It was ninety years ago today II

Before providing an analysis and discussion of the causes, course and consequences of the February Revolution, a good narrative of the events of Glorious February is in order. As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I here reproduce a first installment from Chapter 8 – “Glorious February” from Orlando Figes (1995), A People’s Tragedy – the Russian Revolution 1891-1924.

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. … This, moreover, was the coldest winter Russia had experienced for several years. In Petrograd the average February winter temperature was fifteen degrees below zero. “It’s as cold here as in Lapland,” [Maxim] Gorky wrote… on the 4th [of February]. Arctic frosts and blizzards had brought the railways to a virtual standstill, Factories closed. Thousands of laid-off workers milled around the streets.

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 1 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.

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.

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 the Nevsky Prospekt as ‘consisting of the ordinary people’. There was a holiday mood on the street, 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 [father of Tsar Nicholas II], 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. …

Emboldened by the absence of vigorous repressive measures, even larger crowds came out on to the streets the following day, Saturday 25 February, in what was virtually a general strike. All the city’s major factories ceased to operate, as some 200,000 workers joined the demonstrations. Newspapers failed to appear. Trams and cabs were hard to find. Many shops and restaurants closed their doors. All sorts of people joined the ranks of marching workers heading into the centre of the city. Balk thought the movement ‘bore the character of a people’s uprising’. Compared to the previous two days, the demonstrations now had a more political flavour. Red flags and banners began to appear, and their slogans were calling not so much for ‘Bread!’ as for the overthrow of the autocracy. ‘Down with the Tsar!’ and ‘Down with the War!’ were now their main demands.

Once again there were clashes with police as the demonstrators tried to cross the bridges connecting the suburbs with the centre of the city. At the Liteiny Bridge, the chief of police, Salfeev, made a last desperate bid to halt the marchers by charging headlong into the crowd. The marchers parted to the wides and then closed ranks to surround Salfeev, who tried to force his way out by lashing out on all sides with his whip. But the demonstrators dragged him off his horse. One of the workers beat him on the ground with a piece of wood, while another, taking Shalfeev’s revolver, shot him in the heart. None of the Cossacks defending the bridge attempted to intervene.

Increasingly this became the pattern – violent clashes with the police combined with efforts to win over the soldiers – as the crowds took over the city centre. The police were ‘theirs’ – hated agents of the regime. The people called them ‘pharaohs’ (much as some today might call the police ‘pigs’) and they had no doubt that the police would fight to the end. The soldiers, by contrast, were seen as ‘ours’ – peasants and workers in uniforms – and it was hoped that, if they were ordered to use force against the crowds, they would be as likely to come over to the people’s side. Once it became clear that this was so – from the soldiers’ hesitation to disperse the demonstrators, and from the odd wink by a soldier to the crowd – the initiative passed to the people’s side. It was a crucial psychological moment in the revolution.

The first symbolic battle of this war of nerves was fought out on the Nevsky Prospekt – and won decisively by the people – on the afternoon of the 25th. Part of the crowd was brought to a halt by a squadron of Cossacks blocking their way near the Kazan Cathedral. It was not far from the spot where, twelve years before, on Bloody Sunday 1905, the Horseguards had shot down a similar crowd. A young girl appeared from the ranks of the demonstrators and walked slowly towards the Cossacks. Everyone watched her in nervous silence: surely the Cossacks would not fire at her? From under her cloak the girl brought out a bouquet of red roses and held it out towards the officer. There was a pause. The bouquet was a symbol of both peace and revolution. And then, leaning down from his horse, the officer smiled and took the flowers. With as much relief as jubilation, the crowd burst into a thunderous ‘Oorah!’. From this moment the people started to speak of the ‘comrade Cossacks’, a term which at first sounder rather odd.

To be continued…