the enormous levies in the rear provided crowds of conscripts,
who resented the separation from their households and their
land, chafed under the drudgery of stupefying training and
swallowed eagerly the germs of insidious propaganda. The
factory workmen in the towns were deeply affected by inter-
nationalistic and socialistic ideas, while the peasants were
groaning under the heavy toll of conscription and the economic
demands arising from a war which they had ceased to under-
stand. Among the intellectuals there was a widespread feeling
of uneasiness as regards the coming catastrophe: some were
afraid of " cutting off the branch on which they were sitting,"
and many realized the madness of plunging into revolution in
the midst of a war for existence. But the prevailing sentiment
was despair as to any improvement under the reactionary
Government. Even in Court circles the notion of a revolutionary
movement was spreading rapidly, although, of course, officers
of the Guards did not look further than to the elimination of
Nicholas II. and of his spouse by a conspiracy similar to those
which had put an end to the vagaries of Peter III. and of Paul.
Such facts as Milyukov's scathing denunciation of the Empress
Alexandra's protege Sturmer (Nov. 1-14 1916), and the assassi-
nation of Rasputin by some aristocrats among whom there was a
Grand Duke, Dmitri Pavlovich, showed that the indignation of
upper circles of society had reached a revolutionary pitch. The
Allied mission, in which Lord Milner represented Great Britain,
left Petrograd just in time not to witness the explosion which
everybody was expecting. But the decision came from below,
and not from the stormy currents on the surface.
The principal centres of political agitation were the factories of Petrograd and the queues of householders and servants lined up for hours in sleet and snow at the doors of the bakers. It seems almost ludicrous now to consider the quest of food as one of the principal causes of unrest, but people did not realize then what might result in this respect from a disruption of orderly inter- course, and ascribed the scarcity of bread and the high prices to the inefficiency of the hated Government. Already in Nov. 1916 there had been talk in Petrograd, of the imminence of a general protest strike. On March 8 1917, bread riots actually broke out, and on the next day (Friday) the streets were full of a surging mob which protested against everything. On the Sat- urday the police fired on the mob, and on Sunday troops used their weapons. Already on that day it was clear that part of the garrison could not be depended on. The Pavlovsky regiment of Grenadier Guards, after an encounter with rioters, in which it fired on the crowd, came back to barracks in a very ugly mood; the men declared to their officers that they would not help to murder their brothers in the streets. On Monday (March 12) the military revolt broke loose. The Volhynsky and Litovsky Guards marched against the Arsenal in the Lit- eynaya. They were opposed by some other troops, but before long one regiment after the other joined in the revolt, and by March 14 the principal positions in the town had been occupied by the rebels. The premier regiment of the army, the Preobra- zhensky Guards, marched to the Taurida Palace where the Duma was sitting and placed itself at the disposition of its president, M. Rodzianko. An Executive Committee of the Duma was formed and subsequently a Provisional Government of members of all parties except the extreme Right (Prince Lvov, Milyukov, Guchkov, Shingarev, Tereshtchenko, Nekrasov, Godnev, V. Lvov, Manuilov, and Kerensky). At the same time another centre of authority was set up at the Smolry Institute, where a Council of Workmen's delegates appeared. It represented the factory workmen, artisans and various nondescript elements which had taken part in the Revolution and claimed a share in the reorganization of the country, and it was joined by repre- sentatives of the soldiers.
On March 15 Nicholas II. abdicated in favour of his brother Michael, who, however, declined to ascend the throne unless invited to do so by the will of the nation. In less than a week the mighty Imperial power of the Romanovs had been over- thrown almost without bloodshed. All the commanders of the armies in the field and the governors of provinces, including the
Grand Duke Nicholas, Viceroy of the Caucasus, hastened to promise loyal support to the new Government.
Discordant Tendencies. People were elated in those days. Even statesmen and historians were carried away by the general rejoicings over the newly acquired freedom of Russia. Nothing seemed impossible to the great nation which had come to its own after centuries of bondage. And yet it was evident that a task of superhuman magnitude had to be faced. The story of the " Zauberlehrling " was repeating itself: the pupil of the magician had succeeded in calling up the waters of the deep, but did not possess the word capable of arresting them, and they rose and flooded the place, and drowned the unfortunate amateur in witchcraft. The party leaders thought that the Revolution could be directed by programmes and compromises. In reality the Revolution meant the overthrow of all accepted creeds, morals and habits of the people, a confusion of their entire nature in which, for a time, nothing could be relied upon neither duty, nor humanity, nor affection. A people renowned for its Christian spirit and stubborn patience gave vent to outbursts of bestial lust and cruelty, to hysterical moods of bh'nd selfishness. Even those of the leaders, who had appre- hensions as to the effect, consoled themselves by comparisons with the French Revolution, as if the French Revolution had to deal with cultural problems of such complexity as the Russian one, or had challenged the existence of the educated class.
The history of the Russian Revolution starts with the gradual dissolution of all fundamental institutions and notions. The first to go was the army, as it was the most tangible and irksome form of State organization. The first act of the Soviet of Work- men was to issue an order to all army units enjoining the forma- tion of Soldiers' Committees to watch over the behaviour of officers, to take over arms, etc. It is to be imagined what effect this order exercised on the discipline of the army. The pa- triotic Minister of War in the Provisional Government, A. Guchkov, strove might and main to stop the disintegration of discipline, the fraternization with the enemy, and the cowardly desertions. He called up a legendary hero of the war, Kornilov, and placed him at the head of the Petrograd garrison. But all these efforts were of no avail in the face of the disorganization of the soldiery; the adulation of the demagogues, the propaganda of German and native Defeatists, and the regime of Soldiers' Committees was substituted for hierarchical command. In April Kornilov left for the front in disgust, and in May Guchkov resigned in despair.
Next came the turn of foreign policy. The mob, led by the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, was repeating the magic formula of " peace without annexation and indemnities." How could fidelity to the Alliance concluded in the fateful months of August 1914, how could the aspirations towards a command of the Straits or any other aims of Russian national policy be made to square with this abstract, colourless formula, devised at Zimmerwald by the enemies of European civilization?
The extremists in Russia took a perverse delight in ignoring completely the menace of German domination, and dreamed, or pretended to dream, of a rising of the German Socialists that would substitute class war for the struggle of empires. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milyukov, was not willing to dis- sociate himself from the Allies and to disregard the German danger, nor was he prepared to tear up as a scrap of paper the agreement concluded with much difficulty by Sazonov, in which the Western Powers had acknowledged the justice of Russia's claim to Constantinople and the Straits. He had to retire, because the mob did not want to go on with the war and cared nothing about the Allies or about Imperial interests of Russia, while those who pulled the strings behind the scenes kept in touch with the Germans and were bent on the destruction of historical empires in accordance with Zimmerwald policy. After stormy demonstrations Milyukov resigned.
Even worse than these ministerial changes was the displace- ment of the centre of gravity in the political world. The Duma was set aside by the appointment of the Provisional Govern- ment. As the Duma had been elected on a narrow and artificial
