III. Fill in the prepositions where necessary:

1. The first revolutionary shift in 1917 brought Russia ____ the threshold of a genuine parliamentary regime; the second pushed the country ____ the clutches of a one-party dictatorship.

2. ____ early March a spontaneous upheaval broke ____ that attracted millions of Russians ____ its ranks and within a week brought ____ the autocracy.

3. All hoped their country would continue ____ the capitalist-parliamentary path ____ the West.

4. While Russia’s new leaders understood the need ____ more reforms, the people ____ charge ____ the events of March 1917 were ____ further drastic change.

5. In November power was seized ____ a military coup ____ a small militant group committed ____ the premise that the process of change had merely just begun.

6. As Marxists they looked ____ the establishment of a new society based ____ the abolition of private property ____ favor of public ownership of the country’s productive wealth and ____ cooperation ____ ____ competition.

7. The success of the Bolshevik Party ____ seizing and holding power set the course ____ the next seven decades of Russian history.

IV. Paraphrase or explain the following word combinations, find how they are used in the text. Make up your own examples with them:

To undergo shifts; to bring to the threshold; to be at the forefront; to be tied together by a common thread; people in charge; to restore order and discipline; with varying degrees of commitment; the country’s productive wealth; to set up a dictatorship; to set the course.

V. Summarize the information presented in the text. Text 1 The Provisional Government, Petrograd Soviet, and Dual Power

I. Scan the text. Explain the words in bold, use them in your own examples.

Beginning March 8, 1917, a week of riots, mutinies, and demonstrations brought down the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia since 1613, and with it the Russian monarchy, whose roots stretched back to the grand princes of Muscovite Russia. By the time Nicholas II formally abdicated late on March 15, Russia had a Provisional Government in place. It was led officially by Prince Georgy Lvov, a zemstvo notable, but its most important members were foreign minister Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the Constitutional Democrats and a distinguished historian, and justice minister Aleksandr Kerensky, the most left-wing member of the new government, with views ranging from liberal to mildly socialist.

Kerensky was pivotal; he was the only member of the Provisional Government who belonged to another key body that had formed at the same time as the Provisional Government – the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. This lineal descendant of the 1905 St.Petersburg Soviet had no clearly defined or stated purpose other than to defend the revolution in general and the interests of Russia’s working classes and rank-and-file soldiers in particular. In its composition and actions it combined the trappings of a government, a political convention, and a mob. Above all, by its very presence the Soviet undermined the authority of the Provisional Government, something the latter, given its many weaknesses, could not afford.

The relative strength of the two bodies was convincingly demonstrated on March 15 when the Soviet issued what it called its “Order Number 1,” which instructed enlisted military personnel serving in units stationed in and around Petrograd to choose representatives to the Soviet and proclaimed that the Soviet would now be their ultimate authority. It was an order the Provisional Government did not dare challenge.

The Provisional Government was in a precarious situation. Whatever its pretensions, in reality it represented the interests of a tiny upper crust of Russian society, and only the more forward-looking part at that. Most ordinary Russian workers, peasants, and soldiers were not particularly interested in Western-style parliaments, the rule of law, or the other legal issues so important to the moderate and liberal educated elite. Nor did the masses care about Russia’s war aims, another issue of major importance to the leaders of the Provisional Government. Thus the Provisional Government had virtually no influence with peasants, who made up the vast bulk of the country’s population, or with workers in the cities, who numbered only 3 million but were concentrated in key cities like Petrograd and Moscow and therefore were a threat to any government they opposed.

Making matters worse, the czarist police had been dissolved at the time the Provisional Government took charge, leaving the new regime without a civilian force to control Russia’s masses. As Order Number 1 showed, it could not count on the military either. Army and navy units might or might not listen to its orders. As its first minister of war grimly put it, “The Provisional Government has no real power of any kind and its orders are carried out only to the extent that this is permitted by the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. One can assert bluntly that the Provisional Government exists only as long as it is permitted to do so by the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” (Quoted in Pipes 1990: 306). The imbalance became more pronounced as soviets were established in other cities across Russia, including Moscow. Such was the state of affairs Russians called “dual power.”

Other factors added to the Provisional Government’s burdens. Since that government was self-appointed rather than elected, its members did not believe they could undertake major social reforms. Only a nationally elected Constituent Assembly could establish a fundamental body of law, and only the new parliamentary order that body of law created could legislate social change. Because of the complex logistics of arranging such an unprecedented national election in an enormous empire engaged in a world war, the balloting for the Constituent Assembly could not be scheduled until November.

The delay left Russia with a government that even its own members believed lacked the authority to tackle urgent problems. That agenda included peasants’ demand for land reform to transfer noble-owned properties into their hands as well as the demand by the non-Russian national minorities, almost half the country’s population, for some form of local autonomy. The Provisional Government did issue several major human rights decrees that guaranteed a wide range of civil and political liberties and put an end to all religious, national, and class discrimination. It also abolished the czarist secret police. But these measures carried little weight with the land-hungry peasantry or the poor urban population suffering from wartime shortages and other hardships.

The one decisive action the Provisional Government did take, to remain in the war on the Allied side and mount a major new military offensive, made its problems much worse. The offensive, which began in late June, ended in total defeat by the Germans. The Russian army then collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of demoralized and angry soldiers, unable to take any more, deserted and headed home. As that was happening, the Provisional Government faced a mutiny of soldiers in the capital who feared they would be transferred to the front. Once the mutiny began, it was encouraged and eventually led by the Bolsheviks, who turned it into an uprising known as the July Days.

Revelations that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had accepted German money to fund their activities helped the government rally enough soldiers to its side to put down the uprising. Lenin, a warrant out for his arrest, fled the capital and went into hiding. Still, the government’s narrow escape in fact left it weaker and looking more vulnerable than ever. Meanwhile, neither several reshufflings between May and September that brought moderate socialists into the cabinet nor the appointment of Kerensky as Prime Minister did anything to stabilize the situation.