The Russian Revolution

Hey everyone! So, I have a bit of an ad hoc fix for the footnote issue; I’m simply going to avoid using superscript and put the necessary footnotes at the end of paragraphs in parenthesis. I hope that isn’t too weird for anyone.

I’m going to try to have 1917 wrapped up in another two posts, one covering the military situation, the other everything else. Then we’ll be onto the final stretch of the war.

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The Russian Revolution ​

One of the great historical ironies of the Russian revolution is that its most immediate impetus, the shortage of food in Petrograd, would be solved by external events in a matter of weeks. Ever since the Polish offensive, Russia had been desperately drafting men into its armies and war industry, emptying the fields of Central Russia and Ukraine of peasants and agricultural laborers. The predictable consequence was a shortage of grain and other foodstuffs. Russia made up the deficit by imports financed by a mixture of inflationary government spending and British loans. In 1916, British credit began to grow less generous: it was squeezed by the army expansion program and the reduction of American loans. Consequently, the position of the Russian laborer declined markedly in 1916 at the same time as millions of men entered into war industries in the quickly industrializing cities of Petrograd, Moscow, and Kharkiv. This created a revolutionary situation. (1)

There was also the not insignificant issue of how the grain was actually to be procured and transported to the big cities in Russia. The Dardanelle Straits were blockaded by the Turks, and the trans-siberian railway hardly had the capacity to handle the necessary tonnage through vladivostok. Much of the grain was imported through the arctic port of Murmansk, which was inoperational for much of the winter. (2)

Of course, one should not confuse the immediate cause of the Russian Revolution with the larger structural conditions that rendered it possible. There was the unresponsive machinery of the Tsarist state, the consistently abysmal performance of the Russian military, and, of course, the person of Tsar Nicholas himself, a man who seemed to embody all the vices of the autocrat with none of his purported virtues. A more responsive government may have averted a revolution, even if it is likely that any Russian government would have had a difficult time justifying the conditions it imposed upon its people.

The winter of 1917 was one of the coldest on record. In Petrograd, temperatures regularly fell under twenty degrees below zero. Workers frequently had to go days without eating, and fuel shortages were endemic. Among the poor, inflation had driven up the price of food, rendering it inaccessible; even middle-class women who managed to buy a piece of bread after a long wait in a queue felt their pocketbooks affected. Sporadic protests throughout January were dealt with harshly by the police, but nonetheless slowly grew in intensity. On January 20th, 15,000 women marched through Nevsky Prospect, demanding bread and grain. The next day, news leaked of the secret peace talks - and their failure. (3 )

On the 22nd, a much larger crowd of workers came out, demanding bread and peace. They marched from Vyborg over the Liteiny Bridge, overrunning a mixture of cossacks and policemen. They were soon joined in Petrograd proper by a mixture of white collar workers, students, and shopkeepers. The slogans were for an end to the war, the distribution of bread, and the empowering of the duma. In all, around 95,000 individuals came out that day in protest. They were emboldened by the lack of a response from the Cossacks, who made little attempt to disperse the large crowd.

The next day, workers in all of Petrograd’s factories went on strike. Around 235,000 laborers converged on Znamenskaya Square bearing red flags. This demonstration was more overtly political, and calls were made for the Tsar to be deposed. Unsurprisingly, there were also far more clashes with the police, though the army units in the area refused to fire on the workers. Workers crossing over from Vyborg into inner petrograd overran several blockades constructed by cossacks and police officers. Tensions were therefore high when the police confronted workers in Znamenskaya Square. The police had received scant orders from authorities, who were still struggling to coordinate a response. When workers prepared to topple an Equestrian statue of the Tsar, they were fired upon by police. But the police forces in the area were hardly sufficient to stem the red tide. The enraged workers charged the police barricades, and slaughtered seven officers.

News of the massacre of twenty-two workers and seven police officers reached the Tsar the next day, who ordered a crackdown on the protests. On the 24th came the largest protests yet, as 300,000 workers, shopkeepers, women, and elements from all sectors of society marched through Petrograd, eventually determining to head to the Winter Palace itself. Police officers and soldiers had set up an extensive series of barricades. Orders were given for the crowd to disperse; according to all available evidence, a good number retreated, but armed workers and a not insignificant number of women continued to arrive in the area around the Palace.

When the police began firing into the crowd, chaos broke out among the camp of soldiers who had been sent to reinforce the police. Soldiers refused to follow their officers orders to join in the volley of fire, which in its first two minutes had already killed over twenty-five civilians. A threat of a court-martial radicalized the mutineers, who killed or disabled their officers before opening fire on the police. The crowd, which had been in a chaotic retreat from the prospect, surged forth again. Others entered the barracks of soldiers, informing them that their comrades were being ordered to fire on crowds of defenceless women.

By the end of the day, the Petrograd police were in a state of low-scale civil war with mutinying soldiers. Atrocities against peaceful civilian crowds, thus far a rare occurrence, multiplied throughout the day as the besieged police grew increasingly paranoid. Over the next few days, armed workers and soldiers cleared the city of the remainder of the police forces. The prisoners of the Peter and Paul fortress were freed, replaced by captured army officers and police sergeants. (4)

Later that week, a soviet was proclaimed, with its executive committee elected by delegates from workers and soldiers councils. Originally, this body had seven Mensheviks, three non-party intellectuals, four Bolsheviks, and three representatives each of the other socialist parties, including the Trudoviks, popular socialists, Bund, and Inter-District group. Simultaneously, members of the Duma, led by the charismatic Trudovik Alexander Kerensky, declared the formation of a “Provisional Government for the purpose of Restoration of Order in the Capital and the Establishment of Relations with Institutions”. (6)

On February 3rd, an agreement was tentatively reached between the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government. It was agreed to convene a national assembly elected with universal suffrage, provide amnesty for political prisoners, and formally abolish all political restrictions based on class, religion, and nationality. The agreement formalized the de facto dual-power situation, with the provisional government agreeing to coordinate policy with the soviet.

That same day, Tsar Nicholas ordered a counter-revolutionary expedition to march from Central Russia to retake the rogue city. Strikes among transport workers in Moscow paralyzed the actual assembly of the expedition. Then, when soldiers at the front began mutinying upon hearing of the news, the acting commander-in-chief General Alexeev ordered to halt the expedition entirely. On February 6th, the Tsar abdicated, paving the way for a government of national unity led by Prince Lvov.

Prince Lvov seemed ideally suited to act as a power broker between the two figures who held real power in his government, Alexander Kerensky and Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets. During the war, he had worked with the Zemstvo Union to coordinate medical care for troops and mobilize the national economy. The shattering defeats inflicted on the Russian Army turned him into an increasingly cautious, conscientious man. Yet he retained a sense of optimism about Russia’s future even amidst the ongoing turmoil, likely a prerequisite to serving as an effective administrator amidst the breakdown of civil order in much of Russia.

In a bid to shore up the pro-war faction in the Petrograd Soviet, the new government was largely staffed by members from the right wing of the Menshevik, Popular Socialist, and Socialist-Revolutionary parties. Besides the officially non-partisan Lvov, only four ministers from the bourgeois parties were in the government; aside from Pavel Milyukov, who was given control over the ministry of war, none of the more important posts were allocated to right-wing ministers. (7)

Table of Ministers (OTL Ministers and Parties in Parenthesis)​

Post	Name	Party
Prime minister and Minister of the Interior	Georgy Lvov	Non-Partisan
Minister of Foreign Affairs	Alexander Kerensky
(Pavel Milyukov)	SR
(Kadet)
Minister of War and Navy	Pavel Milyukov
(Alexander Guchkov)	Kadet
(Octobrist)
Minister of Transport	Nikolai Nekrasov
(Nikolai Nekrasov)	Kadet
(Kadet)
Minister of Trade and Industry	Alexander Guchkov
(Aleksandr Konovalov)	Octobrist
(Progressist)
Minister of Justice	Pavel Pereverzev
(Alexander Kerensky)	SR
(SR)
Minister of Finance	Alexey Peshekhonov
(Mikhail Tereschenko)	Popular Socialist
(Non-Partisan)
Minister of Education	Alexander Manuilov
(Alexander Manuilov)	Kadet
(Kadet)
Minister of Agriculture	Victor Chernov
(Andrei Shingarev)	SR
(Kadet)
Minister of Labour	Irakli Tsereteli
(Matvey Skobelev)	Menshevik
(Menshevik)
Minister of Food	Matvey Skobelev
(Alexey Peshekhonov)	Menshevik
(Popular Socialist)
Minister of Post and Telegraph	Alexey Nikitin
(Irakli Tsereseli)	Menshevik
(Menshevik)

The most immediate problem confronting the new government was the war. Lvov was privy to and approved of the peace negotiations of 1917, but with Hindenburg and Ludendorff consolidating their power, he knew that Russia would not be able to seek such favorable terms in the near future. He therefore advocated to continue the war, but in practice opposed the participation of Russia in any future offensives. The war was to be waged primarily as one of national defense. Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets, agreed that it was unwise to launch an offensive in the near future, instead advocating for building up Russia’s army and stocks of supplies until it could launch an offensive which he was certain would succeed. Kerensky was the wild card. Given his participation in the Soviet, a hotbed of antiwar sentiment, many believed that he might be in favor of seeking peace. Instead, Kerensky proved to be one of the most charismatic pro-war orators, and consistently positioned himself as a critic of the timidity and caution of the Lvov government. (8)

The question of the war would soon divide the Soviet. An early victory for the antiwar faction was scored on February 14th, when the Soviet agreed to pressure the Provisional Government into a deal to return Russian Marxist exiles in exchange for German citizens currently being interned in Russia. Eager to destabilize the shaky new Russian government, the Bolshevik Lenin and left-wing Menshevik Martov were soon on their way to Petrograd in German trains. Meanwhile, Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin managed to successfully slip past the British Navy. Yet on the question of the war itself, the Soviet remained divided, with a slim majority of Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks favoring a doctrine of revolutionary defencism. (9 )

The return of the exiles in early March threw tinder on an explosive situation in Petrograd. Shortly after arriving, Lenin gave a speech denouncing the war and calling for the immediate seizure of Soviet Power; Julius Martov, in terms little less incendiary, condemned the centrist, pro-war Menshevik in control of the Soviet, Nikolay Chkheidze. Trotsky took control over the inter-district group, which positioned itself between the Internationalist left-wing of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

Matters reached a head when the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base mutinied. Lenin urged for a mass uprising; however, the workers in Petrograd factories were surprisingly quiet. The opening of the Dardanelle Straits, coupled with a new, more aggressive domestic fiscal policy, had allowed Russia to procure large quantities of grain from the United States. The rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors arose from complaints about their treatment by the imperious officer class and general anti-war sentiment rather than the desperation of hunger. While the Bolsheviks issued a statement of support of the sailors, the executive committee refused to call for a general strike.

The mutinying sailors presented a very real problem for the provisional government, which faced a crisis of authority. There were real concerns that any attempt to disarm the soldiers would only lead to additional mutinies. Lvov reluctantly agreed to place matters in the hands of Kerensky, who managed to convince the Soviet to send a body of loyal soldiers to the Kronstadt naval base. Shortly after, the decision of Lvov to invite the Soviet ministers into government was vindicated: the sailors peaceably stood down.

This was not without repercussions for the parties of the left. Martov denounced the Mensheviks’ participation in the scheme to disarm the soldiers. Within a few days, the Menshevik minister of food, Matvey Skobelev, immensely popular for his role in the improving situation in Petrograd, resigned from the government and joined the calls for an end to the war. Some of the Mensheviks on the Executive Committee of the Soviet began to call for a break with the provisional government. In April, Martov and his followers left the party itself, branding themselves the “Russian Social Democratic Labor Party”. There was now the “Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks)”, the “Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Mensheviks)”, and the “Russian Social Democratic Labor Party” simpliciter , which had the benefit of hearkening back to the original, pre-schism political formation. Trotsky’s inter-district group, small but increasingly influential within the Soviet, soon merged with Martov’s new party. (10)

Julius Martov, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party ​

Throughout the summer, events slowly deteriorated for the provisional government. As British loans grew ever scarcer, inflation spiralled more aggressively and decimated the standard of living of most Russians. Lvov’s refusal to launch an offensive increasingly angered his Entente alliance partners, who saw little reason to support Russia if it was unwilling to contribute to the war effort. The lack of progress on the front led many at home to question why Russia was continuing the fight if it could not meaningfully contribute to it. One also cannot underestimate the impact of events in Germany: the ousting of Ebert and Scheidemann and the seizure of the German Social Democratic Party by an anti-war coalition made many Mensheviks in particular feel somewhat awkward about their participation in the war. In August, two Menshevik members of the executive committee left the party and joined Martov, giving the anti-war faction an absolute majority in the Petrograd Soviet. (11)

Of course, the question was how they were going to use this power. The Bolsheviks held only a minority of the seats, though they were becoming increasingly amenable to Lenin’s proposals for revolutionary agitation. As a whole, Martov’s faction was far more hesitant, even if it did include firebrands like Trotsky. To many, it appeared that Martov’s policy was to condemn the war while recoiling from any course of action that could actually lead to its end. Trotsky described him as “A man who desired power only for the audience it would vouchsafe for his pontificating”.

Events were soon to surge ahead of the socialist politicians. In September, buoyed by middle-class and military discontent with the “pacifistic” Lvov, Kerensky and Milyukov ousted him from the government and forced a new coalition between right-wing SR’s, Kadets, and Octobrists. They promised an end to the inflation and a military offensive that would end the war. Britain greeted the developments warmly, eager for a Russian government that would take a larger role in prosecuting the war. The Mensheviks, who had bled a great deal of their support to Martov and in any event did not support a new offensive, were iced out of the new government. (12)

The formation of the new, more right-wing government brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of Petrograd once again. Fears proliferated of the monarchy being reinstated, the Soviet being dissolved, and Petrograd itself being placed under military rule. The Petrograd and Moscow Soviets issued a joint statement declaring it had no confidence in the new government, and would refuse to cooperate with it until it replaced all of its Octobist ministers. Martov still waffled on the matter of actually seizing power, leading Trotsky to take his followers to the Bolsheviks, who were themselves on the verge of a party split.

Lenin advocated for the immediate seizure of power irrespective of the degree of cooperation from Martov’s faction. The central committee of the Bolshevik party narrowly refused to endorse a measure calling for a preemptive strike on the provisional government until it issued a formal response to the Soviets on the matter of the Octobrist ministers. They would receive their response in good order. (13)

On October 2nd, loyalist troops mustered by General Lavr Kornilov began their march to Petrograd from Livonia. The Petrograd Soviet received news of the expedition on the 3rd; the provisional government had already fled to Pskov, and attempts to cable them met with little response. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn. On October 4th, with Kornilov’s army massing outside of Petrograd, the Petrograd Soviet declared itself to be the sole legitimate government of Russia. At long last, “All Power to the Soviets” was embraced by all of the socialist parties; though at the present moment the Soviets themselves stood at risk of seeing their power disappear. A call was placed for all the denizens of the city to play their part in defending it from the reactionary expedition. Workers armed themselves, women erected barricades, and makeshift hospitals were assembled in the shops on Nevsky Prospect. The Kronstadt Sailors and City Garrison declared their loyalty to the new Soviet government._(_14)__

Yet the 15,000 or so trained soldiers at the disposal of the Petrograd Soviet were little match for Kornilov’s 55,000 man army. Attempts to halt the advance of Kornilov’s troops at the approaches to the city were easily rebuffed. Staffed with nearly a third of all active Russian officers, Kornilov had taken all the measures necessary to ensure his troops did not mutiny. On the 7th, the Baltic and Warsaw stations fell, opening the way to Petrograd’s inner city and eventually the Tauride Palace, the seat of the Soviet.

Over the next few days, the Petrograd Red Army was forced to steadily withdraw further into the city. The Soviet determined that the revolutionary capital would soon have to be evacuated, and made plans to flee north into Finland, where workers had seized power in several cities and declared loyalty to the Petrograd Soviet. Then, abruptly, Kornilov’s advance started to halt, and then, his soldiers started to flee the city in increasingly frantic haste. Rumors swirled about of an unknown savior or a miracle from on high. And then, an extraordinary sight: decked out in the full, aristocratic military garb of Imperial Russia, General Aleksei Brusilov entered the revolutionary capital flanked by soldiers bearing red flags and singing the Marseillase.

The events of October 1917 are so shrouded in mythology that it is difficult to assemble an accurate account of what really happened that week at the front. General Brusilov, one of the few Russian generals who consistently displayed both competence and concern for his soldiers, had been sidelined by a general staff mistrustful of his relationship with the soldier’s councils. Up until the March to Petrograd, it is clear that Brusilov did not intend to participate in any sort of revolutionary activity; he simply believed that working with the soldier’s councils was the best means of keeping his troops loyal and motivated. Nonetheless, the doctrines proliferating through the councils came to exert an increasing influence on Brusilov, especially after the general staff began excluding him from its deliberations. He approved of the overthrow of Nicholas, and believed that an offensive against Germany in 1917 would be an act of national suicide.

At the front itself, mutinies broke out almost immediately after news was received of Kornilov’s expedition and the plan for an offensive. The departure of many senior officers had already given rise to a welter of conspiracies. On October 5th, most of the remaining officers of the Russian Central Front, located in southern Belarus and Eastern Ukraine, were captured and detained. The soldiers councils appointed delegates to a new executive body which placed itself under the command of General Brusilov.

On October 8th, Austrian soldiers were shocked as entire Russian divisions seemed to suddenly vanish from the frontlines. Brusilov’s soldiers marched first to Pskov, where they surprised and captured most of the ministers of the provisional government. Kerensky himself was paraded about town that night. Then, on the 11th, Brusilov smashed into the rear of Kornilov’s troops, sowing chaos in the ranks. Kornilov’s army was soon plagued by mass desertion, making it difficult to coordinate any sort of organized retreat. On the 14th, they retreated from Petrograd entirely, falling back to Moscow, which was already in the grip of Civil War. Brusilov entered Petrograd to thunderous acclaim; there were calls to make him the new head of the red army, though the socialist politicians refrained out of fears of bonapartism. Instead, after a parade through Petrograd and the proclamation of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, Brusilov was sent south to secure Moscow for the new government.

The Red Aristocrat: Aleksei Brusilov in 1917 ​

With most of the ministers of the provisional government captured and strikes ravaging much of eastern Ukraine and Central Russia, the position of the white forces looked tenuous indeed. The French and British did not have the resources necessary to launch an intervention, and in any event they had long ago grown skeptical of Russia’s ability to make a real contribution to the war effort. In Finland, the Caucuses, and Eastern Ukraine, fighting had already erupted between different militias; in Siberia, the majority of towns declared their loyalty to the new government, though in some smaller villages local administrators loyal to the old Tsar pledged allegiance to Kornilov’s movement of national salvation.

On the 28th of October, Brusilov entered Moscow, though Kornilov managed to retreat east to Nizhny Novogorod, after which he would make his way to Kazan and try to make his way along the Volga River to the caucuses, where a cossack revolt was underway against the new government. Nonetheless, the momentum of the red army seemed unstoppable. In November, a new army raised in Moscow and Petrograd, led by none other than Leon Trotsky, marched east, driving white forces back behind the Urals. In the south, the march of the cossacks was halted at Volgograd by Brusilov, who then headed west to seize Rostov. Much of Ukraine was in a state of anarchy and civil war; in December, the British began using the black sea to support the cossacks in the south and Symon Petluria’s Ukrainian People’s Republic, while the Germans sponsored the hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.

At the end of the year, the new government agreed to enter into peace negotiations with Germany. Few in the government believed that the harsh settlement, which required Russia to cede Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, and Western Belarus, would be permanent. But time was needed to clear the country of whites and consolidate the new government, which was already being riven apart by tensions between Martov, Lenin, and Trotsky.

Footnotes ​

1​ITTL, the standard of living of most workers declines somewhat quicker, and there is significantly more turnover within the factories themselves. This means that the Bolsheviks have more influence in the factories much earlier.

2​As IOTL.

3​ITTL, the British are significantly more stingy with loans than IOTL, which means that there is more inflation in the Russian economy. This is one of the reasons why the protests have a larger middle class element here than IOTL.

4​Similar, but not identical events also occurred IOTL. Here, the police react somewhat more quickly with violence, mostly due to feeling paranoid for much longer than IOTL about a potential uprising among the city’s workers. The army is also quicker to side with the citizens of Petrograd, and the conflict has a bit more of the character of an actual civil war in which two factions engage in pitched battles to seize the city. Comparatively, the soldiers play a larger role than IOTL.

5​This is mostly the same as OTL except for the fact that the Soviet is tilted a bit more to the left. There is also a more explicit and formal recognition of the soviets by the provisional government.

6​This is a very large departure from OTL, as can be seen below. IOTL, a government with mostly socialist ministers only emerged significantly later, after the insurrectionary July days. ITTL, because there is a real threat of the Soviet being captured by anti-war socialists, the decision is made from the start to placate it.

7​All three of the figures discussed here (Lvov, Kerensky, and Milyukov) are much less keen on a military offensive than they were IOTL, though the biggest change is in Lvov himself, who is legitimately terrified of the notion of throwing the Russian Army on the offensive again after the disasters of 1915 and 1916.

8​IOTL, the deal to swap interned German citizens for exiles was rejected by the provisional government, which led some Russian leftists to arrive back in Petrograd much later than others. Martov is probably the best example of this, though ITTL Trotsky and Bukharin also don’t face the same delays, which means everyone returns to Petrograd at around the same time.

9​IOTL, the Kronstadt sailors mutinied when they participated in the “July days”. Here, they mutiny earlier, but because of the improved situation in Petrograd (rendered possibly largely by the opening of the Dardanelle straits, which did not occur IOTL, and more inflationary fiscal policy) there isn’t much support for a more general insurrection.

10​None of this occurred IOTL.

11​IOTL, the Bolsheviks did eventually receive an absolute majority in the Soviet, but did so later. Here, an antiwar majority is formed more quickly, but the Bolsheviks hold a minority of the overall seats (though a large majority of the seats of the antiwar faction).

12​This is very different from OTL, where Kerensky and Milyukov were more rivals than collaborators. Here, events force them to work together, and they have a somewhat better relationship to start with since Milyukov has less of a monarchist streak.

13​Similar events IOTL occurred in a mostly similar fashion. Lenin frequently grew frustrated with the executive committee for its timidity. Here, someone like Kamenev is even more cautious because the right wing of the Bolsheviks feel as if Martov is a credible partner.

14​While Kornilov did march on Petrograd IOTL, it was without Kerensky’s permission. Here, the two are very much working together.