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Episode 10.64: The Origin of Dual Power

Last time, we finally successfully got rid of Tsar Nicholas the Second. He’s done. He’s out. He is in fact presently on his way to say goodbye to his troops, and then depart for a long and peaceful retirement finally free of the burdens he never had the talent or fortitude to handle anyway. But in order to connect the dots directly from international women’s day to the abdication a week later, I kind of had to breeze through some really important stuff going on at Petrograd. And so today, we are going to hit rewind until we are back on the evening of Sunday, February 26th, after a day of street clashes led several regiments of the Petrograd garrison to decide to mutiny the next morning, and march out to join the revolution.

Now, the reason I want to go back to Sunday night is to emphasize that even at this incredibly late hour, many of our professional revolutionary socialists, party leaders, and organizers, whose lives were dedicated to bringing about the revolution were caught flat-footed by events. Many, in fact, went to bed on Sunday night convinced the forces of order were already winning. One of the top Bolsheviks in Petrograd groused at a meeting held at Kerensky’s house, "There is no and will be no revolution. We have to prepare for a long period of reaction."

Another of them said, "The unrest in the barracks is subsiding. Indeed, it is clear that the working class and the soldiery must go different ways. We must not rely on daydreams for a revolution." Several years later, an SR leader looked back and admitted, "the revolution found us, the party members, fast asleep, just like the foolish virgins in the gospel." And this is to say nothing of the senior leadership of all these parties, all of whom were in exile abroad, and more or less convinced the next revolution was unlikely to break out in their lifetimes.

Now, this is not to say that the years of organizing and tutoring and propagandizing from the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks and SRs was not partly responsible for the fundamental infusion of revolutionary hopes and dreams, strategies, and tactics into both the Petrograd working classes and the rank and file of the military. But, when the rank and file of the military dramatically defected on the morning of Monday, February 27th, it was of their own accord, and not under the leadership or guidance of revolutionary parties. The leaders of those parties would wake up on Monday, February 27th, realize the revolution was in fact happening, and then run out to recast themselves as leaders of events they were clearly being led by.

Now, all that said there was one group of leaders who could not be the leaders of this revolutionary moment, even if they wanted to, because they were all locked up in the Peter and Paul Fortress. I’m talking here about the leaders of the Workers Group, who had all been arrested at the end of January. This was the sweep of arrests Minister of the Interior Protopopov believed had successfully short-circuited the revolution. Because those guys were the leaders connected to the working class organizations on one side, and the Duma opposition leaders on the other, and who stood the best chance of making the former work for the latter. Well, as we touched on last week, when the Petrograd garrison mutinied one of the things they did was storm the Peter and Paul Fortress, and free all the prisoners inside. So, the freed leadership of the Workers Group immediately returned to the task of organizing the streets, to make sure the demonstrations and mutinies and street fighting formed a cohesive momentum towards the goal of political revolution.

In terms of political affiliation, most of the leaders of the Worker’s Group were Mensheviks or SRs. And the one who we need to specifically namecheck here is Nikolay Chkheidze. Chkheidze was an old school Georgian socialist, and one of the founders of the first Social Democratic group in Georgia back in the early 1890s. When the party split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903, Chkheidze and most of his Georgian comrades became staunch Mensheviks, and he was among those fighting against the frustrating Bolshevik loose cannon and obnoxious gangster of Georgian socialism, young Joseph Stalin.

Now, starting in 1907, Chkheidze managed to get himself elected to the Duma, and he was one of the tiny handful of active Social Democrats remaining in the body after Stolypin’s coup. He then became a working ally of Alexander Kerensky, and starting in 1915 was a key leader of the Workers Group. This was a project championed by the Mensheviks to bridge the gap between the political opposition in the Duma and the working classes in the street. After being released from prison and conferring both among themselves and the other leaders of the several socialist parties Chkheidze and his comrades improvised a solution about how to organize and direct the exuberant chaos presently consuming Petrograd. As Alexander Kerensky later recalled the question arose — and I’m quoting here — "as to how and by whom the soldiers and workmen were to be led. For until then, their movement was completely unorganized, uncoordinated, and anarchical. Kerensky said it was suggested they organize an elected soviet, and he said, "the memory of 1905 prompted this cry. The need of some kind of center for the mass movement was realized by everyone. The Duma itself needed some representatives of the rebel populace. Without them, it would have been impossible to reestablish order in the capital."

And before we go on, let’s just recall here that the soviets — that is elected worker assemblies — had been born spontaneously in the strikes of 1905, and were then used as a model copied by various urban municipalities, including Petrograd. The first Petrograd soviet, remember, became the home base of young Trotsky and was shut down in December 1905 in the first wave of post October Manifesto repression. With the idea for a soviet in hand, socialist party leaders then approached Kerensky about securing a location for such an assembly to meet. Kerensky who also wanted to get a handle on things, saw an opportunity to create a line of communication, authority, and exchange between the workers and soldiers who were up in arms, and the Duma leadership who did not know how to talk to them or control them, or even what it would take to get them back under control. Kerensky said later, "The organizers applied to me for suitable premises. I mentioned the matter to Rodzianko, and the thing was arranged." The leaders were not just assigned to place to meet; they were given space inside the Tauride Palace itself, to make sure the line of communication between the soviet and the Duma was literally physically as short as possible.

These leaders then went out in front of the palace and proclaimed to the tens of thousands of workers and soldiers who had by now assembled in front of the building that they were forming an elected Soviet of soldiers, and that everyone was to go out and spread the word that industries, factories, and companies of soldiers were to elect representatives and send them down to the Tauride Palace. When all of these delegates assembled, they were then to consider themselves the legitimate representatives of the people of Petrograd.

Now, by the evening of Monday, February 27th, most people had still either not heard about the Soviet, or were still in the middle of arranging how to hold little elections to pick deligates, most of whom would thus not be ready to assemble until the next day of the earliest, and then looking forward a little bit, the Petrograd Soviet is not going to hit its maximum size for several weeks to come, as every day, new delegates are showing up saying they have just been elected. But even though most people weren’t ready to show up, a self-selected group who were immediately on hand did convene in the early evening. And we’re talking about roughly 50 delegates, and about 200 observers who crammed into a room in the Tauride Palace. But none of these people were working class delegates from factories or soldiers from mutinous companies. They were instead representatives of the existing socialist parties. They were the ones instigating the creation of the Soviet, and they were the ones who had an existing apparatus in place to select and send representatives of their party to the Tauride Palace very quickly. So, this first meeting of the Petrograd Soviet mostly resembled a summit of socialist party leaders. There were SRs and Mensheviks and Bolsheviks and Trudoviks. This group of about 50 socialist party leaders then elected from their number an executive committee of eight or nine people, depending on what source you use, who would be free to take decisive action, and, for example, negotiate directly with the leaders of the Duma, who were themselves at this same moment choosing their own provisional executive committee to navigate the crisis.

The Soviet executive committee was effectively a power sharing agreement between the several socialist parties, as each of them received at least two representatives. Nikolay Chkheidze was elected chairman of the executive committee, with Alexander Kerensky, who represented the Trudoviks, elected one of the vice chairmen. And this is where and how Kerensky becomes such an important and influential figure in the February Revolution and the post February Revolutionw period, because he’s going to emerge from this momentous week serving as both a senior officer of the Petrograd Soviet, and being a minister in the Duma’s provisional government. He’s going to be the living bridge between the two institutions that are going to spend most of the next eight months kind of pulling in opposite directions.

Now, the fact that they were going to pull in opposite directions was not planned or expected at the time though, and Kerensky later recalled, "Two different Russia’s settled side-by-side. The Russia of the ruling class who had lost, though they did not realize it yet, and the Russia of labor, marching toward power without suspecting it." Because with the establishment of the Petrograd Soviet, right alongside the provisional government inside the Tauride Palace, is the origin of dual power, which is going to become very important once the main cadre of Bolshevik leaders gets off the train at Finland station in April and start plotting how they can take over the whole dang thing.

But that is still a bit down the road. For right now, Kerensky’s influence is shown this very evening, Monday, February 27th. That night, the leaders of both the Duma and the Soviet confronted an unexpected problem. The ministers of the government — that is, the now effectively deposed government — started presenting themselves one by one or in small nervous groups. Well aware that lynchings of enemies of the people were happening all over Petrograd, these former ministers volunteered to be placed under arrest by the Duma, in the hopes that the Duma would be able to guarantee their physical safety. Kerensky, who is poised to become minister of justice, interceded with the angry crowds inside the palace to not immediately lynch the ministers, but instead to take them into custody and guarantee their safety. He even stuck with this when former Minister of the Interior Protopopov snuck into the Tauride Palace in disguise. When his presence was finally detected, he came very near being killed on the spot, but Kerensky barged through, saved his life, and put him in protective custody. The point here is both that Kerensky believed the revolution needed to maintain something like the rule of law, if only not to risk provoking retaliatory counter-revolution by the senior command of the army, who were clearly ready to pitch Tsar Nicholas overboard, but probably would not stand too long for reports of lawless violence in the capital. But the other point is that Kerensky clearly commanded enough authority and respect that when he started shouting at people don’t lynch Protopopov that people listened.

Now the next day, Tuesday, February 28th, we get to the first large scale meetings of the Petrograd Soviet. Initially, about 600 deputies elected by various industries and military companies started showing up. As the weeks progressed, this number is going to grow to about 3000, with soldiers routinely outnumbering workers, about two to one. So though the assembly would be officially called the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, in terms of who actually commanded a majority in the assembly, it would actually be the Soviet of soldiers and also some workers deputies.

Now, the first session of the Soviet was, like most of the sessions of the Soviet, incredibly chaotic. The first meeting was defined by people simply standing up and making speeches or introducing themselves or reporting what they had seen and heard over the past several days. There was no agenda, there were no rules of order, it was just a bunch of people noisily inhabiting the same space as each other.

Now as this main assembly was inevitably very messy and chaotic, the meetings of the executive committee that had self-selected itself the night before it became the focal point of immediate action. The committee was augmented to take into account all the new arrivals, and two more representatives from each of the major parties were added, and were talking Trudoviks, the popular Socialists, the SR, the Bund, the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks. And though, in the main, the executive committee tended to be Menshevik and SR in outlook, at least for the moment they wanted to make sure that all the socialist parties felt like they had a place and a voice inside the Soviet.

As all of these leaders came together to discuss what to do and how to proceed, there were two overriding concerns in front of them: how to restore order to the capital, and then determine what the Soviet’s place would be inside the post-revolutionary order of things. To take the second of these first, the Menshevik leanings of the Soviet leadership meant they still saw events unfolding according to the old two-stage theory of revolution, that first would come the bourgeois democratic revolution, and then, the working class socialist revolution. According to this formula, what they believed was happening right now was the revolutionary transfer of power from the old absolutism of the medieval tsar to the new democratic order of the bourgeoisie. Since they believed this was not just how things ought to go, but how things must go, it naturally followed that the role of the Soviet, as the assembled representatives of the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, was to support the overthrow of the tsar, and the assumption of power by the Duma.

But the other big thing in front of them was how to effectively get control of the spontaneous revolutionary uprising currently parading through the streets of Petrograd. More than anything, the question was, how do we get all the mutinous soldiers back under something resembling military discipline? On March the First, the provisional executive committee of the Duma attempted to assert command of the soldiers by issuing a public order for all of them to return to their barracks and place themselves back under their officers.

But word immediately bounced back up through the soldiers and workers delegates in the Soviet, saying this is impossible without certain guarantees. I mean, they had, after all just mutinied against their officers, in many cases, killed their officers, and the men were justifiably concerned that if they just returned to their barracks and placed themselves back under the command of those officers, that they would be liable for some pretty severe punishments: execution, imprisonment, exile. It was not at all out of line for them to be concerned that that’s what awaited them back in the barracks. With the Duma’s attempt to get the soldiers back in line a non-starter, the leaders of the Soviet discussed what they could possibly do. And their own concern about reprisals from the officer corps w’re not limited to individual punishment for mutinous disobedience, but also that the officer corps, as a whole, represented probably the strongest potentially counter-revolutionary force in Petrograd, and frankly the whole empire. It would be an impossibly stupid mistake to simply reassert the previous status quo in the army. So on March the first, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet addressed both problems simultaneously by issuing the famous — or infamous, depending on who you talk to — Order Number One.

Now, Order Number One actually contained a whole bunch of orders. It called on all military units to immediately form democratic committees and elect delegates to the Petrograd Soviet. It then said all weapons and firearms in the unit’s possession were to be placed under the control of these committees. And that included all the weapons of the officers, who were to be immediately disarmed. The order said that the unit committees were then to control and issue the weapons at their discretion, but not under any circumstances or weapons to be issued to the officers. The order said very specifically, "Weapons–" and I’m quoting here — "shall by no means be issued to the officers, not even at their insistence." The disarming of the officer Corps was to prevent them from being a threat to the unit specifically, and to the revolution generally. The officers would, by practical necessity, still lead the unit and issue orders, but they would do so standing literally defenseless against the armed men they commanded. Which would make them think twice about what orders they issued.

Order number one, went on to say that if the officers issued orders that contradicted decrees of the Petrograd Soviet, the men were commanded to ignore those orders. There were also further decrees about how and when military discipline would be observed, and generally creating an air of social equality between the men and the officers, even if, while on duty, the men were mostly supposed to obey the commands of their superior officers. But again, unless they contradicted decrees in the Petrograd Soviet.

Now, given what’s to come for the Russian army in 1917 and 1918, there has been a prevailing myth that Order Number One commanded military units to begin electing their own officers, but this is not true. All mention of elections in Order Number One are confined to the topic of sending delegates to the Soviet, not out and out electing their own officers. There was also immediate confusion about who Order Number One was supposed to apply to, whether it was just the Petrograd Garrison or the army as a whole. And the next day, the Soviet had to scramble to clarify that it was only meant to apply to the mutinous Petrograd garrisons, not the army as a whole. But by then, Order Number One was already spreading and taking on a life of its own, whereupon it will get wrapped up in the wider story of the total collapse of discipline and cohesion in the Russian army in 1917.

Order Number One is also wrapped up in the story of the Petrograd Soviet operating on its own, and just completely ignoring the authority of the Duma’s provisional government. This will also become a major issue for the rest of 1917, but it was not consciously the goal of the leaders of the Soviet, who issued Order Number One, and then immediately proceeded to spend the whole rest of March the first and overnight into March the second working out the terms of the Soviet acknowledging, supporting, and defending the political authority of the Duma’s provisional government. Which, as I’ve said, the leaders of the Soviet were eager to do. So if you set Order Number One aside, which has to be understood in the context of getting the mutinous soldiers of Petrograd back under control, the leaders of the Soviet mostly wanted to turn the Soviet into an auxiliary assembly that would act as a direct line to the workers and the soldiers of Petrograd, bring them on board with the plan to support the provisional government, and then ensure the provisional government was well briefed on what they needed to do to not lose the support of the workers and the soldiers.

But though the leaders of the Soviet were eager to come to terms with the leaders of the Duma, there would be terms. And after midnight on what was now technically March 2nd, negotiators from both sides hammered out an eight point plan that both sides could live with. And just to link us back around to what we talked about last week, these negotiations were going on simultaneous to the final round of telegrams Rodzianko was sending to Pskov saying Nicolas appointing a new government was no longer enough, that he had to abdicate the throne. And he was saying that because the leaders of the Duma and the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet had already moved on and were crafting their own vision for the political future of Russia.

So, the eight point agreement that will define this political future for post-revolutionary Russia is not very long, and so I’m just going to tick it off in full.

One, immediate amnesty for all political prisoners including terrorists.

Two, immediate granting of the freedom of speech and association and assembly, and of the right to strike as promised by the tsarist government in 1906, but never fully implemented.

Three, immediate abolition of disabilities and privileges due to nationality, religion, or social origin.

Four, immediate operations for the convocation of a constituent assembly to be elected on a universal, secret, direct and equal ballot.

Five, all police organs to be dissolved and replaced by a militia with elected officers to be supervised by local government.

Six, new elections to organize local self-government on the basis of universal direct, equal, and secret voting.

Seven, military units that have participated in the revolution to keep their weapons and to receive assurances they would not be sent to the front.

And finally, eight, military discipline in the armed forces to be maintained, but off duty soldiers were to enjoy the same rights as civilians.

And what we see here in these eight points is what was believed to be the immediate goal and result of the February Revolution. Anyone who had been previously punished or might be punished for opposing a regime that has now been overthrown would be absolved of them. We’re going to find the full realization of the political liberties that had been allegedly guaranteed after the Revolution of 1905, but which had then been ignored. We’re looking towards the elimination of ethnic and aristocratic privileges inside the Russian Empire. The abolition of police forces controlled by the autocratic regime, and instead law and order being handed over to democratically organized and controlled militia groups. And then finally, democratic participation at all levels of government, both at the national level and at the local level, all of it on the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret ballots.

Now none of these points are surprising and all of them represent core parts of the kind of democratic bourgeois revolutions that we’ve seen lots of times so far in the Revolutions podcast. But, before we wrap things up this week, I do want to zero in specifically on point number four, immediate preparations for the convocation of a constituent assembly to be elected on a universal, secret, direct, and equal ballot.

Both the leaders of the Duma and the Petrograd Soviet believed everything they were doing was provisional and temporary. That they were merely stewards, and that it would take the convening of a democratically elected constituent assembly to hammer out a new permanent constitutional order for Russia. The constituent assembly is what they were all going to look forward to to ultimately legitimize everything they were doing here at the end of February and beginning of March.

Now having reached this agreement, the provisional government being organized by the Duma was essentially accepting upon itself full legitimate political authority. And we can connect back up now to the end of last week’s episode, because just after they did all of this, news came back from Pskov that Tsar Nicholas was agreeing to abdicate the throne. And so next week, we will pick things back up with everybody on March the third, 1917, the first day of post February Revolution Russia.

But we’ll get into all of that next week. Before I go this week, however, I do want to remind everybody that we are now just two and a half weeks away from the publication of Hero of Two Worlds, and please, everybody pre-order the book if you haven’t. And if you would like to pre-order a signed copy of the book, please do come to one of our four online virtual events. And just so you know, all of those events did hit their initial max capacity and all the bookstores wrote us back and said, can you please up the max capacity, and we did. So if you weren’t able to get into one before, uh, go check right now, you’ll probably be able to get into one, cause we just did it.

But I’m not actually going to end today plugging my own book Hero of two Worlds, I’m going to end today by plugging another book: Reign of Terror by Spencer Ackerman. I have been reading Ackerman for like 20 years now, and he has just written a book that quite successfully creates the narrative link between the events of September 11th and the current state of American politics through the lens of national security and the war on terror and all of its adjacent rhetoric and policies. Ackerman is an exceptional journalist who is uniquely positioned to tell this story. And if journalists are in the business of writing the first draft of history, then this is an excellent first draft of history that is going to be used as a building block for many years to come. So do please pick up and read Reign of Terror by Spencer Ackerman, it comes out on August 10th. I highly recommend it, and I think you should all buy it.

Now you might be asking yourself, why are you plugging Spencer Ackerman’s book, besides it being a really good book? And if you follow me on Twitter, you already know that among other things, Spencer Ackerman is the drummer of a band that we have started, because I did an insane thing where I wrote a 12 song punk rock opera about the French Revolution. This is a real thing that is actually happened. We decided it would be a really good and fun idea to just make some ridiculous music projects and take it out on the road while we both sold our books. Uh, this is something that we’re looking to do in the near future. We’re going to take this out on the road. Hopefully it was going to happen in the fall, but it’s kind of starting to look like maybe fall of 2021 is not a time where we’re going to be able to do a lot of live events because things are getting worse rather than better. So, if you ever want to do find out what it sounds like when Mike Duncan writes 12 punk rock songs about the French Revolution, and you want to hear that live, please do get vaccinated, because right now the whole thing is looking like it’s actually going to get canceled and I’m not able to sit here and triumphantly tell you where we’re going to be in October and November, which I was kind of hoping I would be doing right now, but it kind of looks like that’s not what I’m going to be able to do, and we’re going to have to look ahead to the spring.

But to even do it in the spring, we need everybody to get on board with the program here. I want live events, you want live events, we all want live events, we all want to see what happens when I got up on stage with a guitar and start yelling about the French Revolution. I promise it will be really, really fun when it happens. But until then first buy Reign of Terror by Spencer Ackerman, then later buy Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan, and then three stay tuned for more information about future live events, and four, stay healthy, stay safe, get vaccinated, and we’ll see you next week.