Petrograd Conference

At three in the afternoon of 1 February 1917, in the Mariinsky Palace in Petrograd, in the large rotunda with windows overlooking St Isaac’s Square, a conference of the Allies opened. By the Julian calendar used in Russia it was 19 January. Around the table sat representatives of Russia, Britain, France and Italy. They were to agree the dates of the offensives in 1917, determine how many arms and how much material the Western Allies could supply to Russia, and hold a preliminary discussion of Russian debts. The British chronology of the war states that the conference met as early as 17 January and ended on 20 February. In fact, in mid-January the Western delegations were only preparing to set out, and the last session was held on 21 February.

Where the idea came from

A conference in Russia had been proposed in the autumn of 1916 by David Lloyd George, then still British Secretary of State for War. He believed that operations in the east and west could not be coordinated without the Tsar and his advisers. In November the politicians gathered at the conference in Paris approved the idea in principle and decided to pass the resolutions of the generals at Chantilly to the future Petrograd conference. Then the matter stalled. In December the governments and high commands in London and Paris changed, Romania was largely conquered, and at the beginning of January the Allies conferred in Rome, where among other things they agreed on help for Russia with armaments. Its details were to be discussed in Petrograd.

The delegations and the journey

Lloyd George, by now Prime Minister, offered the leadership of the British delegation to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, and when he declined entrusted it to Lord Alfred Milner, a member of the five-man War Cabinet. General Henry Wilson became the military representative, and financial matters were to be handled by the banker Lord Revelstoke of the house of Barings. The French delegation was led by the Minister for the Colonies and former Prime Minister Gaston Doumergue, accompanied by General Noël de Castelnau. Italy sent Senator Vittorio Scialoja and General Ruggeri Laderchi. They were joined by the ambassadors of the three states in Petrograd, among them the French ambassador, Maurice Paléologue.

The British sailed from the Scottish port of Oban on 20 January. The delegations travelled by sea round Scandinavia to the port of Romanov on the Murman coast, today’s Murmansk, which had recently been linked with Petrograd by the Murmansk railway. According to accounts of the Milner mission, they found chaos in the port: thousands of tons of ammunition and equipment lay on the quays and no one was moving them inland. After three days on the railway the visitors reached the capital on 29 January. On 31 January Tsar Nicholas II received the delegations at Tsarskoye Selo.

The first session

The Russian side was represented by the Foreign Minister, Nikolai Pokrovsky, who had been in charge of diplomacy since December, the new War Minister, General Mikhail Belyaev, the acting Chief of Staff of the Stavka, General Vasily Gurko, the Naval Minister, Ivan Grigorovich, and the Finance Minister, Pyotr Bark. The Russian Foreign Ministry had decided beforehand that after the plenary session the conference would divide into three sections: military-political, supply and financial. The Russians regarded the first as the most important and treated supplies and credits as secondary matters.

Pokrovsky presided over the proceedings. Paléologue noted that his lack of diplomatic experience prevented him from directing them, and the discussion wandered without logical order, clear purpose or practical conclusions. Gurko asked the fundamental question of whether the campaigns of 1917 were to be decisive. He warned that until Russia had formed and armed 60 new divisions, which would take many months, perhaps even a year, she could conduct only smaller operations.

The delegates also had an unofficial aim: they wanted to assess the internal situation of the empire at close quarters. After the murder of Rasputin and further changes of ministers, with the new Prime Minister Nikolai Golitsyn at the head, the government seemed ever weaker. Within the next few days the Tsar and Tsarina let Milner understand that they did not wish to discuss Russia’s internal politics. In the West there was also growing anxiety about the sea: the day before, Germany had announced unrestricted submarine warfare, starting precisely on 1 February.

What followed

The deliberations lasted three weeks. The French pressed for the Russians to attack as early as possible, by mid-March at the latest, while Gurko spoke of 1 May. After long arguments it was agreed that the offensives on all fronts would begin between 1 April and 1 May. Doumergue obtained the Tsar’s consent to French plans regarding the left bank of the Rhine. The conference ended on 21 February, and Paléologue judged its results very modest. The delegates left the next day. Milner returned convinced that there was much exaggeration in the talk of revolution. A few weeks later the February Revolution broke out in Petrograd.