Free The Russian Revolution by Sheila Fitzpatrick Page A

that the Soviet take power in the name of the working class and repudiate the `ten capitalist ministers' of the Provisional Government. In August, the month of General Kornilov's abortive coup, a leading industrialist urged the liberals to be more decisive in defence of their class interests:
    We ought to say ... that the present revolution is a bourgeois revolution, that the bourgeois order which exists at the present time is inevitable, and since it is inevitable, one must draw the completely logical conclusion and insist that those who rule the state think in a bourgeois manner and act in a bourgeois manner.2
    The `dual power' was conceived as an interim arrangement pending the summoning of a Constituent Assembly. But its disintegration under attack from left and right and the growing polarization of Russian politics raised disturbing questions about the future as well as the present in mid-1917. Was it still reasonable to hope that Russia's political problems could be resolved by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly and the formal institutionalization of parliamentary democracy on the Western model? The Constituent Assembly solution, like the interim `dual power', required a degree of political consensus and agreement on the necessity of compromise. The perceived alternatives to consensus and compromise were dictatorship and civil war. It seemed, nevertheless, that these alternatives were likely to be chosen by a turbulent and sharply polarized society which had thrown off the reins of government.

The February Revolution and `dual power'
    In the last week of February, bread shortages, strikes, lockouts, and finally a demonstration in honour of International Women's Day by female workers of the Vyborg district brought a crowd on to the streets of Petrograd that the authorities could not disperse. The Fourth Duma, which had reached the end of its term, petitioned the Emperor once again for a responsible cabinet and asked to remain in session for the duration of the crisis. Both requests were refused; but an unauthorized Duma Committee, dominated by liberals of the Cadet Party and the Progressive Bloc, did in fact remain in session. The Emperor's Ministers held one last, indecisive meeting and then took to their heels, the more cautious of them immediately quitting the capital. Nicholas II himself was absent, visiting Army Headquarters in Mogilev; his response to the crisis was a laconic instruction by telegraph that the disorders should be ended immediately. But the police was disintegrating, and troops from the Petrograd garrison brought into the city to control the crowd had begun to fraternize with it. By the evening of 28 February, Petrograd's Military Commander had to report that the revolutionary crowd had taken over all railway stations, all artillery supplies and, as far as he knew, the whole city; very few reliable troops remained at his disposal, and even his telephones were no longer working.
    The Army High Command had two options, either to send in fresh troops who might or might not hold firm or to seek a political solution with the help of the Duma politicians. It chose the latter alternative. At Pskov, on the return journey from Mogilev, Nicholas's train was met by emissaries from the High Command and the Duma who respectfully suggested that the Emperor should abdicate. After some discussion, Nicholas mildly agreed. But, having initially accepted the suggestion that he should abdicate in favour of his son, he thought further about Tsarevich Aleksei's delicate health and decided instead to abdicate on his own behalf and that of Aleksei in favour of his brother, Grand Duke Michael. Always a family man, he spent the remainder of the journey thinking with remarkable calm and political innocence about his future as a private citizen:
    He said he would go abroad for the duration of hostilities [in the war against Germany] and then return to Russia, settle in the Crimea and devote himself completely to the