labour movement wanted both order and better conditions for working people as they expanded their network of trade unions and set up factory-workshop committees. And when one body failed to satisfy their demands they either replaced its leadership or turned to some other body to act on their behalf.³ Although the industrial labour force led the way, the enthusiasm for participation spread to every corner of society — with the exception of the aristocracy and the landed gentry whose members lay low after the monarchy’s downfall. Peasants in most Russian regions already had their own bodies, the village communes, to run their affairs. The communes had traditionally engaged in rural selfpolicing and they now extended their authority over all aspects of life in the agricultural areas. Popular administration was a slogan of the day. Even the Trans- Siberian railway was affected. Foreign passengers trying to make their exodus from Russia found themselves being asked to choose a council for their carriage. The motive was more practical than political as the train had to pick up food and drink on the journey and there had to be effective bargaining at each big station. Citizenship in 1917 required everyone to become something of a politician.

Workers wanted higher wages, improved living conditions and secure employment. Increasingly they feared being conscripted if the Provisional Government were to resume active operations on the eastern front. Garrison soldiers felt menaced by the same prospect. At any time they might be ordered to the trenches, and everyone knew how poorly the Russian Army was beginning to perform against the Germans. Peasant households were also restless. They resented having to pay land rents and looked enviously upon the woods and pastures of absentee gentry landlords. It seemed only a matter of time before the villages became ungovernable.

The administrative disintegration picked up pace and the forces of order broke down almost entirely. The gendarmerie in the Russian Empire had never operated with the consent of society. As soon as the monarchy fell, gendarmes pulled off their uniforms and hid themselves from the enraged populace. The old political police — the Okhrana — was disbanded. The commanders of army and navy garrisons could no longer enforce military discipline. The Petrograd Soviet on 14 March issued Order No. 1 stipulating its right to overturn commands issued by military officers. This left the Provisional Government with few instruments to impose its will. Ministers were dependent on favours dispensed by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in the great network of soviets elected by workforces and garrisons in the cities. Prince Lvov could hardly drink a cup of tea without checking whether he had permission. The cabinet kept itself busy and funnelled its policies down through the ministries. The old bureaucrats remained in place; many of them were eager to serve their new masters and implement instructions. But orders formulated in the capital were frequently slow to be obeyed in the provinces. The Provisional Government encountered difficulties from the very start of its rule.

Lvov’s hand of cards held no trumps even before the first post-Romanov crisis occurred in early May. Pavel Milyukov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, shared the deposed emperor’s war aims and expected to acquire the Straits of the Dardanelles for Russia once the Central Powers were defeated, something he made very clear in telegrams to Paris and London. Unfortunately this was in contradiction to the understanding between the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government that Russia would fight only a defensive war. Workers in the telegraph offices informed the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders about Milyukov’s telegrams. A protest demonstration was organized. The Lvov cabinet met in a panic, and Milyukov felt compelled to resign along with the Minister for Military Affairs Alexander Guchkov. Lvov also brought Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries into his reconstructed cabinet, hoping that a coalition of liberals and socialists could pull the country together. The Allied diplomats in