The February Revolution had many striking features that distinguish it from other revolutionary upheavals. But the most striking of all was the remarkably rapidity with which the Russian state fell apart. It was as if the greatest empire in the world, covering one-sixth of the earth’s surface, were an artificial construction, without organic unity, held together by wires all of which converged in the person of the monarch. The instant the monarch withdrew, the wires snapped and the whole structure collapsed in a heap.
Kerensky says that there were moments when it seemed to him that
the word “revolution” [was] quite inapplicable to what happened in Russia [between February 27 and March 3]. A whole world of national and political relationships sank to the bottom, and at once all existing political and tactical programs, however bold and well conceived, appeared hanging aimlessly and uselessly in space.
Rozanov described the phenomenon in his own pungent style:
Russia wilted in two days. At the very most, three. Even Novoe vremia could not have been shut down as quickly as Russia shut down. It is amazing how she suddenly fell apart, all of her, down to particles, to pieces. Indeed, such an upheaval had never occurred before, not excluding “the Great Migrations of Peoples” … There was no Empire, no Church, no army, no working class. And what remained? Strange to say, literally nothing. A base people remained.
By late April, eight weeks after the Revolution had broken out, Russia was foundering. On April 26 the Provisional Government issued a pathetic appeal in which it conceded it was unable to run the country. Kerensky now voiced regrets that he did not die when the Revolution was still young and filled with hope that the nation could manage to govern itself “without whips and cudgels.”
Russians, having gotten rid of tsarism, on which they used to blame all their ills, stood bewildered in the midst of their newly gained freedom. They were not unlike the lady in a Balzac story who had been sick for so long that when finally cured thought herself struck by a new disease.
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "The February Revolution." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 336-37. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Kerensky, Catastrophe, 111.
Rozanov, Apokalipsis, 6.
Tsereteli, Vospominaniia, I, 124; Revoliutsiia, II, 74.
Further Reading:
February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution / Февра́льская револю́ция (February Revolution)
Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ке́ренский (Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky)
Васи́лий Васи́льевич Рóзанов (Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov)
Interesting lesson. A revolution must have a constructive plan to enact in place of the protested one. A revolution cannot be a purely negative reactionary movement or it risks bringing chaos and a power vacuum.