The attack made by the Progressive bloc of the Duma on the autocracy was in fact animated by their conviction of the double danger in which the country stood from defeat in the field and from revolution following on such defeat. They de manded the establishment of a constitutional government, a gov ernment "invested with the people's confidence" and their under lying aim was to forestall the Revolution. They were indeed so opposed to any semblance of revolutionary activity on the part of the masses that again and again they refused to countenance strikes or demonstrations which had been organized with the very intention of supporting the Duma's demands. Even a fortnight before the Revolution broke out they seriously quarrelled with their "friends from the left," the leaders of moderate labour opinion, for calling upon the workers to celebrate the re-opening of the Duma on Feb. 27 by making a sympathetic demonstration in front of the Taurida Palace. This aversion to exploiting the collective activities of the workers was not due to any prima facie objection to using revolutionary methods but solely to fear lest the masses should get out of hand, it being an axiom among the Russian intelligentsia that the working classes once aroused would make the full plunge to anarchy.
It was this fear of invoking popular support that throughout the War paralysed the efforts of the bourgeois parties in their struggle for power. This was what made the Duma's fight against tsarism so wasteful and ineffective. Reluctant to rely on the support of the masses the bourgeoisie was not strong enough in itself to challenge the Government; while to call in the masses was dangerous as likely to rouse the spirit of mob violence. This was the Duma's dilemma, to steer successfully between the Scylla of autocracy and the Charybdis of anarchy. Ministers accordingly were quick to realise the difficulty in which the Progressive bloc found itself and became less and less afraid of its attacks.
By the end of 1916 the attempt to bring down the Government by constitutional means had obviously failed. This failure compelled the more active and impetuous of the Liberal patriots to consider whether it was possible to realise their aims by a military coup d'etat and a Court revolution. The initiative in this matter was notoriously taken by prominent officers at the front who were in close touch with the headquarters staff. The propaganda in favour of a Court, revolution was started by General Krymov, the officer who subse quently commanded the army sent by General Kornilov in Aug. 1917 to suppress the government of Kerensky and to establish a military dictatorship. Only a few of the Liberal leaders seem to have been personally associated with Krymov's scheme ; but sufficient documentary evidence exists to prove that the Pro gressives in the Duma were at least taken into confidence by the conspirators and were considering the formation of a cabinet in case the plot succeeded. Such members of the higher command
as Generals Brusilov and Russky were favourably inclined to it and there are indications that even General Alexeyev the chief of the tsar's staff was aware of it. The complete scheme of the Krymov conspiracy was revealed by Alexander Guchkov, the war minister in the Provisional Government, in the evidence which he gave before the tribunal set up for investigating the criminal record of the ministers of the old regime. The idea according to Guchkov was to seize the tsar as his train was proceeding from headquarters to Tsarskoe-selo, to compel him to abdicate in favour of the tsarevich with the Grand Duke Michael as Regent, to arrest the tsar's ministers with the help of the Preobrazhensky Guards, and then to proclaim the abdication simultaneously with the names of the new Duma ministers. This Court Revolution which was planned to take place in the early months of 1917 was first postponed by the strikes and unrest which prevailed at that time in the capital and was finally rendered abortive by the suc cess of the March Revolution. The Krymov episode shows con clusively indeed that, however impatient moderate parties may have been at the Government's resistance to constitutional re form, they were entirely innocent of any intention to organize the masses for revolutionary action.
The only party, in fact, which was and is persistent in claiming credit for a share in the organization of the 1917 Revolution is the Bolshevik party. They are now producing a mass of literature in support of this contention; but in all this mass it is difficult to find the slightest proof of their claim. True, Lenin and other leaders, who were at that time abroad, were formulating views as to the possibilities of revolu tion which were subsequently acclaimed as prophetic. But these views and the manifestos issued by the Zimmerwald Conferences' organized by Lenin could not be propagated in Russia owing to the fact that the Bolshevik members of the Duma and almost all the minor leaders had been arrested and banished to Siberia. Indeed what these writings prove is that the few Bolshevik agi tators remaining in Petrograd including Shliapnikov, the rep resentative of the Central Committee of the Party, were as little aware as the Mensheviks or the Liberals that the strikes, started early in March 1917, were likely to bring about the Revolution. On the contrary, as far as they could, they dis couraged the idea of a strike as premature and likely to lead to disaster and only gave it their official support when it had actually broken out.