There was no "spontaneous uprising of the dissatisfied masses"
The entire course of events of the February-March revolution clearly shows that the British and French embassies, with their agents and "connections", directly organized a conspiracy together with the Octobrists and cadets, together with part of the generals and officers of the army and the St. Petersburg garrison, especially for the removal of Nikolai Romanov. (V. I. Lenin)
On March 12, 1917, a military coup began, which overthrew the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Tsar Nicholas II.
Classical arguments about the causes of the February Revolution are reduced to a simple scheme: tsarism reached a dead end, and the masses driven to despair (workers, peasants, soldiers) raised an uprising.
Then, to save the country, a group of generals went to the sovereign to explain to him the full gravity of the situation. As a result, Nikolai decided to abdicate the throne.
However, the facts clearly show how naive this popular version is.
The former head of the Moscow security department long ago published information of exceptional importance and it is perfectly clear from them what relation the "spontaneous uprising of the dissatisfied masses" had to the revolution:
“In 1916, around October or November, the letter was revised in the so-called“black office”of the Moscow post office. the meaning was as follows: it was reported for information to the Moscow leaders of the Progressive Bloc (or those associated with it) that it was possible to finally persuade the Old Man, who for a long time did not agree, fearing a large spill of blood, but finally, under the influence of their arguments, gave up and promised full cooperation …
The letter, which was not very long, contained phrases, of which the active steps already taken by a narrow circle of leaders of the Progressive Bloc in the sense of personal negotiations with the commanders of our armies at the front, including Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, were quite clear.
In émigré literature, as far as I remember, in Sovremennye Zapiski, articles appeared that quite frankly explained the content of these “personal negotiations,” at least with the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich; famous Khatisov negotiated with him.
It would seem that the Russian imperial government, on these facts alone, could and should have been fully aware of the conspiracy. But the Grand Duke "kept silent", and the Police Department, apparently, could not inform the Tsar about the treason of the "Old Man", who was none other than the Chief of Staff of the Emperor himself, General Alekseev!
The fact that the nickname "Old Man" refers specifically to General Alekseev, I was told by the director of the Police Department A. Vasiliev, to whom I immediately left Moscow for personal negotiations about this letter”[1, p. 384-385].
So, we see that General Alekseev was a key participant in the conspiracy, and the tsar's uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, was aware of the preparations for the coup and even set himself up as monarchs. And all this happened long before the riots in Petrograd.
Meanwhile, they still constantly talk about the sufferings of the army at the fronts, about the unresolved land issue in the rear, and so on. Until now, these "facts" are called the prerequisites for the revolution. But it is quite obvious that the concepts "a lot" and "a little" are relative.
Little land in comparison with whom? If our peasant had little land, then it would be logical to compare the size of land allotments in Russia with what the peasants of England, France or Germany owned. Have you ever seen such a comparison?
Or, for example, let's take the hardships at the front. Have you often seen in the literature a comparison between the food supply of a Russian soldier and his European counterpart? Do you know the severity of the mobilization load (the proportion of those called up to the front from the entire population) in Russia and in other countries that fought in the First World War?
There is no shortage of emotional stories about the suffering of the people before the revolution, but there are practically no comparative figures. Meanwhile, the impact on feelings, the vagueness of formulations, the substitution of general words for specifics are typical signs of manipulation.
So, let's start with the thesis about front-line hardships. During the revolution, the garrison in Petrograd did indeed rise. But Petrograd at that time was a deep rear. The soldiers who took part in February did not "rot in the trenches", did not die or starve. They sat in warm capital barracks, hundreds of kilometers away from the whistle of bullets and the explosion of shells. And those who at that time held the front, in their absolute majority, honestly performed their duty. It was indeed much harder for them than for the Petrograd rear servicemen, but they were preparing for a decisive spring offensive and did not participate in any revolts.
Moreover, in January 1917, that is, literally on the eve of the revolution, our army carried out the Mitava operation against the German troops and achieved victory.
Move on. They say that the peasants suffered from a lack of land, in other words, they lived from hand to mouth, and they say that this was one of the compelling reasons for the revolution. But even the hottest heads do not undertake to compare the realities of the besieged Leningrad and Petrograd in 1917. According to official data, 600 thousand people died of hunger during the blockade, but no protests against the authorities took place.
It is appropriate to quote here the memoirs of the tsarist general Kurlov, who left a very characteristic description of the February events:
“I knew perfectly well that the bread ration was 2 pounds, that the rest of the food was also given out, and that the available supplies would be enough for 22 days, even if we assume that during this time not a single carload of food would be delivered to the capital. Nevertheless, everyone united in an effort to discredit the Imperial power, not stopping before slander and lies. Everyone has forgotten that a coup d'etat during a world war is the inevitable death of Russia”[2, p. 14-15].
"But is it possible to believe a single testimony?" - the mistrustful reader will say, and will be right in his own way. Therefore, I will quote the head of the Moscow security department Zavarzin, in whose memoirs there is a description of the realities of the life of Petrograd on the eve of February:
"In Petrograd, from the outside, it seemed that the capital lived usually: shops are open, there are a lot of goods, traffic along the streets is brisk, and the average man in the street only notices that bread is given out on cards and in reduced quantities, but on the other hand you can get as much pasta and cereals as you want." [3, p. 235-236].
Think about these lines. For two and a half years there has been a world war unprecedented in history. In such conditions, a sharp drop in living standards is a completely natural thing.
The most severe economy of everything and everyone, huge queues for elementary products, starvation are absolutely ordinary companions of the most difficult war. We know this very well from the history of the Great Patriotic War. But look at how successfully tsarist Russia copes with difficulties. This is a phenomenal result, hardly unprecedented; What are the reasons for the masses to rise up in such conditions?
“In general, the grain resource of the Russian Empire by the spring of 1917 amounted to about 3793 million poods of grain, with the country's total demand of 3227 million poods” [4, p. 62.], - notes the modern historian M. V. Oskin.
But this is not the main thing either. The people who directly overthrew Nicholas II belonged to the highest military elite of the empire. General Alekseev, commanders of the fronts, the Grand Duke - they didn’t have enough land? Did they have to starve or stand in long lines? What does this national "hardship" have to do with it?
The piquancy of the situation also lies in the fact that the unrest in Petrograd by themselves did not pose a direct threat to the tsar, because Nicholas was not in the capital at that time. He went to Mogilev, that is, to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The revolutionaries decided to take advantage of the absence of the tsar in the capital.
The masses are a tool in the hands of the elite, and the creation of a "food psychosis" out of the blue is one of the classic methods of crowd manipulation. In fact, the modern “orange events” and the “Arab spring” have shown very clearly what all this talk about popular revolutions is worth. They are worth a penny on a market day.
The reasons for the overthrow of the government should be sought not among the people, for it is not the masses who make history. We need to see what was happening within the elite and what the international situation was. The intra-elite conflict with the wide participation of foreign states is the real reason for February.
Of course, you can blame Nikolai for the fact that it was he who appointed unreliable people to the highest government posts. However, according to the same logic, exactly the same accusation should be brought against the German monarch Wilhelm II, who was removed from power during the First World War.
By the way, in the course of the February Revolution, one very eloquent fact surfaced. Among the insurgent units were two machine-gun regiments, and so they had at their disposal two and a half thousand machine guns [6, p. 15]. For comparison, in the entire Russian army at the end of 1916 there were twelve thousand machine guns, and for the whole of 1915 the entire domestic industry produced 4, 25 thousand of them.
Think about these numbers.
Heavy battles are going on at the front, and it must be admitted that the weak point of Russia was precisely the provision of the army with machine guns, they were really not enough. And at this time in the deep rear, completely idle, was kept a huge number of machine guns, vital for the army. Who distributed the machine guns so "brilliantly"? Such orders could only be given by generals, leaders of the army. From a military point of view, this is absurd, so why was it done? The answer is obvious.
Machine guns were needed for the revolution. That is, the rebel generals committed a double crime. Not only did they oppose the legitimate government, but for the sake of their revolutionary goals they also sharply weakened their own army, sending thousands of machine guns to the rear, to the capital.
As a result, the overthrow of the tsar was bought with a lot of blood of soldiers and officers. They honestly fought at the front at that time, they would have been helped a lot by machine-gun support, which the machine-gun rear units could have provided, but they adhered to completely different purposes.
In the February Revolution, the intervention of the West is also clearly visible. For many years, Nicholas was under pressure from internal opposition, but representatives of foreign states also tried to influence the tsar.
Shortly before the February Revolution, George Buchanan met with Duma Chairman Rodzianko. Buchanan sounded the ground on the topic of political concessions that parliamentarians want to get from the king. It turned out that we are talking about the so-called responsible government, responsible to the "people", that is, to the Duma. De facto, this would mean the transformation of monarchist Russia into a parliamentary republic.
So Buchanan had the audacity after that to come to Nicholas and teach the sovereign how he should lead the country and whom to appoint to key positions. Buchanan acted as an obvious lobbyist for the revolutionaries, feverishly preparing at this time to overthrow the tsar.
At the same time, Buchanan himself understood that his actions were a gross violation of the rules of conduct of a foreign representative. Nevertheless, in a conversation with Nicholas, Buchanan literally threatened the tsar with revolution and disaster. Of course, all this was presented in a diplomatic package, under the guise of caring for the tsar and the future of Russia, but Buchanan's hints were completely transparent and unambiguous.
Nicholas II did not agree to any concessions, and then the opposition tried to go from the other side. At the beginning of 1917, representatives of the Entente arrived in Petrograd for an allied conference to discuss further military plans. The head of the British delegation was Lord Milner, and the prominent cadet leader Struve turned to him. He wrote two letters to the Lord, in which he essentially repeated what Rodzianko had said to Buchanan. Struve conveyed the letters to Milner through British intelligence officer Hoare.
In turn, Milner did not remain deaf to Struve's reasoning and sent Nikolai a confidential memorandum, in which he very carefully and much more politely than Buchanan tried to support the opposition's demands. In the memorandum, Milner highly appreciated the activities of Russian public organizations (the Zemstvo Union and the Union of Cities) and hinted at the need to provide large posts to people who were previously engaged in private affairs and had no experience in government activities! [7, p. 252]
Of course, the tsar ignored such ridiculous advice, and the opposition was again left with nothing. But the pressure on the king did not stop. Already literally on the eve of February, General Gurko, acting chief of the General Staff, met with Nikolai in Tsarskoye Selo and spoke in favor of constitutional reforms.
It became finally clear that the ideas of a radical transformation of the state structure penetrated into the environment of the higher officers. Now the situation began to rapidly spiral out of control. Duma speakers and all kinds of social activists could talk about anything, by themselves they were powerless to overthrow the legitimate government. But when the tsar received a "black mark" first from British diplomats, and then from Gurko, his throne began to shake seriously.
In February 1917, Alekseev returned to Headquarters from vacation, and soon Nicholas II arrived there. Further events take on a rapid pace. On February 23 (hereinafter, the dates are given according to the old style), a strike of Petrograd workers begins, on February 24, rallies develop into clashes with the police, on February 25, against the background of the growth of the strike movement, a Cossack squadron, which refuses to assist the police on Znamenskaya Square, is out of control. On February 27, soldiers in the Life Guards revolted. Volyn and Lithuanian regiments, soon the mutiny covered other parts of the Petrograd garrison. On March 2, Tsar Nicholas was finally removed from power.
The overthrow of the formation consisted of two parallel developing phases. The highest generals were supposed to actually arrest the tsar, and in Petrograd "popular demonstrations" were organized in order to camouflage a military coup.
Subsequently, the Minister of the Provisional Government Guchkov openly admitted that the previously developed plan for a palace coup consisted of two operations. It was supposed to stop the train of the tsar during its movement between Tsarskoe Selo and Headquarters, and then force Nicholas to abdicate. At the same time, units of the Petrograd garrison were to carry out a military demonstration.
It is clear that the coups are carried out by the security forces, and in the event of riots, again, the security forces must repulse the rebels. So let's see how they behaved in the days of the February Revolution. The list of people whose actions we are obliged to analyze is very small. These are Minister of War Belyaev, Minister of Marine Grigorovich (taking into account the fact that Petrograd is a port city, his position was of particular importance), Minister of Internal Affairs Protopopov and several top generals, high-ranking army leaders.
Grigorovich "fell ill" during February, did not take active steps to protect the legitimate government, on the contrary, it was at his request that the last units, who remained loyal to the monarchy, were withdrawn from the Admiralty, where they tried to gain a foothold. On February 27, when the Volyn and Lithuanian regiments mutinied, although the government existed, in fact it did nothing.
True, the Council of Ministers nevertheless met at 16:00 at the Mariinsky Palace. At this significant meeting, the issue of the resignation of Protopopov was decided, and since the ministers did not have the authority to remove him from office, Protopopov was asked to speak ill and thereby retire. Protopopov agreed, and soon voluntarily surrendered to the revolutionaries.
This happened before the announcement of the tsar's abdication, that is, Protopopov does not resist the rebellion, does not even try to escape, but simply resigns from himself. Subsequently, during interrogation, he claimed that he had left the post of minister even earlier, on February 25. It is very possible that this is true.
On the night of 28, the government finally stopped pretending that it was functioning and stopped any work.
The behavior of the Minister of War Belyaev was similar to the actions of Protopopov. On February 27, Belyaev took part in a meeting with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, then moved to the Admiralty building.
On February 28, the troops defending the Admiralty left it, and the Minister of War went to his apartment. He spent the night there and on March 1 came to the General Headquarters, from where he called the Duma with a request to take measures to protect his apartment! In response, he was advised to go to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Belyaev would be protected most reliably. Apparently, it was such black humor. Then Belyaev came to the Duma, and soon he was arrested. That's all the actions of the Minister of War on the decisive days of February.
What is it? Paralysis of will, cowardice, stupidity, inconsistency with official position? Unlikely. This is just not stupidity, but treason. Key security officials simply refused to defend the state.
And what about the king? What was he doing these days? Fast forward to Headquarters, where Nikolai arrived from Tsarskoye Selo on February 23rd. It is interesting that on the way of the train, the king was warmly greeted by local residents. In Rzhev, Vyazma, Smolensk, people took off their hats, shouted "hurray", bowed. At first, the tsar's work schedule at Headquarters was no different from the usual. We can judge about this from the memoirs of General Dubensky, who was next to Nikolai in those days.
On February 25, Headquarters began to receive information about the riots in Petrograd. On February 27, Grand Duke Mikhail phoned Alekseev and offered himself as regent. But has Nikolai already been deposed? Officially, it is believed that no, but in this case, Mikhail's behavior is, to put it mildly, strange.
Apparently, on February 27, the tsar was under "supervision", and Michael was informed about this. However, early in the morning of February 28, Nikolai somehow slipped out of control and took the train to Tsarskoe Selo.
At first, rank-and-file station chiefs, local authorities, and the police do not stop the tsar, quite naturally believing that the head of state is on his way. You never know what is going on in Petrograd, but here is the tsar, and he must be let through. And besides, few people in the provinces knew about the rebellion in the capital at all. The plans of the conspirators were clearly violated.
However, at the same time on February 28, the Commissioner of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma Bublikov loaded soldiers into trucks, got into a car and headed to the Ministry of Railways. It must be said that the Ministry had a control center for the telegraph network connected with stations throughout the country. It was precisely the seizure of the network, the seizure of this "Internet of a century ago," that was Bublikov's goal.
On the network, it was possible to notify the whole country about the change of power, as well as find out where the king was at that time. At that moment the Februaryists did not know about it! But as soon as the Ministry of Railways was in the hands of the rebels, Bublikov was able to track the movement of the Tsar's train. The staff of the station in Bologoye telegraphed Bublikov that Nikolai was moving in the direction of Pskov.
Bublikov's orders were sent by telegraph: not to let the tsar north of the Bologoye-Pskov line, to dismantle the rails and switches, to block all military trains closer than 250 versts from Petrograd. Bublikov was afraid that the tsar would mobilize units loyal to him. And yet the train was moving, in Staraya Russa the people greeted the tsar, many were glad to see the monarch at least through the window of his carriage, and again the station police did not dare to interfere with Nicholas.
Bublikov receives a message from the Dno station (245 km from Petrograd): it is not possible to carry out his order, the local police are for the tsar. On March 1, Nikolai reached Pskov, the governor met him on the platform, and soon the commander of the Northern Front, Ruzsky, arrived there. It would seem that the tsar had at his disposal the huge military forces of an entire front. But Ruzsky was a Februaryist and had no intention of defending legitimate authority. He began negotiations with Nikolai on the appointment of a "responsible government".
On March 2, two representatives of the Duma arrived in Pskov: Shulgin and Guchkov, who demanded that the tsar renounce the throne. The official version of events says that on March 2, Nikolai signed a manifesto of abdication.
LITERATURE:
1. Peregudova ZI Security. Memoirs of the leaders of the political investigation. in 2 volumes: Volume 1- M.: New literary review, 2004. - 512 p.
2. Kurlov P. G. The death of imperial Russia. - M.: Zakharov, 2002.-- 301 p.
3. Zavarzin P. P. Gendarmes and revolutionaries. - Paris: Edition of the author, 1930.-- 256 p.
4. Oskin M. V. Russian food policy on the eve of February 1917: search for a way out of the crisis. // Russian history. - 2011. - N 3. - S. 53-66.
5. Globachev K. I. The Truth About the Russian Revolution: Memoirs of the Former Head of the Petrograd Security Department / Ed. Z. I. Peregudova; comp.: Z. I. Peregudova, J. Daly, V. G. Marynich. M.: ROSSPEN, 2009.-- 519 p.
6. Chernyaev Yu. V. The death of tsarist Petrograd: the February revolution through the eyes of the mayor A. P. Beam. // Russian past, L.: Svelen, - 1991.- S. 7-19.
7. Katkov G. M. February revolution. - M. "Tsentrpoligraf", 2006. - 478 p.
