The Socialist Forum: The Programme of the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader at St. John, New Brunswick, asks the following questions :—

What was the programme, or principles, in brief, of the Mensheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, now under a ban in Russia? Have these extinct organisations much in common with the S.P.G.B. ?

Yours, etc., M. Wasson.

Reply.

In order to make our comments on these Russian organisations understandable we must first give some facts about them. The “Russian Social Democratic Party,” which later split into two separate bodies, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, was formed in 1898. Its aim was declared to be Socialism. Its energies were largely taken up with problems of organisation, with the struggle for immediate demands (such as the right to organise in trade unions, the shorter working day) and with resisting the efforts of the Czarist Government to suppress its propaganda. From the first there were two wings in the Party, and in 1903 at the Party Congress at Geneva a split developed. The following statement concerning the split is taken from “The Labour International Handbook,” published in May, 1921, by the Labour Publishing Co., Ltd., London. The Editor, R. Palme Dutt, is a well-known Communist.

“It is important to note that there was no disagreement on the programme, which was adopted unanimously. The difference was one of tactics, and concerned (1) the importance to be attached to illegal work; and as the difference developed (2) the question of co-operating with bourgeois parties of the left.” (P. 286.)

A Unity Congress was held in 1906, but the two sections continued to keep their separate organisations and journals. In 1912 they ran candidates against one another in the elections for the Fourth Duma (“Handbook,” p. 287).

Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks claim (and still claim) to be Marxists.

The “Socialist Revolutionary Party, ” formed in 1901 did not claim to accept Marxist principles. They advocated and practised political association, which both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks condemned.

“In their social theory they looked above all to the peasants and the development of agricultural communes with a large local autonomy” (“Handbook,” p. 288.)

The “Socialist Revolutionary Party,” with a predominantly peasant membership, was much larger than the other parties, whose members were chiefly in the towns. The Mensheviks were less numerous than the Bolsheviks.

The “Left Socialist Revolutionaries” were a wing led by Spiridonova and Kamkov, who gave general support to the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power in 1917. They had seven seats on the Council of Commissaries until early in 1918, when they resigned as a protest against the Bolshevik policy of making peace with Germany.

The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries still have organisations and journals, with headquarters in Berlin.

In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).

If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.

The S.R. declaration, on the other hand, contains little about principles, and is not in any real sense a Socialist declaration at all. It is merely a propaganda effort to justify the tactics of the S.R. Party and to blacken the Bolsheviks.

The important thing is that the Menshevik document referred to above, although issued by the Central Committee of the Party, does not give anything like a full and true picture. Rather it represents the views of certain individuals on Socialist principles, completely divorced from the actions of the Party. This characteristic of the Mensheviks is one often found in the Labour Parties of Western Europe and elsewhere.

Let us look at certain of their actions.

The Mensheviks permitted their members  to support the war—-in flat contradiction of’ the Socialist principles they were supposed to understand and accept.

The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (and the Bolsheviks) belonged to the Second International before the war. They accepted the absurd claim that that body and its affiliated parties were Socialist.

The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries are still affiliated to the “Labour and Socialist International ” and still push the reforms which make up the only stock-in-trade of that non-Socialist body.

It will be seen, therefore, that the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries have no more in common with the S.P.G.B. than any of the other reformist parties which find it convenient to cover over their reformist programmes with a gloss of Marxian phrases and ideas.  

Ed. Comm.

Anti-Putin Protests (2021)

From the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s clear who they’re against, but what are they for?

What is the significance of the current Russian protests against the Putin regime? Western media have called them ‘unprecedented’. That is not so.

Mass protests are a frequent occurrence in Russia, though rarely do they attract much attention abroad. Many give voice to local grievances. This January, for example, residents of Ufa protested (successfully) against a big increase in heating charges. In 2019 there were mass meetings in Moscow against an urban renewal programme that threatened people’s homes – meetings larger (so a Russian correspondent tells me) than the anti-Putin protest. However, nationwide protest movements also occur, such as that in 2018 against a ‘reform’ to raise by five years the age at which people can start to draw a pension (43 percent of Russian men die before reaching the new retirement age).

Even focusing solely on protests organised by the anti-Putin opposition, today’s protests are similar in size and geographical scope to those that began in December 2011 and continued into 2012. Those protests were not on a large enough scale to have any chance of toppling the regime, nor are the current protests. They mobilise a much smaller proportion of the population (1 percent at most) than the opposition demonstrations in Belarus did last October (about 5 percent).

Enormous power potential

The Putin regime is not going to collapse any time soon. Its power potential is still enormous. It retains full control over TV – still the medium on which most Russians rely for information – and print media. Oligarchs connected with the regime (independent ones are no longer tolerated) own most of Russia’s natural resources and heavy industry. The state bureaucracy and armed forces remain loyal.

True, the regime has reason to be concerned about a gradual long-term erosion of popular support. Younger people have access to a wider range of information through the internet and social media. Tens of millions have watched the opposition video Putin’s Palace, about the president’s luxurious residence on the Black Sea coast.

Polls show that Putin’s approval rating has fallen over the last couple of years to about 60 percent, which is considered too low. This too, however, is not unprecedented. It hovered just above 60 percent from 2011 to 2013. Then in 2014 confrontation with Ukraine bumped it up to 85—90 percent. The annexation of Crimea was especially popular. No doubt the remedy of ‘a short victorious war’ – first recommended as a means of ‘averting revolution’ by Tsarist interior minister Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 – can be applied yet again.

Nature of the ‘Putin regime’

But what is this ‘regime’ that Putin has established in Russia?

The Putin regime is neither a democracy nor an out-and-out dictatorship. It is officially described as a ‘guided democracy’. It can be represented as three concentric circles:

• at the core: Putin, his presidential administration and government, and his loyal ‘party of power’ – United Russia (the opposition calls it ‘the party of crooks and thieves’);
• the ‘intra-system opposition’ of parties that accept Putin as president but advocate their own policies within permitted limits. There are at present three such parties: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Just Russia, a ‘social-democratic’ reform party that belongs to the Socialist International;
• the ‘extra-system opposition’ of parties and groups that oppose Putin, including Navalny’s ‘Russia of the Future’ (formerly the Party of Progress). Refused registration, they operate under duress and are unable to contest elections.

The term ‘opposition’ is therefore ambiguous. In its broad sense it refers to the intra-system as well as the extra-system opposition, in its narrow sense only to the extra-system opposition.

Uniting the opposition

The political situation in Russia has changed in one significant respect. Nine years ago the extra-system opposition was deeply divided, as we reported in the Socialist Standard (Material World, July 2012). The three main components of the movement were Russian nationalists, Western-type liberals, and leftists of various sorts. Opposition rallies were enlivened by verbal and even physical clashes between nationalists on one side and anarchists or gay activists on the other.

These internal conflicts have been resolved, mainly due to the rising influence of so-called ‘national democrats’ who claim to combine Russian nationalism with Western-type liberalism. Alexei Navalny has played a central role in this development. Leftists have been marginalized within the opposition or have abandoned the movement. A group of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists recently issued a declaration in which they renounce:

  ‘all participation in the political spectacles organised by supporters of the right-wing populist Navalny, sadly renowned for his openly nationalist attacks on immigrants, people from the Caucasus and Jews. Whatever excuses or ‘explanations’ may be offered, joining in their demonstrations would mean turning into an appendage of one of the political gangs waging a dirty and unprincipled struggle for power’ (LINK).

Since 2019 Navalny has urged his supporters to vote ‘smart’ – that is, tactically – for the strongest opposition candidate standing in any election, even if that candidate is a ‘communist’ or one of Zhirinovsky’s people. Tactical voting will tend to strengthen the oppositional character of the intra-system opposition and narrow the gap between the intra-system and extra-system oppositions.

Who is Navalny?

Katya Kazbek in The Grayzone says that Navalny is ‘first and foremost … an investigative journalist’ who exposes corruption within the Putin regime. This is certainly the centrepiece of his public activity. However, the investigations on which the anti-corruption campaign relies have for some time been conducted mainly by researchers at his Foundation for Fighting Corruption rather than by Navalny personally. Is fighting corruption an end in itself for Navalny? Or is it an instrument in his bid for power? It is hard to think of any other theme that would be equally effective in bringing diverse elements together in a broad coalition. Who, after all, is in favour of corruption?

This does not mean we can assume that a regime led by Navalny would prove any less corrupt once he came to power. Navalny has himself been convicted for fraud in his business dealings, though he calls the charges ‘frame-ups’.

Navalny is not only a public speaker but also a prolific blogger and video star who exploits social media to the full. He has a characteristic ironic style and sense of humour.

What does Navalny stand for?

The cruel treatment of Navalny by the Putin regime has won him much sympathy and admiration. Nevertheless, this should not bias our view of what he stands for.

Navalny’s constitutional proposals envision transition from a ‘super-presidential’ to a ‘presidential-parliamentary republic’ with an independent judiciary. His economic platform appeals to capitalists who lack close connections to the regime. He undertakes to transform the existing ‘twisted’ and ‘authoritarian-oligarchic model’ of ‘crony capitalism’ into a fully competitive model of capitalism with a level playing field and a strong high-tech sector. He promises to restart economic growth, ‘create a well-functioning pension system’, move towards an all-volunteer military, reduce crime, improve roads, transfer authority and taxes to the regions and municipalities, and stay out of wars abroad.

Not all of Navalny’s slogans seem compatible. For example, is it really possible to ‘fight corruption’ but also ‘trust people’? And how will he fund all his programmes, including a doubling of state spending on healthcare and education, and at the same time cut taxes? He says he will do this by reducing spending on the security services and ‘bureaucracy’ – but that is easier said than done. Although he criticizes the extreme inequality of wealth in Russia, he does not back Just Russia’s demand to replace the current flat-rate income tax (13 percent) by a progressive tax (though he does want to make the property tax more progressive).

Closer examination suggests that not all of Navalny’s promises should be taken at face value. He highlights a promise to establish a minimum monthly wage of 25,000 rubles (£242.50 or $325), but further on we learn that this is a goal to be achieved by stages, the pace to be set by regional governments (LINK).

It is difficult to assess Navalny because he is such a master at projecting different versions of himself at different audiences (an essential skill of any good politician). Facing west, he poses as a champion of human rights and condemns Russia’s ‘aggression against Ukraine’. But he is unwilling to give Crimea back to Ukraine. And he shares Russian nationalist ideas that militate against full recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty – the perception of Russians and Ukrainians as constituting a single nation and the concept of a ‘Russian World’ that extends to Slav areas beyond state borders but does not encompass the Northern Caucasus, which he proposes to sever from the Russian Federation.

Dehumanising ethnic minorities

Most alarming, however, is the internal aspect of Navalny’s nationalism. Of course, the Putin regime itself is nationalistic. But Putin’s is a state nationalism. Navalny’s is primarily an ethnic Russian nationalism. He demands the full assimilation of ethnic minorities: those who wish to live in Russia ‘must become (ethnically) Russian in the full sense’.

Navalny’s main targets have been the Moslem immigrants from Central Asia (above all, Tajikistan) and the Caucasus. They originally came to Russia to earn some money and return home, but increasing numbers have settled in Russian cities, where they have been allowed to build mosques. Even though they do the hardest and dirtiest jobs, they are widely hated and abused. Their position resembles that of Hispanic immigrants in the United States. Like Trump, Navalny has taken full advantage of anti-immigrant sentiment.

In April 2017 Shaun Walker interviewed Navalny for The Guardian. To quote Walker:

  ‘Several years ago, he released a number of disturbing videos, including one in which he is dressed as a dentist, complaining that tooth cavities ruin healthy teeth, as clips of migrant workers are shown. In another video, he speaks out in favour of relaxing gun controls, in a monologue that appears to compare migrants to cockroaches.

I ask him if he regrets those videos now, and he’s unapologetic. He sees it as a strength that he can speak to both liberals and nationalists. But comparing migrants to cockroaches? ‘That was artistic license,’ he says. So there’s nothing at all from those videos or that period that he regrets? ‘No,’ he says again, firmly’.

Another example of Navalny’s dehumanization of ethnic ‘enemies’ came during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, which he enthusiastically supported. Indulging in a play on words, Navalny called Georgians (gruziny) rodents (grizuny).

Russia in Western media

We can conclude by agreeing with the remarks of Katya Kazbek concerning how Western media cover events in Russia (as well as in other countries regarded as adversaries of the West). ‘The overwhelming majority of Western journalists,’ she observes, ‘are busy communicating their own narrative, which does not have anything to do with the real situation on the ground’ but ‘too often reflects the opinions’ of NATO governments. It is therefore ‘misleading and dangerous to judge Russia by what you hear most often about it’.

Stefan

The New Narodniki (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 15 a “Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation” was founded by students representing groups all over England. As might be expected at a meeting in which trotskyists (of various hues) were prominent the air was thick with such words as mobilise, orientate, perspective, programmatic, transitional and, of course, vanguard. The programme adopted in fact declared:

"Revolutionary students can play a vanguard role by detonating a wider social conflict in which the working-class becomes decisive. Students must seek to ally themselves with working-class struggles: they have also shown that they may anticipate and instigate them.”

So yet another group has appeared to liberate the working class ignoring the long-established Socialist principle that the workers must free themselves.

In Russia in the second half of the 19th century many privileged young men and women decided to “go to the people”, by working and living among the peasants whom they believed to be a revolutionary force. They were thus known as Populists or Narodniks. A similar theme dominated the meeting: only the workers could overthrow capitalism, so students should go to them by leafleting, and perhaps working, in, the factories. As one (Widgery) put it “the talk about the new Narodniki going to the factories is right”. A small minority, from the South Coast, were still in favour of “working within the Labour Party” (as they all were two years ago), but their views were not well-received.

Prominent were members of the alleged “International Socialism” Group. Also, frequently to be seen hovering in the background was Pat Jordan, the trotskyist who runs the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The anarchists and another trotskyist group (the SLL) did not seem to be present.

The RSSF programme commits it to Student Power, Anti-Capitalist Alliance with Workers and Struggle Against Imperialism. These aims are to be achieved by so-called direct action (that is, occupying college buildings, fighting the police, preventing exams taking place, shouting down speakers). As one (Fishman) frankly put it: they are out to “seize the leadership of students as a group”.

At a meeting the previous evening a member of the Socialist Party was prevented from continuing his speech after he had criticised talk about “parliamentary rubbish” and support for the nationalist and state capitalist Vietcong. For his troubles he was called a “fascist” (“Against fascists there is only one weapon: physical force", one LSE student leader, Harman, has written). This is perhaps the shape of things to come for any who dare to stand up to this self-appointed vanguard.

50th Anniversary Russian Revolution (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Curtain Raiser

On March 8th 1917 (February 23rd by the old Russian Calendar) on the streets of Petrograd, a demonstration exploded into a riot, and the riot into a revolution. It was the kind of classic situation that would appeal to a romantic—a spontaneous uprising against tyranny with strikes and demonstrations, the massing of the workers on the streets, and the slow crumbling of authority as regiment after regiment swung over to the insurgents. In just over a week the Tzar had gone and with him the whole apparatus of the State. The scene was set for the much more famous October revolution. It was indeed a curtain raiser.

How could such an event have happened? It was completely unrehearsed and unorganised. Thee workers and soldiers, in whose hands the city lay, were unled and the revolutionary parties were every bit as surprised as the authorities. They trotted behind events as confused as everybody else, and only when the last vestige of authority had gone and the impetus had begun to slacken, did the masses start searching for somebody to take over the controls. What had led up to this situation?

Tzarist Russia was an autocracy at once repressive and inefficient. There was no serious political authority except that of the Tzar, operating through the Army, the Bureaucracy and the secret police. The Church was servile to an extent rarely found elsewhere. The Tzar was backed by a close knit landowning aristocracy immensely wealthy, powerful and cultured. Their wealth and power rested on a peasantry, not far removed from serfdom, who were poor, illiterate and superstitious. The peasantry made up over 80 per cent of the population, and so were the dominant factor in the situation. There was a small class of merchants, government officials and capitalists, and a small but rapidly growing industrial working class.

The system was completely unbending and incapable of compromise. Ministers of State were mere functionaries, who could be dismissed at will by the Tzar, while the Court, as is inevitable in an autocracy, was rife with intrigue. Groups and individuals strove to sway the Tzar and Tzarina, who alone could make ultimate decisions. The most famous of these was Rasputin; among a Court crawling with adventurers, he was merely the most successful. No member of any liberal or revolutionary party had been able to obtain any political experience prior to 1905, and not very much after, this factor combined with a constant, though inefficient, policy of suppression, resulted in political parties and groups existing in a vacuum, out of touch with the realities of politics. This inexperience was to show itself plainly at a later stage, when the liberals were confronted by a realist of the calibre of Lenin.

Capitalism had come late to Russia, but when it did arrive it made rapid progress. The population at the beginning of the 19th century consisted almost entirely of peasant serfs, with a nobility and a middle class of merchants, officials and professional people. There was also a tiny city population.

By the beginning of the 20th century enormous businesses had been established mainly in the metallurgical, mining and textile industries. The railways had arrived and serfdom had vanished. A pushing middle class, whose social habits resembled those of the bourgeoisie of Tudor England, had emerged, as well as a growing industrial proletariat.

Much of this was achieved by foreign Capital — mainly French, British, German and Belgian. This was one reason for the political weakness of the native capitalists; foreign capitalists were not unduly worried about internal conditions, as long as the profits flowed. The number of industrial workers in 1801 had been under 100,000, but by the end of the century the number topped one and three quarter million. In a mere 9 years between 1861 and 1870, the urban population jumped from 4½ million to 6 million. But even so by 1917 there were still 16 peasants for every worker.

The gulf between industry and agriculture was immense. Agricultural methods had hardly changed since the 17th century, while industrial methods and organisation in Russia were comparable with those elsewhere. More important was the fact that owing to outside capital being used, the enterprises that were set up were large concerns. In countries where capitalism had developed from within, the usual sequence was for small concerns to grow slowly into large ones. This process was by-passed in Russia—a fact which had great political significance; large numbers of workers under one roof were easy to organise politically. Workers' solidarity in the factories was consequently great.

The peasants on the other hand were politically non-existent. They were the rock on which much political theory foundered. The limit of their aspirations was to own the land that they worked. Discontent had been accumulating for centuries, exploding into countless peasant uprisings which, being without any clear aim, were easily crushed. The revolts were violent and bloody, and they were suppressed in the same way.

The tangled web of Russian political thoughts in the 19th century had divided into two main camps—Liberal and Revolutionary. The Revolutionaries were divided into Populists and Marxists. Constant suppression, and the complete disinterest of the peasantry, kept them all very small in numbers, and led to fragmentation and dispute. The fact that the peasants were the bulk of the population put them into the main stream of political thought.

The Populists who emerged in the later half of the 19th century looked to the peasants for salvation; their slogan was “Go to the People”. Needless to say the “noble” peasant, as envisaged in the drawing rooms of Petrograd, had little connection with the real article. The Populists sought to establish a kind of agrarian Socialism based on the village commune. During the summer of 1874 thousands of young men and women dressed up as peasants, and went into the countryside to rouse the peasantry. They urged them to adopt modern methods of agriculture, so that they could emerge as a force in the land. They hoped that a vitalised peasantry would give rise to a spontaneous mass movement.

The peasants treated these interlopers with contempt and hostility while the police, who did not have the sense to leave them alone to break their hearts on this brutish mass, arrested them in thousands. However the Populists had another side to their theories—terrorism. The assassination of the Tzar in 1881 was a Populist action. Out of the Populists came the “Social Revolutionary Party”, which was to play a great part in the events of 1917.

The other stream of revolutionary thought, the Social Democrats, influenced by Marx, based their hopes on the rising working class. They argued that only when Capitalism had been fully established in Russia, and the working class were developed, could the move to Socialism take place. As with all other political parties and groups in the pre-revolutionary Russia, it is difficult to pinpoint a definite line of argument, because of constant dispute and fragmentation.

In the early days, some Social Democrats were left alone by the secret police, because their insistence that “Capitalism” must precede “Socialism” led to the misunderstanding that they were pro-Capitalist. By and large they opposed terrorism as futile and unnecessary, but again a minority leaned towards it. Others opposed aid to peasants during famine, on the grounds that it was hindering the growth of Capitalism, and thus of Socialism.

The first Russian organisation to propagate Marx’s ideas was the Emancipation of Labour group in 1883, followed by a mass of discussion groups, clubs and circles. In 1895 an attempt was made to unify these in the Fighting Union for the Liberation of the Working class. In 1903 The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, formed in 1898, split into two wings, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Russian Social-Democrats were steeped in venomous factional strife with constant denunciations, splits and excommunications which made the most bitter political enemies outside Russia look like a band of brothers.

Throughout the 19th century there was another division of thought which must be understood, because of its effect on later events. This was Westernism and Slavophilism. The first of these looked to the West, and thought that Russia’s path lay in catching up with Western Europe, while the second rejected the “decadent culture of the West” and looked to “native Russian institutions” as the road to salvation. These theories went far beyond the nationalism of the rest of Europe and compared with the worst racialist theories, although they were not couched in terms of “blood” but of “cultural patterns”. The division ran through all the parties, including the Social-Democrats, so that Internationalism, and a desire to cut themselves off from the rest of the world, existed side by side in the same organisation. This political dualism was amply demonstrated by the Bolsheviks when they obtained power.

The Tzarist government showed amazing resilience. By its refusal even to contemplate compromise, and by the unrelenting attack on all forms of opposition by the secret police, the Okhrana, it held off the day of reckoning. At the same time it ensured that the day, when it came, would be bloody. All the ingredients of revolution were there, but it was the Great War which destroyed the props behind the facade. In the first few weeks it became obvious that the Russian Army, although it could hold its own with the weaker Austrians, was no match for the Germans. Within a month the Russian Second Army was encircled and annihilated at Tannenburg in East Prussia. The Russians only advantage was in numbers, and the government tried to block the gap with bodies.

Fifteen and a half million men were mobilised and about eight million were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Only the vast distances to be covered, combined with the fact that the Germans were locked in a massive struggle on the Western Front, prevented a break-through. The civil population were reduced to starvation with little fuel to meet the Russian Winter.

When in 1915 the Tzar, who was incapable of organising anything properly, took absolute command of the Army, it was just a matter of time. Bureaucratic inefficiency by both the General Staff and the War Department, and out of date methods combined with a blockade, contributed to the downfall but the real reason was that Russian industry was unable to sustain a war of this magnitude.

One of the mainstays of the monarchy had always been the army. The regular army was a group apart from the rest of the population, and completely loyal. They could always be relied on to obey orders. But the terrible slaughter had largely wiped out the regulars, particularly the officer class who went over the top standing erect, and were special targets. By 1917 the bottom of the barrel was being scraped, and crack regiments were filled with men who would never have been entertained as recruits in peacetime. All was ready for the collapse.

The March revolution took place entirely in Petrograd. Once it was accomplished the rest of the country followed suit. Throughout the winter there had been a rash of small strikes. The shortages of war were accentuated by muddle and corruption, and workers and housewives often had to queue for hours for basic essentials like bread. Wartime industries had added an extra 400,000 workers to the population of the capital, and this increased both working class strength—and their problems.

The day that was to begin it all was International Women’s Day, with all the usual demonstrations, meetings and speeches laid on. None of the revolutionary parties were calling for any real action, for they did not consider the right moment had arrived. During the morning women workers in some textile factories began a run-of-the-mill strike. They demonstrated outside empty shops, as they had been doing regularly for months, and marched about shouting for bread. Other workers came out in sympathy until about 90,000 were out. They flocked onto the streets of the Vyborg district, and then drifted into the city proper. Some troops were out, but nothing much happened, and the day ended quietly.

The following day, March 9, found half the workers out on strike, and slogans attacking the war, the autocracy and the police began to appear. The Cossacks, the traditional riot breakers, charged the crowd but without any real venom. The crowds pelted the police with stones and ice, but were tactful with the soldiers. The day ended with the strange spectacle of rioters cheering Cossacks. By March 10 a quarter of a million workers were on strike, shops had closed, and tramcars stopped running, Petrograd was at a standstill. Shooting began between the crowd and the police. Later the police withdrew and the troops took their place. Already the unreliability of the army was becoming apparent.

At this stage it was still only a massive disorder, a general strike combined with mass demonstrations. No serious clash had yet taken place. What is more nobody, neither government nor revolutionaries, realised just what was happening.

The next two days provided the climax. The military commander of Petrograd, Khabalor, gave orders for a counter attack. This was the point of no return. Gradually the army swung to the side of the revolutionaries, and began to fight the police. By March 15 the city was entirely in the hands of the insurgents, and the Tzar had abdicated. The second stage was about to begin.

Les Dale