REVOLUTION

The first actual violence was begun by the police, who opened fire on the crowds in certain sections of the city from the housetops with their machine guns. A number of demonstrators were killed and wounded, but still the disorders did not yet become general. Where the police opened fire the more resolute elements of the crowds rushed in to attack them and killed them. And now came Protopopoff's pretext for ordering the soldiers to fire and to begin such a massacre as had squelched the premature uprising on Red Sunday twelve years before. It was at this point that one of the most vital arrangements of Protopopoff's scheme snapped.

There were 35,000 soldiers in Petrograd at this time, more than sufficient to suppress any uprising. Neither Protopopoff nor the most radical members of the Duma doubted that the soldiers would obey the orders of their officers, and shoot down the crowds on the streets. When had Russian soldiers ever refused to suppress demonstrations of the people? "The revolution is on," cried Milukov, "but it will be drowned in blood!" In this supposition both sides were to prove greatly mistaken.

The Russian army of March, 1917, was a very different organization from the Russian army of March, 1914. First of all, it was now composed of men who three years before had been part of the Russian people. The regular professional army, the standing establishment, which had been the support of the autocracy, had been practically drowned in the vast influx of recruits. Furthermore, the old, well-trained regiments constituting the regular army had been decimated in the fierce battles along the Russian front, some of them being annihilated. They had been eliminated. Of still more importance there had been a change in the minds of the highest army leaders themselves. Whatever might have been their attitude toward the autocracy and the people in the days of old, like their colleagues, the civilian reactionaries, they had seen the autocracy and the social organizations contrasted; they were profoundly patriotic and they realized what Rasputin and his dark forces had stood for, what Protopopoff stood for; they had personally, most of them, pleaded with the czar to clean the court of the sinister pro-German influences—with absolutely no success. They realized that the country must choose between the autocracy as it was and a government of the people if Prussianism was to be defeated, and they did not hesitate in their choice.

Among these army leaders, who had undergone such a change of psychology, was no less a person than the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch himself, who had been removed from his command of the armies facing the Austro-Germans and transferred to the minor field of operations against Turkey, only because he had protested against the influence of an illiterate Siberian mujik.

With very few exceptions, the army leaders, from the commander in chief down to the regimental commanders, stood arrayed on the side of the Duma. So clever an intriguer as Protopopoff should have realized this.

One of the first regiments to be called out to fire on the people after the first encounters between the machine-gun squads of the police and the demonstrators was the famous Volynski Regiment, notorious in Russian revolutionary history. Never had it failed its masters. A noncommissioned officer of this crack regiment, Kirpitchnikov, immediately made the round of the soldiers and the other noncommissioned officers. They organized a committee which approached the officers. The latter, with the single exception of the colonel, stood with the committee. When the order came to fire on the people, they shot the colonel, formed, shouldered their pieces, and marched out on the streets as the first organized body of soldiers to fight for the awakening Russian democracy.

Persuading several other guard regiments to join them, they attacked Protopopoff's police squads. This event occurred at 5 o'clock in the afternoon of the 11th, and marked the beginning of the actual revolution. The fighting begun by the mutinied soldiers now became general. One by one other regiments were called out, but with very few exceptions all refused to fire on the people and joined the revolutionists. Then the Cossacks came over in a body. As twilight approached the firing in the streets became general and continuous.

Meanwhile Michael Rodzianko, president of the Duma, made one more effort to avert the great crisis. The czar, having been assured by Protopopoff several days previous that all danger was over and the situation well in hand, had gone to army headquarters at the front. To him Rodzianko sent a telegram worded as follows:

"The situation is extremely serious. Anarchy threatens in the capital, transportation of provisions is completely disorganized, and fighting has begun in the streets. It is of vital importance that a new cabinet be formed by some person enjoying the confidence of the people. Each moment of delay adds to the disaster. May the responsibility for a great national calamity not fall upon your head."

To this telegram the czar made no answer.[Back to Contents]