Leading Researcher.

Doctor of Historical Sciences. Associate Professor of the Department of Russian History of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Faculty of History, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Winner of the first prize of the Foundation in Memory of Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) in the category “History of Russia” for 2005.

1998 – graduated with honors from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov.

2001 – defended his dissertation for the academic degree candidate of historical sciences on the topic “The question of power as posed by the Russian liberal opposition (1914 – spring 1917)” (supervisor – Prof. L.G. Zakharova).

2017 – defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences on the topic “Authority and public in Russia during the crisis of the Third June System: dialogue on the path of political development (1910-1917)” (scientific consultant – Prof. L.G. Zakharov).

Area of ​​scientific interests: political history of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century; Russian liberalism; power and society in the revolutionary era; Russian intelligentsia; Church and revolution.

Total number of publications – approx. 200.

Monographs:

1. Liberal opposition on the path to power. 1914 – spring 1917. M.: ROSSPEN, 2003. – 432 p. [reviews: National history. 2004. No. 4; Cahier du monde russe. 2004. No. 45/3-4; Russian Review. V. 64(3). 2005; Slavic Review. V. 64(3). 2005; Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. V. 8. 2007. No. 1; first prize from the Foundation in Memory of Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) in the category “History of Russia” in 2005].
2. Power and public in Russia: dialogue about the path of political development (1910-1917). M.: D. Pozharsky University, 2016. - 618 p.

Articles, reviews, abstracts:

1. IN AND. Gurko and his memories // Domestic history. 2002. No. 6. P. 141-148. In al. with Andreev D.A.
2. The Russian Church and the political situation after the February Revolution of 1917 (to pose the question) // From the history of the Russian hierarchy. Articles and documents. M., 2002. P. 60-68.
3. Cadets and the authorities: woe from mind? // National history. 2005. No. 4. P. 89-93.
4. [Rec.:] Russian clergy and the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917. Materials and archival documents on the history of Russian Orthodox Church. / Comp., author of the foreword. and comm. M.A. Babkin. M.: Indrik, 2006. - 504 pp., illus. // National history. 2007. No. 3. P. 195-196.
5. Russian liberals in the perception of the ruling bureaucracy during the crisis of the Third June system (1911 - 1917) // Domestic History. 2007. No. 4. P. 42-56.
6. The Russian Government as Percieved by the Parliamentary Opposition (1911-1917) // Russian Studies in History. Summer 2007. V. 46, # 1. Pp. 76-86.
7. Bureaucrat through the eyes of a liberal: the Russian government as perceived by the parliamentary opposition (1911-1917) // Pyotr Andreevich Zayonchkovsky. Collection of articles and memoirs for the centenary of the historian / [comp. L.G. Zakharova, S.V. Mironenko, T. Emmons]; Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, East. fact. – M., 2008. P. 647-656.
8. [Rec.:] Seleznev F.A. Constitutional democrats and the bourgeoisie (1905 – 1917): Monograph. – Nizhny Novgorod: Publishing House of Nizhny Novgorod University named after. N.I. Lobachevsky, 2006. – 227 p. // National history. 2008. No. 4.
9. [Rec.:] Babkin M.A. The clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the overthrow of the monarchy (beginning of the 20th century - end of 1917). M.: State Public Historical Library, 2007. 532 p. // National history. 2008. No. 5.
10. Russian political community recent years Empires about faith and the Church // Materials of the International Scientific Conference “1917: The Church and the Destiny of Russia. To the 90th anniversary of the Local Council and the election of Patriarch Tikhon.” M.: PSTGU Publishing House, - 2008. P. 16-24.
11. A.I. Solzhenitsyn: reflections on the February Revolution. M., 2007 // Russian collection: Studies on the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov et al. T. VI. M., 2009. pp. 310-316.
12. The ruling bureaucracy as perceived by Russian conservatives during the crisis of the June Third system // Bulletin of Moscow University. Episode 8. History. 2009. No. 2. P. 3-13.
13. Intragovernmental conflicts during the crisis of the June Third system (1911-1917) // Russian history. 2009. No. 4. P. 77-90.
14. St. Tikhon and the political destinies of Russia at the turn of epochs // XX Annual Theological Conference of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University: Materials. M.: PSTGU Publishing House, 2010. T. 2. P. 83-86.
15. V.N. Kokovtsov in search of a political course (1911–1914) // Bulletin of PSTGU. Series II: History. History of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2011. Issue. 1 (38). pp. 89-110.
16. [Rec.:] I.V. Vorontsova. Russian religious and philosophical thought at the beginning of the twentieth century: M.: Publishing House of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, 2008. 424 p. // Russian history. 2011. No. 2. P. 200-201.
17. “Ministerial strike” of 1913: IV State Duma and the formation of the “New Course” of the government // Tauride Readings 2010. Actual problems history of parliamentarism. International scientific conference, St. Petersburg, Tauride Palace, December 7, 2010 Sat. scientific Art. / Ed. A.B. Nikolaev. St. Petersburg, 2011. pp. 192-202.
18. The political situation in Russia on the eve of the First World War in the assessment of statesmen and party leaders // Russian History. 2011. No. 6. P. 123-135.
19. “Milestones” in the context of the debate about the intelligentsia: revision of the ideal or ideal of revision? // XXI Annual Theological Conference of PSTGU. T. 2. Materials. M., 2011. pp. 126-129.
20. The evolution of the internal political course of P.A. Stolypin and the Duma majority in 1910-1911 // Russian history. 2012. No. 2. P. 76-90.
21. Minister of Internal Affairs N.A. Maklakov: political career Russian Polignac // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XI. M., 2012. pp. 174-207.
22. Historical information about the origin and use of the word “Ukrainians” // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XII. M., 2012. P. 7-28.
23. About “Rasputin’s diary” // Russian history. 2012. No. 5. P. 203-205.
24. Church policy of the Provisional Government in the spring of 1917 // XXII Annual Theological Conference of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University (Moscow, January 2012). Materials. M., 2012. pp. 66-69.
25. “Bloodless Young Turk Revolution”: how was the “Veh” program implemented? // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XIII. M., 2013. pp. 112-120.
26. A few explanations on the history of the word “Ukrainians” // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XIV. M., 2013. pp. 73-79.
27. The Priesthood and the Kingdom in the fantasy genre (review of the book: Babkin M.A. The Priesthood and the Kingdom (Russia, early 20th century - 1918). Research and materials. M.: Indrik, 2011) // Bulletin of PSTGU. Series II: History. History of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2013. Issue. 5 (54). pp. 131-143.
28. At the origins of Dostoevsky: faith and service in the representation of Russian social thought of the first half - mid-19th century // International scientific conference “L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky: the tasks of Christianity and Christianity as a task." Tula, 2014. pp. 282-292.
29. Ukraine and Little Rus': outskirts and center // Russian collection: Studies on the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XVI. M., 2014. pp. 97-108.
30. Council of Ministers on the problems of the Orthodox Russian Church (1906-1914) // Bulletin of PSTGU. Series II: History. History of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2014. No. 2. P. 23-37.
31. The activity of the right often brought their defeat closer // Russian History. 2014. No. 3. P. 169-173.
32. Liberal parties and public organizations (1914 - February 1917) // The First World War and the end of the Russian Empire. In 3 vols. T. 1. St. Petersburg: Faces of Russia, 2014. pp. 269-391. 33. “Sacred Unity”, which did not exist // Russian History. 2015. No. 1. P. 158-161.
33. Ukraine and Mala Rusiya: Ukraine and the Center // Ukrainian Pita Danas / Priredio Zoran Miloseviě. Sabac: Tsentar akademske rech, 2015. (Bayaluka: Marcos). pp. 61-70.
34. “If only our teachers talked more about Russia...” The youthful years of future cadet leaders // Rodina. 2015. No. 2. P. 100-102.
35. The Russian Orthodox Church and ideological changes during the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War// Russia and the Russian World in the face of global threats: Materials of the All-Russian Scientific Conference. Collection scientific works. M.: Publishing house “Sputnik +”, 2015. pp. 314-317.
36. Liberals and the church at the beginning of the twentieth century. // Ethno-confessional and national problems of the development of domestic statehood in the theory, programmatic and political-legal practice of Russian liberalism: Collection of materials of the All-Russian scientific conference. October 1-3, 2015, Orel, Prioksky State University. Orel: ORLIK Publishing House, 2015. - 352 p. pp. 154-163.
37. On the question of the political influence of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XVIII. M., 2015. pp. 378-387.
38. Russian political Freemasonry on the eve of the First World War: party context (1912-1914) // People and power: interaction in history and modernity: collection. scientific tr. / answer ed. I.V. Mikheeva, F.A. Seleznev. Vol. 2. Nizhny Novgorod: LLC “Rastr”, National Research University Higher School of Economics - Nizhny Novgorod, 2015. P. 399-407.
39. Stolypin and the evolution of the government course in the church sphere // Annual theological conference of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University. 2015. No. 25. pp. 106-108.
40. Balkan and Russian liberal opposition (1908–1914) // Century: Historical Hours of the Andriev Institute. No. 2. Andrigrad, 2015. pp. 45-51.
41. [Rec. on the book:] Alexey Tolochko. Kievan Rus and Little Russia in the 19th century. Kyiv, 2012. 256 p. // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XIX. M., 2016. pp. 602-612.
42. “We are being asked to pursue an offensive policy – ​​Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, but what if the Polish one collides with the Jewish one?!” Cadets and the national question in the western provinces of the Russian Empire (1907-1914) // Russian collection: Studies in the history of Russia / Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov and others. T. XXI. M., 2016. pp. 257-271.
43. Moral and ethical aspects as assessed by radical liberals Russian government in the third June period (1907-1917) // Moral aspects political activity in theory, programmatics, party practice and lawmaking of Russian liberalism: Collection of materials of the All-Russian scientific conference. October 6-8, 2016, Orel, Oryol State University named after I.S. Turgenev. Orel: ORLIK Publishing House, 2016. - 318 p. pp. 252-257.
44. Die Provisorische Regierung im Frühjahr 1917: Auf dem Weg zum Allgemeinwohl // Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung. 2017. # 1. P. 53-68.
45. Provisional Government: principles of policy in the context of the development of revolutionary processes in Russia in the spring-summer of 1917 // Historical Studies: Journal of the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University. 2017. No. 6. P. 17-34.
46. Nicholas II and the Third June System (1907-1917) // Bulletin of Dmitry Pozharsky University. 2017. No. 1 (5). pp. 110-134.
47. Russian radical liberals about Russia’s goals in World War I // Russia and Slavic world in wars and conflicts of the 19th–21st centuries. Collection of articles / Scientific editor A. Yu. Polunov. M.: Modest Kolerov, 2018. pp. 132-138.
48. On the eve of the Local Council: The Provisional Government and the Orthodox Church in the spring and summer of 1917 // Centenary of the 1917 Revolution in Russia. Scientific collection. Part 1 / Answer. ed. I.I. Tuchkov. M., Publishing House JSC "RDP", 2018. pp. 620-625.
49. Russian liberal of the early twentieth century in politics // Contours of global transformations: politics, economics, law. 2017. No. 6. P. 28-43.
50. War of Liberation 1877-1878 in the memory of Russian liberals of the early twentieth century // Russia and Slavic peoples in the XIX-XXI centuries: Proceedings of the international scientific conference (Novozybkov, Bryansk region, May 18, 2018) / Ed. V.V. Mishchenko, T.A. Mishchenko, S.P. Kurkina. Bryansk: Avers LLC, 2018. pp. 50-54.
51. “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland”: on the history of the origin of the famous Russian military motto // History. Scientific review OSTKRAFT No. 4. M.: Modest Kolerov, 2018. P. 5-9.
52. “Ukraine for Ukrainians!”: the birth of an ethnonym from the spirit of class struggle // History. Scientific review OSTKRAFT No. 4. M.: Modest Kolerov, 2018. pp. 16-21.
53. So where does “Stalin” come from? // Story. Scientific review OSTKRAFT No. 5. M.: Modest Kolerov, 2018. P. 116-123.
54. Representatives of the public in the Council of Ministers during the First World War (1915-1917) // Russian Collection: Russia and War: International scientific collection in honor of the 75th anniversary of Bruce Manning / Russian Collection. T. XXVI. M., 2018. pp. 491-502.
55. B.V. Stürmer and the State Duma: the government line regarding parliament // Tauride Readings 2017. Current problems of parliamentarism: history and modernity. International scientific conference, St. Petersburg, Tauride Palace, December 7-8, 2017: Collection of scientific articles. In 2 hours / Ed. A.B. Nikolaev. - St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2018. - Part 1. - P. 92-100.

Publications, reference books:

1. Scheme of the development of the diocesan structure of the Russian Orthodox Church from the founding of ancient dioceses on its canonical territory to the present. / Supplement to the magazine “Theological Collection”. M.: PSTBI Publishing House, - 1999. 7 pp. In al. with P.N. Grunberg.
2. From the history of the Russian hierarchy / Articles and documents. M., 2002. – 240 p. In al. with P.N. Grunberg, M.N. Vorobyov, N.A. Krivosheeva, S.N. Romanova.
3. History of the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Commented lists of hierarchs by episcopal departments since 862. M.: PSTGU Publishing House, 2006. – 926 p. In al. with P.N. Grunberg, E.N. Grunberg, I.P. Kirpichev, N.A. Krivosheeva.
4. Taube M.F. “Zarnitsy”: Memories of the tragic fate of pre-revolutionary Russia (1900-1917). M.: Monuments of historical thought, ROSSPEN, 2007. – 275 p. Preparation of the publication, comments in co-authors. with M.A. Volkhonsky.

Update December 2018

The publication in "TD" of A. I. Solzhenitsyn's article "Reflections on the February Revolution" was timed to coincide with the date of abdication of the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II from the throne. Many of our readers have questions regarding the author’s emotional and harsh assessments of the Sovereign’s activities. Orthodox people The memory of the royal martyrs is dear, however, both the Emperor and his entourage are historical figures. We turned to Fedor Aleksandrovich Gaida*, a teacher at the history department of Moscow State University, for a comment, in order to obtain a scientific assessment of the situation in Russia in 1917.

Fyodor Alexandrovich, the red thread in Alexander Isaevich’s reasoning is the idea of ​​the Sovereign and his entourage being in a hypnotic state of absolute lack of will. The writer asserts the mediocrity and inability of all ruling officials to take active action. Was this really so? Based on the following quote: “The temporary consciousness of wrongfulness and powerlessness, as if in a state of hypnosis, of the rulers decided the instant success of the revolution,” it can be assumed that the revolutionaries were not as strong as it seemed to the tsar and the public. The revolution, from this perspective, seems to be a competent PR project, made possible due to the inaction and incompetence of Nicholas II as a state ruler.

The text was written in the early 80s, that is, before “perestroika,” and, according to the author’s explanation, it initially consisted of four separate parts, later stitched together. He is heterogeneous and, of course, very emotional. Well, that’s what a writer should do. However, there is some negative side to this emotionality: when reading a text, you have to extract the main ideas from it, there are only three of them, they are lost in the text, but it is very difficult to argue with them.

The first thesis: of course, February and October are one revolution. There were no two revolutions, two revolutions - Stalin invented it. In the 20s - 30s, the ideology of the February bourgeois-democratic and great October socialist revolutions was created, they were opposed, but the fact that 8 months passed between them was so lost that it was assumed that these were two separate eras in the life of the country , although, in fact, of course, this is a single social revolution that led the Bolsheviks to power. And the events began precisely in February 1917. Solzhenitsyn says this, although not very clearly.

The second thesis is very important. This is, of course, a national catastrophe. You can scold the previous government as much as you like, but the problem is that since February 1917, the situation in the country begins to develop in such a way that the country simply begins to disintegrate. And whatever the government was, good or bad, it kept the country under control and developed. The main instrument, the mechanism of the country before 1917 was the government and autocracy. It is they who build the capitalist economy, it is they who create the education system, by this time the question of primary universal education was already raised. It should have been introduced in the early 20s, after the end of the war, it was practically a resolved issue. This power does not exist, as soon as it was gone, the collapse of the gigantic country began, which, as the events of this time showed - revolution, Civil War, rested precisely on this rod. Solzhenitsyn also has this, it’s hard to argue with that.

The third thesis, which is very important, is that the February Revolution became a kind of prologue to all development in the 20th century. Of course, the 20th century begins with the First World War, if we take the present century rather than the calendar century, then it turns out to be short - it starts in the 14th year and ends in the 91st, and all this is connected with Russia. So, the events that occurred in February 1917 create a certain situation, a global situation at that, the inevitability of a certain breakdown, the collapse of the whole world.

There is a revolution in Russia, and accordingly, it collapses Eastern front. A front that, in principle, if, say, there had not been a revolution in February 1917, could have acted. The army did not disintegrate by February 1917. The army was destroyed by the rear, then, in the spring of 1917. IN in this case I am only complementing what Alexander Isaevich is talking about. The Eastern Front is collapsing - Germany gets the opportunity to concentrate all its efforts on Western Front, resists for a long time, the allies cannot defeat it for a long time, then a peace treaty is concluded, which does not finish off Germany. Churchill correctly said that in 1918 the conditions were created for the Second World War. The notorious German militarism was not finished off. There were even plans for the division of Germany. Let's not forget that German unity at that time existed for only 50 years. United Germany is a kind of myth about the early Middle Ages, that there was a German Empire. Nothing like this could actually have happened in the Middle Ages. So, Germany could have been divided in 1918 if Russia had not withdrawn from the war.

What happens next? In Russia Bolshevism, the answer to this is Nazism in Germany to a large extent. Why are the Social Democrats losing power in Germany? Because the German burgher is afraid of the onset of Bolshevism, afraid of the communists, and therefore votes for the fascists. It was with the February revolution that the Russian revolution began, because of which Russia found itself in international isolation and existed in it throughout the entire 20th century. As a result of revolutionary events, a nomenklatura system is created and finds itself in power, not allowing society to develop, without forming a normal social elite. Within the framework of this nomenklatura system, people who have 5 years of education come to power; they simply fulfill the party’s behests well. As a result, what happens? By the end of the 20th century, people in power were completely inadequate; we know many examples of shameful phenomena that occurred in the 80s and 90s, which was not possible in the 19th century.

An official or minister is a person with a university or equivalent university education, comes to power and can speak the same language with representatives of the public elite, there is no barrier between them. This official is able to understand what the university professor is telling him, what strategy, relatively speaking, the university professor is forming for the country. Such an official is able not only to understand, but also to evaluate and implement. In addition, he has his own experience, his own horizons. This whole trend of the 20th century for Russia also began in February 1917, and the world has changed very much as a result of these events. This all follows from Solzhenitsyn’s opinion, and I repeat, I do not argue. Everything else is, in general, details, but you can argue with the details.

For example, regarding the “powerlessness of the authorities.” The country is autocratic, but it has a fairly developed, as I already said, socio-political elite, there is a government that carries out foreign and domestic policy on behalf of the Emperor. This government was indeed in a state of severe crisis during the First World War. But what caused this crisis? A whole series of circumstances. Firstly, of course, Russia has never been in such a difficult situation as it found itself in during the First World War. world war. Again, the same notorious isolation. If we are at war with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, this means that our two main trade routes are blocked - the Baltic and the Black Sea, we are generally connected with the world only by Vladivostok and Arkhangelsk, as in the 17th century, that is ( when there was only Arkhangelsk). We are in a state of economic blockade; a gigantic number of economic and social issues related to public administration are emerging. All this falls on the government. The government at this time is simply working at its best, finding itself in a situation that is completely unusual for it. There is a rapid turnover of ministers. Someone is not able to withstand this tension, hence the resignations regarding health; all this is reflected in private correspondence: complaints about health and great amount business

Secondly, since 1915, the parliament, the State Duma, has been actively functioning, fighting for power, which is increasing its political opposition rating due to the crisis. How else? This is the law of their behavior. The opposition, if it is even a little irresponsible - and in Russia there was an irresponsible opposition, accustomed to reproaching the authorities for everything, including bad weather, - asserts itself at the expense of power. Throughout the First World War, ministers with this opposition really wanted to find the opportunity for at least some kind of dialogue. And nothing works out. It is clear to the opposition that if they make any contact with this government, their ratings will fall. There is a change of ministers, basically the Emperor does not appoint some Rasputin henchmen, it is generally a myth of that time, by the way, coming from opposition circles, that Rasputin appointed ministers.

(Regarding Rasputin and the Empress. There is not a single minister of all those appointed during this period about whom it could be said that Rasputin played the main role in his appointment. Yes, Rasputin has great influence on the Empress, but mainly in matters of his personal life. Yes, Rasputin takes money from different people and tries to push it through the Empress to some posts. He advises someone to become a governor, and he can say about someone that it would be nice to see him as a minister. But here it is very important to take into account two things: firstly, Rasputin usually was not the first to do this. When he saw that there was some kind of party pushing a person to some post, he could join them for some money. By the way, he took the money mainly not for himself. He, of course, caroused, but mostly gave the money to the people, to the petitioners. That is, he is a broad soul, despite the fact that in general the character is clearly negative, very Russian in character: broadness of soul, holiness, a farce, everything you want in this soul. At the same time, being in St. Petersburg clearly had a negative impact on him. He came rather positive, a specific search for God, silver Age, and Petersburg clearly corrupts him, especially after he gains access to the Empress.

So, we must take into account that Rasputin’s word was never decisive, he, an intelligent and quite cunning man, always knew which stream he needed to join, this is the first thing. And secondly, with all the Rasputin myth, we must take into account that the opinion of the Empress in appointments is also, as a rule, not decisive. We can look at the correspondence of Nicholas II with Alexandra Fedorovna, published back in the 20s. She has been bombarding him since '15 with some kind of project. She is a very active person, and at this time she actively became involved in politics, to which she had previously had a very indirect connection. In 1915, when an acute crisis was already evident, the Empress began to help her husband, the further, the more. And the more he is absent from Petrograd, the more she helps. She bombards him with projects, and how does he react to this? As a rule, he doesn’t answer them at all. The most important thing for him is to maintain peace in the family. Let her be active, great, we can consider it. But appointments occur under the influence of other, usually factors. He communicates with his courtiers, with Grand Dukes, ministers, and this is much more important when appointing posts.)

Who is appointed anyway? There are two types of figures: either they are technocrats, experts in their field, people who can somehow correct the situation in a crisis situation in a specific department, the second type of people are people who can build a dialogue with the Duma, these are people who can enjoy public trust. It is clear that they are appointed by the Emperor, that is, he retains supreme powers, but, nevertheless, based on contact with the Duma.

In general, the Emperor’s mood towards the Duma, right up to the February events, was warmer than before. In February 1916, he himself appeared for the first time in the Duma, in the meeting hall, and gave a speech there. How did they react to this? They didn't care about it, in the end. He calls on them to cooperate, after which they read out a declaration of their parliamentary majority, where they express no confidence in the government. That's all assistance, you won't get any help. So, no matter who he appoints, everything is bad. What does it come down to in the end? In the fall of 1916 - an amazing appointment - Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Protopopov was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. The last Minister of Internal Affairs in the history of the Russian Empire is a man who himself comes from the parliamentary majority, a Duma deputy, a trade and industrialist, with a variety of contacts, a person who is part of the Octobrist faction, an Octobrist, a liberal. How should the Duma perceive this? They don’t like it at all, and more than all other appointments. For what reason? They did not agree on who to appoint. This post is targeted by the most different people in the Duma, they want to occupy it. But the Emperor did not consult them and appointed Protopopov at his own discretion. (By the way: why didn’t you consult? There was an experience of such consultations with the same people during the revolution of 1905-1907, but they did not yield anything: the opposition itself did not want to join the government under the existing system. This is a sign of its destructiveness. T. o. she did not “make” a street revolution, but she created the conditions for it.)

Why him? In addition to the fact that he belongs to the parliamentary majority, all sorts of informal contacts played a role there, including Rasputin putting in his word because he was treated by the famous doctor of Tibetan medicine Badmaev, he had a mild mental disorder, and they somehow had a chance to communicate . The Emperor has two signals - on the one hand, Rodzianko, the Chairman of the Duma, put in a word for Protopopov, on the other hand, it was known from Rasputin that Protopopov is a good person. How does the Emperor react to this? This is exactly the person who needs to be appointed, who will reconcile me with this very Duma! Prescribed. The Duma immediately perceives Protopopov as a provocateur, an upstart, and immediately dissociates itself from him. He, who did not expect this at all, by the way, says: “Don’t you want to communicate with me?” Yes please. And I won't be with you. Begins to walk defiantly in a police uniform. That is, clearly something is happening to the person too. In fact, ministers of internal affairs have not worn police uniforms for a long time; since 1904, since the previous revolution, they have preferred a formal dress when communicating with deputies. And he comes to the Duma in a blue uniform. It is clear how they begin to react to this; a complete break follows. This is what the whole ministerial leapfrog is built from, the famous leapfrog of 1915-17, when the minister seemed to have been displaced under the influence of Rasputin. Not under the influence of Rasputin, but under the influence of circumstances.

The emperor is trying to create a political cabinet, and one that would please the parliament. A very modern thing for Europe at that time. We do this as it turns out, that is, with half a sin, as a result, all this weakens the government. Are there any smart people left in power? Absolutely yes. If we take the same railways, then there was Trepov, under whom in a few months they built a railway from Petrograd to Murmansk and connected it with another, again just built, port of Petrograd. This was necessary due to military circumstances. Trepov leaves, he is replaced by Krieger-Voinovsky, so he is simply a specialist in communications, a class bureaucrat in the literal sense of the word. Minister of Agriculture Rittich, for example, is a person who has done the maximum possible in the food sector. The fact that there were shortages of bread in Petrograd, so if the railways are clogged with wagons carrying ammunition to the front, it is clear that there may be problems with food in the capital. By the way, there was no famine. And here’s an amazing thing, which the revolutionaries later forgot about: as soon as the February revolution took place, bread immediately appeared in Petrograd. Why? What did the revolutionary government provide? The revolutionary authorities had no time for this at all in the first days; they made a revolution there. The fact is that the shortages of bread, in fact, ended just in time for February 27th. Another thing is that this, again, is a kind of reason for showing one’s indignation. And when this reason is eliminated, it is no longer up to him whether he exists or not - it no longer matters, it is a kind of step, a barrier, a springboard from which one must jump.

Emperor and government. Yes, since 1915 the Emperor has been mainly interested in affairs at the front. He is really tired of what is happening inside the country. But in fact, he was tired much earlier, and the front is such an outlet for him. What can be done at the front at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief since 1915? At Headquarters you can be interested in military affairs for several hours a day, Chief of Staff Alekseev will tell you how things are at the front, it’s all interesting and wonderful. Then, accordingly, you can listen to the reports of ministers for an hour or two, then walk in the fresh air. In general, this is the life he always strived for. There is calm at Headquarters.

How much did his detachment from affairs harm the work of the state? In fact, not much, because all the real work has always been done by ministers since 1905-1906. Yes, the ministers do all the work, not the Emperor. After the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, the Emperor intervened very little in domestic politics. He was interested foreign policy, he was interested in the affairs of the army and navy - this is his sphere; in general, he never showed any interest in all other issues of a domestic political nature, economic development, and after 1905-1907 he made practically no fundamental independent decisions without ministers.

The ministers decided everything before 1915, and after that they also decided everything. There are no special changes here. Another thing is that you can, of course, use the Emperor’s move as a propaganda idea that, they say, the Emperor has left and he doesn’t care about us there. This, in fact, was what the liberal opposition used. The changes taking place during the war are clearly connected with these difficulties, with attempts to come to an agreement with the opposition, and are connected with wartime in general. Therefore, there is truth in this thesis that the February Revolution was largely due to the war. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any revolution in 1914.

Soviet historians were very fond of saying that in 1914, on the eve of the war, a revolutionary situation arose. She wasn't there for a number of reasons. The peasants are not rioting, the students are not rioting, there are no student strikes like there were before 1911. It’s impossible to describe what happened in 1905-1907, entire semesters were disrupted, universities simply did not function. They studied politics at universities. And in 1914 everything was calm - students were studying. Everything is quiet and calm in the army, no excesses that happened in 1905-1906, remember the cruiser "Ochakov", the battleship "Potemkin". What's going on? There are labor strikes. Why do they happen? Nobody can understand why they happen.

The revolutionary parties are in complete paralysis. There were no revolutionary parties or any others left in Russia after 1907-1908. The parties at this time, by 1914, numbered several hundred people each. The cadets counted themselves - it turned out that there were 730 of them in all of Russia at that time. (When I saw this figure in the protocols of the Central Committee, I was still thinking, what kind of figure is so familiar? Then I remembered: Raskolnikov had 730 steps to the old pawnbroker.) There may be several thousand Bolsheviks, but they are all driven underground, they are all deprived of leadership. The parties do not influence the situation, which is important. The country is experiencing economic growth, very rapid industrial development, the country at this time ranks first in the world in industrial growth. An economic upsurge can quite easily coincide with a political crisis, if this crisis is not of a revolutionary nature.

If the crisis is limited to St. Petersburg, then the economy can easily grow by leaps and bounds. And the crisis in 1914 was at the top, precisely such that the Duma could not come to an agreement with the government. The rest of the country didn’t give a damn about what was happening in the Duma. This Duma for two years, from 1912 to 1914, could not pass a single law, because there was no parliamentary majority. You see, they cannot elect a presidium. When a minister comes to them, the first thing they do, fighting with each other, competing within the Duma, the first thing they do, of course, is hit the minister: leave me alone, we’ll come to an agreement here, in a few years, after that you can come to us. Budget discussions are breaking down, there is a political crisis, but, again, limited to the walls of the Tauride Palace and the Mariinsky Palace, where the government sits, that is, an area of ​​three square kilometers. The rest of the country lives on its own and is developing very rapidly.

So, labor strikes at this time are mainly of an economic nature. What is the global reason? Production is growing rapidly, workers see that industrialists are getting richer. The workers want their share - completely normal demands. In addition, since 1912 the law on social insurance workers. By 1914, half of workers were covered by workers' insurance. This, by the way, is the first attempt to radically solve the labor question, covering the workers as a class. They have health insurance funds, this is a kind of trade union. Trade union centers are appearing, and they are riding the wave economic growth they begin to push for rights, they begin to fight for workers’ interests. Workers destroy machines, take to the streets, demand higher wages - these are the stormy events. Is this a revolution? Something doesn't look the same. These strikes lead to nothing. Two years of strikes, but nothing reminiscent of the events of 1905 with executions, with councils of workers’ deputies, with attempts to take power. Nothing like this. And, most importantly, this is in no way connected with the Duma, but is developing completely in parallel, without intersecting.

Then the war with its colossal crisis, colossal tension. In 1916, the country was already rebuilt on a war footing. It took two years to force the country to fight for real, such a total war began. Germany did it right away, back in 1914; we needed two years. And since 1916, a truly explosive situation has been created. This is when the conditions for the February revolution appear.

It seems like everyone is howling, everyone is involved in the war in one way or another, but no one understands why, no one wants to. There are, of course, some slogans: to the bitter end! Annex Constantinople! At this time, the issue with Constantinople has already been resolved, there is already an agreement with the allies that, in the event of the end of the war, the province of Constantinople will be part of the Russian Empire. This all goes without saying, but what does the Petrograd worker care about Constantinople?

By the way, real wages rise during the war. But the worker, who exists in such an extreme situation, most likely no longer wants growth wages, but simply to end this situation as quickly as possible. Even if he receives less, for example, he will not be forced to work more. Sometimes unskilled workers were called to the front. The worker no longer wants all this. The peasant doesn’t want it any more.

The peasant wants to return to his home near Saratov, where the Germans do not reach, and calm down at that. In addition, at that time he was already trained in warfare, taught how to handle weapons, hand-to-hand combat techniques. So, knowing and being able to do all this, having looked at death or, at least, having read about it in the rear newspapers, if he is sitting in the rear garrison, the peasant understands that, upon returning, he will stop at nothing to increase his land allotment. That is, he already has enough determination. The situation of mass global violence, of course, affects the psyche. People have already smelled blood; they are not afraid of it. This is also why, of course, the February Revolution is the brainchild of the First World War.

The very scale of the revolution is determined by the war. After all, who makes a revolution? Solzhenitsyn writes that the revolution is taking place in Petrograd. This is actually not entirely true. The revolution began, of course, in Petrograd, of course. But as soon as it acquired revolutionary outlines there, the outlines not of a labor strike, but of an uprising of the rear garrison, it very quickly spread to the rest of the country. What is she throwing herself at? It spreads to the same rear garrisons. The main weapon, the main instrument of the revolution is the rear garrison. What is this, exactly? Basically, these are the same mobilized peasants who know that in the spring of 1917 they will go to the front, because then, and this is no secret to anyone, there will be another offensive. There was an offensive in 1916, which means that in 1917 it should be decisive. This means that in 1917 it is planned to end the war with an offensive. Forward to Berlin. They are separated from their families, these soldiers, they know what awaits them in the spring, but at the same time they also listen to what is happening in the country. And in the country, they are told, Rasputin rules, the Empress is a traitor, she has a direct line to Wilhelm, she informs him of all military plans, because of this we are suffering defeats, and so on, and so on... When are the last defeats were, everyone has already forgotten. In addition, there is a prohibition law, soldiers are not allowed to drink, there is discipline. Who, by the way, is instilling discipline in the rear garrison at this time? Officers. Personnel? No, not regular officers, because all regular officers had been at the front a long time ago, many of them died. And at this time they are already hiring everyone as officers. Everyone who has some more or less passable education becomes an officer. This means that they are mainly the intelligentsia. That is, people with what views? Leftist. These officers with leftist views are still not enough for these soldiers. There is a battalion. In fact, the battalion is 300 people. And the rear battalion, where they are trained for combat operations, is 1000 people. How many officers do they have? Well, it’s good if there are a dozen, or even less, that is, these rear garrisons are left to their own devices. When the events in Petrograd began, what happened to the Petrograd rear garrison? The first thing they do is rebel and kill one of the officers, hang a red bow on themselves, and immediately go to the State Duma. Not because the State Duma was so ready to welcome them with open arms. The Duma is actually afraid: what will this soldiery do to us later? Yes, we will be handed over to a military court, troops will come from the front and we will all be dealt with, including the deputies. full program. But soldiers go to the State Duma precisely for this reason: they are most afraid of the same thing - that troops will come not like themselves, but real ones, and they will also deal with them. And these soldiers want to somehow legalize this situation. But as? Go to the Duma, proclaim yourself the stronghold of the State Duma. And it turns out that they take each other hostage. The soldiers are running to them, and they are forced to accept these soldiers, and it turns out that the Duma members have already been taken hostage, then there is only one possibility left - to establish contact with the officers of these rebel battalions and wait for the counter-revolution to come and somehow resist it, because , if she comes and we don’t resist her, they will kill us. And if we resist, then we have some chance. And the first thing they do is create a military commission of the State Duma, placing Guchkov, chairman of the Central Military-Industrial Committee, who is known for his connections with the officers, over it. He must organize resistance to the expected counter-revolutionary onslaught. What is the first thing Guchkov does? He is intensifying all his contacts with officers, and he even has contacts with those officers who are moving towards Petrograd to suppress the revolution. And it turns out that there is no need for them to fight each other. We, the State Duma, seem to lead this mass of soldiers, but under what slogans? Under patriotic: we want to fight. The Duma is silent about the fact that the soldiers do not want to fight. The Duma talks about its program, which is the desire to fight, but the government interferes with this. The officers who are supposed to suppress all these same excesses, at that moment think exactly the same way under the influence of the same State Duma. Really, what do we need for complete victory? We need to remove the Emperor, we need to ask this Sovereign Emperor, who is incapable of anything. And at this time the officers in Petrograd and the officers of the so-called counter-revolution are already thinking so, at this time the generals are already thinking so, being under the influence of propaganda that has been going on for several years. The Duma is fighting in this way for its own popularity. The problem is that the Duma is the center, but it is only a propaganda center; it cannot take real power into its hands.

Propaganda is their tool, and they are very good at it. But they have not succeeded in administration, so they proclaim themselves to be the main power, but in fact they are not it. Headquarters and the generals who sit there are busy with military issues. What information do they have about what is happening in Petrograd? The State Duma took power. The Duma is vitally interested in the generals having just such an impression, because if the generals suddenly find out that it was not the Duma that took power in Petrograd, but some ragamuffins, then the generals will really get scared and join the counter-revolution. This means that everything needs to be done to ensure that the generals understand that the State Duma has really taken power. The Duma, which does not want to be hanged, is interested in this, which is why it says: we take all power in Petrograd. The generals answered them: it is very good that you are taking all power in Petrograd, we have been waiting for you for a long time, we have long wanted to agree with you on the abdication of the Emperor and on waging the war to a victorious end. But the problem is that at the same time as this whole process, the Duma is reaching an agreement with the generals, but it hasn’t really reached an agreement with the soldiers, because at this time the soldiers, who saw that there was no counter-revolution and first of all defeated the wineries, consider themselves to be the real masters of the situation warehouses. A bunch of drunks all over the country and collapse - that's what began all over the country as soon as they realized that there was no resistance from the authorities.

Indeed, a PR project that was simply carried out not in one day, but for a very long time, and during the First World War entered such a decisive stage. The Duma seemed to have solved all its problems in February 1917, and already in March it turns out that its future tasks and problems are much more serious than before, because before that it fought the autocracy and was able to defeat it, and now it has to fight with anarchy, and the Duma will no longer be able to defeat anarchy. After all, in order to defeat anarchy, ultimately, you need to use machine guns. But the Russian liberal opposition is very humanistic, it cannot do this, and this is what provokes the collapse. And yet they continue to repeat one thing simple thing: their main enemy is not anarchy, but counter-revolution. Until October 1917, they were afraid of the counter-revolution, that punishing sword with which they had been fighting their entire adult lives, for decades.

* Fedor Aleksandrovich Gaida. ist. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of History of the 19th - Early 20th Centuries, Faculty of History, Moscow State University

To be continued...

Interviewed by Yuliana Godik

http://www.taday.ru/text/41718.html

About the name of the Russian state

“Modern history is the history of Christianity”: Pushkin’s view of Russia and the Russian state

“For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland”: on the history of the famous military motto

February Revolution: why did the Church support the Provisional Government?

Was Russian autocephaly of the 15th century illegal?

Has Catholicism Changed?

On the meaning of catholicity for the Church

Episodes of the history of the Western Church V-IX centuries.

What is Russian about Russian liberalism?

Birth of the West

From the history of the Roman Church of the 11th–12th centuries

Cluny Revolution: How one Local Church became “universal”

February 1917 and the New Thirty Years' War

Liberal government + democratization of the entire country = ?

Revolution without heroes

Lessons from the struggle for power: liberals and the February Revolution

On the historical features of Russian liberalism

Progress: the birth of a new religion

What did Vekhi call for?

Conversation about the intelligentsia

How did the word “Ukrainians” come about?

Then open their minds

Pushkin on the path to literary and political realism

The February Revolution of 1917 is one of the most important stages in Russian political history. Meanwhile, much in it seems controversial and still incomprehensible. Unfortunately, the assessment of this historical phenomenon was largely captured by the ideological attitudes of contemporaries and their descendants. But if recent domestic historiography has already managed to look at many such questions more adequately, the February events were much less fortunate.

It seems to us that most of the myths that have received last decades widespread, stem from an incorrect interpretation of the role of February in the events of the political history of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as from a not entirely justified assessment of it as a bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Soviet historiography, whose immediate task for several decades was to prove the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution, was constrained in its quest. Western historians, unfortunately, cannot always adequately assess Russian conditions and often equate the February Revolution with Western European ones. A certain difficulty in studying the revolution is also due to the fact that its contemporaries, sharing completely different political views, sought to explain the course of events and their role in them differently - this time was too critical. And February itself was objectively not an unambiguous event: on the one hand, it ushered in a series of revolutionary changes in Russia and was the threshold of the Soviet system, on the other hand, it was firmly connected with the old order.

Already immediately after the February events, the first attempts were made to explain them, determine them and fit them into the general outline of the political process. Naturally, all these attempts could not but carry a pronounced ideological load; all of them, in one way or another, served as a justification for some political program or justification before posterity.

One of them, which probably most influenced the development of the historiography of February, was made by V.I. Lenin on the basis of newspaper reports back in March 1917, “hot on the heels” of the revolution (1). Lenin's concept of February had as its task a sharp contrast between the accomplished revolution and the coming revolution (that is, Soviet and socialist in essence), primarily in terms of their class character; however, at the same time, show the inevitability of the latter due to the activity of the masses and the doom of that political elite, which was allegedly brought to power by the February events. From this followed the definition of the February Revolution as a bourgeois-democratic one: “bourgeois” - due to the nature of the ruling class, “democratic” - due to the participation in it of the broadest sections of the country’s population, including the hegemon of the coming revolution - the proletariat, as well as the radicalism put forward by them slogans. So, the “February bourgeois-democratic revolution” was defined by Lenin as a sharp turn in the historical development of Russia towards the creation of a “bourgeois democratic republic” (2), which brought the bourgeoisie to power and created the preconditions for the development of the revolutionary movement into a socialist revolution. Lenin's concept cannot be understood and accepted if this last factor is not taken into account: February is bourgeois only insofar as it is followed by the socialist October. Without this, the entire Leninist concept loses its foundation and meaning.

In line with this understanding of February, domestic historiography of the Soviet era developed. However, we must give it its due; there are significant changes in the assessment of the February Revolution based on the rich material that was collected during the research process. The best representatives of Russian historiography (E.N. Burdzhalov, V.I. Startsev, P.V. Volobuev, etc.) (3) tried to soften Lenin’s too harsh judgments. In particular, opinions about the narrowly bourgeois character of the established government, about the “bourgeois-landowner” character of the first composition of the Provisional Government were revised, the strong influence that left-wing organizations and parties had on it was declared, about the weak role of central government bodies in the localities and etc.

The socialist emigration camp, as is known, had a generally positive assessment of the first days and months of the revolution. February, contrasted with October, forever remained for him a time of missed opportunities, a time of his initially incorrect assessment of the situation. I. G. Tsereteli, one of the brightest representatives of “democratic socialism,” subsequently wrote about this: “History hardly knows another such example when political parties, having received so much trust from the overwhelming majority of the population, would have shown so little inclination to take power, as was the case with Russian Social Democracy in the February Revolution” (4). Socialist emigrants also recognized the bourgeois nature of the new government, but for them this term had a fundamentally different meaning. The bourgeois regime had to ultimately give way to socialism as, in their opinion, the true form of democracy, give way peacefully - after the Constituent Assembly. From this vision, my own understanding of the essence of the February events was born: they were committed by the masses and, therefore, by those who prepared the people for the overthrow of tsarism, that is, the socialists. Thus, a revolution took place in the country, essentially socialist, but power remained in the hands of part of the ruling class - the bourgeoisie. Her departure from the political arena is a matter of time. Hence the wait-and-see attitude towards the central government taken by the socialist camp in the spring of 1917, the reluctance to “go to power” (5).

The assessment of the February Revolution by liberal figures is far removed from the reverent attitude towards it that is so characteristic of socialists. This point of view is that neither the bourgeoisie nor the liberal political camp were interested in the revolutionary development of the situation at the beginning of 1917. The main part of these forces, as is known, opposed the revolution to the idea of ​​a palace coup as the only means that would save Russia (the nation, statehood, monarchy) from disaster in conditions of war and a protracted crisis government controlled. The revolution was ahead of the conspirators and, saving the situation, the liberals were forced to take control of the country into their own hands under very unfavorable conditions. This is how a third point of view on the February events is formed: it speaks of their anarchic nature, ochlocratic nature, similarity to a rebellion, and the inability of the masses to take power into their own hands, which caused for some time the establishment of the power of a government consisting of “censors” (6).

Western historiography developed under the direct influence of the emigrant environment, but for Western historians, nevertheless, it is common to take into account all three points of view. In general, if the distinctive feature of Soviet historiography was its ideology, then the Western one is characterized by a certain idealism: its representatives often, say, overestimate the power of the Provisional Government, mistaking its legal status for the real state of affairs, etc. Nevertheless, the most prominent representatives foreign historical science (W. Chamberlin, L. Haimson, T. Hasegawa, G. M. Katkov and others) (7) are inclined towards a liberal interpretation of the February Revolution, noting the weakness of the bourgeoisie and the decisive importance of the role of the masses in it.

Finally, in Russia in the late 80s and early 90s there was a certain breakdown in traditional ideas about February. The works of some authors, for example, the article by V.L. Kharitonov (8), contain an attempt to give new assessment revolution, the significant role of natural factors in it is noted. However, in all these new attempts, a certain qualitative barrier has not been overcome: if earlier the “February bourgeois-democratic revolution” was considered as a prologue to October, now they are trying to derive from it all sorts of roots of Russian democracy and call it “an unrealized alternative to October.” Having rejected Lenin’s position about the incompleteness of the revolutionary process in February, it is at least strange to leave Lenin’s “bourgeois-democratic” character behind it. Nevertheless, the alternative “February or October”, bourgeois democracy or socialist totalitarianism, is firmly entrenched in the consciousness, which is hardly fundamentally different from Lenin’s assessment.

So how can one determine the nature of the February Revolution of 1917? While there are many “intermediate” interpretations, we are dealing with three, expressed in “pure” form: this is the point of view about the bourgeois-democratic nature of the revolution, which brought the bourgeoisie to power, then swept away by October; about the socialist character, about the creation in the country of prerequisites for the establishment of a democratic socialist republic; and, finally, about the ochlocratic nature of the revolutionary process, which eliminated state power and led to the collapse of the country. In order to accomplish this task, it is necessary to consider both the nature of the driving forces of the revolution, the role of various strata of society in it, and the nature of the power that was established during the revolution, the composition of the political elite of the new system and its program of actions. Touching on these problems, we will limit ourselves only to the first stage of the revolutionary process - March - April 1917, when the country was most experiencing the consequences of the February Revolution as such and was still little affected by the side factors generated by the revolution.

Researchers of the Russian bourgeoisie of the early 20th century. came to the conclusion that the latter, being already a fairly significant economic force, did not have any unified political views by that time. The political preferences of its most active part were distributed over a fairly wide spectrum - from the right and nationalists to progressives and constitutional democrats (9).

In wartime, a certain part of the bourgeoisie unites around the so-called Progressive Bloc, the center of which is six factions State Duma, its majority ranges from progressives and cadets to the center group and nationalist-progressives. The purpose of this association was to ensure coordinated work of the state apparatus and broad social forces in the name of victory in the most difficult war (10). And although many Russian bourgeoisie subsequently found themselves in a camp hostile to the government and objectively contributed to the country’s slide toward revolution, revolution was never their goal. One of the most prominent representatives of the Cadet Party, V. A. Maklakov, formulated the position of the moderate forces as follows: “We did not want a revolution during the war... We were afraid that this task was to organize a revolution during the war, to change the state and the social system associated with it, to carry out these shocks and successfully bring the war to an end is beyond the strength of any people” (11). The war was not the only reason for abandoning the revolutionary path: the bourgeoisie was well aware of its weakness and interest in maintaining state order. As F.F. Kokoshkin later stated, the monarchy was not a principle, but a matter of political expediency (12).

The main demand of the Progressive Bloc, as is known, was the creation of a cabinet of “public trust” (13). At the same time, the Cadets and Octobrists who were part of the bloc abandoned their pre-war demand for government responsibility before the Duma for the sake of their alliance with more moderate movements. At the same time, the bourgeoisie did not at all strive for a break with the bureaucracy. Moreover, moderate representatives of the state apparatus of the empire aroused respect among bourgeois and liberal circles, as well as a desire for business consolidation. A.I. Guchkov later recalled: “Among the bureaucracy there were many people with a state understanding and quite pure in the social sense, so that it would be possible to create a good government official and technically trained and acceptable for a wide range of people.” public opinion the office was possible even without resorting to public elements” (14).

However, even here it is no longer the fault of the Russian bourgeoisie; the authorities preferred to rely solely on the forces of the bureaucracy, which, however, more and more revealed its inability to control the situation in the country, rather than an alliance with public circles. In such a situation, the policy of the Progressive Bloc suffered a complete defeat: the authorities did not agree to an alliance with it, and it lost popularity among the increasingly left-leaning public. The block actually collapsed in the fall of 1916! Under these conditions, part of the progressive-minded bourgeoisie came to the idea of ​​a palace coup as the only means to end the crisis of government during the war, the purpose of which was to remove the emperor and the camarilla from the levers of power (15).

How was the palace coup supposed to be radically different in its consequences from the revolution? Firstly, the palace coup assumed the preservation of calm in the country, the immutability of the state system, the monarchy and the dynasty as guarantors of the preservation of statehood; secondly, its goal was only to change the destructive course of the government, to demonstrate the government’s readiness for a real and effective alliance with the entire nation against a common external enemy.

By 1917, all plans for a palace coup were in their infancy, and the liberal camp met this year in a state of deep crisis. When unrest began in the capital, the Duma treated them very warily. The moderate forces were not interested in either the brutal suppression of the rebellion (they saw the unrest itself as a provocation) or in its victory. Therefore, the Duma hastened to put on the agenda the issue of supplying Petrograd with bread, because it was in this problem that it saw the main cause of urban instability. At the same time, the Duma majority did not support deputies A.F. Kerensky and N.S. Chkheidze, who called for supporting the “street” in its demands (16).

The February events clearly took the liberals and the bourgeoisie by surprise and thwarted all plans for a palace coup. At first, there could be no talk of any active participation of the bourgeoisie in the revolution or “aiding” the forces that carried out a coup in the capital. In the Petrograd events of late February 1917, bourgeois circles quite rightly saw a desire to lead the country to disaster. The well-known Menshevik N.N. Sukhanov described the attitude of bourgeois circles to the revolutionary events at that time and, accordingly, their policy in this situation: after the failure of the “last attempts to form a “united front” of tsarism and the bourgeoisie against the people’s revolution,” the bourgeoisie chose the tactics of overcoming democracy by attempting to use and curb the revolution by “joining it” and “becoming its leader” (17).

What kind of position is this of “reining in” and “joining in”? Sukhanov thus defined the activities of moderate liberal and associated bourgeois circles in the first days of the events that crushed the autocracy. As you know, when the events in Petrograd took on the character of a revolution, representatives of the Duma majority created the so-called Provisional Committee of the State Duma. Although it is sometimes considered a kind of prototype of the first Provisional Government, its goals and objectives were fundamentally different from the last. The Declaration of the Provisional Committee contained two main tasks: maintaining public order and forming a new government that would enjoy the confidence of the population (18). It was this old formulation of the “government of public trust,” known to the whole country from the Declaration of the Progressive Bloc, that could not have more clearly highlighted the position of the moderate forces: neither changing the political system, nor, moreover, patronizing the revolution was in their plans at that time, yes and could not enter: the Provisional Committee acted in accordance with the old, that is, legal state order.

The socialist movement, which, although by 1917 was in an even greater crisis than the bourgeoisie and liberals, seemed to take a very direct part in the unfolding of the revolutionary process. But even here, for the most adequate understanding, we need to note a number of significant nuances. Judging by the numerous evidence contained in the memoirs of the leaders of the socialist parties, few of them at first attached importance to the unrest in Petrograd. The trained eye of the revolutionary noted the high probability of provocation on the part of the authorities: too little resistance was provided to the troublemakers. Therefore, most socialist leaders were in no hurry to join the people (19). But when events took a most unexpected turn with the revolt in the garrison, the leaders of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries tried to control the mood of the masses. It is quite natural that the slogans put forward by the socialists immediately found an echo among the demoralized soldiers, striking workers and ordinary people who took to the streets. But we should not confuse the concepts: it was not the socialists in February 1917 who raised the masses to fight for the implementation of their slogans and it was not they who prepared this speech, but by adapting to the situation, trying to use it, they became the leaders of the rebellious people.

On February 27, the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was created, which declared itself, until the Congress of Soviets, the central body of Soviet power in the country. At first, this body consisted exclusively of the intelligentsia, but then it was replenished with representatives of workers and, especially, soldiers (20). Although at first the Petrograd Soviet did not know any proportionality and did not include representatives from the provinces (they appeared in it only a month later) (21), and it itself was not a body of state power, it was to it that the country owed the first most important decisions that determined the course of its development, for example, the famous Order No. 1, etc.

Considering the initial stage of the activity of the Petrograd Soviet, we must note two details that interest us: on the one hand, it was, in the opinion of many memoirists, the center of the uprising recognized by the masses (22), on the other, its influence was based exclusively on the authority of its leaders and existed only insofar as reflected and formulated the demands of the masses. The power of the Council rested only on speeches, slogans and resolutions. There was a crowd behind him, which was in the current conditions powerful force, but still preferred to fight for her specific interests.

So, within a few days, a revolution took place in Petrograd, and then throughout the country. The old government, being in a state of deep decline caused by both the war and internal reasons, was broken very quickly. Nowhere was it able to provide any serious resistance to the revolution. Meanwhile, we cannot call either the bourgeoisie or the socialist movement as such the driving force that brought about the revolution. This force came from the broadest, but unorganized, masses of the people. The famous Western researcher February L. Haimson speaks of their “spontaneous,” elemental behavior (23).

This is also evidenced by a variety of authors - witnesses to those events. “Groups of people unknown to anyone and not authorized by anyone began to arrest figures of the old regime... The crowds ruling the city were some kind of mishmash of soldiers, workers and ordinary urban rabble,” writes Octobrist S.I. Shidlovsky. “The reserves of anti-human hatred suddenly opened up and poured out in a muddy stream onto the streets of Petrograd in the forms of beating policemen, catching suspicious persons, and in the excited figures of soldiers riding madly in cars. It was difficult to push through to the Duma - soldiers, sailors, workers went there in droves... The crowd sporadically pushed away the sentries and poured into the palace,” says People’s Socialist member of the Petrosoviet V.B. Stankevich. The normal course of life in the city was completely disrupted, the Duma building was actually captured by the rebels, its work was completely paralyzed. The number of criminal offenses and looting increased sharply (24), which the new authorities were unable to stop: the Provisional Committee did not have any levers of control (even in the Tauride Palace it was not the owner), and the Petrograd Soviet was simply not equipped for this, because it was so the same product of revolution, like anarchy.

The subsequent events of March 2–3 changed the situation in the country no less radically than the coup in Petrograd itself. After the abdications of Nicholas and Mikhail, the only legal body of central government became the Provisional Government. The monarchy and the Duma, which, at the very least, represented all segments of the country's population, actually sank into oblivion, taking with them the ideas of state and legal order. The Duma, the only representative body on an all-Russian scale, found itself on the sidelines of the political process.

Neither by the principles of its formation, nor by its program of action, we can call the Provisional Government an organ of power of the bourgeoisie. Although its main composition came from the Duma majority, this does not yet indicate its course. This is spoken about, for example, by such well-known researchers as Startsev, who also notes that the government cannot be called bourgeois in the full sense of the word (25). In fact, the organization of a government that would pursue the interests of the bourgeoisie in its policies seems more than problematic in this situation.

The creation of the Provisional Government was the compromise to which the Provisional Committee and the Petrograd Soviet were forced to resort. The first personified the moderate forces of society, which alone by this time were a more or less organized force. The second represented a real, but completely unorganized force of the crowd and therefore could dictate terms to the Committee, but was unable to organize government. The composition and Declaration of Objectives of the new government, as is known, were agreed upon at a meeting of representatives of the Committee and the Council and only after that were published (26). Thus, from the very first day of its existence, the government became a hostage to the Council.

The composition of the new government, although defined by Lenin as “landlord-bourgeois,” hardly corresponds to this definition. Startsev quite rightly notes that the political preferences of government members cannot be determined solely by their party affiliation (27). It seems to us that supporters of the opposite point of view are seriously guilty of formalism. At first glance, it would seem that all government ministers, except Kerensky, belonged to a completely “qualified public.” However, their “class” affiliation did not always determine their specific political position. In accordance with this statement and the political situation, the careers of such government members as N.V. Nekrasov, M.I. Tereshchenko, etc. developed. The position occupied by the former, orientation toward Kerensky and the opinion of the Petrograd Soviet later even allowed P.N. Milyukov, a comrade Nekrasov in the party, accuse him of open betrayal and politicking (28). Unfortunately, among the ministers there were very few people for whom conformity or political lack of will and inability to assess the situation would not become their characteristic features. So, if people like Kerensky, Nekrasov and Tereshchenko obviously considered the main advantage of a political figure to be the ability to please the crowd, then the prime minister of the government G. E. Lvov, being incapable of acting in his post, actually indulged them with his lack of will (29). The declaration of the new government, which also passed through the censorship of the Petrograd Soviet, contained only general democratic provisions (amnesty, political freedoms, broad self-government, etc.) and was not only a bourgeois program. Moreover, the freedoms promised by the government to such an extent clearly threatened the preservation of order in the country and were dictated more by pressure from the broad masses and the leftist movement than by the bourgeoisie itself.

So, the Provisional Government was initially placed in a position where it could only exist relying on the broadest masses of the population. One of the main distinctive features such a government, which did not have any real levers of power and could not pursue independent policies that were unpopular in these conditions, was bound to become populist and pander to the crowd; and the further, the more.

The first actions of the new government were to proclaim the broadest democratic freedoms and eliminate some of the attributes of the old system. The death penalty was abolished, hard labor and political exile were abolished, an amnesty was proclaimed for political prisoners (and later, partially for criminals (30)), freedom of the press and entertainment, political activity and meetings was introduced, and military censorship was softened. The Police Department, the Corps of Gendarmes and security departments, the Supreme Criminal Court and the special presences of the Senate, military courts, as well as the posts of governors and zemstvo chiefs were abolished. The entire repressive apparatus of the empire was officially destroyed. In fact, this happened back in late February - early March, when he was completely paralyzed and broken both in the capital and, for the most part, locally. The government only had to fix this legally, which it did very quickly.

The old governing bodies were supposed to be replaced by new ones, but the vacuum created was never filled. In the localities, they tried to compensate for it with the old bodies of self-government (zemstvo), as well as the so-called committees of public organizations, that is, meetings of representatives of the Zemstvo and City Unions, military-industrial committees, etc. But these organizations were not able to fulfill the functions of local government, because they had no levers of power and were cumbersome. A researcher of the February events in Saratov, D. J. Reilly, very aptly called this process “the dispersion of power at the local level” (31).

The Provisional Government tried to solve the problem of organizing power locally: posts of government commissars were established in provinces and districts, which replaced governors and vice-governors.

But, as Prime Minister Lvov stated, “the commissioners of the Provisional Government, sent to the localities, have as their task not to stand on top of the established bodies as the highest authority, but only to serve as an intermediary between them and the central government and to facilitate the issue of their organization and registration” (32) . It was assumed that they would become the chairmen of provincial and district zemstvo councils, but in practice this was not always the case. Government commissioners have never become a worthy replacement for governors. They had no administrative power in their hands. Moreover, in some provinces and districts at first there were no them at all, and the process of replacing them happened very quickly, so that already in the spring the government insisted that unauthorized appointment to the post of provincial commissar was impossible, since this was a government matter. However, the process was unstoppable, and by the end of April there were less than half of the commissioners appointed from among the chairmen of the boards. total number. On April 26, the government decided to appoint commissioners in consultation with committees of public organizations. The commissars themselves, at their meeting in Petrograd, stated that their local power without support from the councils was “zero.” The Socialist Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, which could hardly be suspected of great sympathy for the administrative system, wrote: “There is no local government: some organs are destroyed, others are unviable, and most importantly, they are deprived of any authority in the eyes of the population” (33).

The government itself understood this: the circulars of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for March - April demanded streamlining the structure of local government bodies and acting in accordance with government regulations and orders of ministries (34). But this was impossible, including because the government itself intended to reform local government “on the basis of transforming local government bodies into self-government bodies and granting them full local government power” (35). The authorities, thus, withdrew themselves from participation in local government, which threatened them with disaster in the near future.

The central government also presented a sad picture. Even in the capital, the Provisional Government was not completely in control of the situation. Ensuring order and public peace, previously entrusted to the police, is now up in the air. Although a decision was made to replace the police with the militia, the latter was created slowly and clearly did not cope with the assigned tasks - the Government decided on March 7 to urge the population to maintain order and not make illegal arrests, which large quantities took place both during the coup and after. At the same time, it was decided to “recreate the central body in charge of public security” (36). Later, on March 10, a decree was issued on the creation of a Temporary Directorate for Public Police (Militia) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the police received their charter only on April 17. On the ground, it was subordinate to local authorities; no centralized structure was created. In addition, it was initially assumed that 2 times less money would be spent on it than previously on the police. The difficulties that arose with the need to maintain public order, the weakness of the police itself, as well as its close connection locally with the soviets did not allow it to be used as an effective force in carrying out government policy (37).

The central state apparatus, unable to actively influence the situation on the ground, was doomed to isolation and helplessness. In addition, he himself underwent significant cleaning, which could not but affect his performance. Ministries created numerous meetings that tried to make up for the normal work of the central government. But the results were minimized due to the inability to coordinate the work of the center and the province. No government measures could be implemented if they did not comply with the decisions of local governments. On May 4, Guchkov stated about his resignation: “I left power because it simply did not exist” (38).

The plight of the authorities was aggravated by the growing anarchy throughout the country. In the cities, legitimate authorities and legitimate bodies of self-government could not contain the changes that led to the death of the country. Already in the first days of the revolution, an eight-hour working day was arbitrarily introduced in many cities (which was completely unacceptable in wartime); in March it was introduced in the 28 largest industrial centers of the country. Councils of workers' and soldiers' deputies (separate or joint) are organized, which, like the Petrograd Soviet, enter into negotiations with authorities and committees of public organizations on behalf of the workers and soldiers of a particular city. The authorities could not come into conflict with these authoritative organizations and usually satisfied their demands. The government even had to warn its commissioners against the financial support of the councils, which took place. It was under pressure from the councils that local government structures and the bourgeoisie agreed to introduce an eight-hour working day in cities (39). The reliance of local councils on the armed forces, which were reserve battalions stationed in cities and supporting these bodies, made any serious attempt to resist them on the part of the authorities pointless. Only preservation by commissioners good relations with the councils could allow them to at least somehow maintain their power. However, this often required the commissioners to directly indulge the advice and increasingly increase their dependence on them.

The government, in turn, not only did not try to prevent this, but on March 10 even recommended that the military and naval departments follow the example of entrepreneurs and introduce an eight-hour working day at their factories. Although this was a crime during the world war, it was still done. Naturally, this measure did not contribute to an increase in efficiency; on the contrary, the economy, which was already in a pre-crisis state, begins to disintegrate before our eyes (40).

In March, the revolutionary wave sets the village in motion. According to Kharitonov’s correct observation, the village, like the entire province in general, did not become the center of resistance to the revolution, but, on the contrary, here the revolution went even further in its manifestations than in the center. In the first month of the revolution, the number of peasant uprisings began to creep up sharply, amounting to almost 20% in relation to the whole of 1916. In April, their number increased 7.5 times, and the number of destroyed estates almost doubled (41).

Such statistics could not go unnoticed. Already on March 9, the Provisional Government discussed the unrest that took place in the Kazan province. The government decided to suppress such protests, since they were aimed at seizing private property. The issue of transferring land into the hands of peasants remained at the discretion of the Constituent Assembly, and its unauthorized expropriation was a criminal offense. It was decided to apply “the full force of the law” to violators, but the use of weapons was considered unacceptable (42). The provincial commissars did not have the forces with which to suppress agrarian unrest. In the spring, military teams were sent to pacify the peasants only a few times, and there is no information at all about the use of weapons. The police were not suitable for such operations: they either did not take part in the pacification, or even contributed to them (43).

Areas of peasant unrest grew, covering most of the European provinces of Russia. The Provisional Government is trying to coordinate the activities of its structures in this matter and transfer it entirely to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the circulars of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, provincial commissars are constantly required to immediately take measures to restore order. The government insists on constantly informing it of all cases of unrest and measures to eliminate them (44). Provincial commissars telegraph about their powerlessness and ask for help (45).

Already at this time, volost executive committees were created in the villages, which filled the resulting power vacuum. In most cases, these executive committees turned out to be the only real body there (46). Based on his decisions, peasants often occupied neighboring estates. Over time, councils of peasant deputies were created in volosts, districts, provinces and even regional ones (that is, for several provinces). Such organizations already in the spring of 1917 made decisions to subordinate to them the entire land fund of their region. A similar decision, despite the resolutions of the Provisional Government, was made in April by the councils of the Shlisselburg district and the Kansky district of the Yenisei province. etc., and in May - the Kazan provincial congress. As for forced leases and requisitions, they were already widely practiced in March, and in April they were approved by the councils of Penza, Saratov and Ryazan provinces (47). On April 11, the government compromised by giving food committees the right to forcefully rent unoccupied space at a price they set (48).

The clearest example of the complete impotence of the authorities were, perhaps, the events that took place several dozen miles from the capital - in Shlisselburg, whose city council on April 17 expressed no confidence in the government, created its own revolutionary committee, declared supreme body authorities in the city. The land in the district was expropriated, and this decision was enforced by the city police. The city also appealed to all of Russia to immediately establish workers' control in enterprises and eliminate private ownership of land (49).

Under these conditions, the independent existence of the Provisional Government was simply unthinkable. He needed to rely on some kind of social force in his activities. Such a force was the Petrograd Soviet. The reasons for its influence and its features have already been indicated above. However, the government did not have to choose.

The Petrograd Soviet was formally a city public organization and did not officially claim power, but, declaring itself a body representing “all of working Russia” and receiving the support of the masses, it was a real threat to the government as an institution acting on behalf of the people and for the people. The council was, obviously, supposed to become the embodiment of the principle expressed in the Socialist Revolutionary “Affair of the People”: “The reforming power of the Provisional Government, pushing and controlling the activities of the councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies” (50). If the Council was a public organization, then, in any case, in the opinion of its leaders, it was the most significant and had the right to put pressure on the authorities. It was precisely this understanding that the Council demonstrated: it decides to close right-wing newspapers, it insists on the arrest of the imperial family and the replacement of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (both demands are fulfilled by the authorities unquestioningly), it issues Order No. 1. In general, it expresses “ demands of the revolutionary people” and develops “urgent measures in order to ... influence the government to satisfy these demands and continuously monitor their implementation.” At the same time, the Petrograd Soviet actively protests against the publication of public acts by the Provisional Committee of the Duma, since the latter is no longer, in the opinion of the Council, a state power (51).

The real power of the Petrograd Soviet was not, of course, as great as its leaders might have thought. He, like the government, did not have the leverage to implement it locally. The order of the Council meetings did not allow this body to become a more or less effective structure: having appeared on the crest of anarchy, it was unable to defeat the anarchy within itself. Stankevich describes his work as follows: “There was no leadership, and there could not have been... The order of the day was usually established “peacefully,” but there were very rare cases when it was possible to resolve not only all, but at least one of the questions raised, since constantly During the meetings, urgent issues arose that had to be resolved in turn... Issues had to be resolved under the pressure of an extraordinary mass of delegates and walkers,... and all the delegates sought to be heard in a plenary meeting of the committee (Executive Committee. - F.G.)… On the days of the meeting of the Council or the soldiers’ section, things fell into catastrophic disorder” (52). Even Sukhanov, much more left-wing than Stankevich, testifies: “The crowd was still pressing from outside. Inside, the same tedious, exhausting leapfrog of “extraordinary statements”, “urgent issues” and “order of the day” was going on... The meetings were still almost continuous and still bore no traces of any external decorum” (53) .

But the specifics of the situation made the Provisional Government really dependent on the crowd and, accordingly, on the Petrograd Soviet. This dependence was expressed in the constant coordination of its activities with the Council (through the conciliation commission (54)). Some of the most important documents were created under direct pressure from the Council, for example, the introduction of a grain monopoly; others that came from the pen of Soviet leaders were only subsequently approved by the government, for example, Order No. 2 for the Petrograd Military District; still others were published jointly with the Soviet ones, such as the government's declarations of March 3 on its tasks and March 26 on its foreign policy, published together with Council resolutions on the same subject.

Let us now consider the position of bourgeois circles. Their attitude to the revolutionary events of late February - early March in Petrograd has already been noted above. Maybe later the situation changed and became more acceptable for the bourgeoisie? Indeed, in Western Europe, bourgeois-democratic revolutions, for example the revolution of 1848 in France, at first also had an anarchic character, but in a very short term The bourgeoisie, which came to power, restored order and the system of authorities, which from that time acted in its interests. In our case this is not entirely true. Already in March, the Provisional Government revealed not only an inability, which was quite obvious and natural in that situation, but also an unwillingness to listen even to those entrepreneurs whose activities were directly related to meeting the country’s primary needs. On March 19–22, the First Trade and Industrial Congress was held, at which bourgeois circles demanded that the government end the dominance of the councils in the center and locally, suspend the eight-hour daily working norm for the duration of the war, and also abolish fixed prices for bread in order to saturate the market. The arguments in favor of the latter measure were quite simple and logical: in the absence of effective local government power, pursuing a policy of fixed prices and state regulation of the economy was unthinkable; it inevitably led to a severe crisis. None of these demands were fulfilled: on March 25, a grain monopoly was introduced with a fixed price for bread, the councils, as you know, became increasingly stronger, and regarding the notorious working day, the government’s position remained the same. According to an authoritative domestic researcher of the economic policy of the Provisional Government, this government could not fully suit the bourgeoisie (55). Indeed, it is unlikely that a government whose program did not include the patronage of the bourgeoisie can be called a bourgeois government.

In this regard, the assessment of the government's activities made by M. Paleologue, the French ambassador in Petrograd, is also of particular interest. It is very characteristic that this outside observer, a representative of the bourgeois republican government, nowhere uses the term “bourgeois” in relation to the Provisional Government. Paleologus associates the liberalism of the latter only with the names of Milyukov and Guchkov, and partially with Lvov and Shingarev. The paleologist, among other things, cites his conversation with the largest industrialist A.I. Putilov, the essence of which boils down to the latter’s words - that “Russia has entered a very long period of disorder, poverty and decay” (56). Can we then say that the Provisional Government was guided in its course by the bourgeoisie, and the latter considered it “their” government?

The April crisis became the first test of the new government's strength. Problem foreign policy was, perhaps, the first issue on which the government could not immediately find mutual understanding with the masses and the Council. But the essence of the conflict was deeper. “The cause and external form of the crisis was the question foreign policy revolutionary Russia. However, its essence was the question of power,” concludes Startsev (57). The crisis clearly showed the complete helplessness of the government. And it was not a matter of his “bourgeoisism,” because subsequent government compositions ultimately did not become more popular due to the presence of socialist ministers in them. The composition of the government and the party affiliation of ministers mattered little. Only one thing was required from the authorities: encouragement and legitimation of the lawlessness that was happening in the country. The Petrograd Soviet was quite suitable for this, and the Provisional Government was shackled by its authority and its own powerlessness. Its tasks included only the publication of such legislative acts that would not contradict the sentiments of the masses. Any serious resistance to them inevitably entailed a crisis of power.

So, neither the bourgeoisie and the liberal camp, nor the socialist parties as political forces were the lever that brought about a revolution in Russia in February 1917. One can evaluate the role of these forces in its preparation one way or another, but the revolution itself did not occur through their fault. The February Revolution was neither bourgeois-democratic nor socialist in essence. It was dominated by democratic and socialist in form, but in essence anarchic and ochlocratic forces.

The February events were not caused by the activation of any political force, but rather, on the contrary, by their general impotence. There was more than one reason for this. A protracted government crisis, the collapse of central and local government at a time of colossal tension associated with the war, and at the same time the stubborn reluctance of the autocracy and the state apparatus to share the heavy burden of governing the country with the moderate forces of Russian society, hence the weakness of the latter, etc. - all it did the trick. The political system collapsed from the unrest in the capital in an instant. But there was no other organized political force in the country capable of taking power into its own hands. The bourgeoisie was then still too weak politically, and did not set itself the task of monopolizing power in its hands. The liberal camp, which during the war created the Progressive Bloc with the goal of uniting the government and the nation around the idea of ​​victory in the war, which removed all radical demands from its shields for the duration of the war (responsible ministry, etc.), by 1917 found itself disunited, experiencing complete defeat of its strategic course. Socialist parties at that time they were in a state of deep crisis and did not prepare the revolution, but only joined it.

Therefore, the unrest that began in the capital in the conditions of the existing power vacuum very quickly grew into unrest throughout the country. According to Maklakov, “Russia received more freedom on the day of the revolution than it could accommodate, and the revolution destroyed Russia” (58). All layers and groups of the population were spontaneously drawn into anarchy. Each of them pursued its own interests, and in total this ultimately resulted in a disaster at the front, the shutdown of factories and factories, transport, theft of estates and the dismemberment of a single state. It would be a big mistake to assume that these processes began in October; no, all this, unfortunately, happened already in March - April. It was from this time that the murders of officers began, the unauthorized introduction of an eight-hour working day in factories, then estates were still on fire, and councils and zemkoms began to appropriate private property. land ownership, then, a few dozen miles from Petrograd, a “sovereign” Shlisselburg “Soviet republic” arises with its own revolutionary committee and labor land use. The weak-willed Provisional Government, which from the first days of its existence was doomed to this lack of will, could not pursue an independent and effective political course. The Petrograd Soviet, even if it had tried to restrain these processes, which, however, it had no intention of doing, would have immediately lost all popularity among the masses. In the conditions of the spring of 1917, only popularity (or populism?) could be the support of power, the condition for its existence. This “dual power”, and Prince E.N. Trubetskoy very accurately called it “ten power” (59)?, did not even closely resemble state power. “We not only overthrew the bearers of power, we overthrew and abolished the very idea of ​​power, destroyed those necessary foundations on which all power is built,” admitted Guchkov (60).