In what ways were the lives of people in Russia affected by the policies of the Provisional Government during 1917?

Russia in 1916 was faced with: an army defeated and mutinous; a rural economy ruined by the war and the peasants rebellious; conditions in the towns in crisis and the workers on strike; and a political class who had lost faith in the government. 

The result was the February Revolution, the abdication of the tsar and the creation of a Provisional Government.  How did this change people's lives?

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The Peasants

When I created my website in c.2002, I wrote of the peasants that they: "started taking the nobles’ land.  There were 1,500 peasant uprisings in August-October.  ie anarchy in the countryside."

I was very wrong, and you will see that I have changed it.  Faced with the collapse of central government, far from collapsing into anarchy, the countryside set about governing itself.  Choosing stolid, respected villagers (including many women), the peasantry set up their own committees, cooperatives, Peasant Unions, rural societies and district & regional Congresses … and made their own laws for their own area. 

It was not ‘anarchy’ (the absence of government), it was – as the historian Orlando Figes labelled it – ‘balkanisation’ (the disintegration of rule into multiple self-governing groups).  The Russian historian AV Sedov (1997) saw this as a unique experiment: the restructuring of social relations according to the principles of the February Revolution.  It must have been an exciting time for the peasants, as they set about creating their own government in a way which suited them. 

In a remarkable development, 98% of the Stolypin farmers gave up their khotura and merged their consolidated holding back into the mir.  And everywhere, the peasantry started taking over the estates of the landowners – "Water is yours, light is yours, the land is yours".  Often, particularly at the start, this was done peacefully, such as in Aryshkadza village, where the peasants gave the estate employees a day to leave, and then went in and sowed the fields. 

How were these peasant bodies affected by the policies of the Provisional Government?

Many of the political classes in the Duma supported the peasants – when Prince Lvov was petitioned by some landowners his reaction was that it was their own fault for treating their peasants like animals.  But Prince Lvov was a landowner himself and he and the middle-class Kadets who dominated the Duma did not feel like abolishing private property rights.  Instead, they said that the ‘Land Issue’ would have to wait for elections, and set up local Land Committees, with orders to prevent land seizures, and to continue the razverstka (requisitioning) of grain.  In April, Kerensky ordered that peasant repartitions needed "suppressing immediately". 

Meanwhile, as the Provisional Government continued the war, and industrial production continued to be directed towards the war effort, the peasantry continued to have no access to the manufactured goods they needed (in 1917 the price of nails was five times what it had been in 1914). 

These policies had the effect of creating trouble in the countryside.  The Land Committees were flouted: "The population refuses to listen to them, throws them out, beats them unmercifully, and hides the grain", wailed the Russkiye vedomosti newspaper in August.  Starting in September – when a small army of 5,000 peasants in Tambov province attacked Prince Vyazemsky’s estate, fought off a Cossack brigade sent to stop them, murdered the Prince, destroyed the manor house, and stole the livestock and equipment – repartitions became increasingly violent, especially where returning soldiers and deserters were involved.  By the end, amidst reports of government stockpiles and military defeats, peasants were looting government grain stores. 

Another effect was that, whereas at the start the peasant organisations had been non-political, as government delays and confrontation grew, so did the peasant movement become politicised.  Younger, more radical peasants took over the leadership from the village elders, and some village assemblies were renamed ‘Soviets’. 

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The Workers

As with the peasants so did the urban workers greet 1917 with hope.  Half a million workers went on strike in the months April to July demanding an 8 hour day, better wages and better conditions.  Workers demanded dignity, and to be addressed as vy not ty.  There were ‘festivals of liberation’.  At first the employers cooperated; the economy – and profits – had boomed 1914-16, and they felt able to meet the workers’ (especially skilled workers’) wage demands – some workers received 400% and 500% rises. 

How were the urban workers affected by the policies of the Provisional Government?

The decision to continue the war was starving Petrograd both of food for the people and raw materials for industry, destroying the economy, and fuelling inflation. 

The grain crisis which had provoked the February Revolution (Petrograd was receiving less than half the supply it had in 1913) continued.  To try to deal with it, the government took whole control over the supply of grain and introduced rationing, to be disbursed by ‘Food Supply Committees’.  The result was fights in the crowds outside the distribution centres.  Meanwhile, to try to secure a better supply of grain from the countryside, the government doubled the fixed price of grain … which merely increased inflation. 

Historian Sarah Badcock (1997) was not impressed with the government’s response to workers’ demands; in March – whilst promising to "strive wholeheartedly to satisfy the needs of workers" – its promises were only for a Ministry of Labour, arbitration boards, and draft laws … sometime in the future. 

The employers fared no better.  In May, when they asked the government for regulation of prices of raw materials and fuel, and for subsidies, they were told that the state coffers were empty. 

Despite an average doubling of wages, inflation caused by the war economy had reduced real wages by 30% and wage demands continued … so, from May, the employers began to resist workers’ demands and organised lockouts.  Badcock believed their claims that they could not afford an 8-hour day; the costs of raw materials and fuel had rocketed, and they faced serious supply disruptions. 

As in the countryside, the workers movement was not anarchic; both the Soviets and the Trade Unions worked hard to prevent strikes, and the Unions and the Petrograd Association of Manufacturers had set up Conciliation Chambers to facilitate negotiations.  The crisis, however, came in August, when the employers refused a Trade Union offer of a 10% cut in unskilled wages, and a large number of factories were closed down altogether.  In response, factory committees, set up before the War, took over control of closed-down factories. 

The response of the government was two circulars, issued by the Minister of Labour Skobelev: the first (22 August) stated that employers had absolute rights in the matter of hiring and firing, and that factory committees had no jurisdiction; the second (28 August) said that workers’ meetings could not go on within working hours, as they affected productivity. 

The workers’ response to continue running the factories.  They beat up government officials, enforced factory discipline, and organised militia to protect the factories from sabotage – not by the workers, but by the factory owners. 

Unlike the countryside, the urban workers were politicised from the beginning.  Everyone was talking politics, but increasingly they were talking Bolshevism.  The Red Guards were first set up as a workers’ army to defend the February Revolution; by July they numbered 20,000 workers in Petrograd alone. 

By autumn, writes Orlando Figes (1996): "The dominant sentiment was one of anger and frustration that nothing had been gained, neither peace, nor bread, nor land, and that unless a decisive break was made with the bourgeoisie there would only be another winter of stagnation".  He sees the workers’ actions as "a social revolution, which was centred on the popular realisation of Soviet power as the negation of the state". 

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The Soldiers

In February 1917 there were 15 million soldiers in arms, and they were defeated and demoralised. 

The Petrograd Order #1 had given them pride, but had also led to breakdown of discipline, as soldiers’ communes debated whether-or-not to obey each order – the so called ‘trench Bolshevism’.  A million soldiers deserted March-October.  Some refused to fight for more than 8 hours day, and there were instances of soldiers not just killing their officers, but of mutilating them.  Army Commander General Brusilov commented: "the soldiers wanted only one thing – peace so that they could go home, rob the landowners, and live freely without paying any taxes or recognising any authority". 

How were the soldiers affected by the policies of the Provisional Government?

On 21 March, the Petrograd Soviet called for a moderate ‘Revolutionary Defensism’ (fighting only to defend Russia against invasion), and a week later the Provisional Government’s ‘Declaration of War Aims’ seemed to say much the same.  This, however, was countermanded by the government’s Foreign Minister Miliukov, who publicly assured the Allies of his commitment to fight to a "decisive victory".  Thousands of armed workers and soldiers demonstrated against it … and only stopped when ordered by the Soviets.  Notwithstanding, and despite Brusilov’s reservations, in June the government (in a move which played to the middle class Kadets and hoped to inspire a new nationalism) ordered a new Offensive; it was a disaster. 

In August, Fedor Linde, who had been appointed Commissar to the Special Army, along with five of his officers, were murdered when he berated a party of 5,000 deserters who were terrorising the local countryside.  Kerensky’s reaction was to dismiss Brusilov and appoint instead a well-known disciplinarian – General Kornilov … and we know how that ended.  After Kornilov’s defeat, army discipline collapsed altogether.  The soldiers arrested hundreds of their offices for allegedly supporting Kornilov – and executed or brutally killed some.  Vast numbers deserted to go home and support the repartitions.  All trust in the government was gone.  Writes Figes: "there was a growing consciousness amongst the rank-and-file troops that peace would not be obtained until the nature of the state itself had been changed". 

In a final moment of incompetence, on 20 October Kerenksy ordered the Petrograd Garrison – the Army presence in the capital – to the Front.  The Petrograd Garrison had been where the Army sent its war-wounded to get them away from the Front.  The next day the garrison mutinied so that, on 25th, when the Bolsheviks launched their coup, only the Women’s Death Battalion was left to defend him (and we know how that ended). 

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The Political Classes

The Provisional Government was set up with visionary expectations.  In March, Minister-President Lvov declared that Russia would lead the world "along the path of human progress according to the principles of liberty equality and fraternity".  In actuality, Provisional Government found itself condemned to "dissension and smouldering hostility" in the Council of Ministers, short Coalition governments, and aggressive lobbying by middle class and business ‘special interest groups’; and without the power to enforce its policies upon the peasants in the countryside, the Soviets in the towns, or even the soldiers in the army. 

Many intellectuals and politicians descended into despair.  The writer Maxim Gorky saw the Revolution as barbarism, and the destruction of the manors as an attack on civilisation:

"There is no longer a capital, it is a cesspit… There is a growing idleness and cowardice in the people, and all those base and criminal instincts which I have fought all my life are now destroying Russia."

Many saw the murder of Linde as the beginning of the end.  The Georgian politician Irakli Tsereteli wrote that the "rose-coloured dreamy youth" of the revolution had been replaced by a "grim period" and an anarchic tide. 

There was a middle-class panic.  Some called for a counter-revolution and a return to dictatorship.  Bolshevik workers were beaten up by the Black Hundreds.  There was a rise in antisemitism.  Others sold their houses and lived wildly for the moment. 

They had been destroyed by their own policies.