100 years of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution March 8 (February 23), International Women's Day
March 8 (February 23 by the old Russian calendar) marks the centenary of the overthrow of the tsarist government in Russia, that began on International Women's Day. Mass demonstrations by women workers defied the troops and brought about the desertion of the Petrograd garrison and the downfall of the centuries old Tsarist empire..
World War I had
lasted 31 long months by February, 1917. Russian soldiers were being killed in
mass, and bread lines at home were growing longer everyday. Peasants who had
been sent to war lost their land by the expropriations of the kulaks, who by 1917
owned 90% of Russia's arable land. Food prices were thus on the rise: In 1916,
food prices accelerated three times higher than wages, despite bumper harvests
in both 1915 and 1916. The price of grain in 1916, already at two and a half
rubles per pud,
kulaks anticipated to raise up to twenty five rubles per pud. Hoping to raise
prices, kulaks hoarded their food surplus.
Throughout 1916, the
average urban labourer, mostly women, ate between 200 and 300 grams of food a
day. In 1917, the tsarist government permitted the urban populations of Russia
to buy only one pound of bread per adult, per day. In practice, workers sometimes
went days without food. Strikes became commonplace.
On the morning of
February 23, International Women's Day, "overcoming the resistance of
their own revolutionary organisations, the initiative taken of their own accord
by the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat – [by] women
textile workers, among them no doubt many soldiers' wives. The overgrown
breadlines had provided the last stimulus. About 90,000 workers, men and women,
were on strike that day. The fighting mood expressed itself in demonstrations,
meetings, encounters with the police. The movement began in the Vyborg district
with its large industrial establishments; thence it crossed over to the
Petersburg side. There were no strikes or demonstrations elsewhere, according
to the testimony of the secret police. On that day detachments of troops were
called in to assist the police – evidently not many of them – but there were no
encounters with them.
A mass of women, not all of them workers, flocked to the
municipal duma demanding bread. It was like demanding milk from a he-goat. Red
banners appeared in different parts of the city, and inscriptions on them
showed that the workers wanted bread, but neither autocracy nor war. Woman's
Day passed successfully, with enthusiasm and without victims. But what it
concealed in itself, no one had guessed even by nightfall.
On the following day
the movement not only fails to diminish, but doubles. About one-half of the
industrial workers of Petrograd are on strike on the 24th of February. The workers
come to the factories in the morning; instead of going to work they hold
meetings; then begin processions toward the centre. New districts and new
groups of the population are drawn into the movement. The slogan
"Bread!" is crowded out or obscured by louder slogans: "Down
with autocracy!" "Down with the war!" Continuous demonstrations
on the Nevsky – first compact masses of workmen singing revolutionary songs,
later a motley crowd of city folk interspersed with the blue caps of students.
"The promenading crowd was sympathetically disposed toward us, and
soldiers in some of the war-hospitals greeted us by waving whatever was at
hand." How many clearly realised what was being ushered in by this
sympathetic waving from sick soldiers to demonstrating workers? But the Cossacks constantly,
though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. Their horses were covered
with foam. The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through, and close
up again. There was no fear in the crowd. "The Cossacks promise not to
shoot," passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had
talks with individual Cossacks. Later, however, cursing. half-drunken dragoons
appeared on the scene. They plunged into the crowd, began to strike at heads
with their lances. The demonstrators summoned all their strength and stood
fast. They won't shoot." And in fact they didn't... https://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/f/e.htm
A meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, April 1917
