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

Brusilov later claimed that the Tsar had been forced to go to war by the strength of his own people's patriotic fervour: 'Had he not done so, public resentment would have turned on him with such ferocity that he would have been tumbled from his throne, and the Revolution, with the support of the whole intelligentsia, would have taken place in 1914 instead of 1917.' This is undoubtedly an overstatement of the case. The middle-class patriots who assembled in front of the Winter Palace to greet the Tsar's declaration of war on Sunday 2 August — clerks, officials, high-school students and housewives — were hardly the people to start a revolution. Many of them, according to foreign observers, had been ordered to turn out by their employers or masters. But on that sunny afternoon, as Nicholas stood on the balcony of his Winter Palace and surveyed in the square below him the vast flag-waving and cheering crowds, who then, as one, knelt down before him and sang the national anthem, the thought must have crossed his mind that the war had at last united his subjects with him and that perhaps, after all, there was some reason for hope. 'You see,' he told his children's tutor shortly after in a state of great emotion, 'there will now be a national movement in Russia like that which took place in the great war of 1812.'⁵²

And indeed in those first heady weeks of August there was every outward sign of a national ralliement. The workers' strikes came to a halt. Socialists united behind the defence of the Fatherland, while pacifists, defeatists and internationalists were forced into exile. Patriotic demonstrators attacked German shops and offices. They ransacked the German Embassy in Marinskaya Square, smashing the windows and throwing out the furniture, the fine paintings and even the Ambassador's own personal collection of Renaissance sculptures on to a bonfire in the street below. Then, to the cheers of the crowd, they sent two huge bronze horses crashing down from the Embassy roof. In this wave of anti-German feeling people even changed their names to make them sound more Russian: thus, for example, the orientalist Wilhelm Wilhelmovich Struve became Vasilii Vasilievich Struve. Bowing to the strength of this xenophobia, the government also changed the German- sounding name of St Petersburg to the more Slavonic Petrograd. Nicholas welcomed the change. He had never liked St Petersburg, or its Western traditions, and had long been trying to Russify its appearance by adding Muscovite motifs to its classical buildings.

'Everyone has gone out of their minds,' lamented Zinaida Gippius, the

poet, philosopher and salon hostess of St Petersburg. 'Why is it that, in general, war is evil yet this war alone is somehow good?' Most of the country's leading writers supported the war, and more than a few even volunteered for the army. There was a common assumption among the intelligentsia, searching as ever for a sense of belonging, that the war would bring about Russia's spiritual renewal by forcing the individual to sacrifice himself for the good of the nation. The meaning of the war, lectured one Moscow Professor of Philosophy, lay 'in the renovation of life through the acceptance of death for one's country'. War should be seen as a kind of 'Final Judgement'. Few intellectuals would have shared the gloomy verdict of Gorky, recently returned from exile abroad: 'One thing is clear: we are entering the first act of a worldwide tragedy.'⁵³

The press waxed lyrical on this new-found unity of the Russian people. Utro Rossii, the Progressist paper, pronounced that 'there are now neither Rights nor Lefts, neither government nor society, but only one United Russian Nation'. Finally, as if to consummate this union sacree, the Duma dissolved itself in a single session of patriotic pomp on 8 August in order, as its resolution declared, not to burden the government with 'unnecessary politics' during its war effort. 'We shall only get in your way,' Rodzianko, the Duma President, informed the ministers in the Tauride Palace. 'It is therefore better to dismiss us altogether until the end of hostilities.'⁵⁴

But such declarations of loyalty were deceptive. The mass of the people had yet to be touched by the war; and the millions of peasants and workers who departed for the Front felt little of the middle-class patriotism that had done so much to raise the Tsar's hopes. There were no flags or military bands to see them off at the stations and, according to foreign observers, the expression on most of the soldiers' faces was sombre and resigned. It was their terrible experience of war that would ignite the revolution. The Tsar's desperate gamble was destined to bring the destruction of his regime.

7 A War on Three Fronts

i Metal Against Men

General A.A. Brusilov on 10 August 1914:

My Dear, Priceless Little Wife, Nadyushenka!

It was exceedingly hard to part from you, my darling Sunny. But my duty to my country and my Tsar, the great responsibility which has been cast upon me and my love for the military, which I have studied all my life, compel me not to give in to any weakening of the will and to prepare with tripled energy for the bloody test which confronts us.

As yet, thank God, all goes well. This morning we are going by automobile to inspect the brave 4th Rifle Brigade. It presents a fine appearance, excellent officers with their regiment commanders and heads of brigades. Very reliable troops.

The spirit of the soldiers is excellent. They are all animated by a firm belief in the righteousness and honour of their cause and so there is fortunately no ground for nervousness or unease. That is remarkably comforting.

I constantly pray to our Lord Jesus Christ that He may grant us, His Orthodox Christians, victory over the enemy. I myself am in very good spirits. Do not worry, my dearest, be brave, have faith and pray for me .. .

I kiss you passionately.

Alexis¹

To the men who led Russia to war there seemed good cause for optimism in August 1914. The memory of the shameful defeat by Japan had been drowned in the bouts of military expenditure during recent years. By 1914, Russia was spending more than Germany on her armed forces: over one-third of all government expenditures.² It is not true, as historians later claimed, that the Russian army was unprepared for war. In manpower and materiel it was at least the equal of the German army, and, thanks to the recent improvement of Russia's western railways, took only three days more than its enemy to complete its mobilization. The Schlieffen Plan — which had been counting on Russia

taking three weeks longer so that the German forces would be able to knock out France before Russia attacked them — was thus confounded and the Germans became bogged down in fighting on two Fronts. But this also saw the end of the widespread expectation that this would be a short war — All over by Christmas', as the saying went — and it was here that Russia's real weakness became exposed. For while Russia might have been ready for a short campaign of up to six months, she had no real contingency plans for a long war of attrition. Few indeed had expected such an ordeal. But whereas the other European powers managed to adapt and improvise, the tsarist system proved much too rigid and unwieldy, too inflexible and set in its ways, too authoritarian and inefficient, to adapt itself to the situation as it changed. The First World War was a titanic test for the states of Europe — and it was one that Tsarism failed in a singular and catastrophic way. Few people foresaw this in the first days of the conflict. It was only in the autumn, when the opening campaigns ended in bloody stalemate and the two opposing armies dug themselves in, that the weaknesses on the Russian side first became apparent.

Brusilov had been placed in command of the Eighth Army on the South-Western Front. With his foxy face and