The February Revolution

It was the working class women of Petrograd who sparked off the revolution in February. After weeks of strikes with police attacks on factories, the most oppressed part of the working class, the women textile workers, took the initiative. Demands for bread and attacks on bakeries were superseded by a massive demonstration of women workers on International Women's Day. The women had ignored a local Bolshevik directive to wait until May Day ! The early slogan of "Bread !" was quickly followed by "Down with the autocracy ! Down with the war !" By February 24th, half of Petrograd was on strike. The workers did go to their factories, not to work, but to hold meetings, pass resolutions and then go out to demonstrate. The Vyborg committee of the Bolsheviks opposed the strikes: "(...) since the committee thought the time unripe for militant action -- the party not strong enough and the workers having too few contacts with the soldiers -- they decided not to call for strikes but to prepare for revolutionary action at some indefinite time in the future.'' [3]

Unaware of how 'unripe' the time was, the workers pressed on with the strike till 240,000 were out. Strikers and demonstrators clashed with armed police, and approached soldiers for support, above all for weapons. The Bolshevik Central Committee finally got round to calling for a general strike just as the already existing strike was becoming an armed uprising. By the evening of February 24th the Vyborg district of Petrograd was held by the revolutionaries: the police stations were wrecked, and the police kicked out altogether; prisoners were released, and contacts made with neighbouring districts. The following evening the 4th company of the Pavlovsky Regiment mutinied and opened fire on police. On the 27th workers 'visited' all the jails in Petrograd and released political prisoners. The soldiers had already come over to the revolution, when a single Bolshevik organisation produced an appeal to the army, which didn't even urge the soldiers to support the workers.

The speed and success of this revolution from below took all the socialists -- who had been propagandising for a revolution for years by surprise. "The leaders were watching the movement from above; they hesitated, they lagged -- in other words, they did not lead. They dragged after the movement. The nearer one comes to the factories, the greater the decisiveness." [4] Instead of talking and writing, the workers and soldiers just got on and did it. They started to set up their own organisations to meet their needs. The socialists now found the workers behaving in ways they hadn't expected. "The leaders of the Revolution also did not understand that, once they themselves had invited the people to take over local affairs, the people, who had had enough of being led and regimented, would eagerly respond to the idea of self-government through soviets, of ending the fighting; they would dream of a new life." [5] The workers would now only accept decisions from above if they agreed with them anyway. Faced with the 'chaos' of workers acting for themselves, calls for 'discipline' resounded from the Bolshevik Stalin, from the moderate socialist Gorky and from the patriotic anarchist Prince Kropotkin.

Similarly, the socialists did not listen to the demands rising up from the workers and peasants. The workers called for an eight hour day, an end to piecework, equal pay, an end to child labour, improvements in safety at work and politeness from management ! These early demands were a reflection of the desire to humanise work and to give workers some dignity. The women workers likewise demanded equal wages and better conditions and hygiene at work. The new egalitarianism was also expressed in another way by workers: only the present was of importance; no one could claim any kind of superiority or priority by virtue of what they had done in the past. The slate was to be wiped clean : when Khrustalev-Nosav claimed a seat on the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet on the basis that he had been President of the Soviet in 1905, he was rejected with boos.

Notes

[3] History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, p121.

[4] Trotsky, p131.

[5] October 1917 - A Social History of the Russian Revolution, Marc Ferro, p3.