Strikes and demonstrations in Petrograd

On Thursday 8 March 1917 Petrograd marked International Women’s Day. In Russia, which still used the Julian calendar, it was 23 February. Socialist organisations had planned rallies and speeches for the day, but nobody had called for a strike. In the morning, however, women workers at several textile mills in the working-class district of the Vyborg Side, on the right bank of the Neva, downed tools and marched to the neighbouring metalworks, calling on the men to join them. Thus began the unrest which in less than a week overthrew the monarchy.

Bread queues

For weeks the capital had been living in want. The freezing winter had immobilised hundreds of locomotives, snowdrifts had halted trains, and only part of the flour and fuel the city needed was getting through. Rumours went round that the authorities would introduce bread rationing. Long queues formed outside bakeries, in which women sometimes stood all night. The French ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, noted on 6 March that in a queue outside a bakery on Liteyny Prospekt he had been struck by the “sinister” faces of the poor. The day before the holiday the management of the great Putilov Works, where pay disputes had been going on for several weeks, announced a lockout, and tens of thousands of workers found themselves out on the street. That same day, 7 March, Tsar Nicholas II left Tsarskoye Selo for General Headquarters at Mogilev, assured by the Interior Minister, Alexander Protopopov, that the situation in the capital was under control.

Thursday, 8 March

The protesting women were joined by workers from one factory after another. The crowds crossed the Liteyny Bridge into the city centre shouting “Bread!”, and some banners also bore the slogans “Down with the war!” and “Down with the autocracy!”. According to police reports about 90,000 people were on strike that day; Soviet historians later gave figures as high as 128,000. On Nevsky Prospekt the first clashes with the police and the Cossacks took place. Paléologue noted that there was great agitation in the city all day and that the crowd shouted “Bread and peace!”. In the evening, however, the guests at his dinner at the embassy talked mainly about the ball that Princess Radziwiłł had announced for Sunday. The authorities did not consider the events dangerous either. At a meeting that evening the commander of the Petrograd Military District, General Sergei Khabalov, took over responsibility for order in the city from the police.

From strike to general strike

On Friday 9 March more than 200,000 workers were on strike. Although the bridges were blocked, demonstrators crossed to the centre over the ice of the Neva. Bakeries were looted, and students joined the workers. Khabalov brought out detachments of the reserve battalions of the Guards regiments onto the streets, but the Cossacks on Znamenskaya Square refused to disperse the crowd. On Saturday 10 March almost the entire city came to a standstill: according to various estimates about 300,000 people were on strike. Red flags appeared with the slogans “Down with the government!”, “Down with Protopopov!” and “Down with the war!”. On Znamenskaya Square a Cossack cut down with his sabre a policeman who was trying to break up a rally. Paléologue wrote of several demonstrators and policemen killed and about a hundred wounded on Nevsky Prospekt.

The Tsar learned of the unrest at Mogilev on the evening of 10 March. He did not call for talks but sent Khabalov a telegram: “I command you to put an end tomorrow to the disorders in the capital, which are inadmissible in the difficult time of war with Germany and Austria.” The general, who until then had tried to avoid bloodshed, took this as an order to use firearms. During the night the police arrested several dozen people, including socialist activists.

Sunday, 11 March

In the morning Khabalov’s proclamation was posted on the walls, banning all gatherings and announcing that the troops had been authorised to use their weapons “stopping at nothing”. The crowds came out onto the streets all the same. Soldiers fired on demonstrators several times, most bloodily on Znamenskaya Square, where a volley was fired by the training detachment of the reserve battalion of the Volhynian Regiment of the Guard. According to Russian studies, about 40 people were killed there and as many again wounded. In the evening, however, the 4th Company of the reserve battalion of the Pavlovsky Regiment mutinied and fired on the police. The mutiny was suppressed and the soldiers were locked up in the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. That evening the Prime Minister, Nikolai Golitsyn, decided to prorogue the State Duma until April, using a blank decree the Tsar had signed in advance. The President of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, telegraphed the Tsar that anarchy reigned in the capital and begged him to appoint a government enjoying the confidence of the country. According to courtiers, Nicholas II brushed this aside, saying that “that fat Rodzianko” was again writing him some nonsense.

By the evening the authorities might have believed they had the situation under control. Paléologue’s informants reported that the workers were tired of going to Nevsky Prospekt “to be killed”. On his way home the ambassador passed a palace brilliantly lit for Princess Radziwiłł’s ball. The firing on the crowd had, however, shaken the soldiers of the garrison, most of them freshly called-up recruits. According to later accounts, that night in the barracks of the Volhynian Regiment the non-commissioned officers of the detachment that had fired on Znamenskaya Square agreed that in the morning they would no longer go out onto the streets against the people.