Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/March 2017/Op-ed
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Peasants of the Russian Empire: At Wit's End |
- By TomStar81
In all probability, the morning of 7 March 1917 began as it would any other day for the citizens of the Russian Empire. The Russian Czar and his family would have awaken and gone about their business in the company of nobles with a small legion of servants, maids, butlers, and others to attend to their needs and wants. Nobles would have checked up on the progress of the war, the economy, the condition of land and other matters of mutual interest. On the surface, all was well in the Russian Empire, but just below the surface was an active fissure of peasants, political activist, small business owners, and others who had long since given up hope of ever communicating to Czar Nicholas II of Russia the seriousness of their problems. Feeling ignored and overlooked under his reign, this mass had previously shaken Russian with a 1905 demonstration that brought about a limited amount of reforms in the Empire. But on this day, as the prices soared due to inflation, causalities mounted on the front lines of an unpopular war, and Nicholas II continued to fail in his duty as leader to take all the citizens' positions into account, this fissure reached critical mass. Imperial Russia's peasants had finally had enough, and in Saint Petersburg this collection of citizens began to protest en mass against the Emperor, the war, the living conditions, and a great many other things that were perceived as wanting in the Russian Empire. While they had no way of knowing at the time how important this would be, the men, women and children who took the streets demanding changes would inadvertently set into motion a series of events that wold culminate in the first successful socialist-led government anywhere in the world.
Nicholas II had been born in May 1868 to a family whose reign over Russia had traced back nearly two centuries to 1721, a year in which Peter the Great established the Russian Empire. Nicholas II's royal rule could be traced back even further, as the first to claim any royal rule in Russia were the Princes of Novgorod in the 860s. Through the next 1100 years Russia underwent several changes of the royal family that would see Russia ruled over by the Grand Princes of Kiev, then the Grand Princes of Vladimir, then to the Grand Princes of Moscow.
During the era of Russia's reign by the Grand Princes of Moscow, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Palaiologina, married Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, who began championing the idea of Russia being the successor to the Byzantine Empire. This idea was represented more emphatically in the composition the monk Filofej addressed to their son Vasili III. After ending Muscovy's dependence on its Mongol overlords in 1480, Ivan III began the usage of the titles Tsar and Autocrat (samoderzhets ). His insistence on recognition as such by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since 1489 resulted in the granting of this recognition in 1514 by Emperor Maximilian I to Vasili III. His son Ivan IV emphatically crowned himself Tsar of Russia on 16 January 1547. The word "Tsar" derives from Latin Caesar, but this title was used in Russia as equivalent to "King"; the error occurred when medieval Russian clerics referred to the biblical Jewish kings with the same title that was used to designate Roman and Byzantine rulers — "Caesar". The awarding of the title "Emperor" to Ivan III in 1514 was a pivotal moment in Russian history, as the European Nobility hierarchy of the day recognized Emperors to be of high rank an honor than Kings or Dukes, and as such Emperors were held to be second to only to the Pope in terms of political power and authority. Therefore, with the granting of this title, Russia had at the time leaped ahead of a great many better established monarchies such as those in England in terms of power and prestige (though as noted a mistranslation at the time had placed this claim in doubt across much of Europe). Following the ascension of Ivan IV Russia inaguareted the Tsardom of Russia, which lasted until 31 October 1721. On that date, Peter I was proclaimed Emperor by the Senate, ushering in the age of the Russian Empire. The title used in this case was the Latin "Imperator", which is a westernizing form equivalent to the traditional Slavic title "Tsar". In taking the title Emperor, Peter I based his claim partially upon a letter discovered in 1717 written in 1514 from Maximilian I to Vasili III, in which the Holy Roman Emperor used the term in referring to Vasili.
Although at the top of the hierarchical pyramid in Europe by using the title Emperor, the Russian Empire lagged sorely behind its European counterparts in a technological and industrial sense, and this lag began to catch up with Russia during the reign of Nicholas II. In a time when steam trains, gasoline cars, and flying machines were wowing the world in the west Russia was still making use of horses and wagons, still had a disproportionately large lower class working demographic and, thanks to an absence of advisors with actual field experience, the Russian monarchs had managed to snuff out most of what was at the time considered the middle class, arguably the most important class in post industrial revolution societies. Nicholas II in particular had a particularly nasty habit for not understanding the ins and outs of Russia's manufacturing, production, agricultural, and commercial based businesses or the people that ran them; either due to innocence, misplaced trust in bad advisors, or perhaps a certain naivete in matters of the state Nicholas always seemed to be misguessing, underestimating, or overlooking signs that his Russian Empire was in dire straights. The first sign that Nicholas II's reign was in trouble came when socialist sentiment began spreading across the Empire, fueled in part by personnel affiliated with the Constitutional Democratic Party, Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. These parties advocated for governmental reforms which upset Nicholas II, who was determined to retain the autocracy his father had left him. Despite these efforts to undermine Imperial rule, the Russian Empire remained one of the world's great powers.
Nicholas II's reign began to crumble in 1904-1905, when the Empire of Japan had declared and waged war against the Russian Empire. In this Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Empire had risen to fight the Japanese, and this was a war that Nicholas II was convinced his country could win owing to his belief in Russian patriotism and the superiority of the Russian race to the Japanese. However, following a series of setbacks, humiliating defeats, and a decisive naval victory by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Tsushima that all but annihilated the Imperial Russian Navy's blue water fleet a dumbfounded Nicholas II elected to sue for peace, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This loss had a profound effect of the Russian Empire, which was exacerbated on Bloody Sunday, when troops loyal to Nicholas II opened fire on unarmed protestors who had assembled to peacefully protest for the redress of grievances. This action against his own people caused the 1905 Russian Revolution, which in turn lead to a very limited number of political reforms reluctantly put in place by Nicholas II to appease the people, including the Russian Constitution of 1906 and the establishment of the State Duma, a legislative body for the lower class. At least for the time being, Nicholas II had cut off and quelled a revolution in his empire.
By the time of World War I the citizens of the Russian Empire had gotten over the 1905 revolution and greeted the conflict with enthusiasm and patriotism, with the defense of Russia's fellow Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs, as the main battle cry. Initially, the Russian army invaded Germany's province of East Prussia and occupied a significant portion of Austrian-controlled Galicia in support of the Serbs and their allies – the French and British. Military reversals and shortages among the civilian population, however, soon soured much of the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and German-Ottoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets. By the middle of 1915, the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties were increasing, and inflation was mounting. Strikes rose among low-paid factory workers, and there were reports that peasants, who wanted reforms of land ownership, were restless. The Tsar eventually decided to take personal command of the army and moved to the front, leaving Alexandra in charge in the capital. As the government failed to produce supplies, mounting hardship created massive riots and rebellions. With Nicholas away at the front from 1915 through 1916, authority appeared to collapse and the capital was left in the hands of strikers and mutineering conscript soldiers. Despite efforts by the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan to warn the Tsar that he should grant constitutional reforms to fend off revolution, Nicholas continued to bury himself away at the Staff HQ (Stavka) 600 kilometres (400 mi) away at Moghilev, leaving his capital and court open to intrigues and insurrection.
By early 1917, Russia was on the verge of total and utter collapse. On 23 February 1917 in Petrograd, a combination of very severe cold weather and acute food shortages caused people to start to break shop windows to get bread and other necessities. In the streets, red banners appeared and the crowds chanted "Down with the German woman! Down with Protopopov! Down with the war! Down with the Tsar!" Police started to shoot at the populace from rooftops, which incited riots. The troops in the capital were by this time poorly motivated and their officers had no reason to be loyal to the regime, and as a result they began to side with the populace.
The Tsar's Cabinet begged Nicholas to return to the capital and offered to resign completely. Some 500 miles away the Tsar, misinformed by the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, that the situation was under control, ordered that firm steps be taken against the demonstrators. General Khabalov attempted to put the Tsar's instructions into effect on the morning of Sunday, 11 March 1917. Despite huge posters ordering people to keep off the streets, vast crowds gathered and were only dispersed after some 200 had been shot dead, though a company of the Volinsky Regiment fired into the air rather than into the mob and a company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards shot the officer who gave the command to open fire. Nicholas, informed of the situation by Rodzianko, ordered reinforcements to the capital and suspended the Duma, however at this point it was too late.
On 12 March, the Volinsky Regiment mutinied and was quickly followed by the Semenovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky and even the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Imperial Guard, the oldest and staunchest regiment founded by Peter the Great. In Petrograd, 170,000 recruits, country boys or older men from the working-class suburbs of the capital itself remained to keep control under the command of wounded officers invalided from the front and cadets from the military academies. While the units in the capital bore the names of famous Imperial Guard regiments, they were in reality rear or reserve battalions of these regiments whose regular forces were away at the front. Many units, lacking both officers and rifles, had never undergone formal training. The arsenal was pillaged, the Ministry of the Interior, Military Government building, police headquarters, the Law Courts and a score of police buildings were put to the torch. By noon, the fortress of Peter and Paul, with its heavy artillery, was in the hands of the insurgents. By nightfall, 60,000 soldiers had joined the revolution.
With no faith or confidence in the Emperor, and with order broke down across the Russian Empire, members of the Duma and the Soviet formed a Provisional Government to try to restore order. They issued a demand that Nicholas must abdicate. Faced with this demand, which was echoed by his generals, deprived of loyal troops, with his family firmly in the hands of the Provisional Government and fearful of unleashing civil war and opening the way for German conquest, Nicholas had little choice but to submit. Nicholas thus abdicated on behalf of his son, and drew up a new manifesto naming his brother, Grand Duke Michael, as the next Emperor of all the Russians. With this blow the Russian Empire was irreversibly compromised. Grand Duke Michael declined to accept the throne until the people were allowed to vote through a Constituent Assembly for the continuance of the monarchy or a republic. The abdication of Nicholas II and the subsequent Bolshevik revolution brought three centuries of the Romanov dynasty's rule to an end. No longer able to maintain an at war footing with the Allied Powers, the Russian Empire's provisional government would eventually seek a negotiated end to the war. In Russia itself the February revolution opened the door for anti-imperial elements to begin forming a new government, but a disagreement between the liberals and the socialist/communist block in the Duma would eventually lead to the second and final revolution of the time in Russia. This revolution, which would begin in October, cemented the socialist/communist block's control on the country, leading to the eventual establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
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