February Revolution and Abdication of Nicholas II
Women textile workers in Petrograd struck on International Women's Day, 23 February 1917 by the old calendar, and the Romanov dynasty fell within a week. The war had broken the city. Petrograd depended on rail for food and fuel, the railways had been requisitioned for the front, bread queues formed at night in temperatures below minus twenty, and there was no coal. The strike spread. By 25 February something like 200,000 people were out and the city had stopped. The decisive moment was the garrison. Nicholas II telegraphed from headquarters ordering the disturbances suppressed by force, and troops fired on crowds on 26 February; the following morning regiments of the Petrograd garrison — reservists, mostly older men who had not been to the front and did not want to go — mutinied rather than fire again, and joined the crowds. The government simply ceased to exist. Two bodies formed in the same building. The Duma's members, ordered to dissolve and refusing, created a provisional committee; workers and soldiers elected a Soviet. Nicholas tried to return, was stopped on the railway, and abdicated on 2 March for himself and his haemophiliac son, offering the throne to his brother Michael, who declined it the next day. Three hundred and four years of Romanov rule ended in about eight days with perhaps 1,300 dead. The Provisional Government then continued the war, which is what destroyed it. Lenin arrived at the Finland Station on 3 April. The whole of it was a genuine popular rising with no party directing it, which is the difference between February and October.
- Year: 1917 CE
- Category: Political
