THE CULMINATION

Meanwhile the deputies sat in session, helpless, regarding the situation with growing alarm. After all, the majority were naturally conservatives and feared revolution. As a matter of fact, they allowed themselves to lose grip of the situation.

As has already been said, the uprising was not a blind force giving vent to elemental feeling, but a thoroughly organized revolutionary movement. The old revolutionary forces had awakened in time to take control of the developing situation. It was the leaders of the Social Democrats, the Social Revolutionists, the successors of the old-time Nihilists and the labor leaders, who were proving themselves masters of the situation. The Duma sat quiet, inert, and so lost its opportunity. It hated the dark forces on the one hand, it feared the revolution on the other, and at the critical moment helped neither. What saved it from being completely discredited was the fact that a number of the revolutionary leaders, such as Alexander Kerensky and Tcheidze, both Socialists, were also deputies in the Duma, and, being of well-balanced minds, realized that they must have the support of those elements which the Duma represented to succeed. The real center of government of the new democracy, then rising out of the birth pangs of the nation, was the Council of Workingmen's Deputies.

This organization on the part of the active revolution was largely completed during the night of the 11th, even while heavy firing swept up and down the streets of the city. When Monday morning dawned the various radical and labor leaders had knit themselves together in the Council of Workingmen's Deputies and were in control of the revolutionary forces through a great number of subcommittees. An intelligent plan of campaign for the actual military or fighting operations had been drawn up and was followed with an efficiency that would have done credit to organized troops. Undoubtedly the officers of the mutinied regiments who had gone over to the side of the people helped, but the revolutionary commanders did not for a moment allow them to take control of the situation. The red flag of International Socialism was raised that Monday morning as the emblem of the new rÉgime, and to the present moment it continues flying.

The dominating brain, the vital moral force, behind the revolution was Alexander Kerensky, the young Socialist lawyer.

On Monday morning the revolutionary column headed by a regiment of the mutineers delivered an attack on the Arsenal, after dispersing the police groups in the neighborhood. The commandant, General Matusov, proved loyal to Protopopoff and offered resistance, but after some sharp fighting the garrison was overcome and Matusov killed. The capture of the Arsenal gave the revolutionists possession of a supply of rifles, small arms, machine guns, and ammunition more than ample to equip all their fighting forces. The artillery depot was also taken, and now the revolutionary soldiers, most of them students and workingmen, organized into flying detachments which scoured the city in automobiles and hunted down the police as though they were wild animals. The jails and prisons too were broken into and all the political prisoners liberated. And so fell the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress, the Bastille of Russia, in which some of the finest minds of the Russian revolutionary movement, both men and women, had been done to death with horrible torture. In the confusion some criminals also escaped, but in spite of their presence in the fighting crowds, there was very little looting or disorder, such as invariably attends violent uprisings. Schlusselburg Prison, another monument to martyred advocates of freedom, also fell. Then, headed by one of the old revolutionists, just released from a long imprisonment, the people turned on the most hated of all the old institutions, the headquarters of the secret police. This building was stormed, its defenders killed and then burned to its foundations, together with all its records. Everywhere the revolutionary forces were successful, meeting comparatively little resistance.

Meanwhile the Duma continued inactive, except that Rodzianko sent a second telegram to the czar and also a telegram to each of the prominent army commanders, begging them to make their personal appeals to the czar, that he might be persuaded to take some action which would at least save him his throne nominally.

"The last hour has struck," wired the Duma president. "To-morrow will be too late if you wish to save your throne and dynasty."

And again the czar, misled by a false adviser, refused to heed. Various accounts would seem to indicate that he was drunk at the time.

By this time 25,000 soldiers of the garrison had joined Kerensky's revolutionary army under the red flag. Then came a committee from these soldiers to the doors of the Duma with the demand:

"We have risen and helped the people overturn the autocracy. Down with czarism! Where do you stand?"

President Rodzianko, speaking for the Duma, showed them his telegrams demanding a ministry of the czar responsible to the people, and said that they stood for a constitutional democracy. The soldiers were satisfied. Then soldiers began arriving at the Taurida Palace, the meeting place of the Duma, to acknowledge their recognition of its authority. This was done under the influence of deputies Kerensky, Tcheidze, and Skobelev, all Socialists, who felt the need of having the cohesion of the Duma to the revolution. At about this time the newly appointed premier, Golitzin, who had succeeded Trepov, telephoned his resignation to the Duma. The other members of the cabinet had disappeared. That afternoon the Duma appointed a committee of twelve members, representing all parties, which should represent its authority and should assist the revolutionary organizers in maintaining order. These latter held a separate meeting in another room of the palace and issued an appeal to the populace to refrain from excesses. An election of deputies to the Council of Workingmen's Deputies was then called for that evening, the name of the council being now changed to the Council of Workingmen and Soldiers' Deputies.[Back to Contents]