Order No. 1

On 14 March 1917 (1 March in the Julian calendar) the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies adopted a document that went down in history as Order No. 1. It was addressed to the Petrograd garrison, “all soldiers of the guard, army, artillery and fleet”, for immediate execution. It ordered the election of soldiers’ committees in all units, placed weapons under their control and laid down that in political matters soldiers were subordinate to the Soviet. Two days after the victory of the rising in the capital, the order struck at the very foundation of the army: the obedience of soldiers to their officers.

Where it came from

After the mutiny of the garrison, thousands of soldiers were left in Petrograd without commanders. Many officers had fled or gone into hiding, and several had been killed. Soldiers who had shot their own superiors and joined the rising feared that once order returned, a court martial awaited them. On the night of 12/13 March the Provisional Committee of the Duma, which had just taken power from the Golitsyn government, called on the soldiers to return to their barracks and on the officers to take up command. Rumours spread among the soldiers that the officers were taking away the men’s weapons. Lieutenant-Colonel Boris Engelhardt, who headed the Duma’s military commission, later told Alfred Knox, the British military attaché, that on 14 March a group of soldiers came to him asking for an order recognising their rights, including the right to regimental committees. The President of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, and Alexander Guchkov would not hear of it. One of the soldiers is then said to have replied: “So much the better. We will write the order ourselves.”

That same day the Soviet, which had been sitting in the Tauride Palace since 12 March, merged with the representatives of the garrison into a single Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Soldiers formed a decisive majority in it. While the Executive Committee of the Soviet was negotiating with the Duma Committee in the next room about forming a government, at a stormy meeting of soldiers one speaker after another put forward ever more far-reaching demands. They were written down by the lawyer and Social Democrat Nikolai Sokolov. Mensheviks who witnessed the scene later wrote that the order could not be attributed to a single author, because “it was composed by the nameless mass of soldiers”.

What it ordered

The order had seven points. In all companies, battalions, regiments, batteries, squadrons and on warships, committees of representatives of the “lower ranks” were to be elected at once. Units that had not yet sent delegates to the Soviet were to elect one from each company. In its political actions a unit was subordinate to the Soviet and to its own committee. Orders of the Duma’s military commission were to be carried out only if they did not conflict with the orders and resolutions of the Soviet. All weapons, from rifles to armoured cars, were to remain under the control of the company and battalion committees and “in no case” might be handed over to officers, “even at their demand”.

The last points concerned the soldier’s daily life. In the ranks and on duty “the strictest military discipline” still applied, but off duty soldiers were to enjoy the same rights as all other citizens. The obligation to salute and stand to attention off duty was abolished, as was addressing officers as “your excellency” or “your honour”. Instead one was to say “Mr General” or “Mr Colonel”. Rude treatment of soldiers was forbidden, including addressing them with the familiar “thou”. Soldiers were to report every breach of this rule to the committees.

Consequences

The order was published on the morning of 15 March by the Soviet’s paper Izvestia. Knox noted that although it bore the date of 14 March, it was handed out as leaflets only the next day. Formally it concerned only the garrison of the capital, but printed in a huge run it quickly reached units at the front and the fleet. Some of its provisions, for example the ban on humiliating soldiers, could in Knox’s view have come even from the high command. Universal committees and the subordination of the army to a political body, however, destroyed the chain of command. Knox called the order “a printed charter of licence for cowardice and anarchy”. General Anton Denikin later wrote that it gave “the first, main impulse” to the disintegration of the army. The officers Knox met at the Duma on 15 March were dejected and said that their position had become untenable.

The leaders of the Soviet quickly realised that the order had gone too far. Further orders, issued a few days later, explained that the committees were not to elect commanders and that Order No. 1 did not apply to the front. The impression, however, could no longer be undone. Soldiers’ committees sprang up throughout the army, and their powers grew steadily. The order became a symbol of “dual power”, in which the Provisional Government governed only to the extent that the Soviet allowed it.