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Порталус

Russia's Provisional Government and World War I

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Imperial Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188913254


Could the Provisional Government have survived if it had pulled Russia out of World War I?

Viewpoint: Yes. The hardships of war turned public opinion against the Provisional Government and precipitated its fall.

Viewpoint: No. Even without the war, the Provisional Government would have been unable to maintain the broad range of political support it needed to stay in power and institute the reforms demanded by the Russian people.

_________________________


The reasons for the collapse of the Provisional Government in November 1917 and its replacement by Bolshevik rule are the subject of a contentious debate among historians of revolutionary Russia. After the fall of the tsarist government in March of that year, the largely self-appointed Provisional Government took temporary charge of national affairs, expressing its commitment to the full democratization of Russia and implementing important reforms in justice and civil liberties. It also continued Russian involvement in World War I. Like its tsarist predecessor, however, the Provisional Government could not mobilize the troops, gather the resources, or marshal the people's resolve to prevail against Germany and its allies. By late 1917 the Provisional Government had lost much of its legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian people and was easily replaced by a communist regime that promised to end Russian participation in the conflict.
For some historians of the Russian Revolution, the failure of the Provisional Government to take Russia out of the war was fatal to its survival. The continuing war exacerbated urban living conditions, sacrificed Russian men for what was widely seen as the imperialist goals of the Old Regime, and increased the popularity of the government's radical, antiwar opponents. These factors compromised the Provisional Government to the point where few could foresee any greater benefit from it than they could from the prospect of Bolshevik rule.
For other scholars, however, withdrawing Russian troops from the war in 1917 would have had little effect on the fate of the Provisional Government. They point out that this move would not have addressed other major issues--such as land redistribution, political reform, and social change--that also helped to propel the Bolsheviks to power.



Viewpoint: Yes. The hardships of war turned public opinion against the Provisional Government and precipitated its fall.

The collapse of the tsar's regime from the strains of World War I was surprising to many commentators; the imperial government was centuries old and had weathered many potentially lethal crises before. Since the stress of waging war was tremendous enough to topple the tsar, then it should be no surprise that it could bring about the collapse of a new government groping to find its way. Faced with major battlefield defeats, dangerously strained supply lines and infrastructure, and the occupation of huge expanses of Russian territory by German and Austro-Hungarian armies, the Provisional Government made a major mistake when it decided to continue the war against the Central Powers, providing the opportunity for the Bolsheviks to seize power in November 1917.

When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917, it was entirely possible that the Provisional Government would survive. The Bolsheviks were only a tiny faction in Russian political life. Most of their leaders were in exile, and they had virtually no support among the Russian people. Moreover, according to orthodox Marxists (including many Bolsheviks), the conditions for a socialist revolution were not evident in Russia. For centuries the Russian government had been essentially a somewhat modernized version of a medieval warrior state. Despite important reforms and improvements during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the modernization of Russia remained incomplete when World War I began in 1914.

Its underdevelopment in comparison to the major powers of Europe hurt Russia in World War I; yet, by 1917, all the combatants were suffering from the strains of waging war. In the previous year, battles at Verdun (February-July 1916) and the Somme (July-November 1916) on the Western Front had each claimed around a million lives. In the spring and summer of 1917, the rank-and-file soldiers in the French army staged a series of mutinies, refusing to go on the offensive. Austria, with a new emperor after the death of Franz Josef in November 1916, was constrained politically and militarily to follow Germany even as its empire was falling into disarray. Germany was sliding into military dictatorship and chronic economic deprivation; in late 1916 its military leaders planned to draft much of the civilian population for war-related labor. Seen in this context, it is not so shocking that the war could cause the collapse of the tsarist government and its provisional successor.

During the first two years of the war, Russia had had some military successes, including notable victories over Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The demands of waging war drained the Russian economy and revealed the limitations of the Russian production and transportation systems. The human cost alone was substantial. Over the course of the entire war, Russia mobilized 12 million men, of whom some 1.7 million were killed and 4.9 million were wounded. This army was more a collection of men than an army in the modern sense. All the combatants in World War I suffered shortages and supply problems, but the Russian army was provided equipment, armaments, and supplies at especially low levels. It was not uncommon for Russian soldiers to be sent to the front without weapons, having been told to arm themselves with the rifles of the fallen. In 1915 one-third of the Russian infantry went into action without rifles. Munitions were seriously lacking. By April 1915 field artillery units could fire just two rounds per day. Many of these shortfalls were partly alleviated by imports from Britain and France, but their delivery had to come via Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in the remote north or Vladivostok on the even more distant Pacific. Because the British and French were experiencing shortages of their own, the supplies they sent to Russia never approximated the quality or quantities pledged, let alone what the Russians needed. In 1916 the Russian general staff estimated that fewer than half its orders for supplies from the Allies had been met. Some orders were filled with worn-out or obsolete equipment. American munitions and financing, which played a leading role in supplying Britain and France, were not made available to Russia.

Even if the Allies had fully met their obligations to the Russians, these imports still would not have met all Russia's needs. The antiquated Russian economy and transportation infrastructure were incapable of supplying all the urban centers and rural towns of Russia. The collapse of the monarchy in March 1917 was directly precipitated by food riots in the capital, which were a response to bread shortages and occurred without any political organization. What Russia needed above all was an end to the strains of war and time to rebuild and recover from the damage already done. The country had no other option for the preservation of domestic order.

Probably the single worst decision the Provisional Government could have made in spring 1917 was to remain committed to the war. In 1917, as in 1915 and 1916, no belligerent would have been able to claim a decisive military victory. At the urging of its suffering Western Allies, the Russian Provisional Government maintained what pressure it could on the Germans in the East, despite the unpopularity of the war. Indeed, in May 1917, when the Provisional Government revealed that it intended to follow through in pursuing the principal tsarist war aims--the annexation of Constantinople and the Turkish Straits--the public outcry was so intense that the moderate ministers of foreign affairs and war, Pavel Miliukov and Aleksandr Guchkov, were forced to resign. Despite public opposition, their remaining colleagues ordered a major attack against German positions in July.

The offensive was a catastrophe and destroyed any hope that the Provisional Government would survive. The Russian attack opened in Galicia on 1 July and made some progress, capturing eighteen thousand Austro-Hungarian troops. The Russian Eighth Army, under General Lavr Kornilov, advanced about fifteen miles, a development so significant that it alarmed the German command and provoked a German shift southward. By the third week of the offensive, however, German troops were counterdeployed, and all Russian movement came to a halt, leaving the Russians with some fifty-eight thousand casualties. Although relatively mild by World War I standards, these losses were particularly costly because these troops had had the highest morale, competence, and reliability in the Russian Army. The defeat proved to many that the Provisional Government was as incapable of fighting a modern war as its tsarist predecessor had been. After this loss, rank-and-file Russian troops began refusing to attack, a problem that worsened as troops involved in the first three weeks of the campaign were replaced with radicalized troops from the Petrograd garrison. The German counterattack was devastating. On 22 July three German machine-gun companies (at most five hundred men) routed two whole Russian divisions (about thirty thousand men). By 23 July the Russian Army had ceased to resist in any meaningful manner, and the Germans could advance essentially at will. The history of the Russian Army over the next several months was one of steady disintegration, as hundreds of thousands of troops--brutalized by combat--deserted. They left the front and returned to their homes, usually taking their weapons and radical politics with them.

The July Offensive had a devastating effect on Russian domestic affairs. The wave of desertions left Russia vulnerable to German advances, and the inevitable peace settlement was likely to be harsh. The disaffected officer corps, much of which was victimized by deserters and other radicalized troops, largely turned against the Provisional Government and its democratic ideology. Appointed army commander in chief in late July, Kornilov was prepared to lead military units into the capital in August. Although he probably did not intend to depose the Provisional Government, as many alleged at the time and later, the plan simultaneously discredited one of the greatest Russian commanders and energized other officers to advocate a military solution to the growing social turmoil. The radicalized urban populations became ever more alienated and more willing to follow the extreme politics of the Bolsheviks. The arming of many Petrograd workers to resist Kornilov (in a battle that did not take place) strengthened the radicals, and their zeal to defend democracy increased their prestige. Originally a mix of more-moderate socialists, the urban soviets of workers' deputies became increasingly Bolshevik in composition and leadership. In September the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, as well as those of several other important cities, came under Bolshevik control. The peasants also became increasingly bold and rebellious, partly as a consequence of radicalized soldiers returning from the front to their native villages and partly because of the general collapse of government authority in the provinces. Between the July Offensive and October 1917, peasants seized three times as many estates as they had in the four months following the tsar's abdication in March.

The diversion of the Provisional Government's attention to the fight against the Germans combined with the collapse of the Russian Army to create the conditions that the Bolsheviks exploited to seize power in November. Because the Provisional Government felt honor bound to carry on the war it had inherited from the tsar, it squandered its opportunity to preserve itself by addressing Russia's crying domestic needs. While the government focused on war, the Bolshevik slogan of "peace, land, and bread" resonated across Russia. The Provisional Government failed to see that its first priority was its own survival at home. Instead of serving Russia, it chose to serve the tsar's legacy and impaled itself on his foreign policy.

-- Phil Giltner, Albany Academy


Viewpoint: No. Even without the war, the Provisional Government would have been unable to maintain the broad range of political support it needed to stay in power and institute the reforms demanded by the Russian people.

The Provisional Government that stepped into the political vacuum caused by the February 1917 Revolution and the collapse of imperial rule had few chances of surviving in the deeply polarized environment of post-tsarist Russia. The most inauspicious omen of its eventual downfall was the adjective provisional in its name (or in a closer translation of the original Russian, temporary). Chosen to denote the time horizon of the new government, the word at the same time undermined the new government's legitimacy. There were several crucial issues and decisions that rendered the Provisional Government highly vulnerable and eventually unsustainable. The decision to continue the war against the Central Powers was only one ingredient in an overall self-defeating formula. Amid the intoxicating sense of freedom resulting from the collapse of tsarism, the new regime instituted reforms hastily and without an overall plan. It did not make history on the terms of its choosing, but its leaders made choices (and blunders) that seriously compromised the prospects of the Provisional Government. Neither the deteriorating fortunes of the Russian military nor the increasing popularity of the Bolsheviks--with their slogan of "peace, land, and bread"--suffices on its own to explain why another revolution had to take place only eight months after the first. Removing one of these factors might indeed have produced fundamentally different historical results. Monocausal interpretations are often hard to resist, but they oversimplify complex historical forces. To claim that the Provisional Government could have survived by leaving the alliance against the Central Powers and ending its participation in the war would make sense only if the main reason for that government's loss of popularity, delegitimization, and eventual downfall lay on the military front.

Clearly the situation was far more complex. The Provisional Government assumed power on a wave of popular exaltation and optimism about Russia's future. Its rising star, Aleksandr Kerensky, remained phenomenally popular until well into the summer of 1917, in spite of a growing disillusionment with the regime's capacity to solve the everyday problems that continued to plague the country--a dissatisfaction that intensified in the aftermath of abortive military initiatives and domestic political divisions. With the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March and the assumption of power by the new cabinet under Prince Georgii Lvov, there was widespread optimism that the new republican system, based on the participation of a wide range of bourgeois political forces and the tentative toleration of the soviets, would accelerate the pace of domestic reform and deliver on promises of social justice.

After an auspicious start in March--when the government established a series of civil rights unprecedented in Russian history and granted amnesty to all political prisoners of the old regime--the situation was complicated by the strange state of dualism in the political structures of the new regime. In late February 1917 soviets (which had first appeared in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution as the model for the self-organization of the proletariat) were established across the country. The Petrograd soviet became the most significant and powerful representative of the soviet movement, emerging as a crucial political player in the new postrevolutionary balance of power. Countrywide coordination of the soviets was thus located in the capital, in close geographic and political proximity to the other two significant centers of power: the Duma (parliament) and the Provisional Government itself. The soviets extended an initial vote of confidence to Lvov's cabinet in return for the implementation of a program of radical socio-economic reform, which included the election of a Constituent Assembly by universal secret ballot, full amnesty for political prisoners, freedom of speech and strikes, abolition of class restrictions, creation of a national militia force to replace the hated tsarist police, and free elections for municipalities. While some of these demands were met immediately, other reforms remained largely on paper or were delayed.

By late March the first cracks in the allegedly united front of the government and the soviets had started to appear. The issue of participation in the war produced divisions that ran through the whole political spectrum of postrevolutionary Russia. Even the Bolsheviks were initially unwilling to commit themselves to a definite, immediate exit strategy. Within the government, some moderate voices wanted to continue the war while rejecting the imperialist agenda of annexing Constantinople and the Turkish Straits. Inside Lvov's cabinet, however, more-extreme militaristic views were also highly influential, seeking the restoration of the country's wounded prestige on the battlefield. It took the government until the beginning of May to clarify its position; it favored a just peace and national self-determination; yet, it was also poised to fight the Central Powers in order to recover the losses of the previous three years. By May, however, the domestic political situation had changed dramatically. Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavel Miliukov had taken the initiative to inform the Entente powers that Russia would continue the war and honor the imperial war aims at a time that soviet agitation for an early exit was growing by the day. "Order Number One" of the soviets had already been issued, encouraging the creation of soldiers' councils in every military unit and a more-democratic system of decision-making in the armed forces. Miliukov's initiative led to a wave of demonstrations against the government in early May 1917, dealing the first blow to its legitimacy. A new cabinet--still under Lvov but without the discredited Miliukov and other moderates who supported his position--was formed. This cabinet embarked on an increasingly desperate damage-limitation exercise. Trying to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable, it vowed to continue fighting while paying lip service to peace and social justice. The promotion of Kerensky and several prominent, moderate soviet leaders was a huge boost of legitimacy for the government, as it could claim success in terms of promoting a genuine political unity.

As war minister, Kerensky used his popularity to order a new offensive against the Central Powers and to institute measures to restore discipline in the armed forces. He embarked on a tour of the frontline troops, gave many passionate speeches, and attempted to reverse the increasingly radicalized mood among soldiers. His decision, however, to install commissars to supervise the soldier councils caused further agitation within the units and afforded new space for soviet (and Bolshevik) agitation against the government. The disastrous results of the June offensive and the devastation wrought by the German counterattack intensified degenerative tendencies within the army and enhanced the appeal of the Bolshevik call for immediate peace. At this point, Lvov's strategy of avoiding harsh measures against the soviets and their representatives in the army came under intense criticism from the more-conservative forces of the new political establishment and the army high command itself. It was rapidly becoming evident that the initial unity between the government and the soviets was ideologically untenable and about to implode.

Kerensky was still the only person who could uphold the vision of unity between government and people, using his dual identity as prominent member of the Petrograd soviet and high-profile minister of the Provisional Government. In early July a largely spontaneous wave of popular discontent in the capital led to violent clashes. The government made scapegoats of the most radical elements of the soviet movement--namely, the Bolsheviks. In the aftermath of these July Days the whole party was outlawed, and its leadership was forced once again to go underground, with Vladimir Lenin leaving the country for Finland. Unwilling to authorize direct measures and violent remedies, Lvov resigned; he was replaced as prime minister by Kerensky, a move that appeared to be the optimal solution to the crisis of legitimacy. Kerensky was still a highly respected soviet member and was considered a reliable government minister.

Trying to hold a meaningful middle ground between the increasing militancy of the Bolsheviks and the equally growing reactionary conservatism of the rightist forces pleased nobody, however, and eventually deprived Kerensky and his cabinet of their legitimacy. As the Bolshevik leadership became identified with an antiwar strategy, Kerensky's government was weakened and left largely defenseless inside the walls of the Winter Palace. In a desperate attempt to retain some of the revolutionary legacy of his regime, he turned against the new army commander in chief, General Lavr Kornilov (whom he had appointed), accusing him of a counterrevolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the Provisional Government. The scheme--albeit successful in the sense that the general was arrested--backfired. It strengthened the resolve of rightist forces to oppose Kerensky--or, at least, not to defend him. On the Left, even the removal of Kornilov was not enough to convince radical soviet elements that Kerensky's increasingly "imperial" style of rule was not a prelude to a personal dictatorship. The role of the Left in organizing defensive forces against a potential military coup strengthened its resolve, and it armed many of its sympathizers. The survival of the Provisional Government had become inextricably tied to Kerensky's political fate, and discrediting Kerensky, which reached its height in early autumn, presaged the end of the government.

The differences between Left and Right with regard to war had become unbridgeable. The militancy of workers and soldiers across the country--and particularly in Petrograd--was escalating and by no means under control, even by the more radical Bolshevik leadership. A loss of initiative plagued Kerensky's cabinet during the summer and the autumn of 1917, delivering the Provisional Government to the wrath of rightist and leftist opposition forces alike. The continuation of the war turned soldiers, peasants, and workers against the government and divided the political forces of the post-February national unity.

While the commitment to continue the war was undoubtedly a disastrous investment for the leaders of the Provisional Government, a complete withdrawal may not have been an option for Kerensky and his government. Evidently, there was no real consensus on the issue of Russia's continued participation in, or withdrawal from, the war. The compromise formula of continuing in view of achieving a just peace was good enough so long as radical leftist elements did not begin agitating in favor of complete, immediate withdrawal. This position remained marginally effective until the beginning of the summer. From that point onward, however, the political framework shifted. Becoming increasingly polarized, the prowar and antiwar camps demanded a clear choice. The unwillingness of the Provisional Government to favor either side's solution--and thus burn the bridges to the opposing camp--was perhaps laudable in the context of seeking maximum consensus; but it was also shortsighted and fundamentally unsustainable. Russia, which Lenin had called the "freest country in the world," had unleashed suppressed forces that were irreconcilable. Differences of opinion with regard to the war issue were not simply a matter of Left versus Right. They split political parties, state institutions, and the government down the middle. No consensus could ever be achieved. Had Kerensky decided to withdraw, he would have still faced the wrath of the rightist forces--and a coup that would have overthrown his government even earlier than the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917.

For Kerensky's Provisional Government to have survived simply through withdrawal from the war, it would have had to take firm action against monarchists, rightists, and the moderates who favored continuing war in order to secure a just peace. The exact opposite is also plausible; the government could have continued to pursue the imperial war aims if it had been able to crush the militancy of the Bolsheviks and the increasing interventionism of the soviets. Either scenario was fundamentally incongruous with the rationale of the Provisional Government, violating the national unity that Lvov and Kerensky were so intent on maintaining--if only on the level of appearances--and that even moderate leaders of the soviet (Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and some Bolsheviks) were unwilling to sacrifice until the final hours before the Bolshevik takeover.

Any repressive action would have to have been taken immediately after the overthrow of the monarchy and would, in any case, have resulted in a situation of near civil war. In the crucial transitional period of March-April 1917, however, the exhilaration caused by the February Revolution--as well as the hesitation of radical leftist leaders to come out clearly in favor of an immediate withdrawal from the war--thwarted this prospect. By the time definite lines were drawn and the political abyss that separated the forces of the February revolutionary bloc was exposed, compromise and national unity were no longer meaningful political options.

In the end, the Provisional Government existed as an awkward interregnum, sustained by the positive momentum that had been unleashed in February 1917 and prolonged only because the new political forces were initially unsure of what they wanted to achieve and how. Few people saw the Provisional Government as anything more than an interlude that afforded time for reorganization; almost nobody (apart from Kerensky) was seriously committed to it as a stable solution in the long term. The tactical short-term restraint of rightist forces, the disorganization inside the ranks of the Bolsheviks, and the dogmatic inflexibility of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (who, having taken Karl Marx's doctrine literally, were willing to accept a period of bourgeois rule as the "second stage" of revolution before the final empowerment of the proletariat) afforded the Provisional Government a political space largely by default. Mistakes and miscalculations aside (and they were many), Kerensky could not have averted the polarization that undermined his legitimacy and that of his cabinet. The issue of war was significant in itself, but it constituted a secondary phenomenon, not a cause, of the government's collapse. The survival of the Provisional Government in the extraordinary circumstances of post-tsarist Russia necessitated a showdown, a taking of sides, and an eventual jettisoning of the initial formula of consensus. Only a different government--freed from the burden of maintaining national unity and from the indecisiveness of Lvov and Kerensky--might have been able to sustain its existence. And even if it had withdrawn Russian troops from the war, its survival would have been by no means guaranteed.

-- Aristotle Kallis, Lancaster University


KERENSKY'S ORDERS TO THE ARMY

On 20 June 1917 Minister of War Aleksandr Kerensky ordered a new Russian offensive against the Germans on the Eastern Front, attempting at the same time to convince the troops that continuing to fight was in the best interest of all the Russian people:

Russia, having thrown off the chains of slavery, has firmly resolved to defend, at all costs, its rights, honor, and freedom. Believing in the brotherhood of mankind, the Russian democracy appealed most earnestly to all the belligerent countries to stop the war and conclude a peace honorable to all. In answer to our fraternal appeal, the enemy has called on us to play the traitor. Austria and Germany have offered us a separate peace and tried to hoodwink us by fraternization, while they threw all their forces against our allies, with the idea that after destroying them, they would turn on us. Now that he is convinced that Russia is not going to be fooled, the enemy threatens us and is concentrating his forces on our front.

Warriors, our country is in danger! Liberty and revolution are threatened. The time has come for the army to do its duty. Your Supreme Commander [General Brusilov], beloved through victory, is convinced that each day of delay merely helps the enemy, and that only by an immediate and determined blow can we disrupt his plans. Therefore, in full realization of my great responsibility to the country, and in the name of its free people and its Provisional Government, I call upon the armies, strengthened by the vigor and spirit of revolution, to take the offensive.

Let not the enemy celebrate prematurely his victory over us! Let all nations know that when we talk of peace, it is not because we are weak! Let all know that liberty has increased our might.

Officers and soldiers! Know that all Russia gives you its blessing on your undertaking, in the name of liberty, the glorious future of the country, and an enduring and honorable peace.

Forward!

Source: "Kerensky's Order for the Offensive," in The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, 3 volumes, edited by Robert Paul Browder and Aleksandr Kerensky (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1961), II: 942.

FURTHER READINGS


References


Edward Acton, Rethinking the Russian Revolution (London: Arnold, 1990).

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (New York: Viking, 1997).

John Gooding, Rulers and Subjects: Government and People in Russia, 1801-1991 (London: Arnold, 1996).

Louise Erwin Heenan, Russian Democracy's Fatal Blunder: The Summer Offensive of 1917 (New York: Praeger, 1987).

W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).

Richard Luckett, The White Generals. An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War (New York: Viking, 1971).

S. P. Melgunov, The Bolshevik Seizure of Power, translated by James S. Beaver, edited by Sergei G. Pushkarev with Boris S. Pushkarev (Santa Barbara, Cal.: ABC-Clio, 1972).

Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990).

Robert Service, The Russian Revolution 1900-1927 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986).

Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 2 volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, 1987).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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