the Government would be foolish enough to let the flour situation get
worse. I was so used by this time to see the Duma keep a calm front in
the face of imperial rebuffs that I thought Russia was going to continue
to muddle on to the end of the war and, though I thought I was rather
well-posted, I confess I was on the point of leaving Russia to return to
the western front, where the spring campaign was about to begin with
vigor. As late as the Wednesday before the revolution I was preparing to
leave. That day I learned that several small strikes which had occurred
in scattered factories could not be settled and that several other
factories were forced to close because workmen, having no bread, refused
to report. Still I remember I was not too preoccupied by these reports
to discuss the possibility of a German offensive against Italy with our
military attache, Lieutenant Francis B. Riggs, as we strolled down the
Nevsky in the middle of the afternoon. We had reached the Fontanka Canal
when we passed three Cossacks riding abreast at a walk up the street.
They were the first Cossacks to make a public appearance, and they
brought to the mind of every Petrograd citizen the recollection of the
barbarities of the revolution of 1905. Their appearance was a challenge
to the people of Petrograd. They seemed to say, "Yes, we are here." If
any one had said to me that afternoon, "These Cossacks are going to
start a revolution which will set Russia free within a week," I should
have regarded him as a lunatic with an original twist.
[Sidenote: Petrograd life normal.]
The life of Petrograd was still normal as late as Thursday morning
February 23d, Russian style (March 8th). The bread lines were very long,
but Russians are patient and would have submitted to standing four or
five hours in the cold if in the end they had always been rewarded, but
shops were being closed with long lines still before them, and the
disappointed were turning away with bitter remarks.
[Sidenote: The historic spot for protests.]
[Sidenote: Cossacks merely keep the crowd on sidewalks.]
The open ground before Kasan Cathedral is the historic spot for protests
and, true to tradition, the first demonstration against the bread
shortage began there Thursday morning toward noon. There were not more
than a dozen men speaking to groups of passing citizens. Each gathered a
constantly changing audience, like an orator in Union Square, New York.
But the Nevsky is always a busy street and it does not take much to give
the appearance of a crowd. Examining that crowd, I could see it had not
more than a hundred or two intent listeners. A company of Cossacks
appeared to disperse it, but they confined themselves to riding up and
down the curbs keeping the people on the sidewalks. The wide street was,
as usual, full of passing sleighs and automobiles. Even then, at the
beginning, it must have occurred to the military commander, General
Khabaloff, that the Cossacks were taking it easy, or perhaps the police
acted on their own initiative; at any rate the scene did not become
exciting until mounted police arrived, riding on the sidewalk and
scattering the curious onlookers pell-mell. By one o'clock the Nevsky
was calm again, and the street cars, which had been blocked for an hour,
started once more.
[Sidenote: Duma discusses food situation.]
[Sidenote: The first snarl of the mob.]
That afternoon I went to the Duma, where the mismanagement of the food
situation throughout Russia was being discussed. I had a glass of tea
with a member of the liberal Cadet Party, and he seemed more concerned
with the victualing of the country than with the particular situation in
Petrograd. Toward evening I drove back along the Nevsky and my
'ishvoshik was blocked for a few minutes while a wave of working people,
in unusual numbers for that part of town, passed. They were being urged
on by Cossacks, but they were mostly smiling, women were hanging to
their husbands' arms, and they were decidedly unhurried. It was not a
crowd that could be in any sense called a mob, and was perfectly
orderly, but it did not go fast enough to suit the police and a dozen of
them came trotting up. Their appearance wiped the smile away, and when
they began really roughing I heard the first murmurings of the snarl
which only an infuriated mob can produce. I wondered what the police
were up to. They were obviously provoking trouble. I felt then we might
be in for serious difficulties--and the attitude of the police gave me
the fear.
[Sidenote: Watching for the Cossacks to act.]
[Sidenote: A red flag.]
Friday morning only a few street cars were running, but the city was
quiet enough until after ten in the morning. Then the agitators, their
small following, and the onlookers, sure now of having a spectacle,
began gathering in considerable numbers. I was still expecting the rough
work to commence with the Cossacks, but after watching them from the
colonnades of the cathedral for half an hour I walked out through the
crowd and, shifted but slightly out of my route by the sway of the crowd
as Cossacks trotted up and down the street, crossed the thick of it.
Green student caps were conspicuous, and one of the students told me
the universities had gone on strike in sympathy with the bread
demonstration. As a company of Cossacks swung by, lances in rest, rifles
slung on their shoulders, I scanned their faces without finding anything
ferocious there. Some one waved a red flag, the first I had seen, before
them, but they passed, unnoticing.
[Sidenote: Crowd not yet dangerous.]
This time the crowd did not break up but began to bunch here and there
as far as the Fontanka Canal. All afternoon the Cossacks kept them
stirring, and occasionally the police gave them a real roughing. Each
time the police appeared, I heard that menacing murmur, but by Friday
evening, when the day's crowd disappeared, the increase in discontent
and anger had not developed sufficiently in twenty-four hours to be
really dangerous. I felt the Government still had plenty of time to
remove the discontent, and an announcement pasted up conspicuously
everywhere saying there would be no lack of bread seemed like an
assurance that the Government would somehow overnight provide all bakers
with sufficient flour. That was the one obvious thing to do.
[Sidenote: A tour of the Wiborg factory district.]
During the afternoon I made a long tour through the Wiborg factory
district, which was thickly policed by infantrymen. Occasional street
cars were still running, but otherwise the district was ominously
silent. The bread-lines were very long here, and on the corners were
groups of workmen. Their silent gravity struck me as being something to
reckon with. Still the lack of real trouble on the Nevsky as I came back
in a measure reassured me.
[Sidenote: Crowd friendly with Cossacks.]
Saturday morning the crowd on the Nevsky gathered at the early Petrograd
hour of ten, but they seemed to be there to encourage the Cossacks.
Wherever the Cossacks passed, individuals called out to them cheerfully
and, even though they crowded in so close to the trotting horsemen as to
be occasionally knocked about, they took it good-humoredly and went on
cheering. I went away for an hour or so and when I returned the
fraternizing of the crowd and the Cossacks was increasingly evident. By
this time all sorts of ordinary citizens, catching the sense of events,
were joining in the general acclamation. I was just beginning to get a
glimmering of the meaning of all this when I was bowled over by the
mounted police in front of the Singer Building.
[Sidenote: Crowd beginning to challenge police.]
[Sidenote: Soldiers fire but wound few.]
[Sidenote: Police inviting quarrel.]
The more timorous average citizens began to lose interest, but the
workmen and students who were in the Nevsky now in considerable numbers,
and arriving hourly, accepted the challenge of the police. They began
throwing bottles, the police charged afresh, and by the early part of
Saturday afternoon there was really a mob on the Nevsky. Liberally mixed
through the whole, though, were the ordinary onlookers, many of them
young girls. The Nevsky widens for a space before the Gastenidwor (the
Russian adaptation of the oriental bazaar), and infantrymen were now
detailed to hold the people back at the point of the bayonet. Meanwhile,
all the side streets were wide open and the appearance of a large, angry
mob was kept up by constant arrivals. The crowd becoming unwieldy, the
soldiers fired into it several times, but they did not wound many,
indicating that they were extracting many bullets before they fired. The
shooting only augmented the crowd, as Russians do not frighten very
easily, and though at a few points it was necessary to turn the corner,
I found no difficulty in going back and forth all afternoon between
Kasan Cathedral and the Nicola Station--the main stretch of the Nevsky.
There was general roughing along this mile and a half of street which
could have been stopped at any time in fifteen minutes by closing the
streets. Instead, the police charged with increasing violence without
doing anything to prevent the people coming from other parts of town.
The idea was now unescapable that the police were inviting the people to
a quarrel.
[Sidenote: Rioting at the Nicola Station.]
[Sidenote: Evident Cossacks are with people.]
The Cossacks were sometimes riding pretty fast themselves, but never
with the violence of the police, and the cheering was continuous. At any
point I could tell by the quality of the howl that went up from the mob
whether it was being stirred by Cossacks or police. At the Nicola
Station the rioting was the roughest, the police freely using their
sabres. The crowd, though unarmed, stood its ground and howled back, and
when possible caught an isolated mounted policeman and disarmed him. In
one case the mob had already disarmed and was unseating a policeman, and
other sections of the mob were rushing up to have a turn at manhandling
him, when a single Cossack, with nothing in his hands, forced his way
through and rescued the policeman, amid the cheers of the same people
who were harassing him. It was quite evident that the people and the
Cossacks were on the same side, and only the unbelievable stupid old
Russian Government could have ignored it.
[Sidenote: Machine guns installed.]
At nightfall the crowd had had its fill of roughing, but Sunday was
evidently to be the real day. There would have been, of course, nothing
on the Nevsky, if properly policed, and I have been unable to understand
how the old Government, unless overconfident of its autocratic power and
disdainful of the people, could have let things go on. But though half
the regiments in Petrograd were on the point of revolt and their
sympathy with the people was evident even to a foreigner, Sunday was
mismanaged like the days before. It was even worse. The powers that
were had, as early as Friday, been so silly as to send armored motor
cars screeching up and down the Nevsky. Now they began installing
machine guns where they could play on the crowd. Up to this time I had
been a neutral, if disgusted, spectator, but now I hoped the police and
the whole imperial regime would pay bitterly for their insolence and
stupidity. The few corpses I encountered during the day on the Nevsky
could not even add to the feeling. They were the mere casualties of a
movement that was beginning to attain large proportions.
[Sidenote: Many soldiers firing blanks.]
[Sidenote: At the French theatre.]
The late afternoon and evening of Sunday were bloody. The Nevsky was
finally closed except for cross traffic, and at the corner of the
Sadovia and the Nevsky by the national library there was a machine gun
going steadily. But it was in the hands of soldiers and they were firing
blanks. The soldiers everywhere seemed to be firing blanks, but there
was carnage enough. The way the crowds persisted showed their capacity
for revolution. The talk was for the first time seriously revolutionary,
and the red flags remained flying by the hour. That evening the air was
for the first time electric with danger, but the possibilities of the
next morning were not sufficiently evident to prevent me from going to
the French theatre. There were a sufficient number of other people, of
the same mind, including many officers, to fill half the seats.
[Sidenote: Imperial box saluted for the last time.]
As usual, between the acts, the officers stood up, facing the imperial
box, which neither the Emperor nor any one else ever occupied. This act
of empty homage, which always grated on my democratic nerves in a
Russian theatre, was being performed by these officers--though they did
not even seem to suspect it--for the last time.
[Sidenote: Lively rifle fire Sunday night.]
On my way home at midnight I picked up from wayfarers rumors of soldiers
attacking the police, soldiers fighting among themselves and rioting in
barracks. But outwardly there was calm until three in the morning, when
I heard in my room on the Moika Canal side of the Hotel de France some
very lively rifle fire from the direction of the Catherine Canal. This
sounded more like the real thing than anything so far, so I dressed and
tried to get near enough to learn what was going on. But for the first
time the streets were really closed. The firing kept up steadily until
four. Farther on in the great barracks along the Neva beyond the Litenie
it kept up until the revolting soldiers had command.
[Sidenote: Revolt spreads like a prairie fire.]
I regret not having seen the revolt getting under way in that quarter. I
regret missing the small incidents, the moments when the revolt hung in
the balance, when it was the question of whether a certain company would
join, for when I reached there it was still in its inception and the
most interesting thing about it was to watch it spread like a prairie
fire.
[Sidenote: The Duma dissolved.]
Still not realizing, like most people in Petrograd, that we were within
a few hours of a sweeping revolt, I wasted some precious hours that
morning trying to learn what could be done with the censor. But toward
noon I heard the Duma had been dissolved, and, as there had not been
since Sunday any street cars, 'ishvoshiks, or other means of conveyance,
I started out afoot with Roger Lewis of the Associated Press to walk the
three miles to the Duma.
[Sidenote: A silence like that of Louvain.]
The hush of impending events hung over the entire city. I remember
nothing like that silence since the day the Germans entered Louvain. On
every street were the bread lines longer than ever. All along the
Catherine Canal, the snow was pounded by many feet and spotted with
blood. But there were no soldiers and few police. We hurried along the
Nevsky, gathering rumors of the fight that was actually going on down by
the arsenal on the Litenie. But many shops were open and there was a
semblance of business. All was so quiet we could not make out the
meaning of a company of infantry drawn up in a hollow square commanding
the four points at the junction of the Litenie and Nevsky, ordinarily
one of the busiest corners in the world.
[Sidenote: Cavalry commands arrive.]
[Sidenote: The barricade on the Litenie.]
[Sidenote: Haphazard rifle-fire.]
But as soon as we turned down the Litenie we could hear shots farther
down, and the pedestrians were mostly knotted in doorways. Scattered
cavalry commands were arriving from the side streets, and the Litenie
began looking a little too hot. So we chose a parallel street for
several blocks until we were within three blocks of the Neva, where we
had to cross the Litenie in front of a company drawn up across the
street ready to fire toward the arsenal, where there was sporadic rifle
fire. Here there were bigger knots of curious citizens projecting
themselves farther and farther toward the middle of the street, hoping
for a better view, until a nearer shot frightened them closer to the
walls. The barricade on the Litenie by the arsenal, the one barricade
the revolution produced, was just beginning to be built two hundred feet
away as Lewis and I reached the shelter of the Fourshtatzkaya, on the
same street as the American Embassy. By crossing the Litenie we had
entered the zone of the revolutionists. We did not realize this,
however, and were puzzled by the sight of a soldier carrying simply a
bayonet, and another with a bare officer's sword. A fourteen-year-old
boy stood in the middle of the street with a rifle in his hand, trifling
with it. It exploded in his hand, and when he saw the ruin of the
breech block he unfixed the bayonet, threw down the gun, and ran around
the corner. A student came up the street examining the mechanism of a
revolver. There seemed to be rifle-fire in every direction, even in the
same street, but haphazard.
[Sidenote: An officer recruiting for the revolution.]
If we had not been living in a troubled atmosphere these small
indications would have impressed us deeply, but neither of us gathered
immediately the significance of events. Before we reached the next
corner we passed troops who evidently did not know yet whether or not
they were still on the side of the Government. An automobile appeared
full of soldiers, an officer standing on the seat. He waved toward him
all the soldiers in sight and began haranguing them. There was no red
flag in sight, and, until we caught his words, we thought he was urging
them to remain loyal. He was really recruiting for the revolution.
[Sidenote: Automobiles and motor trucks.]
As we kept on toward the Duma we encountered other automobiles, many of
them, and motor trucks, literally bristling with guns and sabres. Half
the men were civilians and the number of young boys with revolvers who
looked me over made me feel it was a very easy time in which to be
killed. I was wearing an English trench coat and a fur cap, so to
prevent any mistake of identity I stopped and presented a full view to
each passing motor. Still I knew my continued existence depended on the
sanity of any one of thirty or forty very excited men and boys on each
truck, and when I reached the protection of the enormous crowd that was
storming the entrance to the Duma I felt more comfortable.
[Sidenote: The Duma waits, but finally takes command.]
The Duma had just been dismissed by imperial decree, an ironical
circumstance in view of the thousands of soldiers and civilians massed
before its doors under the red flag. Their leaders were within, asking
the Duma to form a provisional government. The Duma was not yet
convinced, and the mental confusion within was more bewildering than the
revolution without. This was early in the afternoon, and the Duma held
off for hours. Even when it was known that the Preobarzhenski regiment,
which began its career with Peter the Great, had turned revolutionary,
the Duma insisted on waiting. But at nine o'clock in the evening, when
every police station, every court, was on fire and the revolutionists
completely controlled the city, President Rodzianko decided that the
Duma must take command.
[Sidenote: Automobiles dart boldly everywhere.]
It is interesting to watch a revolution grow, and even at this time,
early Monday afternoon, the revolutionists controlled only a corner of
Petrograd. They were working up excitement, and, as often before in the
war, the motor trucks played an important part. They thundered back and
forth through doubtful streets, students, soldiers, and workmen standing
tight and bristling with bayonets like porcupines. They carried
conviction of force, and, as each foray met with less resistance, it was
not long before they were dashing boldly everywhere. That accounts for
the rapid control of the city. It could not have been done afoot.
[Sidenote: The revolutionists take the arsenal.]
All day, from the time the arsenal fell into their hands, the
revolutionists felt their strength growing, and from noon on no attack
was led against them. At first the soldiers simply gave up their guns
and mixed in the crowd, but they grew bolder, too, when they saw the
workmen forming into regiments and marching up the Fourshtatzkaya, still
fumbling with the triggers of their rifles to see how they met the enemy
at the next corner. The coolness of these revolutionists, their
willingness to die for their cause, won the respect of a small group of
us who were standing before the American Embassy. The group was
composed chiefly of Embassy attaches who wanted to go over to the old
Austrian Embassy, used by us as the headquarters for the relief of
German and Austrian prisoners in Russia; but though it was only a five
minutes' walk, the hottest corner in the revolution lay between.
[Sidenote: Soldiers ground arms and become revolutionists.]
When we left the Embassy, Captain McCulley, the American Naval Attache,
said he knew a way to get out of the revolutionary quarter without
passing a line of fire. So he edged us off toward the distant Nevsky
along several blood-blotched streets in which there were occasional
groups of soldiers who did not know which way to turn. Then, as the
Bycenie, beyond, suddenly filled with revolutionists coming from some
other quarter, we turned to cross the Litenie. Twenty minutes earlier
Captain McCulley had passed there and the Government troops controlled
for another quarter mile. Now we passed a machine-gun company commanding
the street, which dared not fire because there was a line of soldiers
between it and a vast crowd pouring through the street toward us. The
crowd had already overwhelmed and made revolutionists out of hundreds of
soldiers, and the situation for a moment was dramatically tense.
Down the bisecting Litenie another crowd was advancing, filling the wide
street. Before it there was also a company of soldiers, and it did not
know whether to face the Bycenie or the river. Three immense mobs were
overwhelming it, though it knew of but two. Suddenly, just at the moment
when we expected a shower of bullets, and flattened ourselves against a
doorway, the company grounded arms and in three seconds was in the arms
of the revolution.
[Sidenote: Company after company joins.]
As we retreated to the Nevsky ahead of the victorious crowd we could see
company after company turn, as if suddenly deciding not to shoot, and
join.
[Sidenote: Thunder of motor trucks.]
I walked rapidly back to the Morskaya and down to the cable office,
which I found closed, not encountering on the whole two miles a single
soldier or policeman until I reached St. Isaac's Cathedral, where a
regiment of marines turned up the Morskaya toward the Nevsky, swinging
along behind a band. Five minutes later I followed them up the Morskaya,
but before I reached the Gorokawaya, half the distance, I could hear the
thunder of the revolutionary motor trucks and the glad howls of the
revolutionists. They had run the length of the Nevsky, and the city,
except this little corner, was theirs. The shooting began at once, and
for the next three hours on both the Morskaya and the Moika there was
steady firing. This was still going on when, at nine in the evening, I
passed around the edge of the fight, crossed Winter Palace Square,
deserted except for a company of Cossacks dimly outlined against the
Winter Palace across the square. By passing under the arch into the head
of Morskaya again I was once more with the revolutionists.
I have since asked Mr. Milukoff, now Minister of Foreign Affairs, at
that moment a member of the Duma's Committee of Safety, how much of an
organization there was behind the events of that day.
[Sidenote: The organization a spontaneous growth.]
"There was some incipient organization certainly," he replied, "though
even now I could not be more definite. But for the most part it was
spontaneous growth. The Duma was not revolutionary, and we held off
until it became necessary for us to take hold. We were the only
government left."
[Sidenote: Duma is forced to adopt democratic programme.]