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russian studies in history
russian studies in history, vol. 47, no. 4, Spring 2009, pp. 839. 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 10611983/2009 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/RSH10611983470401
Sergei V. KuliKoV
Revolutions Invariably Come from Above

The Fall of Tsarism Through the Prism of the Elite Circulation Paradigm
Any revolution, being primarily a social phenomenon (i.e., a function of society) that is characteristically dual in nature and involves an intermin gling of the principles of consciousness and unconsciousness, rests on the same two principles. In specific historical terms, revolutions are expressed in an indissoluble symbiosis of factors of organization and spontaneity,
English translation 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text. Abridged by the author from Revoliutsii neizmenno idut sverkhu . . . : padenie tsarizma skvoz prizmu elitistskoi paradigmy, nestor: zhurnal istorii i kultury rossii i Vostochnoi evropy, 2007, no. 11, The Paradigm Shift in Contemporary Russian Studies: Sources, Research Projects, and Historiography (Smena paradigm: sovremennaia rusistika. Istochniki, issledovaniia, istoriografiia), ed. B.N. Mironov, pp. 11785. Translated by Liv Bliss. This article further develops premises supported in S.V. Kulikov, Biurokaticheskaia elita rossiiskoi imperii nakanune padeniia starogo poriadka (19141917) (Riazan, 2004); Kulikov, K predystorii Grazhdanskoi voiny v Rossii. Vysshie voennye vlasti Petrograda 2328 fevralia 1917 g., in Grazhdanskie voiny v istorii chelovechestva: obshchee i chastnoe. doklad vserossiiskoi nauchnoi konferentsii (1516 noiabria 2003 g.) (Ekaterinburg, 2004); Kulikov, Fevralskaia revoliu tsiia sverkhu ili fiasko generalov dlia pronunsiamento, rossiia XXi, 2004, no. 4; Kulikov, Sovet ministrov i Progressivnyi blok vo vremia padeniia monarkhii, nestor, 2005, no. 7, The Technology of Power (Tekhnologiia vlasti); and Kulikov, Petrogradskoe ofitserstvo 2328 fevralia 1917 g. Nastroeniia i povedenie, novyi chasovoi, 2006, nos. 1718; and the previously cited Revoliutsii neizmenno idut sverkhu . . . : padenie tsarizma skvoz prizmu elitistskoi paradigmy, nestor, 2007, no. 11, pp. 11785.
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and consequently, those studying revolution must accord equal attention to both factors, as students of the English, American, French, October, and other revolutions have in fact done. A unique exception to that rule is the February Revolution of 1917, since the overwhelming majority of historians, in this country and abroad, have accepted the idea of that revolu tion as an absolutely spontaneous event.1 Yet no less a person than Pavel Nikolaevich Miliukov noted its organized, rather than spontaneous, nature. From the objective factors, he wrote in 1918, it indisputably follows that preparations for the revolutionary conflagration were being conducted with extreme efficiency, especially from early 1917, among the workers and in the barracks of the Petrograd garrison. Miliukov did, however, acknowl edge that the work being performed behind the scenes in preparation for revolution has remained where it beganbehind the scenes.2 Only a minority of scholars attribute the victory of the February Revo lution not only to spontaneity but also to organization, an element that they associate, to one degree or another, with the Bolshevik Party (Igor Pavlovich Leiberov),3 other socialist parties (Michael Melancon),4 the Fourth State Duma (Andrei Borisovich Nikolaev),5 German secret agents (Elisabeth Heresch),6 or a Masonic plot (in migr and domestic histo riography).7 The misalignment between such ideas and historical reality impels us to consider instead the efforts of the Central MilitaryIndustrial Committee [Tsentralnyi voennopromyshlennyi komitet, CMIC], which was established at 46 Liteinyi Avenue, Petrograd, in June 1915. In regarding the purpose of the CMIC and its subordinate network of local militaryindustrial committees as having been the wartime mobilization of industry, historians have underestimated the political role the committees played on the eve of and during the course of the February Revolution.8 Only Leopold Haimson has noted the radicalism of the CMIC leadership, which by early 1917 had agreed on the need for a rapid adoption of revolutionary tactics.9 Haimson did not, even so, specify whether revolutionary tactics were indeed adopted and if so, what the outcome was. Nikolaev, for his part, notes the CMICs involvement in the February Revolution but proposes that on 27 February 1917* it was playing the role of an auxiliary structure, which served the inter ests of the revolutionary center and the headquarters of the uprising that were operating in the State Duma. We, however, have countered that view by suggesting that the CMIC gave birth to the Duma as a center
*Dates in Old Style throughout.Ed.
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of revolution.10 The CMIC warrants special attention primarily because of its staff, which were recruited from the elite opposition, among whom we see future leaders of the February Revolution. From July 1915 on, the chairman of the CMIC Bureau was Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov, whose deputy was Aleksandr Ivanovich Konovalov. They were assisted by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bublikov, Mikhail Ivanovich Tereshchenko, and Mikhail Mikhailovich Fedorov. The CMIC also included Mikhail Aleksandrovich Karaulov, Prince Georgii Evgenevich Lvov, Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov, Petr Ioakimovich Palchinskii, Pavel Pavlovich Riabushinskii, Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev, and others. Most of the CMIC leadership was united in its liberal and radical views and its antipathy to the old order. As we are told by Boris Osipovich Bogdanov, a Menshevik, the CMIC contained bourgeois groups hostile to the tsarist regime.11 The views of Guchkov and his confederates are all the more distinctive in that the militaryindustrial committees were in every way dependent on the financial patronage of the Treasury, which in 191517 with the full endorsement of Emperor Nicholas II, allocated 170,000,000 rubles to them.12 Guchkov acknowl edged the aim of CMIC leaderships activity to be not merely a coup dtat [gosudarstvennyi povorot] but a national revolution, primarily implying by that the overthrow of Nicholas II, which was construed as the sine qua non of Russias victory in the war against Germany.13 Guch kov, though, was in favor of revolution irrespective of any connection with the war. As Count Sergei Iulevich Witte had learned in the summer of 1911, even then Guchkov was proposing that the revolution in 1905 failed because the troops were on the sovereigns side and that should another revolution ensue it would be necessary to avoid the mistake made by the ringleaders of the 1905 Revolution in order to have the troops . . . on our side. Therefore, I, A.I. Guchkov acknowledged, am occupying myself exclusively with military issues and military affairs, with the desire that, that should the need arise, the troops would be more apt to support us than the ruling house. 14 But in addition to the troops, another way of ensuring that the revolution would be a mass event, thereby facilitat ing its legitimization, was the political mobilization of the proletariat, which was to be attained by means of special worker groupsadjuncts of the CMIC and other militaryindustrial committeeswhose creation was spearheaded by Guchkov. Historians have studied the worker groups separately from the military
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industrial committees and have denied that either was revolutionary in spirit.15 However, the explanation advanced by Mikhail Vasilevich Novorusskii, secretary of the CMIC General Assembly and former mem ber of the Peoples Will [Narodnaia Volia], for the installation of worker representatives in an organization inimical to them by virtue of class interest was that the bourgeois leadership had recognized the need to unite all elements of society into a struggle waged simultaneously on two frontsagainst both the enemy without and the enemy within, that is, against the old regime. Furthermore, as Novorusskii attests, the leaders of the CMIC, for the most part members of capitalist groups, legally and publicly admitted into their midst an alien group for no other reason than to prepare for revolution, and that therefore the Department of Police assumption that the CMIC was undermining the foundations and the roots was not unfounded.16 V.N. Pereverzev, who worked on the Mos cow MilitaryIndustrial Committee, wholly endorsed Novorusskiis view, emphasizing that [i]n the eyes of the government, those organizations of the militaryindustrial committeeby which he meant primarily worker groupsseemed, entirely understandably, to be extremely dangerous. The government thought that in those organizations a revolutionary contagion could develop that would spread throughout Russia. And to give the old government its due, it was not mistaken.17 Thus, by the end of 1915 the CMIC, in the person of its leaders, had already become the elite oppositions headquarters for organizing revolution. Proof that in the fall of 1915 the CMIC leaders were indeed revolu tionary (if not necessarily open about it) can be seen in the attitude they manifested toward the creation of a CMIC Worker Group. The assembly to elect members of such a group, which convened on 29 November 1915, was opened by Guchkov, who hinted at the need for revolution by emphasizing, we all need to triumph over the enemy while also striving toward the very best arrangement for life inside Russia. That the CMIC leader had revolution in mind was unequivocally confirmed by Kuzma Antonovich Gvozdev, who urged the organization of Russias social forces to combat the assailant Germany and our fearsome enemy within, the autocratic order. Saying what Guchkov had opted not to say, Gvozdev declared power should pass from the hands of the government into the hands of the bourgeoisie and Russia was on the eve of a bourgeois revo lution. All the prerequisites, Gvozdev concluded, are now in place for change in the present political system.18 The idea of a bourgeois revolution to assure victory in war had thus become a rallying point for members of
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the social and revolutionary elite opposition, of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, despite the social tensions that divided them. The CMICs Worker Group comprised ten individuals headed by Gvozdev. At the same time, elections were held to the Petrograd Regional MilitaryIndustrial Committees sixman Worker Group, which was affili ated with its counterpart in the CMIC. Most of those sixteen individuals were Mensheviks, and the remainder Socialist Revolutionaries. Involved in the election procedure were 101 Petrograd enterprises employing a total of 219,000 workers.19 Through its new subsection, the CMIC was evidently grounding itself on fairly extensive strata of the Petrograd proletariat, thus inclining them further toward revolution. The first resolution of the Worker Group, adopted on 29 November 1915, was also revolutionary in nature, speaking of the dismantling, root and branch, of the regime and declaring the proletariats challenge to be the fight for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to wrest power from the hands of those who presently hold it. (Tellingly, the watchword of the February Revolution was precisely thatthe convocation of a Constituent Assembly.) The CMIC leadership made no objection to that resolution at its General Assembly on 3 December 1915.20 This proves, yet again, that the goal of the Worker Groupa bourgeois revolutionwas also the goal of the CMIC. The political solidarity that united the social and revolutionary elite opposition determined the organizational and financial guardianship exercised by the CMIC leadership over its Worker Group. The group mobilized the proletariat through meetings held at the CMICs premises and attended by audiences of up to five hundred (including prominent figures from sickness funds and trade unions, Mensheviks, Bundists, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks, as well as Nikolai Semenovich Chkheidze and Alexander Kerensky from the Dumas Menshevik and La bor Group factions),21 through the groups ten permanent commissions,22 and, finally, through worker cooperatives that were wholly controlled by Gvozdev and his supporters.23 From 1915 to 1917 the Worker Group was, to all intents and purposes, a Soviet of Workers Deputiesthe main legally acceptable center of the proletarian movement on a Petrograd and national scale. The groups official actions to improve life for the prole tariat concealed its unofficial activity, which involved preparations for revolution. As Novorusskii has confirmed, the Worker Group actually led the preparations for revolution.24 Gvozdevs supporters, in setting the scene for revolution, were not pursuing their own separate policy but following the CMIC leaderships lead.
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In late September 1916, with the approval of the opposition leaders, Guchkov began technical preparations for a coup dtat. He formed a fiveman body comprising himself, Nekrasov, Tereshchenko, and, as military liaisons, Prince Dmitrii Leonidovich Viazemskii and retired Staff Cavalry Captain P.P. Kotsebu.25 According to testimony given by Guchkov to the Provisional Governments Extraordinary Investigative Commission, the coup plan developed by the Guchkov group involved capturing the imperial train en route between the General Staff Headquarters [Stavka] and Tsarskoe Selo and compelling abdication, while placing the current govern ment under arrest, assisted by military units, and then announcing both the coup and the names of the individuals who would head the government. The conspirators initial premise was that Nicholas II [18941917] must abdicate voluntarily, because otherwise civil war is to be feared. We must note that events took exactly this course during the February Revolution and Guchkov later publicly acknowledged that the main point of the practi cal program developed by him and his fellowthinkers was an armed coup. According to the Menshevik Nikolai Ivanovich Iordanskii, prepara tions for the coup were being made by a military organization that was linked to the plots of a circle of liberal generals and an antidynastic group inside the militaryindustrial committee but was completely independent of the historical revolutionary parties and their then weak representation in St. Petersburg. At the conspiracys head, Iordanskii observed, stood members of the militaryindustrial committeeGuchkov, Konovalov, and others.26 That is why the events of February 1917 caught party activists not only on the right but also on the left entirely by surprise. On the eve of tsarisms fall, Guchkov and his confederates were therefore heading up a composite, multilevel conspiracy, whose ultimate goal was not simply a palace coup but outandout revolution.27 Their conspiracy brought together representatives of the social elite opposi tion (Duma deputies and members of the State Council, leaders of the zemstvo and city unions, individual representatives of the palace, and the bureaucratic and military elites) and ringleaders of the revolution ary elite opposition of the Worker Group.28 The telling opinion of group secretary Evgenii Maevskii was that by early 1917 the monarchy had stirred up against itself the most diverse classes, with the most contrary views and interests.29 Consequently, the CMIC was a venue wherein an alliance of bourgeoisie and proletariat, with leaderships united by their involvement in the preparations for revolution, not only emerged but also began to operate.
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A key element of Guchkovs plan was to give the coup dtat a national character by means of a general strike and popular demonstrations orga nized through the Worker Group. From information supplied by Iordanskii, we know that the Worker Group while providing the leadership of the bourgeois coup with a wealth of information on the moods of the prole tarian masses and a locus wherein to coordinate certain acts of political insurrection, had no direct access to the bourgeois military organization. But the conspirators deemed it a convenient way to secure assistance for the plot from the working masses and a potential instrument of influence over the masses that would incline them toward moderation and precision in their acts of insurrection. Guchkov began using the Worker Group to draw the proletariat into the future revolution in late September 1916.30 In October and November, Gvozdevs supporters instigated antigovernment rallies in Petrograd factories, where commissions to further the ends of the Worker Group were elected to form a grassroots organizational network that helped consolidate the influence exerted by the group over the masses.31 As Novorusskii attests, many factory representatives were involved in aid ing the Worker Group as it pursued the cause of fomenting revolution.32 The extension of the groups influence deep into the core of the proletariat tended to reinforce the political ambitions of its patrons in the CMIC. At a conference of representatives of the regional militaryindustrial committees that was held in Petrograd on 1215 December 1916 under the chairmanship of Konovalov, the CMIC leadership openly set its sights on revolution. As proposed by the Worker Group, the militaryindustrial committees next task would be not a struggle against individual mani festations of the regime but its irrevocable elimination and the countrys full democratization and the creation of a Provisional Government that rests on an organized, selfdirected, and free people. The Bundist Moisei Grigorevich Rafes believed this to be the first formulation of the demand for the overthrow of tsarist authority.33 As the CMIC staff member E.I. Omelchenko emphasized, the entire program of revolu tion was reflected in the Worker Groups acts of insurrection, especially in December 1916.34 Consequently, a resolution was adopted that Decem ber that concentrated on nothing other than revolution, which the CMIC was preparing through the Worker Group. Subsequently, at Konovalovs initiative, that resolution garnered the support of the CMIC Bureau. The resolution, which was adopted by the full conference on 14 December 1916, called for the unification of all vital . . . forces with broadly democratic participation in the constructive work and declared
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that only a responsible government at one with the people and aided by it can lead the country from the impasse into which the old regime has taken it. The conference urged the State Duma, and the people with it, to conclude its struggle to create a responsible government and to obliterate conditions favorable to the pernicious interference of irresponsible forces in the guidance of the country and its destiny, both behind the lines and at the front. The conference also hailed the army, expressing its confidence that in a unified effort by country and army lies the gage of victory over our common enemy and of the establishment in Russia with all speed of the change in the political order that is demanded by the whole people.35 These resolutions, too, also obviously referred to revolution. After the December conference, the Worker Group ramped up its cam paign to organize a mass action in Petrograd, and in January 1917 it staged rallies and strikes showcasing revolutionary slogans in the capitals facto ries and plants. Here, too, Gvozdevs supporters had the full endorsement of the CMIC leadership. The Bolshevik Aleksandr Gavrilovich Shliap nikov pointed out that in the first half of January the Worker Group turned its political barque to sail with the revolutionary wind with the blessing . . . of the factory owners on the CMIC Bureau.36 In early 1917, according to data possessed by Aleksei Tikhonovich Vasilev, director of the Department of Police, Gvozdevs supporters were influenced by Guchkov, Konovalov, and Lvov; believed in their own strength; and acknowledged that they would be the ones to give the decisive signal to begin the second great Russian revolution and the last. 37 Then as previously, Gvozdevs supporters were carrying out directives from the CMIC leaders, who were focused on revolution. For 14 February 1917, when the Duma was scheduled to convene, Guchkov and his confederates were planning a general strike and a workers march on the Tauride Palace, as the next stage in the prepara tions for revolution. In January, structures were set up within the Worker Group to make that act of insurrection happen. To prepare and direct the march, as Bogdanov attests, the leaders on Liteinyi Avenue created a large group, also called a command staff [shtab] or a propaganda college [propagandistskaia kollegiia], of fiftyindividual Mensheviks and others with no party affiliationfrom the capitals largest enterprises. In Petrograds factories, the command staff formed cells to recruit and organize the future marchers and to maintain contact with the center. As their preparations progressed, the Worker Group, Maevskii says, was by no means scheduling that action for any particular day and
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was instead considering various junctures in the course of the entire [Duma] session.38 Consequently, the groups plans for the mass action could accommodate not only 14 February but also 23 February, the date the February Revolution actually began. Historians have followed Pavel Miliukov in asserting that police provo cation gave rise to the idea for the march, since Worker Group member Abrosimov, a Menshevik who was also an agent of the political police, supported the march. Maevskii, however, attests that Abrosimov had almost no involvement in the preparations,which means that the march on the Duma cannot be called police provocation.39 As the preparations progressed, the Worker Groups activity became overtly revolutionary. As a result, on 27 January, at the initiative of Aleksandr Dmitrievich Protopopov (the interior minister, who was also a former member of the CMIC), almost the entire group headed by Gvozdev was arrested. Only two Gvozdev supporters, Ia.I. Anosovskii and Ia.S. Ostapenko (one a member of the CMIC Worker Group and the other of the Petrograd Regional MilitaryIndustrial Committee), and Abrosimov the provocateur (who was arrested just before revolution broke out) remained at liberty. Guchkov used the dismantling of the Worker Group to heighten the antigovernment sentiments of the Petrograd proletariat, openly calling on the workers to protest the arrests in a circular distributed to the sickness funds on 28 January.40 To help coordinate the social and revolutionary elite opposition in readiness for a coup dtat, on 29 Janu ary Guchkov convened and chaired a conference of representatives of the CMIC and the Moscow Regional MilitaryIndustrial Committee, various worker groups, the zemstvo and city unions, Duma deputies (up to and including Social Democrats), and elected members of the State Council (thirtyfive individuals in all), in a venue supplied by the CMICs Outfit ting Department [Veshchevoi otdel] at 59 Nevskii Avenue. The goal of this conference was to establish full contact between all representatives of the oppositionist public and to develop a general plan of action in the struggle with governmental power. As part of the extralegal struggle, conference attendees proposed arranging a worker march on the Duma and announcing a long general strike. As the conference was drawing to a close, its attendees spoke unanimously in favor of the need for another conference, to develop a path for a general and more decisive struggle with the present governmental power and to elect from its members a supersecret and exclusive circle able to fill the role of guiding center for the public as a whole.41 As far as can be seen and as would be confirmed
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by later events, the center under discussion was a center designed to bring about revolution. The next conference met on 5 February, again on CMIC premises and under Guchkovs chairmanship. By all indications, this was what Miliu kov recalled in his account of conference participants talking about a program for the eventual revolution, which entailed replacing Nicholas II with Crown Prince Alexis, setting Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich up as regent, and creating a government headed by Lvov. As Guchkov told Aleksandra Petrovna Stolypina in emigration, a committee to prepare for an uprisingmade up of Guchkov, Kerensky, Miliukov, Nekrasov, and many otherswas formed in February 1917, shortly before the Revolution began. It is not impossible that this was the super secret and exclusive circle that the 29 January conference had deemed essential. According to the memoirs of Pavel Pavlovich Mendeleev, an elected member of the State Council, at a dinner held around the same time and attended by some forty members of both legislative chambers (Guchkov among them), all present and everything said were perme ated by the idea of a coup.42 It must be emphasized that the subject of discussion at Guchkovs conferences was not revolution as a hypothetical possibility but an absolutely specific revolution, which would later be known as the February Revolution. The [beginning ofS.K.] the action, V.N. Pereverzev, a member of the Moscow MilitaryIndustrial Committee attests (alluding to the February Revolution),
should be dated to the arrest of the CMIC Worker Group. Remember the excitement that gripped all the central organizations at that time. Remember the conferences that A.I. Guchkov held with representatives of the Duma party leaders, of all the central organizations, and of the State Council. Remember that at those gatherings, those representatives for the first time ever proclaimed that the time had come for an energetic struggle against the government. Remember the excitement that gripped the working masses then. Remember the wish list they presented when the great events were almost at hand. Then you will see the causal connection between our great revolution, to which the world can offer no equal, and the work, major and minor, performed by the CMIC.43
Thus Pereverzev drew a direct link between the activities of the CMIC and its representatives and the preparations for the February Revolution. Despite the arrest of the Worker Group, Guchkov was still counting on mass demonstrations by the proletariat and so joined with Konovalov
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in lobbying the government to hold Gvozdev under house arrest. As a result, Gvozdev was, Rafes noted, as able as he had ever been to stay in touch with worker organizations and worker activists.44 Worker Group members Anosovskii and Ostapenko, who were still at liberty, attended a CMIC Bureau meeting on 16 February, at which Ostapenko proclaimed the need to appeal in the name of the members of the Worker Group, the CMIC, and the Petrograd MilitaryIndustrial Committee to the workers at the striking Petrograd factories with a call to buckle down to work and a suggestion to convene a conference of worker representatives from the striking plants attached to the CMIC, for the purpose of bringing the strike action to its speediest end. Although clothed in legal forms, Ostapenkos suggestions were revolutionary in content and led to the bureau passing a resolution approving his plan for an appeal to Petrograds workers and ordering that steps be taken toward the broadest possible dissemina tion of that appeal. The bureau was also, however, determined not to convene a conference of representatives because conference attendees may be arrested.45 Thanks to the patronage of the CMIC leadership, Gvozdev and his confederates were able to continue leading the proletariats mobilization in preparation for revolution, especially since the Worker Groups subor dinate structures (primarily commissions to further the ends of the group, sickness funds, and cooperatives) remained entirely intact after the arrest of most of the group members. As Novorusskii attests, the preparations for revolution continued after the arrests, as a result of which, in the actual preparations for revolution, which the Worker Group was indeed pursuing, it commanded one of the more prominent positions.46 As before, the group was making its preparations for revolution under the direction of the CMIC, whose bureau was in almost permanent session, meeting on 17, 18, 20, and 21 February. On the eve of the February 1917 Revolution, the CMIC leadership drew into the organization of a mass demonstration representatives of not only the social and revolutionary but also the business elite opposition, since 241 enterprises came together under the auspices of the Petrograd Re gional MilitaryIndustrial Committee. According to information gathered by the Department of Police, Guchkov and his confederates were at that time vesting their expectations in the mighty class of industrialists, which had begun to move sharply left in early 1917.47 A meeting held on 8 February at a major industrial enterprise and attended by forty pillars of the industrial and financial worlds and four emissaries from
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foreign banks had determined to declare a financial boycott of the tsarist regime. In the event that a new loan was floated, they planned to give the money only to the people, withholding it from the tsarist government. As the Bolshevik T.K. Kondratev attests, factory and plant directors with oppositionist views themselves precipitated organized strikes in February 1917 by closing their businesses and forcing the workers to strike, whether they wanted to or not.48 (Kondratevs testimony is, in fact, enormously valuable, since he had no vested interest in exaggerating the revolutionary spirit of his class enemies.) The business elite could potentially support the revolutionary move ment not only organizationally but financially, too. Alluding to the 19057 Revolution, Novorusskii wrote, to construct barricades and to pave the streets with its corpses has always been the privilege of every peoples fourth estate [here, the working classTrans.]. But that superficial fact tells us nothing about internal sources. When the talk turns to revolution ary organizations, the prescient never forget that neither their richness of spirit nor an abundance of heroism can make them effectual if their funding dries up and the wideranging sympathies of influential social forces cool.49 Novorusskiis conclusions indubitably also apply to the February Revolution, especially since they accord with conclusions drawn by the Menshevik Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov, who acknowledged that all the underground parties representing the working class always received donations from capitalists.50 As Chkheidze, also a Menshevik, recalls, oppositionist activists were taking up collections by subscription in 1916 and 1917, while Moscow merchants were prepared to donate tens of millions of rubles to the cause, or so Vladimir Petrovich Litvinov Falinskii told the Octobrist Nikanor Vasilevich Savich, his colleague on the CMIC. Major donors were CMIC leaders Tereshchenko (who gave a million rubles to the revolution) and Konovalov, along with A.A. Kotelnikov and Count Aleksei Anatolevich OrlovDavydov.51 The CMIC brought together oppositionists and revolutionaries and was thus, by all indications, the main channel whereby money for the revolution was funneled from above to below. Later, during the Civil War, Savich learned that there had been two interconnected revolutionary centers functioning under the CMICs aegis: the first staffed by liberals (Konovalov, Lvov, Riabushinskii, and Mikhail Vasilevich Chelnokov), which operated in the upper ech elons of society and the army and the second, which was financed by the first, manned by socialists (Kerensky, Matvei Ivanovich Skobelev,
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and Chkheidze), who were stirring up the barracks and factories. The explosion in February 1917, according to Savich, was the handiwork of the second organization, which made use of money from the first to ignite a blaze and tear power away not only from its old enemy but also from its new ally.52 Indirect confirmation that the CMIC financed the February Revolution comes from an episode that took place at a bureau meeting on 3 March 1917, when Nikolai Nikolaevich Kutler disclosed that the CMICs current account in the State Bank contained only 15,000,000 rubles or so. Although the fiscal year had hardly begun, the bureau acknowledged a need to exercise the utmost thrift in disbursing the funds on hand, making only the most pressing payments and issu ing prepayments only in exceptional cases.53 In studying the causes of the February Revolution, by far the most pertinent problem evidently relates not to German money but to Russian money. This is a problem that historians have yet to raise. Another issue yet to be raised by historians is that of the leading role played by the CMIC not only on the eve of but also during the course of the revolution that began on 23 February in Petrograd, finding its expres sion in strikes and demonstrations. At a gala meeting of the CMIC held on 8 March 1917, however, Guchkov openly acknowledged the decisive influence exerted by the CMIC on the course of that revolution, declar ing that its institutions had played their role in bringing it about and priding himself on their participation in the events of recent days, a time when the militaryindustrial organization had taken up the mili tant, wellarmed position that we had to take to discharge our basic and stipulated task of achieving victory. A little later, at a dinner arranged for him by several likeminded officers, Guchkov observed, by way of explaining why revolution had broken out, that it had been All else aside . . . my fault. I wanted you to know that.54 Alluding to the February Revolution, Sergei Dmitrievskii, a CMIC employee, wrote that the militaryindustrial committees had embarked on a path of struggle against the old power structure and had transformed themselves, in the final analysis, into organizations wherein was forged the first weapon of the peoples wrath. It is easy to understand why the militaryindustrial committees were in those great days in the vanguard of the new orders defenders. In the regions, Dmitrievskii emphasized, they were the organizing cells of the unified public.55 N. Volkovysskii, Dmitrievskiis colleague in the CMIC, also pointed out that the military industrial committees took an effective part in the autocracys over
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throw, or were, more accurately, engaged in opening the paths along which Russia insurgent proceeded to victory.56 The opinions of these CMIC employees accord fully with informa tion received by Konstantin Ivanovich Globachev, head of the Petrograd political police, who in his own explanation of the causes of the February Revolution recalled that via the CMIC the working masses were pep pered with political slogans and assailed with rumors about an alleg edly imminent famine and a lack of bread in the capital that did not jibe with reality and were provocative, their goal being to bring about great disturbances and unrest.57 Prince A.V. Obolenskii, Guchkovs confeder ate on the central committee of the Union of 17 October [Octobrists], to whom Guchkov had confided the details of his plot, stated outright that the uprising was scheduled for 22 February.58 Weighty arguments maintaining that the February Revolution had been planned by none other than the CMIC leadership were supplied by that leadership itself. In early January 1917 Guchkov informed British Ambassador George Buchanan that before Easterthat is, before 2 April 1917there ought to be a revolution that would last no more than two weeks. As we know, the February Revolution did indeed come before Easter and lasted roughly two weeks (from 22/23 February to 3/4 March).59 That Guchkov was so wellinformed suggests to us that he was involved in instigating the February Revolution, especially since Princess Lidiia Leonidovna Vasilchikova, the sister of Guchkovs confederate, Prince Dmitrii Leonidovich Viazemskii, has confirmed the existence of a plan for revolution. Princess Vasilchikova attests that prior to 17 February 1917 Kerensky, who had ties to the CMIC Worker Group, was in possession of a program that planned the proposed revolution day by day and coincided on every point with that which we . . . witnessed: among the workers, propaganda about food shortages, and a mutiny in the reserve garrison.60 The CMIC leaders selection of the date to launch the projected revolutionon the eve of a determined Entente assault on Germanyis explained by their faith in the inevitability of an Entente victory and a desire to snatch the victors laurels from the hands of the autocracy, so as to prevent the unshakable reinforcement of its prestige, which would unavoidably happen if the conditions of a victorious peace for Russia were to be dictated by the tsarist government. Describing the prerevolution ary mood, Tereshchenko recalled that in the family of allied peoples, the Russian, in trembling and hope and with his eyes pinned on the end
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of the War, wondered if that end could possibly serve to strengthen the power of tsarism.61 So it was to prevent a shoring up of the power of tsarism that Guchkov and his fellowthinkers decided that the revolution should happen not after but during the war. The CMIC leaders not only presided at the wellsprings of the Febru ary Revolution but also tried to direct its course, with the CMIC Bureau meeting on 22, 24, 25, and 27 February 1917. Nekrasov and Teresh chenko have conceded that the Revolution was led by a small handful of people, five strong.62 By all indications, this refers to the Guchkov five, whose plan assumed the use of mass action to pressure Nicholas II, with the aim of forcing him to renounce the throne voluntarily. Accord ing to Obolenskii, the strikes of 2326 February 1917 were organized by conspirators to prove to Nicholas II the hopelessness of the situa tion and thereby compel him to abdicate. There was then a reprise of the situation described by Kondratev, when factory and plant directors shut their enterprises down, forcing the workers to strike, whether they wanted to or not. The strikers not only encountered sympathy on the part of management but were, according to Buchanan, also given aid.63 Those strikes, whose organization was both bottomup and topdown, helped bring the proletariat out onto the streets. The directive to revolt was issued by the CMIC leadership, a fact that they themselves did not bother to hide. So, Tereshchenko told Litvinov Falinskii on 23 February that we [probably the Guchkov fiveS.K.] will order the workers out onto the streets. The members of the Worker Group who were still at large, with Gvozdev at their head, served as intermedi aries between the CMIC and the proletariat. If we take and examine all the events that have taken place, Pereverzev observed, we should say that the first impetus to the movement that developed in Petrograd and ultimately swept away the Romanov dynastythe first impetus to that movement came from the CMIC, in the person of its Worker Group.64 Through the workers deputies, Protopopov indicated, the political oppositionists on the committees established a link with the working masses and organized them to fight at the proper time against the exist ing order, in order to accomplish the oppositions political ideals.65 In the Revolutions early days, Novorusskii recalled, as the Provisional Government was being established and the autocracy overthrown, a most prominent place was accorded to the Worker Group.66 To organize the demonstrations of 2326 February, the Worker Group utilized the struc tures it had created for the demonstration of 14 February, along with the
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cooperatives and the factory and plant commissions formed to further the ends of the group. The Petrograd Union of Worker Consumer Societies Board, under the control of Gvozdev supporters played a key role. On 23 February (in the sickness fund office at I.A. Semenovs machinebuilding plant) and on 25 February (in its own premises at 144 Old Nevskii Avenue), the board convened conferences that assembled members of the commissions to further the groups ends, activists from the sickness funds, cooperatives, and trade unions, and leaders of the leftwing factions in the State Duma. These conferences involved some thirtyfive individuals, including I.D. Volkov, a worker and union president, and the Mensheviks Fedor Andreevich Cherevanin, Chkheidze, and others, and had been formally called to discuss the food supply. However, as Sukhanov emphasized, most of the attendees anticipated and proclaimed revolution, and the discussion actually turned on the question of how to organize the move ment, in which regard the second of the two conferences resolved to set up a soviet of workers deputies. Sukhanov credited those conferences with having performed an enormous historical service, by preparing the technique of revolution and the organization of the revolutions forces.67 Yet, like the Worker Group itself, these groupinitiated confer ences were no more than instruments employed by the CMIC leadership to mobilize the proletariat. At a meeting of the CMIC Bureau chaired by Guchkov on 25 Febru ary 1917, Anosovskii, one of the Worker Group members still at large, broached the need to take urgent and appropriate measures to pacify the movement now in train and to direct it into the correct course, by not allowing that movement the opportunity to issue forth in misshapen forms. Proof that by the correct course Anosovskii meant a deepen ing of revolution comes from his concrete recommendations, which entailed (1) soliciting the prompt release of the arrested members of the Worker Group and the resumption of the groups activities, which would include undertaking to calm the working masses; (2) organiz ing, with permission from the appropriate authorities, the convening of worker representatives in every district to clarify in conference and regulate the situation that has transpired; and (3) taking steps to prevent the authorities and factory managers from obstructing the election of worker representatives to the twelve regional food commissions that are to be constituted. The bureau accepted those recommendations, resolving to convene the CMIC at 4 p.m. on 27 February to discuss
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the expediency of the first two suggestions.68 But the CMIC and the Worker Group were busy with far more than that on 25 February. A conference of representatives of the militaryindustrial committees initiated by Guchkov, which opened on 25 February in Troitskii Alley, helped escalate the mass movement. The leading role at the confer ence, whose official goal was to discuss the food supply issue, belonged, as Petrograd Mayor [gradonachalnik] Aleksandr Pavlovich Balk has indicated, to none other than Gvozdev. At 8 p.m., with Guchkovs permis sion, Anosovskii and Ostapenko called a meeting at the CMIC offices on Liteinyi Avenue, with the formal intent, again, of reviewing the food supply issue. At that meeting, aside from Kerensky and Skobelev, were people who had attended previous conferences held under the aegis of the Petrograd Union of Worker Consumer Societiessome fifty indi viduals in total, as evidenced by General Sergei Semenovich Khabalov, commander of the Petrograd Military District. This was evidently the command staff that had been created by the Worker Group to prepare for the 14 February demonstration and was used by Guchkov and Gvozdev to organize mass demonstrations on 2325 February. Khabalov heard from Globachev that the crowds act of insurrection was indubitably inspired by revolutionaries who had gathered in the CMIC building under the ostensible pretext of discussing the food supply issue but in essence to discuss the organization of unrest.69 The information received by the police accords well with intelligence from the opposing camp. Describing the 25 February meeting at the CMIC, I. Markov, a worker at the Arsenal factory with ties to the Worker Group, wrote, This was to all intents and purposes already a soviet of workers deputies, fashioned by the workers themselves even without prompting from the party centers. The demonstrators viewed the people at the meeting as their ringleaders: the Bolshevik Ivan Konstantinovich Mikhailov, who passed by the CMIC building on the evening of 25 Feb ruary, recalled them shouting, Here are our worker representatives, our comrades, hoorah! Later, the meeting on Liteinyi Avenue was dispersed by the police and twentyeight of its attendees arrested, over the protests of Tereshchenko, who had been called out on this occasion and remembers one of the detained workers merrily telling the rest: One more effort and we will have it! Just dont give in! No rankandfile participant in the Revolution would ever have said such things; this had to come from one of the organizers. Even so, only Anosovskii and Ostapenko continued to be held after questioning, while the other workers were released.70 The
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meeting attendees then went on to the Petrograd City Council, where they were joined by attendees of the conferences sponsored by the Petrograd Union of Worker Consumer Societies, including Volkov, a worker named Samodurov, Kerensky, and Skobelev. Although, as with other similar events, the formal goal of the session of the city council that began at 9 p.m. was to discuss the food supply, according to a police report, it assumed the character of the memorable revolutionary rallies of 1905. The Department of Police found a cor roborating witness in the oppositionist journalist E.P. Semenov, who recalled that the city council session was undoubtedly revolutionary and a portentous harbinger, if not the first voice, of the incipient Revolu tion. That session acquired its revolutionary spirit predominantly from the speeches made there by Gvozdevs supporters, with Volkov declaring that only if the contemporary order is democratized will it be possible to combat disarray in the food supply and Samodurov advising razing the contemporary machinery of state to its foundations.71 The extent of the workers revolutionary spirit was predicated on that of their patrons in the CMIC. According to Dmitrii Vladimirovich Filosofov, on the evening of 26 February, Konovalov made the rounds of the workers to organize the elections for the soviet of workers deputies. Then, having heard from the Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov about his negotiations with tsarist ministers on a compromise between the govern ment and the opposition, Konovalov exclaimed indignantly: What are you doing? The factories are electing deputies as we speak. We are on the eve of revolution, and youre trying to thwart it.72 The CMIC leadership was evidently planning for revolution and nothing but revolution. The Revolutions decisive day, 27 February, was decisive thanks to Guchkov and his confederates. The available data indicate that the CMIC leadership was responsible for initiating the mutiny of the Volhynia Regiment that erupted on the morning of that day. So, according to Ior danskii, the mutineers took their direction from Guchkovs military organization. As told by General Janin* and by Obolenskii, every soldier who participated in the 27 February mutiny, as well as in the mutiny of the Pavlovsk Regiment on the previous day, received a daily subsidy of 25 rubles from the revolutionary fund.73 While steering the mutineers,
*Head of the Extraordinary French Military Mission to the General Staff. Trans.
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the CMIC leadership was also directly inserting itself into the issue of who should hold power by promoting, on 27 February, the creation of a Provisional Committee of the State Duma and an Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers Deputies. N.V. Nekrasov was at the Tauride Palace from early in the morning of 27 February, telephoning the Duma deputies and inviting them to come and meet with him. Soon after the rebellious members of the Worker Group had been released from custody, Baron German Khristoforovich Maidel, the CMICs business manager, borrowing, as Iordanskii put it, either Guchkovs or Konovalovs vehicle, with his backers blessing, and ac companied by Gvozdev, made the rounds of the Petrograd factories to stir them up with the slogan Immediate Elections to the Soviet of Workers Deputies, as in 1905. The freed Gvozdev supporters headed for the CMIC, with the intent, as Novorusskii emphasized, of moving things along. B.O. Bogdanov, who now had the strength that had emerged onto the streets in his absence at his disposal, appealed to the CMICs community organizers [obshchestvennye deiateli], urging them all to go with him to the Duma. We have already seized power, he went on. But without you we will not be able to hold on to it. We will act together. The groups members and their supporters went to the Tauride Palace in the afternoon, thus breathing life into the idea behind the 14 February march. Influenced by that and encouraged by Nekrasov and his fellowthinkers, the deputies then took the first steps to revolution, by instituting a private conference that established a Duma Provisional Committee, which was presided over by Duma Chairman Mikhail Vladimirovich Rodzianko.74 On the evening of 27 February, Bogdanov, Gvozdev, and members of the Worker Group met in the Tauride Palace to form the Executive Com mittee of the Soviet of Workers Deputies, to which Konovalov, as the Kadet Prince Vladimir Andreevich Obolenskii recalls, offered the Budget Commissions office. Pressed by Guchkov, the Provisional Committee then summoned Chkheizde, chairman of the soviet, and Kerensky, his deputy, as a result of which Kerensky was added to the committee.75 Thus was the union of bourgeoisie and proletariat, which had formed within the framework of the CMIC prior to the Revolution, deepened. The CMIC leadership also played a prime role in resolving military issues, in that it organized the defense of the new power structure and the suppression of hotbeds of counterrevolution and helped settle conflicts between soldiers and their officers. Nekrasov allotted to the uprising command staff rooms 41 and 42 in his own offices and adjacent quarters
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in the Tauride Palace. Earlier, on 27 February, Guchkov had advised the deputies to form a military commission to defend the Duma against the government and to appoint Boris Aleksandrovich Engelgardt, a member of the Progressive Bloc, as its chairman and the engineer Petr Iakimovich Palchinskii as his deputy. Palchinskii was not a Duma deputy, but, being a fellowthinker and protg of Guchkov, he, as Colonel Filipp Ivanovich Balabin attests, to all intents and purposes headed the Military Commission.76 Thanks to Palchinskii, as early as 27 February, the Military Commis sion had sixty CMIC vehicles at its disposal, which cut sharply into the CMICs own automotive fleet. In fact, the CMIC Bureau resolved on 1 March to ask the Dumas Provisional Committee to order that the CMIC be provided with the necessary number of motor vehicles and horses. Meanwhile, the vehicles that had been transferred from the CMIC to the Military Commission on 27 February allowed the rebels to establish control over individual areas of Petrograd and agitate for the Duma to be transformed into a center of revolution. Armed soldiers and workers with, according to Rafes, ties to the Worker Group drove around the capital, shouting to the crowds, Go to the Tauride Palace and Go to the State Duma.77 Guchkovs de facto primacy in resolving military issues was given formal expression on 1 March, when he was appointed chairman of the Military Commission. As for Nekrasov, he continued providing technical aid to the Revolu tion from the Tauride Palace, where he stayed until 3 March and whence he issued instructions and held briefings by telephone, communicating in particular with the Petrograd telephone office and his representatives in various institutions. He also signed arrest orders, ordered the seizure of government agencies, and installed commissars in those agencies. In addition, Nekrasov was supervising A.A. Bublikov, who from 28 February on, as commissar of the Provisional Committee attached to the Ministry of Communications, controlled the movement of the trains carrying Nicholas II and General Nikolai Iudovich Ivanovs punitive detachment.* As General Ivanov has acknowledged, Bublikov followed those trains with particular attention, taking steps to delay [them] in locations appropriate thereto. Bublikovs confederates have stated out
*Nicholas II had appointed General Ivanov commander in chief of the Petrograd Military District with emergency powers when the February Revolution began. Trans.
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right that the two trains were delayed on orders from A.A. Bublikov.78 Through his supervision of Bublikov, Nekrasov was evidently carrying out Guchkovs plan, which entailed delaying Nicholas IIs journey so that he would be forced to abdicate. Not coincidentally, it would be Guchkov who accepted the tsars abdication, on 2 March in Pskov. Characteristically, a leading role in the Revolution belonged not only to the CMIC leadership but also to the CMIC as an institution. Accord ing to the memoirs of both Novorusskii and Obolenskii, on 27 February, many public figures, mainly representing the leftist intelligentsia of St Petersburg, gathered in the CMIC building. On the evening of 27 February, a conference of representatives of public organizations, includ ing the militaryindustrial committees, the zemstvo and urban unions, the Petrograd City Council, the public health trusteeships [sanitarnye popechitelstva], trusteeships of the poor, and so on meeting on CMIC premises, adopted a resolution that called on the lower chamber [of the DumaTrans.] to take charge of the Revolution. The conference attendees hailed the State Dumas official decision not to disband and its resolute determination to take power into its hands and expressed their hope that the Dumas Provisional Committee would meet with the concerted support of social organizations and would at long last give Russia an unqualified victory over the enemy without and within.79 This resolution, the first official document to express the publics solidarity with the Duma members by formally introducing the Provisional Com mittee, made the Duma the center of revolution in the eyes not only of the deputies but also of ordinary citizens. The CMIC was, naturally enough, behind the organization of in formation and propaganda for the Revolution. On the evening of 27 February, according to Zinadia Gippius, the idea of the Committee of Petrograd Journalists publishing izvestia was raised at 46 Liteinyi Avenue.80 Later, at a CMIC Bureau meeting on 1 March, it was de cided to telegram the local militaryindustrial committees on events transpiring in Petrograd, having first secured the approval of the Provisional Committee. The telegram, dated 1 March, informed the CMICs subordinate structures about the creation of the Provisional Committee and instructed them that its orders will be implicitly car ried out. At a meeting on 2 March, the bureau proposed the approval of a plan presented by Nikolai Fedorovich von Ditmar, to issue a CMIC proclamation with regard to events transpiring and to ensure its broadest possible dissemination.81 Thus, the CMICs involvement
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in the Revolution was not only as a major center of agitation but also as an organizational center. On the evening of 27 February, as Obolenskii recalls, meetings had been held in the CMIC building to discuss how to bring order to the city and feed the mutinous soldiers. As a result, on 28 Febru ary, the Committee for Military and Technical Assistance of the United Scientific and Technical Organizations, which had ties to the CMIC, issued two proclamations. The first, to the citizens, declared the main task of the hour to be the swiftest possible establishment of order on the streets. The second, to the students, suggested that their repre sentatives enlist in an organization to maintain order in Petrograd,82 with the result that a student militia was thereafter keeping Petrograds central districts in hand. Finally, the Provisional Government itself was an initiative of the CMIC and its leadership. As early as 27 February, Guchkov, accompa nied by Tereshchenko, informed Vladimir Nikolaevich Kokovtsov that the Duma was forming a government (although the official talks on that subject would not begin for another two days) with Tereshchenko as finance minister, a post he in fact occupied during the Provisional Governments first incarnation. Next, on 1 March, an official CMIC communiqu to the Provisional Committee announced (speaking of the necessity of forming a new government) that the country has need for the prompt organization of power.83 It says much that talks between the Provisional Committee and the Soviet Executive Committee began on 1 March and ended on 2 March with the formation of the Provisional Government. Thus, in the Revolutions decisive days (i.e., 2728 Febru ary), not only its technical but also its political headquarters were at 46 Liteinyi Avenue rather than at the Tauride Palace, to which the command staff finally moved only on 1 March, when Guchkov officially took charge of the Military Commission. But characteristically, even after that, the CMIC was the only institu tion that the Dumas Provisional Committee treated as its equal in status. On 2 March, when the CMIC Bureau petitioned the Provisional Commit tee to authorize the CMIC to hand out credentials permitting free move ment around Petrograd and allowing liaison with various institutions, as well as personal identification documents, a Provisional Committee resolution signed by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Karaulov on the very same day placed any documentation issued by the CMIC on a par with that issued by the Provisional Committee.84 This would evidently not have
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been the case had the CMIC not already been what Nikolaev called an auxiliary structure of the Provisional Committee. An examination of the February Revolutions key events shows that it resulted to a certain extent from the implementation of a plan for a coup dtat compiled by the Guchkov five and brought to life by the CMIC and the Worker Group. Other factors were inarguably in playincluding the Duma, the socialists (Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolu tionaries), the Masons, German agents, and human spontaneitybut all those factors, meaningful as they indubitably were, at times unconsciously developed along lines adumbrated by the CMIC leadership. Does this mean that the February Revolution was the outcome of a conspiracy organized by the CMIC? Yes and no. As Rafail Sholomonovich Ganelin has observed, the conspiratorial activity of oppositionist circles on the eve of February 1917 was being pursued so openly as to be called conspiratorial only for want of a better word.85 At the end of the day, it all depends on ones understanding of conspiracy and revolution. If conspiracy is associated with organization and revolution with spontane ity, then February 1917 was both a conspiracy and a revolution. But how justified are we in keeping those two concepts strictly apart? As noted at the beginning of this article, all revolutions without exception are based on a symbiosis of factors of organization and spontaneity, in consequence of which there will be conspiratorial aspects to the preparations for any revolution, even a revolution of the masses, whereas the implementation of any conspiracy, however wellplanned, will be accompanied by spontane ous excesses. Consequently, February 1917 was a revolution that resulted from a conspiracy, but a conspiracy of an unusual kind, organized not by clandestine but by legal structures (the CMIC and the Worker Group) that were not selfproclaimed but based on law, having been approved by the tsarist government in August 1915 and by the monarch in September of that year. This fact greatly complicated the fight waged by the Interior Ministry against the CMICs and the Worker Groups acts of revolutionary insurrection, especially since the official goal of those two bodies was to render aid to the army, which actually made that fight seem antipatriotic. If historians have mostly accepted the view of February 1917 as absolutely spontaneous, they have done so not after dispassionate study of the sources but primarily for political reasons. Already on 8 March 1917 Guchkov was validating the spontaneous version of the Febru ary Revolution by declaring that it had resulted not from some shrewd and crafty conspiracy, some criminal intrigue, the work of some masked
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conspirators but from spontaneous historical forces.86 What compelled Guchkov to pervert historical reality was the conviction, which he shared with the other standardbearers of the new order, that an admission that the Revolution had been organized rather than spontaneous would hinder its legitimization. To permit people to believe that a handful of conspirators inspired the revolutionary events would deprive those events of the halo that surrounded them as an expression of the popular will. The doubts of Alexander Blok, a friend of Tereshchenko, from whom the poet could have learned about what had happened behind the scenes during the February Revolution, are typical. Revolution assumes will, Blok wrote on 25 May 1917, but was it the action of will? So it was, on the part of a small handful of individuals. I do not know if it was a revolution.87 Such doubts tended to erode a revolutionary conscious ness whose preservation and reinforcement required that February be regarded as spontaneous. If the February Revolution had actually not resulted from the work of a group of conspirators, as had been seen to happen during the Young Turk or the Young Portuguese coup, that, in Guchkovs opinion, would guarantee its unshakable durability. This coup was not effected by people, he said, communicating the logic that compelled an interpreta tion of the revolution as a spontaneous event, and therefore cannot be undone by people.88 Guchkovs disavowal of the Young Turks revolution of 1908 and the Portuguese revolution of 1910, the first of which ended in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and the second in the replacement of a monarchy by a republic, obviously does not withstand serious criticism. Like its Eastern and European analogues, the Febru ary Revolution was an ordinary bourgeoisdemocratic revolution and therefore, like them, had indeed resulted from the work of a group of conspirators. This fact does not minimize its historical significance. The ideological constraints that burdened Soviet historians after 1917 hindered later dispassionate study of the links between Guchkovs plan and the February Revolution. As we know, even broaching the issue of how revolutionary an affluent man [tsenzovik] could be was deemed somewhat seditious in the USSR: from the viewpoint of communist ideologues, the only possible revolutionaries were the Bolsheviks, who claimed monopoly even over the bourgeois revolution, and the abstract mass of the peopleor, more precisely, the proletariat. Soviet researchers absolutized quotations from Lenin in their interpretations of the early twentiethcentury Russian bourgeoisie as a historically untenable class
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that, rather than striving toward revolution, thought only of how to avert revolution. According to a concept substantiated in a short Course in the history of the Communist party [Kratkii kurs istorii VKP(b)], two conspiracies, tsarist and bourgeois, existed on the eve of the February Revolution, though they never gelled into anything real. Valentin Semenovich Diakin has proven that neither plot existed in the form described by the authors of the twoconspiracy theory.89 The class paradigm did not permit So viet historians to venture beyond the bounds of the short Course, which strictly counterposed bourgeoisie to proletariat and denied even the possibility of their acting in concert, as actually happened in February 1917. However spurious the idea that the Bolsheviks played a leading role during the Second Revolution, a lack of desire to admit the obvi ous and to hand the laurels to the class enemy led to Soviet historians overenthusiastic affirmation of the Revolution as spontaneous, obscuring the significance of its true standardbearers. Examining the logic behind that motivation, Ganelin has written that Soviet historians recognized the February Revolution as a spontaneous event since, impossible as it may have been to claim Bolshevik leadership for the movement, a search for other leaders was impermissible.90 Western historians have been influenced not only by Soviet histori ography but also by migr memoirs, which have validated the thesis of the opposition leaders dissociation from the revolutionary movement and their unwilling involvement in it. However, the migr memoirists, including Guchkov, had their own reasons for downplaying the role of the affluent element in the monarchys overthrow, especially since they had been directly involved in the February Revolution, which found its logical culmination in the October Revolution. Guchkov and his con federates, as it turned out, were implicated not only in the monarchys overthrow butindirectly and, more important, unwittinglyin the collapse of bourgeois democracy and the installation of a totalitarian regime that they loathed. After the revolution escaped the control of Guchkov and his support ers and developed along lines entirely different from those that they had expected would lead to victory, some of them, naturally and all too humanly, tried to shift the blame for what had happened on the eve of and during tsarisms fall, downplaying their own role and foisting their miscalculations onto the spontaneity of people run amok. Iordanskii emphasized that the later development of the February Revolution
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made it particularly expedient for those who had been involved in the first military conspiracy to cover up their own revolutionary sins.91 The rightward swerve of the erstwhile bourgeois revolutionaries, horrified by what the genie that they had carelessly let out of its bottle had wrought, also played a role. Thus, paradoxical as this may seem, actors of opposing political sympathiesred and whitehad a vested interest in preserving inviolate the view of the February Revolution as spontaneous, which is certainly no reason to idolize that view as if it were a historiographical sacred cow. Notes
1. For further detail and a weighing of factors of organization and spontaneity relative to the history of the February Revolution, see O.N. Znamenskii, Sovetskie istoriki i sootnoshenii stikhiinosti i organizovannosti v Fevralskoi revoliutsii, in sverzhenie samoderzhaviia. sbornik statei (Moscow, 1970); and R.Sh. Ganelin, O proiskhozhdenii fevralskikh revoliutsionnykh sobytii 1917 g. v Petrograde, in problemy vsemirnoi istorii. sbornik statei v chest a.a. Fursenko (St. Petersburg, 2000). 2. P.N. Miliukov, istoriia vtoroi russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 2001), pp. 39, 41. 3. I.P. Leiberov, na shturm samoderzhaviia. petrogradskii proletariat v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny i Fevralskoi revoliutsii (iiul 1914mart 1917 g.) (Moscow, 1979). 4. Michael S. Melancon, Rethinking Russias February Revolution: Anonymous Spontaneity or Socialist Agency? Carl Beck papers in russian and east european studies (Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2000). 5. A.B. Nikolaev, Gosudarstvennaia duma v Fevralskoi revoliutsii: ocherki istorii (Riazan, 2002); Nikolaev, revoliutsiia i vlast: iV Gosudarstvennaia duma 27 fevralia3 marta 1917 g. (St. Petersburg, 2005). 6. E. Kheresh [Elisabeth Heresch], Kuplennaia revoliutsiia. tainoe delo parvusa (Moscow, 2004). See also I. Trauptman and G. Shisser, russkaia ruletka. nemetskie dengi dlia russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 2004). 7. S.P. Melgunov, na putiakh k dvortsovomu perevorotu. Zagovory pered revoliutsiei 1917 g. (Paris, 1931); N.N. Iakovlev, 1 avgusta 1914 (Moscow, 1993); O.A. Platonov, pokushenie na russkoe tsarstvo (Moscow, 2004). 8. R.A. Kulagin, Politicheskaia deiatelnost Tsentralnogo voenno promyshlennogo komiteta [TsVPK] (19151918), abstract of Candidate of History diss., St. Petersburg, 2001. See also M.F. Iurii, Istoriografiia burzhuaznykh voenno obshchestvennykh organizatsii perioda Pervoi mirovoi voiny, in Gosudarstvennye uchrezhdeniia i obshchestvennye organizatsii sssr. problemy, fakty, issledovaniia (Moscow, 1991). 9. L. Kheimson [Leopold Haimson], Problema politicheskoi i sotsialnoi stabilnost v gorodskoi Rossii nakanune voiny i revoliutsii: sovremennyi vzgliad, nestor, 2005, no. 3, Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii, 19051917, pp. 189, 190, 191. 10. A.B. Nikolaev, 27 fevralia 1917 g.: k voprosu o tsentrakh revoliutsii, in
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peterburgskaia istoricheskaia shkola. almanakh. pamiati V.i. startseva (St. Peters burg, 2002), pp. 239, 245. See also S.V. Kulikov, A.B. Nikolaev, Gosudarstvennaia duma v Fevralskoi revoliutsii: ocherki istorii (Riazan, 2002), Klio, 2003, no. 1, p. 242. 11. B.O. Bogdanov, Fragmenty vospominanii, in N.B. Bogdanova, Moi otets menshevik (St. Petersburg, 1994), p. 194. 12. A.D. Protopopov, Predsmertnaia zapiska. Avgust 1918, in Zakat imperii, ed. A.A. Iskenderov (Moscow, 2001), p. 557. 13. Rech voennogo i morskogo ministra, predsedatelia TsVPK A.I. Guchkova, in otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK 8 marta 1917 g. v aleksandrovskom zale petrogradskoi gorodskoi dumy (Petrograd, 1917), pp. 1718; Zh.M. Paleolog [MauriceGeorges Palologue], dnevnik posla (Moscow, 2003), pp. 33739. 14. B.V. Ananich et al., eds., iz arkhiva s.iu. Vitte. Vospominaniia. rasskazy v stenograficheskoi zapisi. rukopisnye zametk (St. Petersburg, 2003), vol. 1, p. 868. 15. S.P. Borisov, Borba bolshevikov protiv voenno-promyshlennykh komitetov (19151916) (Moscow, 1948); S.V. Tiutiukin, Rabochaia gruppa TsVPK nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, nauchnaia sessiia, posviashchennaia 50-letiiu sverzheniia samoderzhaviia v rossii, vol. 1: sotsialno-ekonomicheskie predposylki Fevralskoi revoliutsii v rossii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1967); M.F. Iurii, Mensheviki i rabo chie gruppy v voennopromyshlennykh komitetakh, in neproletarskie partii rossii v trekh revoliutsiiakh (Moscow, 1989). 16. M.V. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, istoriko-revoliutsionnyi biulleten, 1922, nos. 23, pp. 2728. 17. Rech predstavitelia sluzhashchikh Moskovskogo voennopromyshlennogo komiteta V.N. Pereverzeva, otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, p. 15. 18. A.G. Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadtsatogo goda. semnadtsatyi god. (Moscow, 1992), vol. 1: Kanun semnadtsatogo goda, pp. 122, 134. 19. Vystuplenie A.I. Konovalova, 17 fevralia 1917, in Gosudarstvennaia duma, 19061917. stenograficheskie otchety, ed. V.D. Karpovich (Moscow, 1995), vol. 4, p. 290. 20. Pechatnaia zapiska Departamenta politsii ot nachala marta 1916 g. o rabo chikh gruppakh pri voennopromyshlennykh komitetakh, in rabochee dvizhenie v gody voiny, comp. M.G. Fleer (Moscow, 1925), p. 277; Zaiavlenie Rabochei gruppy TsVPK. 3 dekabria 1915 g., in Mensheviki. doklady i materialy 19031917 gg., ed. S.V. Tiutiukin (Moscow, 1996), pp. 406, 408, 409. 21. M.G. Rafes, Moi vospominaniia, Byloe, 1922, no. 19, p. 179; R. Arskii, V Petrograde vo vremia voiny (Iz vospominanii), Krasnaia letopis, 1923, no. 7, p. 87; Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadtsatogo goda, vol. 1, p. 275; Bogdanov, Fragmenty vospominaniia, pp. 195, 196. 22. K istorii gvozdevshchiny. Biulleteni Rabochei gruppy TsVPK. Publikatsiia I.A. Menitskogo, Krasnyi arkhiv, vol. 67 (1934), pp. 41, 57, 58, 59, 81. 23. Obzor rabochego dvizheniia v Petrograde za noiabr 1915 g., sostavlennyi Departamentom politsii. 8 dekabria 1915 g., in rabochee dvizhenie v gody voiny, pp. 220, 221; Vystuplenie A.I. Konovalova, p. 293. 24. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, pp. 2728. 25. Pokazaniia A.I. Guchkova. 2 avgusta 1917 g., in padenie tsarskogo rezhima. stenograficheskie otchety doprosov i pokazanii, dannykh v 1917 g. v Chrezvychainoi
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sledstvennoi komissii Vremennogo pravitelstva, ed. P.E. Shchegolev (Moscow and Leningrad, 192427), vol. 6 (Moscow and Leningrad, 1926), pp. 262, 274, 278; A.I. Guchkov rasskazyvaet . . . Publikatsiia S.M. Liandresa i A.V. Smolina, Voprosy istorii, 1991, nos. 78, pp. 203, 205, 206; A.F. Kerenskii, rossiia na istoricheskom povorote (Moscow, 1996), pp. 137, 138. 26. Rech voennogo i morskogo ministra, predsedatelia TsVPK A.I. Guchkova, in otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, pp. 1718; N.I. Iordanskii, Voennoe vosstanie 27 fevralia. Zametki, Molodaia gvardiia, 1928, bk. 1, pp. 170, 171. 27. Doklad direktora Departamenta politsii ministru vnutrennikh del o pred polagaemoi demonstratsii 14 fevralia. Fevral 1917 g., in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii. sbornik dokladov, ed. B.B. Grave (Moscow and Leningrad, 1927), p. 174; N.A. Sokolov, Predvaritelnoe sledstvie 19191922 gg. Sostavitel L.A. Lykova, rossiiskii arkhiv, 1998, vol. 8, pp. 24243 (pokazaniia A.F. Keren skogo); P.N. Vrangel, Zapiski, noiabr 1916noiabr 1920 g. (Moscow, 1995), pt. 1, p. 7. 28. S.V. Kulikov, Revoliutsii neizmenno idut sverkhu . . . : padenie tsarizma skvoz prizmu elitistskoi paradigmy, nestor: zhurnal istorii i kultury rossii i Vostochnoi evropy, 2007, no. 11, p. 169. 29. E. Maevskii, uroki 1905 g. i revoliutsiia 1917 g. (Petrograd, 1917), pp. 1516, 16. 30. Politicheskoe polozhenie Rossii nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii v zhan darmskom osveshchenii. Publikatsiia M.N. Pokrovskogo, Krasnyi arkhiv, vol. 4 (1926), pp. 14, 28; Doklady Shtiumera Nikolaiu II, in Monarkhiia pered krusheniem, 19141917. Bumagi nikolaia ii i drugie dokumenty, ed. V.P. Semennikov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1927), p. 160; Iordanskii, Voennoe vosstanie 27 fevralia, p. 170. 31. E. Maevskii, Predislovie, in Kanun revoliutsii. iz istorii rabochego dvizheniia nakanune revoliutsii 1917 g. deiatelnost rabochego predstavitelstva pri tsVpK (po materialam), comp. Maevskii (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 6, 7; K istorii gvozdevshchiny, pp. 88, 90, 9192; Bogdanov, Fragmenty vospominaniia, pp. 198, 200; Zaiavlenie Rabochei gruppy TsVPK v Gosudarstvennuiu dumu. Konets oktiabria 1916 g., in Mensheviki. doklady i materialy, pp. 43738, 438. 32. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, pp. 27, 29. 33. Rafes, Moi vospominaniia, p. 179; Rezoliutsiia rabochei delegatsii na Soveshchanii oblastnykh voennopromyshlennykh komitetov, 1215 dekabria 1916 g., in Mensheviki. doklady i materialy, pp. 44243. 34. E.I. Omelchenko, Rabochaia gruppa TsVPK. Istoricheskii ocherk, izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 221, p. 3. 35. Zhurnal Soveshchaniia predstavitelei oblastnykh voennopromyshlennykh komitetov pri TsVPK, 14 dekabria 1916, izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 215, p. 4. 36. Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadtsatogo goda, vol. 2: semnadtsatyi god, pp. 29, 30, 31. 37. Doklad direktora Departamenta politsii, in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, p. 174. 38. Maevskii, Predislovie, p. 12; V ianvare i fevrale 1917 g. Iz donesenii sekretnykh agentov A.D. Protopopova. Publikatsiia P.E. Shchegoleva, Byloe, 1918, no. 13, p. 109; Bogdanov, Fragmenty vospominaniia, pp. 198, 200.
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39. Maevskii, Predislovie, p. 11. 40. Ot TsVPK, Kanun revoliutsii, p. 101; K.I. Globachev, Pravda o russkoi revoliutsii. Vospominaniia byvshego nachalnika Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia [Publikatsiia D. Deili (Jonathan W. Daly) i Z.I. Peregudovoi], Voprosy istorii, 2002, no. 7, p. 109, no. 8, pp. 6162. 41. V ianvare i fevrale 1917 g., p. 117; Doklad Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia ministru vnutrennikh del ob otnoshenii obshchestvennykh organizatsii k arestu rabochei gruppy, 31 ianvaria 1917 g.; Zapiska Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia o vozzvanii k obshchestvennym organizatsiiam po povodu aresta Rabochei gruppy (agentura Sharov), 2 fevralia 1917 g., in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, p. 184; Doneseniia L.K. Kumanina iz Ministerskogo paviliona Gosu darstvennoi dumy, dekabr 1911fevral 1917 g. Publikatsiia B.D. Galperinoi i V.V. Polikarpova, Voprosy istorii, 2000, nos. 45, p. 24. 42. Doklad direktora Departamenta politsii, in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, p. 180; P.N. Miliukov, Vospominaniia, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1990), vol. 2, p. 244; A.P. Stolypina, Chelovek poslednego tsaria. Stolypin. Vospominaniia, in p.a. stolypin v vospominaniikh docherei (Moscow, 2003), p. 108. Compare with R.Sh. Ganelin, Materialy po istorii Fevralskogo revoliutsii v Bakhmetevskom arkhive Kolumbiiskogo universiteta, otechestvennaia istoriia, 1992, no. 5, pp. 16263. 43. Rech predstavitelia sluzhashchikh Moskovskogo voennopromyshlennogo komiteta V.N. Pereverzeva, otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, p. 15. 44. Rafes, Moi vospominaniia, p. 180. 45. Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 16 fevralia 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 209, p. 2. 46. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, pp. 27, 29. 47. Lichnyi sostav voennopromyshlennykh komitetov, po 24 oktiabria 1915 g. (Petrograd, 1915), pp. 85, 8687; Zapiska Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdele niia ob otsenke momenta kadetami (agentura Tumanskii). 6 fevralia 1917 g., in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, p. 178. 48. T.K. Kondratev, Vospominaniia o podpolnoi rabote, Krasnaia letopis, 1923, no. 7, p. 63; B.B. Grave, K istorii klassovoi borby v rossii v gody imperialisticheskoi voiny, iiul 1914fevral 1917 g. proletariat i burzhuaziia (Moscow and Leningrad, 1926), pp. 38586. 49. M.V. Novorusskii, Iz razmyshlenii v Shlisselburge, Minuvshie gody, 1908, no. 3, p. 308. 50. Protokol doprosa N.N. Sukhanova, 26 ianvaria 1931 g., in Menshevistskii protsess 1931 g. sbornik dokladov, comp. A.L. Litvin (Moscow, 1999), vol. 2, p. 87. 51. V.B. Lopukhin, Zapiski byvshego direktora Departamenta Ministerstva inostrannykh del, Otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi natsionalnoi biblioteki, f. 1000 (otdelnykh postuplenii), op. 2, d. 765, l. 397; Zapiska Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia o nastroenii burzhuazii posle razgona dekabrskikh sezdov, 5 ianvaria 1917 g., in Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevralskoi revoliutsii, p. 165; Zapis besedy s N.S. Chkheidze, in russkie masony i revoliutsiia, ed. B.I. Nikolaevskii (Moscow, 1990), p. 88; S.P. Mansyrev, Moi vospominaniia o Gosudarstvennoi dume, in strana gibnet segodnia. Vospominaniia o Fevralskoi revoliutsii 1917 g., comp. S.M. Iskhakov (Moscow, 1991), p. 97; N.V. Savich, Vospominaniia (St. Petersburg and
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Dsseldorf, 1993), pp. 211, 290; B.N. Voeikov, s tsarem i bez tsaria. Vospominaniia poslednego dvortsovogo komendanta gosudaria imperatora nikolaia ii (Moscow, 1994), p. 111. 52. Savich, Vospominaniia, pp. 210, 212, 290. 53. Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 3 marta 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 209, p. 1. 54. Rech voennogo i morskogo ministra, predsedatelia TsVPK A.I. Guchkova, in otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, pp. 1718; A.I. Verkhovskii, na trudnom perevale (Moscow, 1959), pp. 22728. 55. S. Dmitrievskii, Vse dlia pobedy, izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 208, p. 2. 56. N. Volkovysskii, Voennopromyshlennye komitety i spasenie Rodiny, izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 247, p. 1. 57. Globachev, Pravda o russkoi revoliutsii, p. 6. 58. A.V. Obolenskii, Moi vospominaniia, Vozrozhdenie, vol. 48 (1955), p. 103. 59. D.U. Biukenen [George William Buchanan], Moia missiia v rossii. Vospominaniia angliiskogo diplomata, 19101918 (Moscow, 2006), p. 237 (compare with V.Ia. Laverychev, po tu storonu barrikad. iz istorii borby moskovskoi burzhuazii s revoliutsiei [Moscow, 1967], pp. 161, 170). 60. L.L. Vasilchikova, ischeznuvshaia rossiia. Vospominaniia, 18861919 (St. Petersburg, 1995), p. 356. 61. Rech ministra finansov M.I. Tereshchenko, otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, p. 22. 62. Ministr N.V. Nekrasov v Moskve, utro rossii, 1917, no. 75; E.N. Burd zhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia. Vosstanie v petrograde (Moscow, 1967), p. 79 (pokazaniia M.I. Tereshchenko). 63. I.I. Milchik, rabochii Fevral (Moscow and Leningrad, 1931), p. 61; Obo lenskii, Moi vospominaniia, p. 104; Biukenen, Moia missiia v rossii, p. 242. 64. Rech predstavitelia sluzhashchikh Moskovskogo voennopromyshlennogo komiteta V.N. Pereverzeva, otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, p. 15. 65. Protopopov, Predsmertnaia zapiska, p. 562. 66. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, pp. 28, 29; E.F. Rodzianko, Dobavlenie k knige Krushenie Imperii M.V. Rodzianko, in M.V. Rodzianko, Krushenie imperii i Gosudarstvennaia duma i Fevralskaia 1917 g. revoliutsiia ([Valley Cottage, NY: Multilingual Typesetting], 1986), p. 337. 67. Milchik, rabochii Fevral, p. 60; E.I. Kashchevskaia, Bolnichnaia kassa Putilovskogo zavoda, in V ogne revoliutsionnykh boev (Moscow, 1967), p. 190; N.N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii (Moscow, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 55, 56, 62; Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadtsatogo goda, vol. 1, p. 141. See also Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia, p. 133; Leiberov, na shturm samoderzhaviia, pp. 117, 155, 203, 204, 216; and I.P. Leiberov and S.D. Rudachenko, revoliutsiia i khleb (Moscow, 1990), p. 92. 68. Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK. 25 fevralia 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 209. p. 4. 69. Dopros generala S.S. Khabalova, 22 marta 1917, in padenie tsarskogo rezhima (Leningrad, 1924), vol. 1, pp. 188, 194; Gibel tsarskogo Petrograda. Fevralskaia revoliutsiia glazami gradonachalnika A.P. Balka. Publikatsiia V.G.
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Bortnevskogo i V.Iu. Cherniaeva, russkoe proshloe, vol. 1 (1991), p. 42; Donesenie Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia v MVD o zasedanii Peterburgskogo komiteta RSDRP(b), 25 fevralia 1917 g.; Donesenie nachalnika Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia v MVD o sobytiiakh v stolitse, 26 fevralia 1917 g., in Fevralskaia revoliutsiia 1917 g. sbornik dokladov i materialov, comp. O.A. Shashkov (Moscow, 1996), pp. 58, 60. 70. K. Markov, Kak proizoshla revoliutsiia (zapis rabochego), Volia rossii, 1927, pt. 3, p. 96; I.K. Mikhailov, Agitatsiia protiv voiny, in V gody podpolia. sbornik vospominanii, 1910fevral 1917 g. (Moscow, 1964), p. 296. See also Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia, p. 159. 71. E.P. Semenov, Fevralskie i martovskie dni 1917 g., istoricheskii vestnik (March 1917), pp. 9, 10; Donesenie nachalnika Petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia v MVD o sobytiiakh v Petrogradskoi gorodskoi dume 25 fevralia 1917 g., in Fevralskaia revoliutsiia 1917, pp. 51, 53, 54, 55, 56. 72. V.A. Maklakov, Kanun revoliutsii, novyi zhurnal, vol. 14 (1946), p. 312; Filo sofov, D.V. Dnevnik. Publikatsiia B.I. Kolonitskogo, Zvezda, 1992, no. 1, p. 195. 73. Iordanskii, Voennoe vosstanie 27 fevralia, pp. 170, 171; Obolenskii, Moi vospominaniia, p. 102; Kheresh, Kuplennaia revoliutsiia, p. 236. 74. Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, p. 30; Pokazaniia A.I. Guchkova, pp. 262, 263; Iordanskii, Voennoe vosstanie 27 fevralia, p. 169; A.F. Kerenskii, russkaia revoliutsiia, 1917 (Moscow, 2005), p. 20; Protokol sobytii Fevralskoi revoliutsii, 27 fevralia4 marta 1917, in Fevralskaia revoliutsiia 1917, p. 112; Iz sledstvennykh del N.V. Nekrasova 1921, 1931 i 1939 gg. Publikatsiia V.V. Polikarpova, Voprosy istorii, 1998, nos. 1112, p. 20; Doneseniia L.K. Kumanina, Voprosy istorii, 2000, no. 6, pp. 30, 31. 75. S.D. Mstislavskii, piat dnei. nachalo i konets Fevralskoi revoliutsii (Mos cow, 1922), p. 13; Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromyshlennnogo komiteta, p. 29; E.P. Bennigsen, Pervye dni Fevralskoi revoliutsii, Vozrozhdenie, vol. 33 (1954), p. 120; Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, p. 76. 76. Verkhovskii, na trudnom perevale, p. 212; Protokol doprosa F.I. Balabina, in Ia.Iu. Tinchenko, Golgofa russkogo ofitserstva v sssr, 19301931 gg. (Moscow, 2000), pp. 317, 318. 77. Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 1 marta 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 208, p. 7; Rafes, Moi vospominaniia, pp. 185, 186; I.A. Garaevskaia, petr palchinskii. Biografiia inzhenera na fone voin i revoliutsii (Moscow, 1996), p. 60. 78. Deiatelnost A.A. Bublikova, izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 208, p. 4; A.A. Bublikov v Moskve (beseda), utro rossii, 1917, no. 75; Protokol sobytii Fevralskoi revoliutsii, pp. 116, 117; Iz sledstvennykh del N.V. Nekrasova, p. 20; Kerenskii, russkaia revoliutsiia, pp. 4849. 79. Velikie dni rossiiskoi revoliutsii 1917 g. Fevral: 27 i 28-go. Mart: 1, 2, 3, i 4-go (Petrograd, 1917), p. 5; Novorusskii, Rabochaia gruppa Voennopromysh lennnogo komiteta, p. 30; V.A. Obolenskii, Moia zhizn. Moi sovremenniki (Paris, 1988), pp. 515, 516. 80. Z.N. Gippius, Peterburgskie dnevniki, 19141919, in Zhivye litsa. stikhi. dnevniki (Tbilisi, 1991), vol. 1, p. 288. 81. Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 1 marta 1917 g.; Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 1 marta 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 208, pp. 7, 8.
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82. Velikie dni rossiiskoi revoliutsii, p. 17. 83. TsVPKVremennomu komitetu Gosudarstvennoi dumy, 1 marta 1917 g., Russian State Historical Archive, f. 1278 (Gosudarstvennaia duma), op. 5, d. 1252, l. 3; izvestiia Komiteta petrogradskikh zhurnalov, 1917, 2 marta; V.N. Kokovtsov, iz moego proshlogo. Vospominaniia 19031919 gg. (Moscow, 1992), vol. 2, p. 341. 84. Khronika. Pravila vydachi udostoverenii: Zhurnal zasedaniia Biuro TsVPK, 2 marta 1917 g., izvestiia tsVpK, 1917, no. 208, pp. 7, 8. 85. Ganelin, O proiskhozhdenii fevralskikh revoliutsionnykh sobytii, p. 173. 86. Rech voennogo i morskogo ministra, predsedatelia TsVPK A.I. Guchkova, in otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, pp. 1718. 87. A.A. Blok, sobranie sochinenii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1963), vol. 7: avtobiografiia, 1915, dnevniki. 19011921, p. 255. 88. Rech voennogo i morskogo ministra, predsedatelia TsVPK A.I. Guchkova, in otchet o torzhestvennom zasedanii tsVpK, p. 18. 89. V.S. Diakin, russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (19141917) (Leningrad, 1967), pp. 274, 304, 31011. 90. Ganelin, O proiskhozhdenii fevralskikh revoliutsionnykh sobytii, p. 178. 91. Iordanskii, Voennoe vosstanie 27 fevralia, pp. 171, 172.
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russian studies in history

Revolutions Invariably Come from Above

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

russian studies in history

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