1917 Diary

the politicians

March 2

It is necessary for me to abdicate. Ruzsky told headquarters about his conversation,* and Alexeyev then told all the supreme commanders. By 2:30 I had received their responses. They essentially said that we must take this step in order to save Russia and prevent unrest at the front. I consented. Headquarters sent a draft manifesto. In the evening, Guchkov and Shulgin arrived from Petrograd. I spoke with them and gave them the signed and reworded manifesto. This experience was weighing heavily on me when I left for Pskov at one in the morning. I am surrounded by treason, cowardice, and deceit.

This famous diary entry was made by Nicholas II immediately after his abdication. He was at least spared the knowledge that Petrograd was rejoicing, and he did not yet know that his brother Mikhail, in whose favor he had renounced the throne, would refuse it, bringing the monarchy to an end. And certainly he could not have imagined the fate that awaited him and his family, nor could the supreme commanders of all the fronts who had agreed to support the Duma’s demand for abdication have imagined what the coming weeks and months would hold for their armies.

The Soviet that had been instituted in the capital by the leftist parties immediately placed the Petrograd garrison under its control. The soldiers began to elect committees and follow their guidance rather than their commanders’ orders. Nobody wanted to fight anymore, and not only in the Russian Army – Germany’s and Britain’s soldiers were also war weary. But with the collapse of the Russian government, it was only in the Russian Army that discipline completely disintegrated.

From the memoirs of Anton Denikin, Sketches of Russia’s Time of Troubles:

The soldierly masses were becoming increasingly agitated. This began in the rear, which is always more degenerate than the front-line units, among the military quasi-intelligentsia: the clerks, the medical assistants, the technical personnel. By the second half of March, at which point breaches of discipline were just starting to become serious in our front-line units, the commander of the 4th Army was already expecting to be taken from his headquarters any hour and arrested by out-of-control bands…

General Denikin, who would go on to head the anti-communist White movement, wrote his memoirs after he was in emigration. Just as the tsar had been blind to the possibility of jubilation in the capital, so too, Denikin, as he looked back on late March of 1917, recalled a Petrograd from which any initial sense of revolutionary enthusiasm had vanished.

It had been four years since I last saw Petrograd. Now, the capital gave me a strange and oppressive feeling… beginning with the ransacked Hotel Astoria, where I had stayed, and where now uncouth and disorderly sailors of the Guards were patrolling the hallways. The streets were just as busy, but dirty and filled with the new masters of the situation, in their military overcoats, far from the fighting, consolidating and saving the revolution. From whom? I had read about the ecstatic mood that supposedly prevailed in Petrograd, but I did not find it. Not anywhere. The ministers and officials, with pale faces, sluggish movements, tormented by sleepless nights and endless speeches at meetings, councils, and committees, to delegations and throngs… There was the false enthusiasm, the phrases intended to invigorate and inspire that had already become hateful to those who spoke them, and the fear, the profound and heartfelt fear. And there was nothing useful to be done: the ministries essentially lacked the time and ability to concentrate at all and work on the day-to-day affairs of their institutions. And the bureaucratic machinery that had been set in motion, creaking and limping along, continued to more-or-less run, although its old parts were being powered by a new engine…

From the diary of Nicholas II:

March 8. Wednesday.

The last day in Mogilyov. At 10 a.m. I signed my farewell to the armies. At 10:30 I went to the guardhouse and said my farewells to all the military and administrative ranks. Back home I bade farewell to the officers and Cossacks of the convoy and to the special guard regiment. It was heartbreaking! At noon I went to mama’s train car and breakfasted with her and her suite and stayed with her until 4:30. I then parted with her, Sandro, Sergei, Boris, and Alec. At 4:45 I departed Mogilyov; a heartwarming crowd saw me off. Four Duma members are accompanying me in the train!

I left for Orsha and Vitebsk. It is cold and windy. This is hard, painful, and sad.

The tsar’s mother, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, never returned to Petrograd, instead traveling to Crimea and, from there, to Great Britain. She also mentions her last meeting with Nicholas in her diary: “Dear Nicky met me at the station. A distressing meeting! He poured out his overflowing heart, and we both cried.”

She lived out her final years in the country of her birth, Denmark. Sandro, better known as Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, was both the tsar’s first cousin once removed and the husband of his sister Ksenia. He made major contributions to the development of the Russian navy and even to Russian aviation. A man of liberal views, at least for a Romanov, Grand Duke Alexander had been Nicholas’s childhood friend. He was not, however, as self-sacrificing as Princess Marie Louise of Savoy, who after the French Revolution returned from emigration to be by the side of her friend, Queen Marie Antoinette, an act of loyalty that cost her her life. By March 22, 1917, Sandro was dismissed from the army and left for Europe, also via Crimea.

Nicholas traveled to Tsarskoye Selo, where he was reunited with his family. Here, throughout the spring of 1917, he seemed to take little notice of the turmoil raging beyond the palace gates.

Why did the tsar not attempt to escape? He was not being particularly well guarded. Did he think escape was impossible or dangerous? Was he merely being indecisive? Did he simply fail to understand the situation?

Meanwhile, a fellow named Ulyanov, going by the pseudonym “Lenin,” was making arrangements to leave Switzerland and return to Russia, negotiating with the German government for permission for him and his comrades – citizens of a country with which Germany was at war – to pass through German territory. Back in Russia, few had heard of him and almost no one was eagerly awaiting his return. In a letter from that period he does a poor job of using humor to mask his anxiety at the thought that the majority of workers in Russia might turn out to be “social patriots” – in other words, supporters of continuing the war.

But no: the majority of workers had long opposed the war. And Lenin’s fiery speeches found ready kindling in Russia.

By late April, any semblance of stability was vanishing in Russia. Demonstrations in Petrograd toppled the first Provisional Government, which had been dominated by liberals. The liberal parties wound up being forced into a coalition with the socialists, and the leftist parties began to gain influence. The historian Pavel Milyukov, founder and leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, also called the Kadet Party, and the first Provisional Government’s foreign minister, was dismissed under pressure from the left, since he had promised Russia’s allies that the country would keep fighting. In his memoirs he describes how he parted with Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador, who was about to leave Russia:

One day before my dismissal (and before I knew of it), Paléologue was getting ready to depart Russia. I decided, for the first and last time during my tenure at the ministry, to host a farewell dinner of the proper sort. I was given two menus to choose from, and, trying to look like an expert, I chose one of them. The servants were wearing bashmaki, stockings, and caftans, as befitted ancient tradition.* Ceremonial speeches were delivered… Tom (another French diplomat) was also invited, and he said to me, privately, “Ah, ces cochons les tovaristch” (Oh, these comrade pigs!). Paléologue praised me, also privately, saying that in his eyes, I was exactly the right sort of minister. But the overall mood was bleak…

* Nicholas is referring to a lengthy phone conversation between the distinguished General Nikolai Ruzsky and Mikhail Rodzianko, a conservative politician and statesman who had once been a royal chamberlain but now played a key role before and during the February Revolution in urging reform and, ultimately, abdication.

the military

in 1917, officers found themselves in a strange position. On one hand, there was a strong belief that the military should stay out of politics. Before the Revolution, its members had not even voted in elections, to say nothing of involving themselves in political power struggles. The army was supposed to defend “the tsar, the motherland, and the faith.” But what was it supposed to be defending now?

On March 8,† General Anton Denikin wrote to family members:

A historical page has turned. The first impression is shocking, due to its utter unexpectedness and immensity. But overall, the troops have taken events in stride. They watch what they say, but you can clearly sense where things are going in the mood of the masses:

1. There is no going back to how things were.

2. The country will get a government worthy of a great people: probably a constitutional monarchy.

3. An end to German dominance and the victorious continuation of the war.

But soon, Denikin was faced with questions:

I have started to get a multitude of perplexed questions on matters large and small from units:

Who represents supreme authority: The Provisional Committee that formed the Provisional Government or the latter? I asked and didn’t get an answer. The Provisional Government itself apparently lacks a clear understanding of the nature of its power.

Whose health should we pray for during mass?

Should we still be singing the national hymn, “Save, O Lord, Thy People”? These may seem like minor details, but they have introduced a certain confusion in people’s minds and disrupted settled military customs. The senior officers have asked that an oath of allegiance be put in place soon. Here’s another question that came up: did Emperor Nicholas have the right to renounce his minor son’s right of succession?

As the men in the military units and soldiers’ committees grew more assertive, both at the front and in the rear, officers felt increasingly unsure of their authority. The old discipline and old relationships were rapidly disintegrating, and nothing new had taken their place. The men wanted to be done with the war and escape their muddy trenches as quickly as possible. Anything aimed at continuing the war provoked fury. The calamitous “Milyukov note” – a leaked telegram promising Russia’s allies that the country would continue pursuing the tsarist government’s original military objectives – cost the foreign minister his portfolio. The idea that the new government should fulfill the tsar’s international commitments sounded fine in Petrograd’s halls of government, but the view from the trenches and barracks was different. Lenin had arrived in Petrograd and began making speeches (just how was it that he managed to traverse war-torn Europe and reach the capital via train from Switzerland?), he found many a sympathetic ear.

General Brusilov was skeptical of tsarist rule. He had been enthusiastically celebrated, even idolized, after his 1916 Brusilov Offensive, which achieved Russia’s first victory after a series of dismal defeats in 1915. Some believe his attitude toward the regime had to do with the tsar’s failure to properly recognize him for his successes at the front, which were to some extent achieved more in spite of plans conceived by the General Staff rather than because of them. Then again, maybe Brusilov simply did not like how the Romanovs were running the country. In any event he seemed to be well disposed toward the Revolution, and in May he even accepted the post of commander-in-chief, although he did not hold this post for long (nobody kept their posts for long in 1917). After the October Revolution, Brusilov agreed to serve under the Bolsheviks, believing that he was serving not the party, but his country. Later, in memoirs written and published under the Soviets, he managed to voice criticism of the effect leftist propaganda had had on the troops:

By May, troops on all the fronts were utterly out of control, and nothing could be done to correct the situation. The commissars who had been appointed were listened to only when they condoned what the men were doing, but when they were at odds, the soldiers would not obey the commissars either. For example, the 7th Siberian Corps, which was moved away from the front for a rest, absolutely refused to return to the front when their rest period was over and told corps commissar Boris Savinkov that the corps soldiers wanted to go to Kiev for more rest. Savinkov’s inducements and threats were to no avail. There were many such instances on all the fronts.

Another renowned World War I general was Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov, who was much loved by the troops and general public alike – especially after he finally escaped from Austrian captivity on his third try. On March 2, the Provisional Government appointed Kornilov commander-in-chief of the Petrograd Military District. This was the same district whose troops had essentially placed themselves under the command of the Petrograd Soviet. The district’s Order No. 1 stated that only directives approved by the Soviet would be carried out and that all arms should be under the Soviet’s control.

It was Kornilov who informed the royal family of the Provisional Government’s order for their arrest, and it was his people who guarded Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children at their Tsarskoye Selo palace outside Petrograd. It still is not entirely clear whether he was preventing their escape or protecting them from revolutionary throngs – historians differ on this question depending on their attitude toward Kornilov. The general did not manage to leave his own account of events, since he died in the spring of 1918. A great deal about his life remains up for debate.

One thing, however, is clear: Kornilov was not the sort of man who would put up with insubordination for long. The Petrograd garrison was increasingly ungovernable. Kornilov wanted to transfer the “propagandized” units out of the city and replace them with others – but how? He could not move the troops without permission from the Petrograd Soviet, and the Soviet would never allow him to send its loyal followers to the front.

In late April, less than two months after he took the helm of the Petrograd Military District, he left, proclaiming that he did not feel it was possible for him “to be a helpless witness to and participant in to the army’s destruction… by the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.”

The army was falling apart, and yet Russia was at war! The situation was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the German and Austrian armies were also in a sorry state. Their soldiers, however, were, at least, obeying orders, but there was very little fighting along the Russian front, for now. But what would happen later? The generals had no way of knowing, but they feared the worst.

* Bashmak, probably from the Tatar bashmaq, was an ankle-high bootee of leather or cloth.

† The revolution began on February 22.

the artists

by the time of the February revolution, Russian writers had long been predicting the downfall of the old order and the appearance of something new that would be simultaneously horrifying and magnificent. One might have expected universal rejoicing from the realm of belles-lettres as the Revolution finally unfolded. For the most part, there was.

Fyodor Sologub gushed, “This is no revolution! It is a radiant transfiguration.” The very titles of Balmont’s poetry are enough to convey his enthusiasm: “Spring’s Clarion Call,” “Glory to the People,” “Solidarity,” “Glad Tidings.” On March 1, Zinaida Gippius made the following diary entry:

The morning is radiant today – this intoxication with the truth of revolution, this infatuation with the freedom that’s been taken (not “given”), is also in the regiments with their music and in the untroubled faces on the street, of the people… Our home has turned into a headquarters for acquaintances and semi-acquaintances (sometimes for utter strangers) who have been making their way to the Duma (to the Tauride Palace)…

As it turned out, the first four years after the revolution were extremely difficult for Sologub. He was finally given permission to leave Russia but was unable to do so after being utterly crushed by his wife’s suicide. He died in Leningrad in 1927, ten years after Russia’s “radiant transfiguration.” By then, he utterly despised the Bolsheviks.

Under the tsar, Balmont, a master of exquisite poetic symbolism, had considered himself a political émigré during his past years abroad. His departure from Soviet Russia to Estonia in 1920 may have had been less about political differences and more about survival, as he had been reduced to a state of starvation under the new regime.

Zinaida Gippius, like her husband, the writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky, was quickly consumed with a hatred for the Bolsheviks that burned to her dying day. A January 3, 1920, diary entry by Kornei Chukovsky, the renowned children’s writer, reads:

The Merezhkovskys have left. Misha Slonimsky accompanied them to the train station. He says their departure was utter agony. The first thing that happened was the crowd pushed them toward different train cars, separating them. They lost their luggage. They couldn’t get onto the train until the last minute… Merezhkovsky was yelling: “I’m a member of the soviet! I’m from Smolny!”*

Even that didn’t help. He then cried out: “My coat!” Apparently, someone in the crowd was trying to pull off his fur coat.

On the other hand, Maxim Gorky, who would later be officially recognized as the bard of the revolution, and whose 1901 “Song of the Stormy Petrel” summoned upheaval with the famous line “Let the tempest rage still stronger,” wrote to his wife in March 1917:

Events are unfolding that appear outwardly sublime… but their meaning is not as deep and impressive as it might seem to everyone. I’m filled with skepticism, although I am also moved to tears by the sight of soldiers walking toward the State Duma to music.

Vladimir Korolenko was someone who stood up for the oppressed under all regimes. In 1892 he defended Udmurt peasants who had been falsely accused of committing ritual murder as part of a pagan rite. In 1911 he defended Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew who worked at a Kiev factory and was targeted with a similar accusation involving the murder of a boy named Andryusha Yushchinsky. Later, Korolenko would do everything in his power to defend those swept up in the Bolshevik terror. But for now, in April 1917, he saw – or at least tried to believe he was seeing – hopeful signs amid the horror:

As for the horrible mayhem underway, of course it is truly horrible. But don’t you realize that this has happened time and again? The Thirty Year’s War turned most of Europe into a wasteland, however nobody denies that both then and later humanity has harbored more than just brutality, that it has also harbored lofty aspirations and, through the smoke and blood, the ideas of the Reformation emerged and crystallized. It is possible that now, too, through the smoke and blood, shoots will sprout that will transform all life across a vast space. Can’t you see that alongside a great war there is a great anti-war protest? It was not able to stop the mayhem, and it erupted once again, but the huge protest movement against it, although it may not have been able to stop it or avoid taking part in it, is a foretoken that this universal and long-enduring crime of peoples will be brought to an end. After all, if we only look at one side of life, a careful reading of history’s gloomy pages would have us all putting bullets in our heads.

When the revolution became a reality, the avant-garde was jubilant – they thought this was their moment. Indeed it was for a while, until, some time after taking power in October, the Bolsheviks decided that what was needed was Realism, at which point they began denouncing any art form not easily grasped by the working class. For now, however, political revolution was marching shoulder-to-shoulder with artistic revolution. Nevertheless, even in the weeks following the February revolution, the pioneer of abstract art, Kazimir Malevich, remained skeptical of any government. In thoughts penned under the heading “What Happened in February 1917 and March,” he wrote:

The beginning of Revolution: those anointed by God and invited into the government by the divinely anointed were replaced with those provisionally recognized by the people.

The yoke of freedom granted by the Lord’s anointed was switched out for breeching.

The people rejoiced, they liked this updated outfit. They swore allegiance to the Provisional Government. The Liberty Loan order was issued, since money was needed to make more bullets and bayonets, and by annihilating one another they thought they would achieve wisdom showing that the slaughterhouse is unnecessary.* By exterminating the best – now liberated – forces, they want to achieve brotherhood and peace.

At mass meetings, it has been dangerous to talk about the individual, to say, “I am free, and nobody can use me as a butcher of men.”

The prisons and Siberia were emptied of the political criminals who suffered under the anointed; presumably they will be replaced with new ones, more appropriate to the times (as rumor has it).

Wilson is making special mines to promote freedom. Anarchists are turning up in Moscow, causing confusion when robbers and thieves are apprehended. Opinions are divided: some say “a simple robber-thief,” others, “an anarchist,” and it’s the same in print.

It’s dangerous to talk about personal freedom; you’ll be taken for a German spy. To talk about the murder of war is very risky. They would suspect Christ and Moses of being in the pocket of the German race.

Mass meetings were organized for the artists of “free Russia.” These meetings were run by the same old anointed autocrats of the Academies. It has turned out very badly – ingrates who used to be fed on the crumbs of their beloved monarch, who painted millions of his portraits, who erected statues to the hangmen, who adorned anything Imperial, were all crowing over the corpse of their overlord, caroling their infamy.

And those who yesterday were tossing the new, young, insurgent truths out the door, today are kowtowing to freedom. They had red ribbons in their buttonholes.

The Suprematists were going along and wondering at the pliancy with which they reincarnated themselves. And one newspaper critic became such a revolutionary that he even proposed blowing up the statue to Alexander III. He used to demonize everything about the young new art in his newspaper.

* Slominsky was also a writer, a member of the Serapion Brothers group. Starting in 1918, the building that had formerly housed the Smolny Institute, a school for aristocratic girls, served as the seat of the Leningrad City Soviet of People’s Deputies. Merezhkovsky was not being honest: he was never a member of the council.