The rioting that spontaneously broke out in
Petrograd – formerly St Petersburg – early in
March (23 February by Russian dating) 1917 was
not due to the leadership of the socialist exiles.
Their organisation within the country had suf-
fered severely when early in the war the tsarist
government smashed the strike movement. Yet,
unrest in Petrograd and Moscow had been
growing. Only a proportion of the workers in war
industries had received wage rises to compensate
them for the rapid rises in the price of food and
other necessities. Other workers and the depend-
ent families of the soldiers at the front were
placed in an increasingly desperate position. The
peasants were withholding food from the towns
and were unwilling to accept paper money, which
bought less and less. The railway system was
becoming more inefficient as the war continued,
unable to move grain to the towns in anything
like sufficient quantities. Dissatisfaction turned on
the supposedly ‘German’ empress and the admin-
istration and government which permitted such
gross mismanagement. The revolution in March
1917 succeeded because the garrison troops of
the swollen army were not loyal and would not
blindly follow the command of the tsar as they
had done in peacetime.
Quite fortuitously the Duma had begun one
of its sessions at the very time when this new
unrest began. Among the professional classes, the
gentry and the army generals, the Duma leaders
had gained respect, even confidence, as faith in
the tsar’s autocracy and management of the war
rapidly diminished. The feeling of country and
towns was still patriotic. Everyone was suffering –
gentry, workers, peasants and the professional
classes. The war against the invader should be
won. But at the same time an alleviation of the
hardships that the population was suffering, espe-
cially food shortages, must be dealt with now,104 THE GREAT WAR, REVOLUTION AND THE SEARCH FOR STABILITY
Lenin addressing a small street gathering; a wooden cart, no setting such as later leaders could organise, 1917.
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis