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Czarist Navy - 1917 Revolution

In the last few months of 1916 a change came over the attitude of the naval officers. The murder of Rasputin, the speeches of Purishkevich and Molynkov, compelled most of them to start thinking on the political situation in Russia, and undermined their former conviction that autocracy was the form of government which answered to the cultural and economical level of the Russian people. But from this change of attitude to active sympathy with the revolution the distance was great. A parliamentary monarchy was, to the majority, the extreme limit of aspirations and probabilities.

But among the seamen revolutionary propaganda had been far more successful. The Social Revolutionary party was especially popular, sparing, as it did, no effort to create revolutionary associations on the warships. The Bolshevik party had also their organizations in the navy, but they were far less numerous and influential than those of the Social Revolutionary party.

Ever since 1905 a series of mutinies and rebellions had taken place in the navy; they were purely revolutionary in character, although sometimes, for motives of expediency, their leaders gave them the shape of economical dissatisfaction (dissatisfaction with food, pay, etc.). The best known are: the bloody mutiny of the battleship Prince Potemkin, the Sevastopol rebellion headed by Lieutenant Schmitt, the mutiny on board the cruiser Pamiat Azova in 1906, and the seamen's rebellion in Kronstadt in 1905. Besides these, some disorders would break out nearly every year in the Baltic as well as in the Black Sea fleet, and several ships became notorious for their revolutionary proclivities, while others remained staunchly loyal. The torpedo boats and in general the smaller craft were loyal, while the battleships, especially the new ones, were inclined to mutiny.

The putting down of all these rebellions involved the execution of ringleaders, and the revolutionaries were not slow to spread rumors of executions en masse and of wholesale annihilations of rebellious crews. These rumors had no foundation whatever. The government applied capital punishment only to the leaders and to men guilty of murder. The total number of men executed is nearer a few dozens than many thousands, as it was asserted by the propagandists. In some cases (e.g., the mutiny on the battleship Emperor Paul i) the Emperor substituted penal servitude for capital punishment to all the men sentenced by the court martial. In the years immediately preceding the war, the government succeeded in expelling the revolutionary associations from the ships, and by the autumn of 1914 only wretched remains of the terroristic and fighting associations of the Social Revolutionary party were left here and there.

The upheaval of patriotic feeling which accompanied the outbreak of the great war contributed to the establishment of an informal armistice between the government and the revolutionary parties. During the first two and one-half years of the war, there were only two cases of disorder in the navy. The first took place on board the cruiser Rossia in the summer of 1915 and only proved the weakness of the revolutionaries who were backed only by the reservists. The second was on board the battleship Gangul whose captain was Captain M. Kedrov, an officer of outstanding merit, while the commander was another excellent officer—Commander M. Petrov. This outburst was more serious than the preceding one, but it also ended without bloodshed, owing to the energetic measures taken by the senior officers and the obvious lack of sympathy with the rebels of the majority of the men. But in 1917 the men had become weary of the war; especially those whose term of service should have ended in 1914, and who were now eight years away from their homes and families.

The crews and the shore units stationed at Kronstadt owing to their composition (large percentage of reservists of old terms, and, in the naval divisions, a considerable number of seamen taken off their ships for bad conduct), as well as to the proximity of Petrograd with its hundreds of thousands of factory workmen, were under the action of Bolshevik propaganda, more than any other part of the navy. The influence of Bolshevism over the minds of the Petrograd workmen was on the increase since the beginning of the war. The Bolsheviks had a strong organization in Kronstadt and it was popular with the seamen.

In combating the revolutionary movement in the navy the government had, previously to the war, arrived at. the idea that much would be gained by handing over the whole proposition to the political secret police and the gendarmes' corps. Secret agents were introduced on board and in the barracks and started their secret work, acting independently of the commanding officers and obeying only the orders of their own superiors. Unhappily the agents of the Russian home office were prone to recur to methods known by the name "provocation" and used to support one revolutionary party against another. The Bolsheviks enjoyed their special protection and, consequently, relative immunity. In the winter of 1916-1917 the revolutionaries developed an intense activity among the workmen of Petrograd, preparing an armed insurrection. This activity found an immediate echo in Kronstadt where the revolutionary spirit rapidly grew. Admiral Viren, the commandant of Kronstadt, was known to be a man of strong will and unbending loyalty to the sovereign. The remains of the social revolutionary associations on the ships stationed at Helsingfors (especially the battleships Paul 1 and Andrey Pervozvanny) also began to stir.

The revolt in Kronstadt broke out almost simultaneously with that of the guards' depot in Petrograd. Its first victims were Admiral Viren and Rear Admiral Alexander Butakov. Viren's corpse was soaked in petrol and burned on the Anchor Square. The revolution took its revenge on autocracy in the person of the commandant of Kronstadt and the scum of the seamen's mob triumphed their victory over the stern commander who had upheld a discipline of iron in his command. The other senior officers were all massacred and together with them a few more or less casual victims from among the junior officers. The massacre was carried out according to a list drawn up beforehand, and was not the outcome of personal vengeance on the part of individual seamen. The Bolsheviks from the very beginning succeeded in establishing their authority and until the October revolution made them rulers of all Russia, Kronstadt was their stronghold and their sanctuary, where the agents of the impotent provisional government were afraid of pursuing them.

The Russian Fleet in the Baltic, as well as the Russian Army, which for over three years had heroically faced the German troops on the Eastern front, was demobilised as the result of the Revolution. The menace to Germany's coasts and communications in the Baltic was thus been removed; that inland sea became virtually a German lake, for the enemy has always treated with scant respect the interests of Denmark and Sweden. The collapse of Russian power in the Baltic gave to Germany freedom of naval movement at the other end of the Kiel Canal which opened the possibility of a new strategy, less defensive in its character than in the past.

At length the Revolution, which dethroned the Tsar and undermined tho morale of the Russian Fleet, as of the Russian Army, enabled the enemy to act. It may seem surprising, but it is probably true to say that in the history of the Russian Fleet there have been few occasions when, acting under Russian officers, any section of it fought with finer courage than during the rearguard action in the Gulf of Riga. There were only two old battleships and some small craft to support the Russian minefields, but their crews were outside the Revolutionary current. The Germans, assured that ships could be borrowed without risk from the North Sea, had at their disposal about half the strength of the High Seas Fleet. The Russians fought with desperate courage, but fought in vain, their failure being partially due to the success with which the Germans had undermined the morale of the troops in charge of the fortifications of the islands which defended the entrance to the Gulf and supplemented the protection the Russian naval forces endeavoured to provide for the minefields. In those circumstances, the German Fleet secured the command of the Gulf of Riga, obtaining a jumping-off place for an attack on Petrograd or for taking the Russian naval forces in the Gulf of Finland in the rear.