No nation had suffered more terribly than Czarist Russia as World War I entered its third year in 1917. It was not only the estimated 6,000,000 Russian dead and wounded in the trenches. At home, the winter had been cruelly severe even by Siberian standards. Russia's rickety railroads were no longer able to funnel sufficient food into the cities, and bread lines in the capital of Petrograd (now Leningrad) grew longer each day. The orgies and intrigues of the Czarina's mad mystic Rasputin had riven Nicholas II's court. It was in this chill ambiance of discontent and deprivation that, 50 years ago this week, a revolution that began almost casually in Petrograd swept out the Czar and changed the course of Russian and modern history.
To historians it is known as the February Revolution.* Unlike the October Revolution that followed it and installed Lenin and Communism in power, the February Revolution was unplanned and unplotted. In a nation teeming with would-be revolutionaries, the uprising was a total—and embarrassing—surprise. Lenin himself was in Zurich, and only two months previously had mournfully predicted that his generation would not live long enough to see the Czar overthrown, so distant seemed the prospect. "Who led the revolution?" Socialist Leon Trotsky later asked. He answered himself ruefully: "Nobody. It happened of itself."
"Give Us Bread!" The first sign of spontaneous combustion occurred when workers in Petrograd's giant steelworks demanded a 50% wage increase. They were turned down and promptly went on strike; 40,000 of them fanned out through the city urging other workers to strike as well. Thousands of women were demonstrating outside the empty food stores, wailing "Khleba!" (Give us bread!) Each day the number of people milling through the streets increased until, active or acquiescent, nearly the whole population was involved. Cossacks and police blossomed on bridges and corners to keep order, but they were hardly needed. The crowds were peaceable, almost festive.
Then matters soured. Sporadic shooting began, killing 200 people in one day. The army was ordered to crack down; instead, the Pavlovsky regiment of guards in the city refused to fire on the crowds, mutinied, and was joined next day by the Volynsky regiment. That night Czar Nicholas, who was away at his military headquarters, cabled back an order to the city's military authorities to dissolve the Duma, the elected parliament that he had created. The leaders of the Duma, among them a fiery lawyer and orator named Alexander Kerensky, defied the Czar and sat down to form a coalition provisional committee to take charge. The garrison of Petrograd backed up the Duma, and it was the commander of Petrograd, with the support of all the other army commanders, who sent word to the Czar demanding that he abdicate. Surprisingly, the Czar meekly obeyed.