The Russian Revolutions

There were two Russian revolutions in 1917. The first, called the February Revolution, was more of a collapse than an uprising. It began innocuously enough when on 8 March, Petrograd workers went on strike to protest food shortages.

Although bringing tsardom down had been surprisingly easy, finding a generally acceptable substitute proved to be incredibly difficult. Two claimants to political authority emerged. One was the Provisional Government, which was formed from liberal members of the Duma and which sought to perform a caretaker role until Russia established some permanent new form of government. With the administration in shambles and the police almost completely dispersed, the Provisional Government had little effective power, despite the fact that it was widely recognized at home and abroad. Moreover, it was saddled with the burden of carrying on the unpopular war. The Provisional Government’s rival from the outset was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Dominated by socialists, among whom the Bolsheviks were initially only a minority, the Petrograd Soviet (council) was an ad hoc assembly of radical intelligentsia, workers, and soldiers that was quickly duplicated throughout the country. Its goal was to “deepen” the revolution by pushing it into a complete transformation of society along socialist lines.

Indeed, this confusion soon became an all-pervasive fact of life in revolutionary Russia. For many, most notably the soviets, the demand for change, which had been sanctified by the revolution, justified an attack on many previously commonly accepted principles and institutions. For example, on 14 March, the Petrograd Soviet issued the notorious Order Number One (which the Provisonal Government failed to block) whereby military units were authorized to establish democratically elected councils to run their affairs. The authority of officers was limited to battle situations. This order effectively undermined the already shaky discipline of the army and, as a consequence, it began to disintegrate. By the summer, as millions of armed, demoralized, and radicalized soldiers deserted the front and streamed homeward, public order collapsed. As one observes the often lamentably inadequate attempts to establish and maintain political authority in those chaotic times, it ought to be remembered that those who tried to do so faced a dilemma akin to striving to erect a structure while the ground constantly gave way underneath.