The February revolution a hundred years later

Abstract

The article discusses the problem of correlation between factors of organization and spontaneity before and during the February revolution of 1917. Unlike his predecessors, the author believes it methodologically incorrect to oppose these factors to each other, as in any revolution they are present at the same time. The reason for interpretations of the February revolution as a purely natural event, according to the author, is the artificial comingling of the concepts of “conspiracy”, “coup” and “revolution”, which in reality are the stages of mainstreaming a holistic phenomenon. February 1917 was the result of the activities of the Central Military-Industrial Committee (CMIC) and its Working Group and was a conspiracy, coup and revolution, presenting a mixture of organization and spontaneity. The silence of the leaders of the February revolution as to its organized nature is explained by politics: first of all was the necessity of using the myth of spontaneity for legitimation of the republican regime. Subsequently, Soviet historiography has focused on the actions of the Bolsheviks, and foreign historiography on the activities of non-Bolshevik social democratic groups. In this article, for the first time in the historiography, special attention is devoted to the Working Group of the CMIC. It was these affiliations as a mass labor movement: relief funds for the sick and trade unions, and workers cooperatives controlled by the Working Group, that took to the streets of Petrograd on 23 February 1917 and then engaged in further street demonstrations. These cooperatives were prepared with the consent of the executives of the CMIC, A. I. Guchkov, A. I. Konovalov, and M. I. Tereshchenko. The peak of this movement, a military uprising on 27 February 1917, was organized by the same non-partisan center led by A. I. Guchkov. It was he, using methods of mass and individual pressure on the monarch, who forced the tsar to abdicate in favor of the Son of Tsarevich Alexey Nikolayevich, and of his brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. This fact contributed to the preservation of a compromise between monarchists and republicans that ensured the victory of the revolution. Refs 82.