The Russian Revolution, Through American Eyes - HISTORY - 0 views
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On a muggy July night in 1917, American journalist Arno Dosch-Fleurot joined the protestors parading along Petrograd’s Nevsky Prospekt when gunshots suddenly rang out. Banners pleading for liberty and freedom crashed to the ground as blood stained the Russian capital’s most fashionable thoroughfare. After diving for cover in a gutter, the New York World correspondent came face-to-face with a Russian officer and asked him what was happening. “The Russians, my countrymen, are idiots,” he replied. “This is a white night of madness.”
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“St. Petersburg was a very Western-looking city with much more contact with Western culture than Moscow,” Rappaport tells HISTORY. In addition to a large British population, the city was home to a sizable American community that included employees of major corporations such International Harvester, the Singer Sewing Machine Company and Westinghouse. The American presence only grew after the start of World War I as entrepreneurs arrived to sell weapons to the imperial government.
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Empty stomachs, rather than political philosophy, launched the onset of the Russian Revolution, and Rappaport says the spark that ignited the political tinderbox came on March 8, 1917, when tens of thousands of protestors marked International Women’s Day by marching through the streets of Petrograd demanding not just the right to vote—but food for their families. In the ensuing days, the protests grew in size and turned violent as the imperial forces tried to keep order. Courts, police stations and other buildings of the czarist regime were torched. Morgues could not keep up with the flow of bodies, which were flung into mass graves.
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Unfortunately, the February Revolution also mimicked the French Revolution by giving way to anarchy, violence and repression. As Alexander Kerensky’s provisional government floundered, Petrograd’s expatriates watched in horror as the air of optimism quickly grew toxic. Their diaries and letters detail the descent into violence as looting and killing became a common occurrence.
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The February Revolution had surprised the Bolsheviks as much as anyone, and they were not powerful enough to take control early in 1917, Rappaport says. The return of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin from exile, however, galvanized the radical socialists. By the fall of 1917, the residents of Petrograd were so desperate for relief from the seemingly endless chaos that they cared little about who could bring it.
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Rappaport says the first-hand accounts of Americans and other foreigners in Petrograd are valuable because they provide an unvarnished window into the events of 1917. “These were private citizens writing personal diary entries or letters. They didn’t have a particular political agenda. I looked at Russian accounts and had to wade through so much tedious politics. Their response, though, was natural and instinctive.”