Under Soviet rule, the Bolsheviks tried to appropriate the "paternity" of the February Revolution for themselves. The proletariat “acted as the hegemon and the main driving force of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution. He led the national movement against war and tsarism, led the peasantry, soldiers and sailors … The leader of the proletariat was the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) headed by V. I. Lenin "(Great October Socialist Revolution. Encyclopedia. M., 1977).
This myth was picked up by the liberal community as well. They say that the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar, destroyed the autocracy and destroyed the Russian Empire. Currently, this myth is very popular, the liberals regularly demand to remove the "bloody ghoul" Lenin from the mausoleum, instead of the "ugly ziggurat" to build a church, to repent with the whole world for the murder of the royal family, the destruction of churches and to forget the "damned Soviet past" that hinders the development of the modern Russia, etc.
This myth serves two main purposes. First, they diverted attention from the Westernizers, the degenerated aristocracy, liberals and "bourgeois" - the Februaryists, who in reality destroyed the autocracy and the "White Empire". Secondly, it allows to complete the de-Sovietization and de-Stalinization of Russia, consolidating the results of the liberal-bourgeois counter-revolution of 1991-1993. and redistribution of the national property in favor of a small group of "new masters".
Thus, "Lenin and the Party" are supposedly to blame for everything. They destroyed "historical Russia" and turned Russia off its path, tore it away from Europe. At the same time, it was hushed up that the entire leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the organization's activists, including Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, etc., were in exile or in exile and prisons. The fact that the Bolshevik party opposed the "imperialist war" and was actually defeated. That the Bolsheviks were few in number and unpopular compared to other parties, for example, the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) and Socialist Revolutionaries (Socialist Revolutionaries). That Lenin believed that a revolution was impossible during his lifetime, and learned about the coup in Russia from the newspapers, like his other associates. That the liberal-bourgeois Provisional Government arranged an amnesty and itself freed many prominent revolutionaries from exile and prisons, enabling the Bolsheviks to begin subversive work against the new government.
Bolshevik organizations were extremely few in number, but they were saturated to the limit with agents of the secret police (Security Department of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). Before the revolution, a member of the Central Committee and editor of Pravda ME Chernomazov, a member of the Central Committee and a member of the Bolshevik faction in the IV State Duma, RV Malinovsky, worked for the secret police. It is interesting that if the salary of the director of the Police Department was 7,000 rubles. per year, then Malinovsky's salary is 6000-8400 rubles. in year. At the suggestion of Malinovsky, the secret police arrested Bukharin, Ordzhonikidze, Sverdlov and Stalin. The Council of Workers' Deputies, formed after the February Revolution, consisted of more than thirty informants of the secret police.
It is obvious that such a large apparatus of secret police agents and provocateurs would have been able to warn the government in time that the Bolsheviks were preparing to seize power. And the revolutionaries were easily defeated. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were in a similar position, although they had more activists and influence in society. However, with all their desire, they also could not make the February Revolution.
The February revolution was organized by the ruling elite of the Russian Empire itself. In this respect, February is unique. The industrial-financial (bourgeoisie), administrative, military, and partly political "elite" themselves crushed "historical Russia". High-ranking Westerners, Masons of high degrees of initiation, deputies, bankers and industrialists, generals and ministers spoke out against tsarism. All of them wanted to destroy the autocracy, to obtain complete "freedom", that is, the full completeness of power, without "despotic" restrictions.
In fact, Nicholas II was left completely alone, except for a small circle of elderly conservatives, dignitaries, campaigners - army and police officers. True, most of the officers could speak for the tsar, obeying habit and oath, but Nikolai Alexandrovich himself refused to resist, did not dare to take responsibility and shed blood.
Everyone was against the tsar and his wife, including the tsar's relatives and the mother-empress. Nicholas II did not allow his relatives to come to power, tightly controlled their lives, not allowing the slightest criticism of his wife and the “holy elder”. The mail of the great dukes was looked through by order of the tsar. In addition, the entire reign of Nikolai Alexandrovich, from the birth of the heir, lasted a dynastic crisis. The heir was seriously ill. Obviously, Tsarevich Alexei could not rule in such a turbulent and cruel XX century. The royal family had no doubts that Alexei would not rule. Then who will take over the throne? The marriages of the Grand Dukes Mikhail Alexandrovich and Kirill Vladimirovich formally deprived them of their right to the throne. But this was not officially announced. A significant part of society did not understand the intricacies of tsarist relationships. Nicholas II was afraid to raise this issue. As a result, several grand dukes mentally tried on the cap of Monomakh. In Russia, a "grand-ducal conspiracy" is taking shape behind the scenes.
The participants in the February coup pursued different, often opposite goals. Some representatives of the House of Romanov wanted to limit the autocracy, to dethrone Nicholas II, and tried on the crown for themselves. Members of the "general's group" also wanted to remove Nicholas II from the throne, he, in their opinion, prevented the war from being brought to a victorious end. The generals wanted an "iron hand" that would put things in order in the rear. According to the generals and senior officers, Russia was in danger of chaos, and a "dictator" was needed. The actual head of the Headquarters, General MV Alekseev, somehow actually demanded that the tsar appoint a dictator, that is, a person responsible for supplying the army and vested with emergency powers. Nikolai was categorically against limiting his power.
It is not surprising that the generals wanted the removal of Tsar Nicholas. Quartermaster General MS Pustovoitenko openly spoke at Headquarters about the tsar: “Does he understand anything of what is happening in the country? Does he believe even one gloomy word of Mikhail Vasilyevich (Alekseev)? Isn't he therefore afraid of his daily reports, as a freak is afraid of a mirror? We point out to him the complete collapse of the army and the country in the rear with daily facts, without making any special emphasis, we prove the correctness of our position, and at this time he thinks about what he heard in five minutes in the yard, and, probably, sends us to hell ….
Two months before the February Revolution, Lieutenant General AM Krymov, in a private report to the Duma deputies on the situation at the front, said: “The mood in the army is such that everyone will gladly welcome the news of the coup. The coup is inevitable, and they feel it at the front … There is no time to waste …”.
The military conspirators even had the idea of seizing the tsar's train at the crossing between Tsarskoye Selo and Petrograd, in order to force the tsar to sign the abdication of the throne. The seizure of the train was scheduled several times, but was postponed all the time. The last time the operation was postponed was March 1, 1917. The main reason for the refusal of the operation was the moral factor. The convoy could resist, they would have to kill their own. Nicholas could refuse to sign the papers, which led to the scenario of the visit of the guards officers to the bedroom of Paul I. The officers of that time lacked such determination. However, the conspirators-generals were ready to support the coup in the capital, and supported it! Nicholas was “tied hand and foot,” they said that he had no support in the army and that he had to agree with his abdication.
The bourgeoisie had money, power, but no real power. They wanted to destroy the autocracy, which, in their opinion, hindered the economic development of Russia. They wanted a redistribution of property, the royal family had to share the property. Russian masons and Westernizers wanted to build a "sweet Europe" in Russia, they also wanted "market", "freedom" and "democracy." The pro-Western and liberal intelligentsia hated “tsarism,” “despotism,” etc.
Why did the Western Freemasons perpetrate the February Revolution when Russia could become the winner in the war? First, they decided that there would be no better moment. A revolutionary situation has been created, the most reliable and loyal troops are removed from Petrograd, at the front, the tsar is torn off from the capital and will not be able to organize resistance. The second center of power, headed by Alexandra Fedorovna, who assumed the functions of an autocrat, giving orders to the military and civilian authorities, irritated the Duma and society, and did not have the appropriate authority.
The personnel of the guards units were sent to the front, and were replaced by reserve soldiers and officers of the wartime, mainly yesterday's students and representatives of the intelligentsia. The battalions of recruits included teams of convalescents who told various horrors about the front line. Neither the recruits nor the convalescents wanted to go to the front under any circumstances. The order of Nicholas II to alternately send cadre guards regiments from the front line to Tsarskoe Selo "for rest" was constantly sabotaged for various reasons. For example, in January 1917 the tsar demanded that the chief of staff, General V. N. instability ".
Secondly, it is possible to establish in Russia a Western-type regime (constitutional monarchy or republic), which will act as a triumphant winner in the war with Germany, taking these laurels from the tsarist regime. And on the basis of this victory, with the support of allies - England, France and the United States, to create in Russia a matrix of a Western-type society. The hope was that "the West will help us."
The Februaryists seized power easily. Nikolai offered no resistance. All the pillars of the autocracy were dismantled and destroyed even before the February coup, all the main persons knew their "roles" in this "production". It was not for nothing that the leader of the Bolsheviks V. Lenin noted: “This eight-day revolution was, if one may say so metaphorically, was“played out”exactly after a dozen major and minor rehearsals; "Actors" knew each other, their roles, their places, their surroundings along and across, through and through, to any significant shade of political directions and methods of action."
Freemasons played an important role in this "operation". Masonic organizations in Russia had a clear political orientation. Their goal was to overthrow the autocracy. They implemented the plans of the masters of the West, since the main conceptual and ideological centers of Freemasonry were located in Europe. Masonic lodges were extra- and non-partisan organizations, therefore they played the role of a liaison between the Februaryist conspirators.
For example, in 1912, the "Supreme Council of the Peoples of Russia" was created in the strictest secrecy. Its secretaries were A. F. Kerensky, M. N. Tereshchenko and N. V. Nekrasov. The largest industrialist, banker and landowner Mikhail Tereshchenko in the first composition of the Provisional Government was the Minister of Finance, in the second - fourth composition of the government he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nikolai Nekrasov, a cadet and member of the Duma, was first the Minister of Railways of the Provisional Government, then the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer and member of the Duma, was the Minister of Justice, the Minister of War and the Navy, and the head of the Provisional Government.
According to the Mason N. Berberova, the first composition of the Provisional Government (March-April 1917) included ten "brothers" and one "layman" (Berberova N. N. People and lodges. Russian Masons of the XX century). Masons called "profane" people close to them, who were not formally included in the lodges. Such a "layman" in the first Provisional Government was the leader of the Cadets P. N. Milyukov. According to Berberova, the Freemasons formed the future Provisional Government headed by Prince Lvov already in 1915. In the last composition of the Provisional Government, in September-October 1917, when the Minister of War Verkhovsky left, everyone was freemasons, except for Kartashov. Thus, the Freemasons controlled the Provisional government.
By the beginning of 1917, the "Masonic group", as the most organized in Russia, which included representatives of all other elite groups (grand dukes, aristocrats, generals, bankers, industrialists, members of the Duma and leaders of political parties, etc.), came to the conclusion that the military is incapable of carrying out a coup. The generals can only support him. Therefore, it was decided to organize "spontaneous popular demonstrations", fortunately, the "soil" was prepared, to push the crowd against the police, Cossacks, to drag the rear soldiers, spare parts, etc. into the turmoil.
Everything went like clockwork. The soldiers began to refuse to shoot at the crowd and opened fire on the police, gendarmes and Cossacks. The military command of the Petrograd district sabotaged the process of eliminating the riots at the initial stage, and then the hotbed of turmoil was already out of control. In the wake of chaos, power in Petrograd passed to the Provisional Government. Nicholas II on February 28, 1917 left the Headquarters in Mogilev and went to Petrograd. And then the "railway option" worked, the general's elite worked. The tsar's train was detained in Pskov, the tsar became de facto a prisoner of the commander of the Northern Front, General N. V. Ruzsky, who was in collusion with the head of the State Duma M. V. Rodzianko. Meanwhile, the head of the Headquarters Alekseev telegraphed the commanders of the fronts and fleets. All were unanimous in favor of the tsar's abdication.
According to the memoirs of Baron Fredericks, who was present at the abdication of Nicholas II, known in the exposition of Countess M. E. Kleinmichel, Ruzsky, with crude violence, forced the hesitating tsar to sign the prepared abdication from the throne. Ruzsky held Nicholas II by the hand, with his other hand pressed the prepared abdication manifesto to the table in front of him and rudely repeated: “Sign, sign. Don't you see that you have nothing else to do. If you do not sign, I am not responsible for your life. Nicholas II during this scene, embarrassed and depressed, looked around. He had no choice but to renounce.
However, easily, almost bloodlessly seizing power, Februaryists, instead of a triumphant victory, caused the catastrophe of the Romanov empire and brought Russian civilization to the brink of destruction. They lost. The masters of the West pursued their own goals, destroying the Russian autocracy. For many Februaryists, it was a terrible shock when "the West did not help."
Russia was falling apart before our eyes. The army did not want to fight. The sailors began to kill officers en masse. Not for trying to save the royal power. Only because of the decades of accumulated hatred of the "gold diggers", landowners. These were already outbursts of civil war, and without any Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1917, only a few units and ships of the fleet retained their relative combat effectiveness. The bulk of the troops and crews did not want to fight and practically did not obey the commanders, both the old ones and those appointed by the Provisional Government.
The government could not temporarily resolve the agrarian issue, which was the root of Russia. The liberal-bourgeois ministers could not give the land to the peasants. They themselves came from landowners, large landowners. And it was not possible to send punitive detachments to the villages, as in 1905-1907, to restore order with fire and iron. There were no units that would have carried out such an order. The troops for the most part consisted of peasants, and they simply raised the officers who would give such an order to bayonets. The only way out is to promise that the issue will be resolved when the Constituent Assembly is convened. As a result, in the spring and summer of 1917, peasant Russia flared up. In the European part of Russia alone, 2,944 peasant uprisings took place. The scope of the peasants' actions was greater than during the uprising of Razin and Pugachev. A real peasant war began, it will continue during the Civil War, and will become one of the reasons for the defeat of the White movement. And the red ones will hardly put out this fire.
At the same time, the separatists will raise their heads. By October 1917, there were already dozens of "armies" and bandit formations of nationalists and separatists numbering hundreds of thousands of bayonets and sabers throughout Russia. The separatists will start their war in Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Crimea, the Baltic states, Bessarabia, the Caucasus and Turkestan. At the same time, separatism will be shown not only by foreigners and non-believers, but also by Russian Cossacks, "regionalists" in Siberia, etc. It is important that national separatists and Russian separatists claimed not only their "indigenous lands", but also vast areas where other peoples lived. For example, the Poles wanted to restore the Rzeczpospolita from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Finnish nationalists wanted to include Karelia, the Kola Peninsula, the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions in the "Greater Finland". Not only Poles, but also Romanians laid claim to the Odessa region. That is, a bloody and large-scale civil and national war has become inevitable.
In addition, at the beginning of 1917, external forces did not abandon their plans to seize and dismember Russia. The German-Austrian, Turkish command did not abandon plans for an attack on the collapsed Russian army and the occupation of the Baltic States, Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, the creation of pro-German Finland and Poland. Russia's "ally" in the Entente had plans to land and seize the Russian North, the Black Sea region, Siberia, and the Far East.
Thus, the Russian Empire was destroyed not by the Bolsheviks, although they retrospectively tried to attribute this victory to themselves, but by the "elite" of the Romanov empire itself
Later, the myth of "Lenin - the German spy" will be created. In the summer of 1917, Russian counterintelligence declared Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks to be German spies. The counterintelligence officers presented the warrant officer D. S. Ermolenko, who had escaped from German captivity, who declared that he had been sent to Russia by officers of the German General Staff for anti-war agitation, and he was informed that the same order had been given to Lenin and other Bolsheviks. The Provisional Government conveyed information about this to the press and at the same time ordered the arrest of Lenin and other Bolsheviks. Apparently, this was a provocation of the Russian counterintelligence.
Later, documents will be found about the transfer of large sums by the Germans to the Bolsheviks through two channels - through Parvus and the Swiss socialist Karl Moor. But does it follow from this fact that Lenin was a German agent? The allies gave huge loans to the Kerensky government, financially and materially supported the armies of Denikin, Yudenich, Kolchak and Wrangel. It is known that the British sponsored the future Empress Catherine II, with British gold she was able to organize a palace coup, which led to the murder of her husband. In addition, the Bolsheviks from the very beginning opposed the autocracy and the "imperialist war." Unlike other political forces, they spoke about it directly.
It is obvious that Vladimir Lenin was a practical man and took money, but he was not an agent of Germany. He solved the problems of financing the party and the future revolution. And the Bolsheviks were able to organize October only because February first happened. Lenin sat in Geneva and pessimistically noted that the current generation will not see the proletarian revolution. But I was wrong. Liberal bourgeois, Masonic circles organized a revolution, overthrew the emperor and created a "window of opportunity." The Bolsheviks used it. They destroyed the Russian Empire and started a civil war in the country with little or no participation.
