A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

killed'.⁸⁴

As they entered the third and by far the coldest winter of the war, the morale of the soldiers took a sudden turn for the worse. It was no longer a crisis of supplies: if anything, the supply of clothes and munitions had improved since the previous year, thanks to the increase of domestic production and orders from abroad, although the food situation remained as grim as ever. It was now more a crisis of authority, of utter despair and exhaustion: the soldiers could see no end to the slaughter while the present regime remained in command. As one soldier wrote to his wife in November 1916:

Everyone pretends that the war will end soon, that the longed-for peace will arrive, but that is only to keep their spirits up. People are so worn out and destroyed, they have suffered so much, that it's all they can do to stop their hearts from breaking and to keep themselves from losing their mind . . . Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't understand the mood of the men and it only seems to me like this because I myself am exhausted and have come to realise in the past few days that I may lose my own mind in all this chaos . . . Liulya, I have written all this to you so that you may understand what sort of a man you love.⁸⁵

Part Three

RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION (FEBRUARY 1917-MARCH 1918)

8 Glorious February

i The Power of the Streets

It all began with bread. For several weeks the bakeries in Petrograd had been running out, especially in the workers' districts, and long bread queues were beginning to appear. The problem was not shortage of supplies. According to Balk, the city's governor, there was enough flour in the warehouses to feed the population for at least a week when what had started as a series of bread riots turned into a revolution. True, the shops were not full. This was the end of the war's third winter and there was a general feeling of austerity. Buns, pies, cakes and biscuits were no longer baked. 'The shops are not carrying such a full line of articles and provisions,' an Englishman wrote home on 13 February. 'Restaurants no longer have the big fine pastries, owing to the scarcity of sugar.' This, moreover, was the coldest winter Russia had experienced for several years. In Petrograd the average February temperature was fifteen degrees below zero. 'It's as cold here as in Lapland,' Gorky wrote to Ekaterina on the 4th. Arctic frosts and blizzards had brought the railways to a virtual standstill. Factories closed. Thousands of laid-off workers milled around the streets.¹

It was this that turned the supply problem into a crisis. Because of the breakdown of the transport system, Petrograd was starved of regular supplies of flour and fuel. For want of the one or the other, bakeries were frequently forced to close. Women would queue all night for a loaf of bread, only to be told in the early hours of the morning that there would be none for sale that day. This constant interruption to the bread supply naturally gave rise to rumours in the queues. People said that 'speculators' and 'capitalists' — which in the xenophobic wartime atmosphere usually meant German or Jewish merchants — were deliberately forcing up the bread prices by withholding stocks. Many people blamed the government (wasn't it also full of Germans?). Even educated liberals were inclined to see the shortages as the evil doing of a treasonable government. On 19 February the Petrograd authorities announced that rationing would start from I March. Rumours spread that there would soon be no bread stocks at all and the unemployed would be left to starve. In the panic buying that followed the shelves were laid bare, scuffles broke out, and several bakeries had their windows smashed.²

On Thursday, 23 February, the temperature in Petrograd rose to a spring-like minus five degrees. People emerged from their winter hibernation to enjoy the sun and join in the hunt for food. Nevsky Prospekt was crowded with shoppers. The mild weather was set to continue until 3 March — by which time the tsarist regime would have collapsed. Not for the first time in Russian history the weather was to play a decisive role.

February 23rd was International Women's Day, an important date in the socialist calendar, and towards noon huge crowds of women began to march towards the city centre to protest for equal rights. Balk described the crowds as 'ladies from society, lots more peasant women, student girls and, compared with the earlier demonstrations, not many workers'. Photographs show the women were in good humour as they marched along the Nevsky Prospekt.

But in the afternoon the mood began to change. Women textile workers from the Vyborg district had come out on strike that morning in protest against the shortages of bread. Joined by their menfolk from the neighbouring metal works, they had marched towards the city centre, drawing in workers from other factories on the way, and in some cases forcing them out, with shouts of 'Bread!' and 'Down with the Tsar!' By the end of the afternoon, some 100,000 workers had come out on strike. There were clashes with the police as the workers tried to cross the Liteiny Bridge, linking the Vyborg side with the city centre. Most of the workers, having been forced back, dispersed and went home, some of them looting shops on the way. But several thousand crossed on the ice and marched towards the Nevsky Prospekt, where they joined the women with cries of 'Bread!' The thickest crowds were around the city Duma. Balk's Cossacks could not clear them and even showed an unwillingness to do so: they would ride up to the women, only to stop short and retreat. Later it emerged that most of the Cossacks were reserves without experience of dealing with crowds, and with horses that were new to the city streets. By some oversight they had not been supplied with their usual whips. It was to prove a fatal mistake by the authorities. For this show of weakness by the Cossacks emboldened the workers over the coming days.³

The following morning saw bright sunshine. Workers held factory meetings throughout the city and, urged on by socialist agitators, resolved to march again to the centre. Many armed themselves with knives, spanners, hammers and pieces of iron, partly to fight their way through the squadrons of Cossacks and police who had been brought in overnight to bar their way, and partly to help them loot the well-stocked food shops of the affluent downtown areas. The expedition had the feel of a hungry workers' army going off to war. 'Comrades,' urged one factory agitator, 'if we cannot get a loaf of bread for ourselves in a righteous way, then we must do everything: we must go ahead and solve our problem by force . . . Comrades, arm yourselves with everything

possible — bolts, screws, rocks, and go out of the factory and start smashing the first shops you find.'

By mid-morning about 150,000 workers had taken to the streets. They made their way to the bridges connecting the industrial suburbs with the city's administrative centre. Some of them smashed windows, looted shops and overturned trams and carriages. At the Liteiny Bridge a crowd of 40,000 Vyborg workers overran a small brigade of Cossacks, who were clearly unprepared for them. 'But nobody told me there would be a revolution!', a policeman was heard to say as he saw the vast army of workers approach. On the Troitsky Bridge the workers fought their way past mounted police by throwing rocks and ice. The huge crowds converged on the Nevsky Prospekt. The mounted Cossacks were unable to disperse them: they would ride across the street and on to the pavements, forcing the demonstrators to run in all directions; but as soon as they stopped the crowds would reassemble and begin to approach the troops, offering them bread and calling out to them. By this stage, the crowds of workers had been swollen with students, shopkeepers, bank clerks, cabbies, children, well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, who were either sympathizers or just spectators. Balk described the crowds on Nevsky Prospekt as 'consisting of the ordinary people'. There was a holiday mood on the streets, no doubt partly because of the fine weather. One witness compared it to 'an enormous circus'. Arthur Ransome, then the correspondent for the Daily News, described the feeling on that day as one of 'rather precarious excitement like a Bank Holiday with thunder in the air'. There was a huge rally on Znamenskaya Square. The equestrian statue of Alexander III, an awesome monument to the principles of autocracy, was conquered by the revolutionary orators. Few in the vast crowd could hear what they were saying, but this did not matter. The people knew what they wanted to hear, and the mere sight of this brave act of free speech — performed from the top of such a monument and in full view of the police — was enough to confirm it in their minds: a revolution was taking place. Later that