The Formation of the Petrograd Soviet

chapter 17 The Formation of the Petrograd Soviet

Tauride Palace as the Centre of the Revolution

The sudden explosion of the soldiers’ rising on 27 February completely des- troyed the tsarist administrative network in Petrograd. The ‘former’ ministers and generals now became fugitives from the triumphant insurgents. Yet, even though the rebels took the capital into their hands with unexpected ease, they had no idea of what to do next. Suddenly, at the height of the intoxication of liberation, fear chilled their passions. The rumour spread that counterre- volutionary troops sent by Nicholas ii were approaching the capital from the front. While the soldiers had shaken off the chains of military discipline, they found no revolutionary authorities to give them direction. Soldiers who had broken their oaths to the tsar now sought an institution that would sanction their actions.The Duma, which had spearheaded the attack on the government from its rostrum, appeared to the masses of soldiers to be the institution to absolve them from the ‘crimes’ they had just committed. The cry: ‘To the Taur- ide Palace!’ spread from soldier to soldier.1 The success of the insurrection also meant broadening the basis of the mass movement. The leadership that had provided the driving force in the strikes and the demonstrations before 27 February quickly eroded once the rebellion expanded beyond the confines of the workers’ movement. The soldiers who revolted suddenly became the main actors in the insurgency. How to organise these insurgent soldiers became the crucial issue that would determine the fate of the revolution. Furthermore, for the first time since 23 February many private citizens joined the political movement, attacking police stations and prisons, or just going out to the streets to greet the soldiers. The leaders of the workers’ movement could not extend their effectiveness to the new- comers. The left-wing socialists led by the Bolsheviks and Mezhraiontsy, trying to divert the massive support for the Duma as the centre of the movement, appealed to the insurgents to establish Finland Station in the Vyborg District as a centre.This attempt, however, went unheeded; workers and even the Bolshev- iks themselves eventually joined the irresistible current flowing to the Tauride

1 Burdzhalov 1967, p. 202.

Palace. By early afternoon on 27 February, theTauride Palace became the centre of the revolution. When the soldiers’ boots stepped onto the carpeted floor of the palace built by Catherine the Great for one of her lovers, Potemkin, two groups were responding to the events outside – the Duma leaders and the socialist leaders. From the former there emerged a Provisional Committee of the State Duma (the Duma Committee), while the socialists created the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, to be renamed the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Sol- diers’ Deputies on 1 March. Thus two conflicting authorities came into being. And it was during the first few days of the February Revolution that the two authorities established their ambivalent relationship of cooperation and com- petition, a relationship that lasted basically until September of this turbulent year. From the point of view of revolutionary leadership during the February insurrection, two characteristics stand out: first, the movement had no leadership strong enough to organise the masses into some kind of revolutionary power. Second, the top leaders of the revolutionary parties took little part in the insurrection. The creation of the Petrograd Soviet might appear to have finally closed the gap between the masses and the revolutionary leaders. The insurrection seemed, on the surface, to have finally found a voice to dictate its will. Actually, however, the gap between the masses and the leaders was never bridged. The Petrograd Soviet, like Janus, had two faces: one face expressing the long suppressed desires of the masses for the destruction of the existing sys- tem and the other representing the revolutionary intelligentsia, who desired to support the establishment of the government formed by the bourgeoisie. If one were to take a picture of these two faces, they would remain like a double- exposed photograph, never merging into one clear image.

Revolutionary Parties and the Soviet after the 1905 Revolution

As Oskar Anweiler states, despite its short-lived existence, the St. Petersburg Soviet of 1905 had left a strong revolutionary tradition that was clearly imprin- ted on the consciousness of St. Petersburg workers.2 Although the revolutionary parties failed to incorporate the notion of the soviet integrally into their revolutionary programmes after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, they never-

2 Anweiler 1958, p. 127.