A revolution breaks out when all the antagonisms of a society have reached their highest tension. But this makes the situation unbearable even for the classes of the old society – that is, those who are doomed to break up.

– Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution

The weakness of tsarist Russia, the corruption that gnawed at the entrails of the regime, was cruelly exposed. The military catastrophes, the rising cost of living, the profiteering and speculation, the rottenness of the court clique expressed themselves in a crisis of the regime. In May 1916 there were scattered disturbances among recruits in the provinces. Food riots began in the South and spread to the naval fortress of Kronstadt. By late autumn Petrograd was once more the scene of stormy social agitation and a massive strike wave. The military defeats, the bungling of the government, the whiff of corruption from the Rasputin regime, the rising prices and constant repression provoked a burning sense of anger and injustice in the very depths of society. By 1916, the strike wave reached new and unprecedented heights. A staggering 1,542 strikes involving up to 1,172,000 workers were recorded – much more than in 1905. No other country experienced such an explosion of strikes during the First World War. The workers advanced mainly economic demands, at first. But the number of political strikes steadily increased: in 1915, 216; in 1916, 273. And the number of participants increased likewise: in 1915, 156,900; in 1916, 310,300. By the autumn of 1916, the mood of discontent had reached threatening proportions.

The regime’s anxiety grew as the anniversary of Bloody Sunday approached. Repression and arrests were stepped up, especially in December 1915 – January 1916. Despite a pre-emptive strike of the police, there were mass protest meetings on 9 January, 1916, with 55 factories out in Petrograd alone, according to official figures. There were strikes in Moscow, Kharkov, Revel, Tver, and Yekaterinoslav. The metal workers – the heavy battalions of the proletariat – took over from the textile workers as the main force in the strike movement. More ominous for the regime was the commencement of fraternisation at the front. News of mutinies in the army was now reaching the authorities – from Kharkov, Greece, and France. There were the beginnings of a peasant movement, giving notice of the explosive mood in the villages, especially among the poorest layers who bore the brunt of the war. Uprisings took place in Kazakhstan and Central Asia which lasted several months in the summer of 1916.

This was a decisive turning point. By 17 October, 45 factories were on strike, protesting against the high cost of living, the war, and the autocracy. In an ominous development, the troops turned against the police and supported the workers. The Cossacks, sent to restore order, refused to fire on the soldiers. Only with great difficulty did the authorities manage to get the soldiers to return to barracks that evening. For those with eyes to see, here were the unmistakable symptoms of a revolution in the advanced stages of gestation. Further strikes occurred later in October, culminating in a lockout, which was defeated by a general strike. In the whole of October, up to 250,000 Petrograd workers participated in political strikes.

The crisis of the regime was revealed by the assassination of Rasputin. The hideous reality of a drunken and debauched ‘Holy man’ intriguing with a degenerate court clique and dictating to a superstitious Tsarina, handing out favours and even deciding military policy, brought to a head the unbearable contradictions between different wings of the state. A section of the aristocracy resolved to eliminate Rasputin as a means of regenerating the regime and staving off imminent disaster. Since all attempts to remove him (including the offer of a bribe of 200,000 roubles in cash to return to Siberia) foundered on the opposition of the Tsarina, the only solution was murder. The reactionary politician and bitter enemy of Rasputin, V.M. Purishkevich, hatched a plot, together with a clique of noblemen, to assassinate Rasputin and place the Tsarina in a mental institution, a simple expedient, whereby the Tsar, freed from the pernicious influence of the court camarilla, would be miraculously transformed into a model constitutional monarch!

Similar dreams have accompanied every absolute monarchy to the grave. The basic flaw in all of them is the same: that monarchy, especially of the absolute type, is organically inseparable from court camarillas. The Rasputin regime was merely a particularly poisonous example of this phenomenon. The details of the assassination of Rasputin, which combined the macabre with comic opera, are too well known to need much elaboration here. Topped up with a large dose of his favourite brand of sweet Madeira liberally laced with cyanide, shot several times, and finally knocked on the head, the Holy man was finally dispatched, his body weighed down with iron chains and dumped in the river Neva. His death was celebrated in champagne by dukes and field marshals. The principal assassin, the Grand Duke Dimitri, was given a standing ovation at the Bolshoi Theatre. But the Tsar was not amused. Dimitri was exiled to Persia, and, contrary to all expectations, Nicholas was still more under the thumb of his grief-stricken wife than before. Thus, the attempt to reform the monarchy by means of a surgical operation had the opposite effect to what was intended.

The idea of a palace revolution offered no solution for Russia. Things were too far gone. The intrigues and manoeuvres at the top resembled the antics of a man dancing on the edge of a volcano. Meanwhile, society was in a state of constant and uncontrollable ferment. The intrigues at the top bore no relation to the sufferings of the masses which constantly worsened. While rich speculators and arms manufacturers got richer, the masses suffered from constantly rising prices. To pay its huge debts, the government resorted to printing roubles. The money supply increased eightfold between 1914 and 1917. Prices soared. Food became scarce and dear. In Moscow the price of rye – the basis of Russian black bread – rose 47 per cent in the first two years of the war. In the same period, a pair of boots went up by 334 per cent, and a box of matches by 500 per cent. By November 1916, the food supply to the army and to the cities had reached a critical level. On the eve of the February Revolution, the average working woman in Petrograd had to spend around 40 hours a week queuing to get the basic necessities of life. In such circumstances, the antics at court could only provide a passing interest for the mass of workers and peasants, struggling for survival. But the whiff of corruption and decay that emanated from the regime served to deepen the sense of outrage, hatred, and contempt that was ripening in the depths of society. The regime was bankrupt in every respect, not just economically, but politically and morally as well.