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Ominous, can't butterfly away a massive stroke I suspect.
The Widening Gyre: The Great War and the Remaking of Europe
- Thread starter Curby
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- Timeline Post-1900
The Russian Revolution
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
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Hey everyone! So, I have a bit of an ad hoc fix for the footnote issue; I'm simply going to avoid using superscript and put the necessary footnotes at the end of paragraphs in parenthesis. I hope that isn't too weird for anyone.
I'm going to try to have 1917 wrapped up in another two posts, one covering the military situation, the other everything else. Then we'll be onto the final stretch of the war.
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One of the great historical ironies of the Russian revolution is that its most immediate impetus, the shortage of food in Petrograd, would be solved by external events in a matter of weeks. Ever since the Polish offensive, Russia had been desperately drafting men into its armies and war industry, emptying the fields of Central Russia and Ukraine of peasants and agricultural laborers. The predictable consequence was a shortage of grain and other foodstuffs. Russia made up the deficit by imports financed by a mixture of inflationary government spending and British loans. In 1916, British credit began to grow less generous: it was squeezed by the army expansion program and the reduction of American loans. Consequently, the position of the Russian laborer declined markedly in 1916 at the same time as millions of men entered into war industries in the quickly industrializing cities of Petrograd, Moscow, and Kharkiv. This created a revolutionary situation. (1)
There was also the not insignificant issue of how the grain was actually to be procured and transported to the big cities in Russia. The Dardanelle Straits were blockaded by the Turks, and the trans-siberian railway hardly had the capacity to handle the necessary tonnage through vladivostok. Much of the grain was imported through the arctic port of Murmansk, which was inoperational for much of the winter. (2)
Of course, one should not confuse the immediate cause of the Russian Revolution with the larger structural conditions that rendered it possible. There was the unresponsive machinery of the Tsarist state, the consistently abysmal performance of the Russian military, and, of course, the person of Tsar Nicholas himself, a man who seemed to embody all the vices of the autocrat with none of his purported virtues. A more responsive government may have averted a revolution, even if it is likely that any Russian government would have had a difficult time justifying the conditions it imposed upon its people.
The winter of 1917 was one of the coldest on record. In Petrograd, temperatures regularly fell under twenty degrees below zero. Workers frequently had to go days without eating, and fuel shortages were endemic. Among the poor, inflation had driven up the price of food, rendering it inaccessible; even middle-class women who managed to buy a piece of bread after a long wait in a queue felt their pocketbooks affected. Sporadic protests throughout January were dealt with harshly by the police, but nonetheless slowly grew in intensity. On January 20th, 15,000 women marched through Nevsky Prospect, demanding bread and grain. The next day, news leaked of the secret peace talks - and their failure. (3)
On the 22nd, a much larger crowd of workers came out, demanding bread and peace. They marched from Vyborg over the Liteiny Bridge, overrunning a mixture of cossacks and policemen. They were soon joined in Petrograd proper by a mixture of white collar workers, students, and shopkeepers. The slogans were for an end to the war, the distribution of bread, and the empowering of the duma. In all, around 95,000 individuals came out that day in protest. They were emboldened by the lack of a response from the Cossacks, who made little attempt to disperse the large crowd.
The next day, workers in all of Petrograd's factories went on strike. Around 235,000 laborers converged on Znamenskaya Square bearing red flags. This demonstration was more overtly political, and calls were made for the Tsar to be deposed. Unsurprisingly, there were also far more clashes with the police, though the army units in the area refused to fire on the workers. Workers crossing over from Vyborg into inner petrograd overran several blockades constructed by cossacks and police officers. Tensions were therefore high when the police confronted workers in Znamenskaya Square. The police had received scant orders from authorities, who were still struggling to coordinate a response. When workers prepared to topple an Equestrian statue of the Tsar, they were fired upon by police. But the police forces in the area were hardly sufficient to stem the red tide. The enraged workers charged the police barricades, and slaughtered seven officers.
News of the massacre of twenty-two workers and seven police officers reached the Tsar the next day, who ordered a crackdown on the protests. On the 24th came the largest protests yet, as 300,000 workers, shopkeepers, women, and elements from all sectors of society marched through Petrograd, eventually determining to head to the Winter Palace itself. Police officers and soldiers had set up an extensive series of barricades. Orders were given for the crowd to disperse; according to all available evidence, a good number retreated, but armed workers and a not insignificant number of women continued to arrive in the area around the Palace.
When the police began firing into the crowd, chaos broke out among the camp of soldiers who had been sent to reinforce the police. Soldiers refused to follow their officers orders to join in the volley of fire, which in its first two minutes had already killed over twenty-five civilians. A threat of a court-martial radicalized the mutineers, who killed or disabled their officers before opening fire on the police. The crowd, which had been in a chaotic retreat from the prospect, surged forth again. Others entered the barracks of soldiers, informing them that their comrades were being ordered to fire on crowds of defenceless women.
By the end of the day, the Petrograd police were in a state of low-scale civil war with mutinying soldiers. Atrocities against peaceful civilian crowds, thus far a rare occurrence, multiplied throughout the day as the besieged police grew increasingly paranoid. Over the next few days, armed workers and soldiers cleared the city of the remainder of the police forces. The prisoners of the Peter and Paul fortress were freed, replaced by captured army officers and police sergeants. (4)
Later that week, a soviet was proclaimed, with its executive committee elected by delegates from workers and soldiers councils. Originally, this body had seven Mensheviks, three non-party intellectuals, four Bolsheviks, and three representatives each of the other socialist parties, including the Trudoviks, popular socialists, Bund, and Inter-District group. Simultaneously, members of the Duma, led by the charismatic Trudovik Alexander Kerensky, declared the formation of a "Provisional Government for the purpose of Restoration of Order in the Capital and the Establishment of Relations with Institutions". (6)
On February 3rd, an agreement was tentatively reached between the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government. It was agreed to convene a national assembly elected with universal suffrage, provide amnesty for political prisoners, and formally abolish all political restrictions based on class, religion, and nationality. The agreement formalized the de facto dual-power situation, with the provisional government agreeing to coordinate policy with the soviet.
That same day, Tsar Nicholas ordered a counter-revolutionary expedition to march from Central Russia to retake the rogue city. Strikes among transport workers in Moscow paralyzed the actual assembly of the expedition. Then, when soldiers at the front began mutinying upon hearing of the news, the acting commander-in-chief General Alexeev ordered to halt the expedition entirely. On February 6th, the Tsar abdicated, paving the way for a government of national unity led by Prince Lvov.
Prince Lvov seemed ideally suited to act as a power broker between the two figures who held real power in his government, Alexander Kerensky and Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets. During the war, he had worked with the Zemstvo Union to coordinate medical care for troops and mobilize the national economy. The shattering defeats inflicted on the Russian Army turned him into an increasingly cautious, conscientious man. Yet he retained a sense of optimism about Russia's future even amidst the ongoing turmoil, likely a prerequisite to serving as an effective administrator amidst the breakdown of civil order in much of Russia.
In a bid to shore up the pro-war faction in the Petrograd Soviet, the new government was largely staffed by members from the right wing of the Menshevik, Popular Socialist, and Socialist-Revolutionary parties. Besides the officially non-partisan Lvov, only four ministers from the bourgeois parties were in the government; aside from Pavel Milyukov, who was given control over the ministry of war, none of the more important posts were allocated to right-wing ministers. (7)
The most immediate problem confronting the new government was the war. Lvov was privy to and approved of the peace negotiations of 1917, but with Hindenburg and Ludendorff consolidating their power, he knew that Russia would not be able to seek such favorable terms in the near future. He therefore advocated to continue the war, but in practice opposed the participation of Russia in any future offensives. The war was to be waged primarily as one of national defense. Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets, agreed that it was unwise to launch an offensive in the near future, instead advocating for building up Russia's army and stocks of supplies until it could launch an offensive which he was certain would succeed. Kerensky was the wild card. Given his participation in the Soviet, a hotbed of antiwar sentiment, many believed that he might be in favor of seeking peace. Instead, Kerensky proved to be one of the most charismatic pro-war orators, and consistently positioned himself as a critic of the timidity and caution of the Lvov government. (8)
The question of the war would soon divide the Soviet. An early victory for the antiwar faction was scored on February 14th, when the Soviet agreed to pressure the Provisional Government into a deal to return Russian Marxist exiles in exchange for German citizens currently being interned in Russia. Eager to destabilize the shaky new Russian government, the Bolshevik Lenin and left-wing Menshevik Martov were soon on their way to Petrograd in German trains. Meanwhile, Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin managed to successfully slip past the British Navy. Yet on the question of the war itself, the Soviet remained divided, with a slim majority of Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks favoring a doctrine of revolutionary defencism. (9)
The return of the exiles in early March threw tinder on an explosive situation in Petrograd. Shortly after arriving, Lenin gave a speech denouncing the war and calling for the immediate seizure of Soviet Power; Julius Martov, in terms little less incendiary, condemned the centrist, pro-war Menshevik in control of the Soviet, Nikolay Chkheidze. Trotsky took control over the inter-district group, which positioned itself between the Internationalist left-wing of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.
Matters reached a head when the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base mutinied. Lenin urged for a mass uprising; however, the workers in Petrograd factories were surprisingly quiet. The opening of the Dardanelle Straits, coupled with a new, more aggressive domestic fiscal policy, had allowed Russia to procure large quantities of grain from the United States. The rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors arose from complaints about their treatment by the imperious officer class and general anti-war sentiment rather than the desperation of hunger. While the Bolsheviks issued a statement of support of the sailors, the executive committee refused to call for a general strike.
The mutinying sailors presented a very real problem for the provisional government, which faced a crisis of authority. There were real concerns that any attempt to disarm the soldiers would only lead to additional mutinies. Lvov reluctantly agreed to place matters in the hands of Kerensky, who managed to convince the Soviet to send a body of loyal soldiers to the Kronstadt naval base. Shortly after, the decision of Lvov to invite the Soviet ministers into government was vindicated: the sailors peaceably stood down.
This was not without repercussions for the parties of the left. Martov denounced the Mensheviks' participation in the scheme to disarm the soldiers. Within a few days, the Menshevik minister of food, Matvey Skobelev, immensely popular for his role in the improving situation in Petrograd, resigned from the government and joined the calls for an end to the war. Some of the Mensheviks on the Executive Committee of the Soviet began to call for a break with the provisional government. In April, Martov and his followers left the party itself, branding themselves the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party". There was now the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks)", the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Mensheviks)", and the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party" simpliciter, which had the benefit of hearkening back to the original, pre-schism political formation. Trotsky's inter-district group, small but increasingly influential within the Soviet, soon merged with Martov's new party. (10)
Julius Martov, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
Throughout the summer, events slowly deteriorated for the provisional government. As British loans grew ever scarcer, inflation spiralled more aggressively and decimated the standard of living of most Russians. Lvov's refusal to launch an offensive increasingly angered his Entente alliance partners, who saw little reason to support Russia if it was unwilling to contribute to the war effort. The lack of progress on the front led many at home to question why Russia was continuing the fight if it could not meaningfully contribute to it. One also cannot underestimate the impact of events in Germany: the ousting of Ebert and Scheidemann and the seizure of the German Social Democratic Party by an anti-war coalition made many Mensheviks in particular feel somewhat awkward about their participation in the war. In August, two Menshevik members of the executive committee left the party and joined Martov, giving the anti-war faction an absolute majority in the Petrograd Soviet. (11)
Of course, the question was how they were going to use this power. The Bolsheviks held only a minority of the seats, though they were becoming increasingly amenable to Lenin's proposals for revolutionary agitation. As a whole, Martov's faction was far more hesitant, even if it did include firebrands like Trotsky. To many, it appeared that Martov's policy was to condemn the war while recoiling from any course of action that could actually lead to its end. Trotsky described him as "A man who desired power only for the audience it would vouchsafe for his pontificating".
Events were soon to surge ahead of the socialist politicians. In September, buoyed by middle-class and military discontent with the "pacifistic" Lvov, Kerensky and Milyukov ousted him from the government and forced a new coalition between right-wing SR's, Kadets, and Octobrists. They promised an end to the inflation and a military offensive that would end the war. Britain greeted the developments warmly, eager for a Russian government that would take a larger role in prosecuting the war. The Mensheviks, who had bled a great deal of their support to Martov and in any event did not support a new offensive, were iced out of the new government. (12)
The formation of the new, more right-wing government brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of Petrograd once again. Fears proliferated of the monarchy being reinstated, the Soviet being dissolved, and Petrograd itself being placed under military rule. The Petrograd and Moscow Soviets issued a joint statement declaring it had no confidence in the new government, and would refuse to cooperate with it until it replaced all of its Octobist ministers. Martov still waffled on the matter of actually seizing power, leading Trotsky to take his followers to the Bolsheviks, who were themselves on the verge of a party split.
Lenin advocated for the immediate seizure of power irrespective of the degree of cooperation from Martov's faction. The central committee of the Bolshevik party narrowly refused to endorse a measure calling for a preemptive strike on the provisional government until it issued a formal response to the Soviets on the matter of the Octobrist ministers. They would receive their response in good order. (13)
On October 2nd, loyalist troops mustered by General Lavr Kornilov began their march to Petrograd from Livonia. The Petrograd Soviet received news of the expedition on the 3rd; the provisional government had already fled to Pskov, and attempts to cable them met with little response. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn. On October 4th, with Kornilov's army massing outside of Petrograd, the Petrograd Soviet declared itself to be the sole legitimate government of Russia. At long last, "All Power to the Soviets" was embraced by all of the socialist parties; though at the present moment the Soviets themselves stood at risk of seeing their power disappear. A call was placed for all the denizens of the city to play their part in defending it from the reactionary expedition. Workers armed themselves, women erected barricades, and makeshift hospitals were assembled in the shops on Nevsky Prospect. The Kronstadt Sailors and City Garrison declared their loyalty to the new Soviet government. (14)
Yet the 15,000 or so trained soldiers at the disposal of the Petrograd Soviet were little match for Kornilov's 55,000 man army. Attempts to halt the advance of Kornilov's troops at the approaches to the city were easily rebuffed. Staffed with nearly a third of all active Russian officers, Kornilov had taken all the measures necessary to ensure his troops did not mutiny. On the 7th, the Baltic and Warsaw stations fell, opening the way to Petrograd's inner city and eventually the Tauride Palace, the seat of the Soviet.
Over the next few days, the Petrograd Red Army was forced to steadily withdraw further into the city. The Soviet determined that the revolutionary capital would soon have to be evacuated, and made plans to flee north into Finland, where workers had seized power in several cities and declared loyalty to the Petrograd Soviet. Then, abruptly, Kornilov's advance started to halt, and then, his soldiers started to flee the city in increasingly frantic haste. Rumors swirled about of an unknown savior or a miracle from on high. And then, an extraordinary sight: decked out in the full, aristocratic military garb of Imperial Russia, General Aleksei Brusilov entered the revolutionary capital flanked by soldiers bearing red flags and singing the Marseillase.
The events of October 1917 are so shrouded in mythology that it is difficult to assemble an accurate account of what really happened that week at the front. General Brusilov, one of the few Russian generals who consistently displayed both competence and concern for his soldiers, had been sidelined by a general staff mistrustful of his relationship with the soldier's councils. Up until the March to Petrograd, it is clear that Brusilov did not intend to participate in any sort of revolutionary activity; he simply believed that working with the soldier's councils was the best means of keeping his troops loyal and motivated. Nonetheless, the doctrines proliferating through the councils came to exert an increasing influence on Brusilov, especially after the general staff began excluding him from its deliberations. He approved of the overthrow of Nicholas, and believed that an offensive against Germany in 1917 would be an act of national suicide.
At the front itself, mutinies broke out almost immediately after news was received of Kornilov's expedition and the plan for an offensive. The departure of many senior officers had already given rise to a welter of conspiracies. On October 5th, most of the remaining officers of the Russian Central Front, located in southern Belarus and Eastern Ukraine, were captured and detained. The soldiers councils appointed delegates to a new executive body which placed itself under the command of General Brusilov.
On October 8th, Austrian soldiers were shocked as entire Russian divisions seemed to suddenly vanish from the frontlines. Brusilov's soldiers marched first to Pskov, where they surprised and captured most of the ministers of the provisional government. Kerensky himself was paraded about town that night. Then, on the 11th, Brusilov smashed into the rear of Kornilov's troops, sowing chaos in the ranks. Kornilov's army was soon plagued by mass desertion, making it difficult to coordinate any sort of organized retreat. On the 14th, they retreated from Petrograd entirely, falling back to Moscow, which was already in the grip of Civil War. Brusilov entered Petrograd to thunderous acclaim; there were calls to make him the new head of the red army, though the socialist politicians refrained out of fears of bonapartism. Instead, after a parade through Petrograd and the proclamation of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, Brusilov was sent south to secure Moscow for the new government.
The Red Aristocrat: Aleksei Brusilov in 1917
With most of the ministers of the provisional government captured and strikes ravaging much of eastern Ukraine and Central Russia, the position of the white forces looked tenuous indeed. The French and British did not have the resources necessary to launch an intervention, and in any event they had long ago grown skeptical of Russia's ability to make a real contribution to the war effort. In Finland, the Caucuses, and Eastern Ukraine, fighting had already erupted between different militias; in Siberia, the majority of towns declared their loyalty to the new government, though in some smaller villages local administrators loyal to the old Tsar pledged allegiance to Kornilov's movement of national salvation.
On the 28th of October, Brusilov entered Moscow, though Kornilov managed to retreat east to Nizhny Novogorod, after which he would make his way to Kazan and try to make his way along the Volga River to the caucuses, where a cossack revolt was underway against the new government. Nonetheless, the momentum of the red army seemed unstoppable. In November, a new army raised in Moscow and Petrograd, led by none other than Leon Trotsky, marched east, driving white forces back behind the Urals. In the south, the march of the cossacks was halted at Volgograd by Brusilov, who then headed west to seize Rostov. Much of Ukraine was in a state of anarchy and civil war; in December, the British began using the black sea to support the cossacks in the south and Symon Petluria's Ukrainian People's Republic, while the Germans sponsored the hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.
At the end of the year, the new government agreed to enter into peace negotiations with Germany. Few in the government believed that the harsh settlement, which required Russia to cede Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, and Western Belarus, would be permanent. But time was needed to clear the country of whites and consolidate the new government, which was already being riven apart by tensions between Martov, Lenin, and Trotsky.
1ITTL, the standard of living of most workers declines somewhat quicker, and there is significantly more turnover within the factories themselves. This means that the Bolsheviks have more influence in the factories much earlier.
2As IOTL.
3ITTL, the British are significantly more stingy with loans than IOTL, which means that there is more inflation in the Russian economy. This is one of the reasons why the protests have a larger middle class element here than IOTL.
4Similar, but not identical events also occurred IOTL. Here, the police react somewhat more quickly with violence, mostly due to feeling paranoid for much longer than IOTL about a potential uprising among the city's workers. The army is also quicker to side with the citizens of Petrograd, and the conflict has a bit more of the character of an actual civil war in which two factions engage in pitched battles to seize the city. Comparatively, the soldiers play a larger role than IOTL.
5This is mostly the same as OTL except for the fact that the Soviet is tilted a bit more to the left. There is also a more explicit and formal recognition of the soviets by the provisional government.
6This is a very large departure from OTL, as can be seen below. IOTL, a government with mostly socialist ministers only emerged significantly later, after the insurrectionary July days. ITTL, because there is a real threat of the Soviet being captured by anti-war socialists, the decision is made from the start to placate it.
7All three of the figures discussed here (Lvov, Kerensky, and Milyukov) are much less keen on a military offensive than they were IOTL, though the biggest change is in Lvov himself, who is legitimately terrified of the notion of throwing the Russian Army on the offensive again after the disasters of 1915 and 1916.
8IOTL, the deal to swap interned German citizens for exiles was rejected by the provisional government, which led some Russian leftists to arrive back in Petrograd much later than others. Martov is probably the best example of this, though ITTL Trotsky and Bukharin also don't face the same delays, which means everyone returns to Petrograd at around the same time.
9IOTL, the Kronstadt sailors mutinied when they participated in the "July days". Here, they mutiny earlier, but because of the improved situation in Petrograd (rendered possibly largely by the opening of the Dardanelle straits, which did not occur IOTL, and more inflationary fiscal policy) there isn't much support for a more general insurrection.
10None of this occurred IOTL.
11IOTL, the Bolsheviks did eventually receive an absolute majority in the Soviet, but did so later. Here, an antiwar majority is formed more quickly, but the Bolsheviks hold a minority of the overall seats (though a large majority of the seats of the antiwar faction).
12This is very different from OTL, where Kerensky and Milyukov were more rivals than collaborators. Here, events force them to work together, and they have a somewhat better relationship to start with since Milyukov has less of a monarchist streak.
13Similar events IOTL occurred in a mostly similar fashion. Lenin frequently grew frustrated with the executive committee for its timidity. Here, someone like Kamenev is even more cautious because the right wing of the Bolsheviks feel as if Martov is a credible partner.
14While Kornilov did march on Petrograd IOTL, it was without Kerensky's permission. Here, the two are very much working together.
I'm going to try to have 1917 wrapped up in another two posts, one covering the military situation, the other everything else. Then we'll be onto the final stretch of the war.
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The Russian Revolution
One of the great historical ironies of the Russian revolution is that its most immediate impetus, the shortage of food in Petrograd, would be solved by external events in a matter of weeks. Ever since the Polish offensive, Russia had been desperately drafting men into its armies and war industry, emptying the fields of Central Russia and Ukraine of peasants and agricultural laborers. The predictable consequence was a shortage of grain and other foodstuffs. Russia made up the deficit by imports financed by a mixture of inflationary government spending and British loans. In 1916, British credit began to grow less generous: it was squeezed by the army expansion program and the reduction of American loans. Consequently, the position of the Russian laborer declined markedly in 1916 at the same time as millions of men entered into war industries in the quickly industrializing cities of Petrograd, Moscow, and Kharkiv. This created a revolutionary situation. (1)
There was also the not insignificant issue of how the grain was actually to be procured and transported to the big cities in Russia. The Dardanelle Straits were blockaded by the Turks, and the trans-siberian railway hardly had the capacity to handle the necessary tonnage through vladivostok. Much of the grain was imported through the arctic port of Murmansk, which was inoperational for much of the winter. (2)
Of course, one should not confuse the immediate cause of the Russian Revolution with the larger structural conditions that rendered it possible. There was the unresponsive machinery of the Tsarist state, the consistently abysmal performance of the Russian military, and, of course, the person of Tsar Nicholas himself, a man who seemed to embody all the vices of the autocrat with none of his purported virtues. A more responsive government may have averted a revolution, even if it is likely that any Russian government would have had a difficult time justifying the conditions it imposed upon its people.
The winter of 1917 was one of the coldest on record. In Petrograd, temperatures regularly fell under twenty degrees below zero. Workers frequently had to go days without eating, and fuel shortages were endemic. Among the poor, inflation had driven up the price of food, rendering it inaccessible; even middle-class women who managed to buy a piece of bread after a long wait in a queue felt their pocketbooks affected. Sporadic protests throughout January were dealt with harshly by the police, but nonetheless slowly grew in intensity. On January 20th, 15,000 women marched through Nevsky Prospect, demanding bread and grain. The next day, news leaked of the secret peace talks - and their failure. (3)
On the 22nd, a much larger crowd of workers came out, demanding bread and peace. They marched from Vyborg over the Liteiny Bridge, overrunning a mixture of cossacks and policemen. They were soon joined in Petrograd proper by a mixture of white collar workers, students, and shopkeepers. The slogans were for an end to the war, the distribution of bread, and the empowering of the duma. In all, around 95,000 individuals came out that day in protest. They were emboldened by the lack of a response from the Cossacks, who made little attempt to disperse the large crowd.
The next day, workers in all of Petrograd's factories went on strike. Around 235,000 laborers converged on Znamenskaya Square bearing red flags. This demonstration was more overtly political, and calls were made for the Tsar to be deposed. Unsurprisingly, there were also far more clashes with the police, though the army units in the area refused to fire on the workers. Workers crossing over from Vyborg into inner petrograd overran several blockades constructed by cossacks and police officers. Tensions were therefore high when the police confronted workers in Znamenskaya Square. The police had received scant orders from authorities, who were still struggling to coordinate a response. When workers prepared to topple an Equestrian statue of the Tsar, they were fired upon by police. But the police forces in the area were hardly sufficient to stem the red tide. The enraged workers charged the police barricades, and slaughtered seven officers.
News of the massacre of twenty-two workers and seven police officers reached the Tsar the next day, who ordered a crackdown on the protests. On the 24th came the largest protests yet, as 300,000 workers, shopkeepers, women, and elements from all sectors of society marched through Petrograd, eventually determining to head to the Winter Palace itself. Police officers and soldiers had set up an extensive series of barricades. Orders were given for the crowd to disperse; according to all available evidence, a good number retreated, but armed workers and a not insignificant number of women continued to arrive in the area around the Palace.
When the police began firing into the crowd, chaos broke out among the camp of soldiers who had been sent to reinforce the police. Soldiers refused to follow their officers orders to join in the volley of fire, which in its first two minutes had already killed over twenty-five civilians. A threat of a court-martial radicalized the mutineers, who killed or disabled their officers before opening fire on the police. The crowd, which had been in a chaotic retreat from the prospect, surged forth again. Others entered the barracks of soldiers, informing them that their comrades were being ordered to fire on crowds of defenceless women.
By the end of the day, the Petrograd police were in a state of low-scale civil war with mutinying soldiers. Atrocities against peaceful civilian crowds, thus far a rare occurrence, multiplied throughout the day as the besieged police grew increasingly paranoid. Over the next few days, armed workers and soldiers cleared the city of the remainder of the police forces. The prisoners of the Peter and Paul fortress were freed, replaced by captured army officers and police sergeants. (4)
Later that week, a soviet was proclaimed, with its executive committee elected by delegates from workers and soldiers councils. Originally, this body had seven Mensheviks, three non-party intellectuals, four Bolsheviks, and three representatives each of the other socialist parties, including the Trudoviks, popular socialists, Bund, and Inter-District group. Simultaneously, members of the Duma, led by the charismatic Trudovik Alexander Kerensky, declared the formation of a "Provisional Government for the purpose of Restoration of Order in the Capital and the Establishment of Relations with Institutions". (6)
On February 3rd, an agreement was tentatively reached between the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government. It was agreed to convene a national assembly elected with universal suffrage, provide amnesty for political prisoners, and formally abolish all political restrictions based on class, religion, and nationality. The agreement formalized the de facto dual-power situation, with the provisional government agreeing to coordinate policy with the soviet.
That same day, Tsar Nicholas ordered a counter-revolutionary expedition to march from Central Russia to retake the rogue city. Strikes among transport workers in Moscow paralyzed the actual assembly of the expedition. Then, when soldiers at the front began mutinying upon hearing of the news, the acting commander-in-chief General Alexeev ordered to halt the expedition entirely. On February 6th, the Tsar abdicated, paving the way for a government of national unity led by Prince Lvov.
Prince Lvov seemed ideally suited to act as a power broker between the two figures who held real power in his government, Alexander Kerensky and Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets. During the war, he had worked with the Zemstvo Union to coordinate medical care for troops and mobilize the national economy. The shattering defeats inflicted on the Russian Army turned him into an increasingly cautious, conscientious man. Yet he retained a sense of optimism about Russia's future even amidst the ongoing turmoil, likely a prerequisite to serving as an effective administrator amidst the breakdown of civil order in much of Russia.
In a bid to shore up the pro-war faction in the Petrograd Soviet, the new government was largely staffed by members from the right wing of the Menshevik, Popular Socialist, and Socialist-Revolutionary parties. Besides the officially non-partisan Lvov, only four ministers from the bourgeois parties were in the government; aside from Pavel Milyukov, who was given control over the ministry of war, none of the more important posts were allocated to right-wing ministers. (7)
Table of Ministers (OTL Ministers and Parties in Parenthesis)
| Post | Name | Party |
| Prime minister and Minister of the Interior | Georgy Lvov | Non-Partisan |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | Alexander Kerensky (Pavel Milyukov) | SR (Kadet) |
| Minister of War and Navy | Pavel Milyukov (Alexander Guchkov) | Kadet (Octobrist) |
| Minister of Transport | Nikolai Nekrasov (Nikolai Nekrasov) | Kadet (Kadet) |
| Minister of Trade and Industry | Alexander Guchkov (Aleksandr Konovalov) | Octobrist (Progressist) |
| Minister of Justice | Pavel Pereverzev (Alexander Kerensky) | SR (SR) |
| Minister of Finance | Alexey Peshekhonov (Mikhail Tereschenko) | Popular Socialist (Non-Partisan) |
| Minister of Education | Alexander Manuilov (Alexander Manuilov) | Kadet (Kadet) |
| Minister of Agriculture | Victor Chernov (Andrei Shingarev) | SR (Kadet) |
| Minister of Labour | Irakli Tsereteli (Matvey Skobelev) | Menshevik (Menshevik) |
| Minister of Food | Matvey Skobelev (Alexey Peshekhonov) | Menshevik (Popular Socialist) |
| Minister of Post and Telegraph | Alexey Nikitin (Irakli Tsereseli) | Menshevik (Menshevik) |
The most immediate problem confronting the new government was the war. Lvov was privy to and approved of the peace negotiations of 1917, but with Hindenburg and Ludendorff consolidating their power, he knew that Russia would not be able to seek such favorable terms in the near future. He therefore advocated to continue the war, but in practice opposed the participation of Russia in any future offensives. The war was to be waged primarily as one of national defense. Milyukov, the leader of the Kadets, agreed that it was unwise to launch an offensive in the near future, instead advocating for building up Russia's army and stocks of supplies until it could launch an offensive which he was certain would succeed. Kerensky was the wild card. Given his participation in the Soviet, a hotbed of antiwar sentiment, many believed that he might be in favor of seeking peace. Instead, Kerensky proved to be one of the most charismatic pro-war orators, and consistently positioned himself as a critic of the timidity and caution of the Lvov government. (8)
The question of the war would soon divide the Soviet. An early victory for the antiwar faction was scored on February 14th, when the Soviet agreed to pressure the Provisional Government into a deal to return Russian Marxist exiles in exchange for German citizens currently being interned in Russia. Eager to destabilize the shaky new Russian government, the Bolshevik Lenin and left-wing Menshevik Martov were soon on their way to Petrograd in German trains. Meanwhile, Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin managed to successfully slip past the British Navy. Yet on the question of the war itself, the Soviet remained divided, with a slim majority of Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks favoring a doctrine of revolutionary defencism. (9)
The return of the exiles in early March threw tinder on an explosive situation in Petrograd. Shortly after arriving, Lenin gave a speech denouncing the war and calling for the immediate seizure of Soviet Power; Julius Martov, in terms little less incendiary, condemned the centrist, pro-war Menshevik in control of the Soviet, Nikolay Chkheidze. Trotsky took control over the inter-district group, which positioned itself between the Internationalist left-wing of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.
Matters reached a head when the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base mutinied. Lenin urged for a mass uprising; however, the workers in Petrograd factories were surprisingly quiet. The opening of the Dardanelle Straits, coupled with a new, more aggressive domestic fiscal policy, had allowed Russia to procure large quantities of grain from the United States. The rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors arose from complaints about their treatment by the imperious officer class and general anti-war sentiment rather than the desperation of hunger. While the Bolsheviks issued a statement of support of the sailors, the executive committee refused to call for a general strike.
The mutinying sailors presented a very real problem for the provisional government, which faced a crisis of authority. There were real concerns that any attempt to disarm the soldiers would only lead to additional mutinies. Lvov reluctantly agreed to place matters in the hands of Kerensky, who managed to convince the Soviet to send a body of loyal soldiers to the Kronstadt naval base. Shortly after, the decision of Lvov to invite the Soviet ministers into government was vindicated: the sailors peaceably stood down.
This was not without repercussions for the parties of the left. Martov denounced the Mensheviks' participation in the scheme to disarm the soldiers. Within a few days, the Menshevik minister of food, Matvey Skobelev, immensely popular for his role in the improving situation in Petrograd, resigned from the government and joined the calls for an end to the war. Some of the Mensheviks on the Executive Committee of the Soviet began to call for a break with the provisional government. In April, Martov and his followers left the party itself, branding themselves the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party". There was now the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks)", the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Mensheviks)", and the "Russian Social Democratic Labor Party" simpliciter, which had the benefit of hearkening back to the original, pre-schism political formation. Trotsky's inter-district group, small but increasingly influential within the Soviet, soon merged with Martov's new party. (10)
Julius Martov, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
Throughout the summer, events slowly deteriorated for the provisional government. As British loans grew ever scarcer, inflation spiralled more aggressively and decimated the standard of living of most Russians. Lvov's refusal to launch an offensive increasingly angered his Entente alliance partners, who saw little reason to support Russia if it was unwilling to contribute to the war effort. The lack of progress on the front led many at home to question why Russia was continuing the fight if it could not meaningfully contribute to it. One also cannot underestimate the impact of events in Germany: the ousting of Ebert and Scheidemann and the seizure of the German Social Democratic Party by an anti-war coalition made many Mensheviks in particular feel somewhat awkward about their participation in the war. In August, two Menshevik members of the executive committee left the party and joined Martov, giving the anti-war faction an absolute majority in the Petrograd Soviet. (11)
Of course, the question was how they were going to use this power. The Bolsheviks held only a minority of the seats, though they were becoming increasingly amenable to Lenin's proposals for revolutionary agitation. As a whole, Martov's faction was far more hesitant, even if it did include firebrands like Trotsky. To many, it appeared that Martov's policy was to condemn the war while recoiling from any course of action that could actually lead to its end. Trotsky described him as "A man who desired power only for the audience it would vouchsafe for his pontificating".
Events were soon to surge ahead of the socialist politicians. In September, buoyed by middle-class and military discontent with the "pacifistic" Lvov, Kerensky and Milyukov ousted him from the government and forced a new coalition between right-wing SR's, Kadets, and Octobrists. They promised an end to the inflation and a military offensive that would end the war. Britain greeted the developments warmly, eager for a Russian government that would take a larger role in prosecuting the war. The Mensheviks, who had bled a great deal of their support to Martov and in any event did not support a new offensive, were iced out of the new government. (12)
The formation of the new, more right-wing government brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of Petrograd once again. Fears proliferated of the monarchy being reinstated, the Soviet being dissolved, and Petrograd itself being placed under military rule. The Petrograd and Moscow Soviets issued a joint statement declaring it had no confidence in the new government, and would refuse to cooperate with it until it replaced all of its Octobist ministers. Martov still waffled on the matter of actually seizing power, leading Trotsky to take his followers to the Bolsheviks, who were themselves on the verge of a party split.
Lenin advocated for the immediate seizure of power irrespective of the degree of cooperation from Martov's faction. The central committee of the Bolshevik party narrowly refused to endorse a measure calling for a preemptive strike on the provisional government until it issued a formal response to the Soviets on the matter of the Octobrist ministers. They would receive their response in good order. (13)
On October 2nd, loyalist troops mustered by General Lavr Kornilov began their march to Petrograd from Livonia. The Petrograd Soviet received news of the expedition on the 3rd; the provisional government had already fled to Pskov, and attempts to cable them met with little response. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn. On October 4th, with Kornilov's army massing outside of Petrograd, the Petrograd Soviet declared itself to be the sole legitimate government of Russia. At long last, "All Power to the Soviets" was embraced by all of the socialist parties; though at the present moment the Soviets themselves stood at risk of seeing their power disappear. A call was placed for all the denizens of the city to play their part in defending it from the reactionary expedition. Workers armed themselves, women erected barricades, and makeshift hospitals were assembled in the shops on Nevsky Prospect. The Kronstadt Sailors and City Garrison declared their loyalty to the new Soviet government. (14)
Yet the 15,000 or so trained soldiers at the disposal of the Petrograd Soviet were little match for Kornilov's 55,000 man army. Attempts to halt the advance of Kornilov's troops at the approaches to the city were easily rebuffed. Staffed with nearly a third of all active Russian officers, Kornilov had taken all the measures necessary to ensure his troops did not mutiny. On the 7th, the Baltic and Warsaw stations fell, opening the way to Petrograd's inner city and eventually the Tauride Palace, the seat of the Soviet.
Over the next few days, the Petrograd Red Army was forced to steadily withdraw further into the city. The Soviet determined that the revolutionary capital would soon have to be evacuated, and made plans to flee north into Finland, where workers had seized power in several cities and declared loyalty to the Petrograd Soviet. Then, abruptly, Kornilov's advance started to halt, and then, his soldiers started to flee the city in increasingly frantic haste. Rumors swirled about of an unknown savior or a miracle from on high. And then, an extraordinary sight: decked out in the full, aristocratic military garb of Imperial Russia, General Aleksei Brusilov entered the revolutionary capital flanked by soldiers bearing red flags and singing the Marseillase.
The events of October 1917 are so shrouded in mythology that it is difficult to assemble an accurate account of what really happened that week at the front. General Brusilov, one of the few Russian generals who consistently displayed both competence and concern for his soldiers, had been sidelined by a general staff mistrustful of his relationship with the soldier's councils. Up until the March to Petrograd, it is clear that Brusilov did not intend to participate in any sort of revolutionary activity; he simply believed that working with the soldier's councils was the best means of keeping his troops loyal and motivated. Nonetheless, the doctrines proliferating through the councils came to exert an increasing influence on Brusilov, especially after the general staff began excluding him from its deliberations. He approved of the overthrow of Nicholas, and believed that an offensive against Germany in 1917 would be an act of national suicide.
At the front itself, mutinies broke out almost immediately after news was received of Kornilov's expedition and the plan for an offensive. The departure of many senior officers had already given rise to a welter of conspiracies. On October 5th, most of the remaining officers of the Russian Central Front, located in southern Belarus and Eastern Ukraine, were captured and detained. The soldiers councils appointed delegates to a new executive body which placed itself under the command of General Brusilov.
On October 8th, Austrian soldiers were shocked as entire Russian divisions seemed to suddenly vanish from the frontlines. Brusilov's soldiers marched first to Pskov, where they surprised and captured most of the ministers of the provisional government. Kerensky himself was paraded about town that night. Then, on the 11th, Brusilov smashed into the rear of Kornilov's troops, sowing chaos in the ranks. Kornilov's army was soon plagued by mass desertion, making it difficult to coordinate any sort of organized retreat. On the 14th, they retreated from Petrograd entirely, falling back to Moscow, which was already in the grip of Civil War. Brusilov entered Petrograd to thunderous acclaim; there were calls to make him the new head of the red army, though the socialist politicians refrained out of fears of bonapartism. Instead, after a parade through Petrograd and the proclamation of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, Brusilov was sent south to secure Moscow for the new government.
The Red Aristocrat: Aleksei Brusilov in 1917
With most of the ministers of the provisional government captured and strikes ravaging much of eastern Ukraine and Central Russia, the position of the white forces looked tenuous indeed. The French and British did not have the resources necessary to launch an intervention, and in any event they had long ago grown skeptical of Russia's ability to make a real contribution to the war effort. In Finland, the Caucuses, and Eastern Ukraine, fighting had already erupted between different militias; in Siberia, the majority of towns declared their loyalty to the new government, though in some smaller villages local administrators loyal to the old Tsar pledged allegiance to Kornilov's movement of national salvation.
On the 28th of October, Brusilov entered Moscow, though Kornilov managed to retreat east to Nizhny Novogorod, after which he would make his way to Kazan and try to make his way along the Volga River to the caucuses, where a cossack revolt was underway against the new government. Nonetheless, the momentum of the red army seemed unstoppable. In November, a new army raised in Moscow and Petrograd, led by none other than Leon Trotsky, marched east, driving white forces back behind the Urals. In the south, the march of the cossacks was halted at Volgograd by Brusilov, who then headed west to seize Rostov. Much of Ukraine was in a state of anarchy and civil war; in December, the British began using the black sea to support the cossacks in the south and Symon Petluria's Ukrainian People's Republic, while the Germans sponsored the hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.
At the end of the year, the new government agreed to enter into peace negotiations with Germany. Few in the government believed that the harsh settlement, which required Russia to cede Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, and Western Belarus, would be permanent. But time was needed to clear the country of whites and consolidate the new government, which was already being riven apart by tensions between Martov, Lenin, and Trotsky.
Footnotes
1ITTL, the standard of living of most workers declines somewhat quicker, and there is significantly more turnover within the factories themselves. This means that the Bolsheviks have more influence in the factories much earlier.
2As IOTL.
3ITTL, the British are significantly more stingy with loans than IOTL, which means that there is more inflation in the Russian economy. This is one of the reasons why the protests have a larger middle class element here than IOTL.
4Similar, but not identical events also occurred IOTL. Here, the police react somewhat more quickly with violence, mostly due to feeling paranoid for much longer than IOTL about a potential uprising among the city's workers. The army is also quicker to side with the citizens of Petrograd, and the conflict has a bit more of the character of an actual civil war in which two factions engage in pitched battles to seize the city. Comparatively, the soldiers play a larger role than IOTL.
5This is mostly the same as OTL except for the fact that the Soviet is tilted a bit more to the left. There is also a more explicit and formal recognition of the soviets by the provisional government.
6This is a very large departure from OTL, as can be seen below. IOTL, a government with mostly socialist ministers only emerged significantly later, after the insurrectionary July days. ITTL, because there is a real threat of the Soviet being captured by anti-war socialists, the decision is made from the start to placate it.
7All three of the figures discussed here (Lvov, Kerensky, and Milyukov) are much less keen on a military offensive than they were IOTL, though the biggest change is in Lvov himself, who is legitimately terrified of the notion of throwing the Russian Army on the offensive again after the disasters of 1915 and 1916.
8IOTL, the deal to swap interned German citizens for exiles was rejected by the provisional government, which led some Russian leftists to arrive back in Petrograd much later than others. Martov is probably the best example of this, though ITTL Trotsky and Bukharin also don't face the same delays, which means everyone returns to Petrograd at around the same time.
9IOTL, the Kronstadt sailors mutinied when they participated in the "July days". Here, they mutiny earlier, but because of the improved situation in Petrograd (rendered possibly largely by the opening of the Dardanelle straits, which did not occur IOTL, and more inflationary fiscal policy) there isn't much support for a more general insurrection.
10None of this occurred IOTL.
11IOTL, the Bolsheviks did eventually receive an absolute majority in the Soviet, but did so later. Here, an antiwar majority is formed more quickly, but the Bolsheviks hold a minority of the overall seats (though a large majority of the seats of the antiwar faction).
12This is very different from OTL, where Kerensky and Milyukov were more rivals than collaborators. Here, events force them to work together, and they have a somewhat better relationship to start with since Milyukov has less of a monarchist streak.
13Similar events IOTL occurred in a mostly similar fashion. Lenin frequently grew frustrated with the executive committee for its timidity. Here, someone like Kamenev is even more cautious because the right wing of the Bolsheviks feel as if Martov is a credible partner.
14While Kornilov did march on Petrograd IOTL, it was without Kerensky's permission. Here, the two are very much working together.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
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Hmm, interesting. Could we get a RSSR under Martov's control? It'd be interesting to see how that ends up playing out, especially if a more victorious Germany leads to them NOT getting ceded territory back.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
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Yes, though mostly in military matters.
The asterisk was just meant to signal that the assassin themselves wasn't a concrete person but a fictional character, a sort of stand-in for whoever may have "actually" been the assassin.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
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I haven't (and likely won't) do a full-length post on German war propaganda, but I see little reason why that would be meaningfully different ITTL. They will likely continue to insist that that are winning, and, more importantly, until 1917 or so, they would likely have a good deal more credibility due to Germany having even more successes in the east and not facing a complete British blockade.
As intriguing as this scenario might be, I have a difficult time imagining Martov outmanuevering the Bolsheviks, especially since he's starting with a much smaller base of support.
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
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I have no idea who this Martov fellow is but if he's better than that seminary dropout Dzughavalli, it's a win for all of the world.
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...who?
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
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appears to be a misspelling of Dzugashvili, the Russified version of Stalin's birth surname dze Jugashvili.
The Sacred Union Shatters: Germany in 1917
Curby
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The Sacred Union Shatters: Germany, 1917
Excerpt from the Alternatehistory.com thread "Successful October Uprising?
collegedude154 said:
ladfromthenorth said:
Petrushka said:
ladfromthenorth said:
Petrushka said:
Helmuth Von Moltke said:
ladfromthenorth said:
Thalmannian said:
ladfromthenorth said:
Thalmannian said:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Excerpts from Dietrich Goldstein*, Prelude to Revolution: Germany in the Great War (University of Berlin Press, 1972)
For two and a half years, burgfriedenpolitik bound together the conservatives, national liberals, progressive bourgeoisie, and socialist labor movement, temporarily subsuming class antagonisms in national solidarity. In 1917, this uneasy peace imploded under the weight of its own contradictions. It is a wonder the social truce lasted as long as it did, especially given the reactionary proclivities of the German leadership. Ebert and Scheidemann deserve most of the credit for the success of the policy; each did their utmost to convince the German worker that he was well served by the imperialist war.
Any discussion of the politics of 1917 must begin with the labor mobilization bill. Introduced at the end of 1916, the law required all men between the ages of 17 and 60 to register with a draft board. Those who were unemployed would be assigned a workplace; those already employed would typically not be re-assigned, but absenteeism, strikes, and other workplace infractions would be punished as military offenses. Ludendorff and Hindenburg believed that militarizing the workforce was necessary to rationalize the German economy for the purposes of war production.
The bill quickly galvanized the social democrats. Bernstein, Kautsky, Luxembourg, and Liebknecht all denounced the proposed legislation. The right wing of the party attempted to gain concessions to secure Social-Democratic support for the bill. Working with Bethmann Hollweg, Ebert and Scheidemann did manage to ensure there would be some union representation on factory boards, but this was not nearly enough for many of the trade unionists. The right wing of the party split, with around half of the prominent trade union officials joining with the left-centrists and left-radicals to vote against the bill. It narrowly passed with the unanimous support of the National Liberals and DkP, as well as a substantial majority of the Catholic Centre party. Ebert and Scheidemann's support for the bill placed them in the minority of the Social Democrats.
The right wing sensed the party slipping away from them. In February they attempted to use the executive committee to purge the left-radicals from the party, a motion which was voted down first by the Reichstag delegation, and then, more decisively, by regional party executives. A press campaign in left-wing newspapers called for an early party congress. The current one was slated to be held in August.
In March, the Trier caucus had a clandestine meeting to formalize their program and strategize on the best means for seizing control of the party. Rosa Luxemburg and Clare Zetkin, two luminaries of the left-radicals, were absent, both rotting in German prisons. Of the 193 delegates to the meeting, only 46 were left-radicals, and 33 were right-wing trade unionists previously aligned with Ebert. Plans were made to draft propaganda to workers, informing them of the reality of the intra-party struggle.
There were signs of increasing unrest in the German working class. The intensification of the British blockade had caused a precipitous rise in the price of food; Germany, long dependent on transatlantic imports to feed its population, had little means to quickly make up the deficit in the supply of grain and animal feed. 1917 also witnessed a sharp uptick in inflation as the government printed new treasury notes unbacked by gold specie to pay for the ballooning costs of munitions procurement.
On April 29th, 40,000 workers in Stuttgart went on strike after they were informed of a reduction in bread rations. Though the action was technically illegal, the deputy district commander had the sense to negotiate with the workers, and managed to end the strike in just a few days. Next week in Leipzig and Dresden, workers struck once again; this time, the more overtly political nature of the strikes led to swift repression from authorities.
The wave of strike action emboldened the opposition. Regional party executives began calling for the resignation of the Social Democratic leadership. First came Dresden, Leipzig, Bremen, and Wurttemberg; then most of Berlin, Frankfurt, Chemnitz, and Breslau.The real coup came on May 14th, when Otto Wels, a trade unionist and sitting member of the party executive, declared he had no confidence in Ebert to run the party. On the 16th, Ebert, Scheidemann, and their allies resigned from the executive, paving the way for new leadership in the party. Holding on until the Party Congress in August would have accomplished little besides dividing the party; attempting to indefinitely delay it would likely have led to its splintering.
Otto Wels, Reluctant Revolutionary
The new executive committee consisted of the left-centrists Haase and Kautsky, the left-revisionist Bernstein, and two trade-unionists, Otto Wels and Gustav Bauer. Although the left-radicals were displeased with being once again iced out of the party leadership, they did secure a number of key concessions, the most important of which was a weakening of the party executive. The previous two years of persecution convinced the left-centrists of the need for a more decentralized party structure with more formal protections for dissenters. When the left-radicals insisted on firm limits on the executive as a prerequisite for their assent to the new government, the left-centrists agreed to support them.
The position of the left-radicals was somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, most of them felt a great deal of relief that Ebert and Scheidemann had been ousted from the party. Few of them wanted a party split. Yet the left-radicals stood at odds with the stated policy of the new leadership. At the meeting of the trier caucus in March, only a resolution calling for a strictly parliamentary campaign of peace without annexations was agreed upon; a more radical one advocating for the use of strike action to bring down the war machine was voted down by a coalition of left-revisionists and trade unionists. The party's new leadership was willing to employ extra-parliamentary measures to aid in the renegotiation of the labor mobilization bill, but would not employ these same means to target the war effort, ostensibly because a favorable peace would only be possible with the front in good order.
Of course, the leadership shakeup represented an unalloyed victory for the coalitional strategy of the left-radicals. But it is not clear that it improved their position in the party. While they now had a more direct influence on the parliamentary delegation, they were still iced out of leadership decisions, and now lacked the bogeymen of Ebert and Scheidemann. There was a very real prospect that the parliamentary victory could enervate revolutionary activism.
A new wave of strike action began in July. It started with Richard Muller, a socialist activist and Berlin metalworker, who led a walkout demanding an end to the war and worker's representation on the boards which distributed food. Within a week, strikes involving over 350,000 workers in Berlin, Saxony, and southwestern Germany had broken out. Haase and Kautsky would later claim that the strike action was orchestrated by the party executive, but recent historical research has revealed that it occurred without the direction of national trade union officials or politicians.
This was the first real test of the new leadership. The left-radicals issued an internal resolution calling for the party to endorse a general strike; the left-revisionists, left-centrists, and trade-unionists unanimously rejected such a plan, but the latter two also refused to act to quiet the strikes until the government was willing to enter into negotiations over the labor mobilization bill. The German army was in the midst of the summer counteroffensive, and could not afford for the flow of supplies to the font to be delayed any further. After cracking down on the most radical and overtly political strikes, Bethmann Hollweg (now largely a puppet of Ludendorff) entered negotiations with the Social Democrats. A series of revisions to the labor mobilization bill were passed through the Reichstag later that month; trade union officials were to be afforded representation on all the main planning boards of German industry, and arbitration courts empowered to mediate wage disputes.
One week later, all of the left-radicals and around half of the left-centrists co-signed an open letter in Vorwarts condemning the triangulation of the leadership. Regional party executives in Leipzig, Wurttemberg, Bremen, and four Berlin districts openly denounced the "class conciliation"; their most prominent members were arrested in short order. Haase replied to the dissenters with an editorial of his own, where he argued that the agreement did not represent an abandonment of the party's pro-peace policy. The quick re-emergence of warring internal factions in the new government was a sign of things to come.
Meanwhile, the German middle-class press was in the midst of its own acrimonious debate. The advocates of unrestricted submarine warfare were emboldened by widespread outrage over the British blockade. Newspapers charged Bethmann Hollweg with needlessly restraining the military forces of the German Empire. The navy, defeated in a crushing blow at the Battle of the North Sea in 1916, desperately wanted some way to make a larger contribution to the war effort. Of course, the German government itself had already secretly resolved to begin unrestricted submarine warfare in the winter, and had been marshaling its resources for this purpose. But it was decided to keep the public in the dark about the matter, mostly because it was believed that the element of surprise would be crucial.
In Bavaria, Wurttemburg, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine, middle-class opposition to unrestricted submarine warfare began to crystallize. Many liberals believed that William Jennings Bryan would soon force the British to roll back their harsh blockade policy; sinking American merchant shipping would simply antagonize a potential friend. Liberal discontent was exacerbated by the emergence of more details about the German Army's atrocities in Belgium, which managed to slip their way past military censors despite their best efforts. Many likened the actions of the German Army in Belgium to the repression of minorities in Alsace-Lorraine and Posen.
The national-social movement achieved one of its first victories in 1917 when they lobbied sizable minorities of the Catholic Centre and Progressive Liberal parties to oppose the labor mobilization bill. Particular attention was paid to the clauses of the bill permitting women to be drafted, which galvanized grassroots catholic resistance.
Membership in the organization skyrocketed from 65,000 to 255,000 in the first nine months of 1917, alarming the German government. In late July, the government arrested several prominent journalists on its board, including Theodor Barth and Theodor Wolff. The enormous expansion of the group raised questions about the organization's finances, which had allowed it to cultivate an extensive set of connections in the Reichstag. An investigation into the movement's revenue revealed a sharp discrepancy between the income it claimed from dues and the quantity of members in local chapters. Attempts to locate the true source of the funding turned dry, prompting police units to refer the issue to military intelligence; most suspected British involvement in providing revenue for the subversive organization.
In truth, the British had little money for foreign intelligence operations. The vast majority of the secret funding for the group came from Walter Rathenau, a German-Jewish industrialist who was beyond suspicion as a member of several war planning boards. German Intelligence would take not months but years to discover this, a testament to its extraordinary incompetence.
Walter Rathenau, the key financier of the National-Social Movement
The next and more radical wave of protest happened in October. For months, the left-radicals had organized workers in preparation for a general strike at some time in the indefinite future. Trade union officials either dismissed the agitators without informing authorities or simply ignored them, believing that they could use the strikes to press for additional concessions. The leadership itself had been in contact with revolutionary sailors aboard German cruisers and battleships, though they discouraged them from engaging in mutiny unless and until instructed by the party. Yet the sailors had other ideas. Inspired by the events in Russia and fearful of being sent to another massacre with the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, they mutinied at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven on October 16th. Both cities were under the control of the sailors by the end of the day.
The left-radicals did not have knowledge of the network of revolutionary sailors. They also had no immediate plans to seize power, despite the preparations being made for a general strike. But they also believed that one must strike while the iron is hot. Already, workers in Stuttgart, Leipzig, and Dresden had begun to occupy factories; with the assistance of the left-radical network, workers in Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt joined in. Stuttgart and the large cities in Saxony fell almost bloodlessly to the revolutionary workers, while in Berlin, Hamburg, and the Rhineland workers fought with police. In Munich, Karlsruhe, and Mannheim tens of thousands of citizens filled the streets, demanding a "peace without annexations". Hindenburg and Ludendorff addressed the Reichstag the next day, demanding that emergency powers be granted to the military and the Reichstag dissolved. The panicked bourgeois deputies assented. With dozens of Social Democratic Parliementarians already arrested by the government, the measure easily passed.
Then the hammer fell. Loyal troops stationed in Alsace-Lorraine crushed large protests in Metz before being rushed to the other insurrectionary western cities; they laid siege to the Stuttgart commune and brutally suppressed the mostly middle-class protestors of Munich. In the Rhineland, police and ad hoc military formations managed to secure order within a week. Rosa Luxembourg, Clare Zetkin, and Franz Mehring, who had managed to successfully escape military captivity during the revolutionary chaos, fled to Russia with the assistance of sympathetic sailors; Karl Liebknecht, the key politician behind the plot, was not so lucky. The final holdout were the worker's strongholds in Saxony. On October 24th, soldiers from the eastern front arrived in Dresden and Leipzig, where they discovered that the demoralized workers had already returned to their factories.
Erich Ludendorff and Paul Von Hindenburg addressed cheering crowds in Potsdam on the 26th, triumphantly declaring that the "bolshevik revolt" had been crushed. They publicly declared that the Reichstag would remain dissolved for the time being, since seditious elements remained dispersed throughout the population. A period of indefinite military rule was necessary to excise Germany of these internal fifth columnists. Although it was curiously absent from most of the main events of the October uprising, the entire board of the German Social Movement was placed under house arrest and the organization dissolved. A new wave of crackdowns began on prominent liberal journalists and newspapers.
The Ludendorff dictatorship had some sense of its own limitations. It did not declare the Social Democratic Party illegal, let alone ban the parties of the progressive bourgeois. Instead, it liberally employed informal house arrest and military intimidation to cow the opposition. The entire executive committee of the Social Democrats received the former treatment. A new leadership election under de facto military control placed the right-wing social nationalists Paul Lensch, Heinrich Cunow, and Konrad Haenisch in control of the party. To the surprise of the government, Ebert and Scheidemann both refused overtures to serve on the executive committee, though the right-wing trade union leader Carl Legien happily obliged.
Why did the October uprising fail? For one, because the objective conditions were not present for revolution. The German laborer had actually seen their working conditions improve through the second half of 1917 as trade unionists employed their leverage on the war planning boards to push up the wages of industrial workers. Secondly, the principal organizers of the uprising, a coalition of left-centrists and left-radicals, disagreed about what it aimed to accomplish. Some hoped to establish a Soviet republic; others simply understood the rising as a mechanism to pressure the government into renewing peace negotiations. Consequently, whereas in some places workers seized power, in others they merely engaged in protest and strike action. Finally, there was little attempt to actually link up the different centers of revolutionary activity, allowing for them to be isolated and crushed piecemeal. These were lessons that would not soon be forgotten.
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
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- The Great State of Warshington
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- He/Him
I wonder if instead of Leninism, TTL will see Marxism-Luxembourgism become popular. It would be interesting to see how this would effect the development of society in general.
In particular, I feel like it would be interesting to see a world where the term "Marxism" is not defined by the seminary school dropout and his disciples like Mao.
In particular, I feel like it would be interesting to see a world where the term "Marxism" is not defined by the seminary school dropout and his disciples like Mao.
Excerpts from Eilig Zwanziger: A Comprehensive Sourcebook, No. 2 (Spoilers Present)
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
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- He/They
Excerpts from Eilig Zwanziger: A Comprehensive Sourcebook, eds. Martin Gordon, Peter Jay.
Thomas Mann
The Socialist Republic
From an address to emigre students in Chicago, first published as Der Widerstrebende Sozialist, Berliner Tageblatt, 1928.
…I myself cannot deny the romanticism of war. No one has earnestly denied the mystic and poetic element residing in it. But today can we truly treat this as an honest and forthright romanticism? We all among us have national feeling, a sense of what has been lost; I implore you yet to consider what may be gained if we lay aside some of our more violent fantasies. Is it not apparent that the world itself, and the German people in particular are more and more absolutely dedicated to a cult of peace?
I must beg you to allow me to continue. I am no socialist or pacifist; neither are to my taste, whether as utopian creeds or concrete doctrines. But is there not some sense in which it is only socialism which today can promise some safe haven for the broad-minded aristocracy of the spirit we witness in Goethe and Schiller? For it is peace that brings culture, art, and thought; the great war has given the lie to the notion that we may reenter the heroic age…its clarion call is a lie, albeit one to which we may all be tempted…
Please, please…
What has Germany lost from socialism? A great many fine men, no doubt, who may have contributed to their fatherland had it dictated their fate more kindly to them. I make no defense of the actions of Luxemburg, Thalmann and Pieck. But you must forget this seething resentment; there is only the ugliest kind of Germanness in it. It not the the antithesis of that freedom and magnanimity of spirit which we associate with those undeniably German personages Goethe, Nietzsche, and Holderlin?
Ah, yes, yes, I can already hear your cries of denunciation - Holderlin, Goethe, were these democratic, egalitarian spirits, heralds of socialism? Clearly not, yet is it any less absurd to invoke their names in pursuit of some vain redemptive violence? I am and remain a conservative; my concern is not the anachronistic restoration of the past but the preservation of that which is most valuable in our present. Revolution, whether from left or right, must never be made an end to itself, a condition to be perpetuated: in this, I stand against many assembled here and Luxembourg, who appear to coincide on this point.
Please! I urge you to allow me to continue. Perhaps if I speak on a matter to which those listening are well-disposed, you will be better disposed toward me. I have recently finished the most recent volume of Spengler's Collapse. I will not deny that this is a work of great power and lucidity, a veritable romance. Yet let us think democratically about this work,: is not its basic orientation cold and violent to a point of utter inhumanity? If one learns secondhand of this book, one may come to believe that its prophesies of death are the mere predictions of an analyst. Yet can anyone reading it deny the relish which the author takes in his augury? And for what - because a new order has imposed itself on Germany which he finds himself unable to make peace with?
You may harangue me as you wish, but I speak in a language as German as yours. I speak of a theme that may sound old-fashioned to you, and yet still has not lost its luster in this world: I speak of humanity. Humanity is that mean between aesthetic isolation and undignified leveling of the individual to the general; between mysticism and ethics; between the inward and the public; between a nihilistic negation of ethical and a democratic philistine rationality. Do not socialists, too, listen to the 9th symphony? Have we forgotten to? Are we not honoring its most explicit injunction when we commit, unashamedly, to our duty to reconcile ourselves with each other, to the point where we may one day say with full conviction: "Long live the German Socialist Republic!".
Guidelines of the German Association for Sexual Reform
First published as "Richlinien des Deutschen Verein für Sexual Reform", Neue Generation, 1926.
The movement for sexual reform and for a revolution in sexual culture emerges from an upright, life-affirming worldview. It springs from a traditional conviction that only socialism can make actual: the sanctity and inviolability of human life. In building our socialist society, we must strive to unmask those offensive social conditions and backwards ethical views which give license to the ills of venereal disease, sexual hypocrisy, and compulsory abstinence.
We must proceed not by condemning symptoms and those who suffer from them, but by excising the real causes of the sickness. We must also not simply aim to eradicate social evils, but also must promote a new, joyous, socialist mode of living which recognises in sexuality not simply a means for propagation but also a powerful instrument for the progressive development of the human being. This is the true content of sexual reform.
….The precondition for the improvement of sexual and hence human relations is an absolute break with all views which base their conception of human sexuality on supernatural arrangements, arbitrary laws, or tradition. The laws of sexuality should be founded solely on the insights of progressive science, considerations of social utility, and the sexual experience of the free individual. The sexual repression embraced by the ruling classes of history is a poison that must not be permitted to enter our new socialist society. A free and harmonious relationship with sexuality will enrich human life and aid cooperation among all peoples…
…Although we regard legally recognized monogamy as the most desirable form of sexual relationship, we recognize that it is an ideal only attainable by a relative few, and which not all aspire to anyways. Most of human sexual life occurs before and outside of marriage. For reasons emotional, economic, and personal, the legal marriage is manifestly incapable of absorbing all the manifold possibilities of the sexual relationship.
Accordingly, we favor:
- The preservation of legally recognized monogamous marriages on the basis of the real equality of the sexes; the furtherance of the economic possibilities within these marriages, and the promotion of additional programs to provide education for marriage and parenthood.
- The further liberalization of divorce laws, and a campaign to remove the social stigma from divorce.
- Moral and legal recognition of relationships between partners of all sexes.
- Additional funding of research into contraceptive devices, and the decommodification of existing contraceptives.
- Maintaining the ban on sectarian religious education.
Radio: The Socialist Art
First published as "Radio: die sozialistische Kunst," Die neue Literatur, 1929.
On ten million receivers ten million families listen to the radio - that is, approximately thirty-five million people, half the population of the German Socialist Republic. The public nature of art has reached a degree that can scarcely be surpassed - can anyone doubt that we have at last succeeded in socializing art? The artist is now a figure as public as the statesmen; his productions no longer belong to the single person who commissions, orders, or consumes them but to all of humanity.
For 450 years people have printed books, which is nothing other than the translation of the inwardness of thought into a form publicly accessible and reproducible. The same may be said of the printing of music and the technique of print-making which allows for the paintings of the masters to now adorn the apartments of thousands. Yet it is only through radio and radio art that the socialization of art has become really possible. Radio art must therefore assume a character markedly different from that of all previous types. It must be public not simply in form, but also in content.
…The state broadcasting corporation and the innumerable cooperatives are estimated to spend nearly thirty-thousand marks a day. The larger cooperatives surpass in their vast resources the combined revenue of all the bourgeois theatres. It is clear that the material basis is in place for us to depart from the age of private and museum art and enter that of publicly accessible socialist art.
The medium of this new art is nothing other than the human voice itself in its distinct materiality. The decline of the old classical-bourgeouis forms of the symphony and the sonata are but the inverse of the rise of proletarian radio art. A man on the radio recounts the details of a stroll through the city; a woman recalls the travails of 1919; a factory worker describes a council meeting gone wrong; a student presents with dramatic flair the details of a sordid love affair. Can we not witness here the irruption of life into art, or what is the same thing, the final end of the hegemony of the aesthetic over art, and hence the return and reconciling of art to the immediacy of the lived world?
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Every description ever of "art" under socialism somehow manages to be viscerally unappealing, even when the voices in question are supposedly singing its praises… I guess it won't be any different ITTL.
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- They/Them
...what? Holy, "There are so many things to unpack, but why don't we just throw out the suitcase" Batman.
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- They/Them
Like what you're seeing there is... actually a pretty normal paean to the Radio? Like, people talked about the transformative nature of radio, and how it brought a new kind of art and way of thinking and so on in the IRL 1920s in a way that didn't actually have anything to do with socialism?
People who deeply value the medium of Radio write glowing descriptions of how it is the future, and thus must inevitably be the truest, freest, [Insert positive descriptor]-est form of art ever.
That's, once again, completely normal and doesn't actually have anything to do with socialism per se? Like the form it's taking here is no doubt deeply influenced by ideology, but thinking Radio is nifty keen is an entirely common thing to see in any version of the 1920s, because it was, y'know, neat?
Similarly, if we are unpacking, putting ""'s around art in this case is actually kinda fucked up?
People who deeply value the medium of Radio write glowing descriptions of how it is the future, and thus must inevitably be the truest, freest, [Insert positive descriptor]-est form of art ever.
That's, once again, completely normal and doesn't actually have anything to do with socialism per se? Like the form it's taking here is no doubt deeply influenced by ideology, but thinking Radio is nifty keen is an entirely common thing to see in any version of the 1920s, because it was, y'know, neat?
Similarly, if we are unpacking, putting ""'s around art in this case is actually kinda fucked up?
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
This.
The passage was adapted from a piece written in OTL's Weimar Republic by an individual who was not, to my knowledge, a committed socialist. Far from underlining the uniqueness of the German Socialist Republic, that piece was intended primarily to indicate its continuity with the interwar era of our timeline.
Of course, it is neither the first nor will it be the last word on art in the DSR. It's not as if high culture has or will simply disappear. But plenty of thinkers in this era (just as IOTL!) will act as if it has.
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Information about the rise of radio in the German Socialist Republic (or DSR, which I guess is the German-language name of it) just leads me to wonder if the development of radio in the United States is progressing apace, with likes of David Sarnoff leading the charge.
QueenOfRoses
Athena Promachos
- Location
- Department of Motor Vehicles
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- She/Her
Lovely to imagine what Hirschfeld and other sexologists/reformers will get up to under better circumstances.
I'm not referring to the medium, just the content which was specifically praised as superior to "the symphony and the sonata."
Though, of course, flash-in-the-pan, avant-garde shit is hardly unique to socialism.
Austria-Hungary and Britain in 1917
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
Austria-Hungary in 1917: Trialism and the Struggle for Reform
Austrian forces may not have performed spectacularly in the first two and a half years of the war, but they did far better than anyone expected. The Russian Army assaulting Lviv was beaten back. With German assistance, Congress Poland was conquered and Austro-Hungarian troops garrisoned in Lublin and Warsaw. Further east, innumerable peasant towns in Western Ukraine and Belarus were occupied. In the south, Italian attempts to seize the Isonzo were frustrated time and again by the elite troops of the Austro-Hungarian army. The Serbian threat appeared to have been vanquished once and for all. (1)
The Dual Monarchy, widely believed to be a fragile and tottering house of cards, had shown itself to be more than adequate in the field. Living standards were certainly hard hit by the war, but German loans and Russian plunder helped to prop up the economy. When Franz Joseph died on December 15, 1916, tens of thousands of Viennese citizens attended his funeral and participated in the vast burial procession. (2)
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, immediately succeeded to the throne as Ferdinand II following the death of his older brother. In his politics and outlook, he represented a mixture of old and new. Like the recently deceased Franz Joseph, Ferdinand was an autocratic archconservative at heart who believed in the paternalistic role of the crown. He had little tolerance for socialism, mass politics, or democracy. (3)
He was also a committed trialist with a sincere commitment to the slavic people of the Empire. Ferdinand had a particularly robust base of support among the Poles in Galicia and the Croats in Hungary. Yet it is clear that his desire to federalize the Empire arose as much from his concerns with the threat that Hungarian nationalism posed to the traditional dominance of the Austrian aristocracy as it did from goodwill toward the Slavs. The schemes for federalization he endorsed involved a greater centralization of power in Vienna, made possible by a partition of Hungary between Croatia, Slovakia, Transylvania, and several German enclaves. (4)
Hungarian political elites reacted to Ferdinand's ascension with unease. To assuage their concerns, he met with the Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza on December 17th, who attempted to persuade him to have an early coronation. As part of the coronation, Ferdinand would be required to take a pledge committing him to maintaining the integrity of Hungarian territories, forestalling any attempt to reform the Empire. After consulting with some of his advisors, Ferdinand determined to delay the coronation for at least five months. (5)
Ferdinand appointed a cabinet of Austrian-Germans, Croats, and Poles from the Belvedere circle, a pre-war group of trialists and federalists. The reform plans drafted were less drastic than those considered before; in particular, Bohemia and Galicia would not, for the time being, cease to be Austrian crownlands, though both would be granted increased autonomy. It was feared that directly sundering either of the Austrian territories would lead to a revolt of the Austrian elite, a group whose support Ferdinand required to push his reforms on an unwilling Hungary.
Franz Ferdinand, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary
The Czechs would not be happy about trialist plans being implemented which ignored their own aspirations to make Bohemia a co-equal Kingdom. This is part of why Ferdinand avoided calling parliament into session, a body in which he may have found some support for his reform efforts but which would likely be used by the Bohemian parties to voice their discontent with the government. Neither did he immediately issue any decrees indicating his plans for Hungary, which involved the transfer of its southern, croatian-majority lands to a south Slavic, majority-croatian kingdom. (6)
It was felt that some propaganda victory was needed before commencing the trialist plan, a boost to the regime's legitimacy that would allow it to weather Hungarian recalcitrance. Thus with the full cooperation of the Germans, a military offensive was planned in Italy later that year in May to coincide with a counteroffensive in Bulgaria. Ferdinand believed that a decisive victory here would give him the political capital necessary to begin reforming the Empire without outright Hungarian revolt.
A week before the counter-offensive was to begin, the government was shaken by protests and strikes in Vienna. There were calls for an end to the war, the phasing out of the de facto wartime military dictatorship, and for the Reichsrat (the lower house of the Austrian parliament) to be called back into session. The protest was mostly contained to Vienna and of a mostly working-class character; after two days, the protests fizzled out. Despite this, they put a scare into Ferdinand and prompted him to enter into a more direct dialogue with political elites in Bohemia and Galicia. (7)
He could not offer them much. Germany would not agree to a Polish state under Austrian suzerainty, and the ambitions of the Bohemians were at odds with Austro-German nationalists. The Czechs in particular were wary of engaging in negotiations at this point, as they felt that they were best off stalling for time until an allied victory, which seemed fairly plausible following the successive blows dealt to the Central Powers in the winter of 1917. Ferdinand did provide an assurance to the Czechs that there would be no partition of German-speaking areas of Bohemia without their full consent, a gesture which was crucial in building trust between the two parties.
The May offensives changed matters. The spectacular victories in Asiago and Caparetto and the reconquest of eastern Bulgaria suddenly placed the Entente on the back-foot. With fears now rising that both Russia and Italy might make a separate peace, the Czechs showed a renewed willingness to negotiate. In return for accepting autonomous German enclaves in the southern Sudetenland, parts of western slovakia would be transferred to Bohemia, which would gain autonomy but remain an Austrian crownland. Hungary would be compensated by gaining Romanian territory and receiving explicit assurances of its future territorial integrity; Transylvania and Eastern Slovakia would be recognized as integral parts of Hungary. (8)
Of course, this was all decided without the active participation of the Hungarians. When the reorganization of the Empire was imposed unilaterally upon Hungary by a series of decrees, protests broke out in major Hungarian cities and Istan Tisza threatened to resign. Ferdinand accepted the resignation, but it never came. Tisza, feeling cornered after Czech, Galician, and Croatian parties announced support for the reform, instead entered into negotiations with Ferdinand to lessen the blow to Hungary. He successfully won a series of Vojvodina and increased funding for Hungary's military. On June 14th, the Kingdom of Croatia, incorporating Dalmatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Istria, and half of Slavonia, was officially declared. (9)
Though the Croats would prove to be some of the most loyal subjects of Ferdinand, creating the new Kingdom was hardly a panacea for the Empire's problems. With food prices rising and Austria still governed by a de facto military dictatorship, domestic unrest continued to percolate through the remainder of the year. Throughout July, new protests in Vienna centered around the government's refusal to issue a pardon for the popular social democrat Friedrich Adler, sentenced to death after being convicted for assassinating the Austrian Minister-President Karl von Sturgkh. Eventually, Ferdinand commuted his sentence to life-imprisonment. (10)
The emperor also faced increasing pressure from the nationalist right as Austrian and Hungarian revanchists denounced the loss of territory. Radical "Free Hungary" societies formed which advocated for Hungary to seek a separate peace and declare independence. In August, Austrian nationalists killed several Croatian politicians in Slovenia, and paramilitaries associated with the free hungary movement burned the offices of prominent Croatian-language newspapers in Hungarian Slavonia. The same month, renewed protests broke out in Austria demanding the Reichsrat to be called back into session. This time, Ferdinand allowed their grievances to be aired, but still refused to end de facto military rule.
Britain in 1917: The Coalition Collapses
The spectacular British victories of the winter of 1917 concealed an underlying weakness: the armies of all three of Britain's principal allies in the war were nearing exhaustion. Prince Lvov insisted that the Russian Army was in no state to launch any offensives; he would sooner make peace than throw Russian youth once more into German and Austrian machine guns. For France, the battle of Verdun had not utterly destroyed the French Army, but it had inflicted casualties so devastating upon it that it would be incapable of offensive action for at least eight months. And the Austrian asiago offensive in 1916 and the costly Italo-British counteroffensive which followed had forced the Italians onto the defensive for the foreseaable future. (11)
The plans for the winter of 1917 initially involved concurrent offensives from Russia and France sometime in February. Without their participation, the British hardly had the means of pressing home the attack. When they reached their Kulminationspunkt, no German ally was knocked out of the war. The Ottoman Empire was temporarily reduced to a national redoubt in Ankara and most of Bulgarian territory was occupied for a time, but both nations would regain a good deal of their lost territory.
Britain confronted a series of crises in 1917. Firstly, there was the manpower crisis. Having rapidly expanded its army, Britain was facing critical shortages of workers in many key industrial sectors. The entrance of women into the workforce could only partially make up for the loss of skilled workers. With munitions production starting to dip, Britain became increasingly dependent on American weapons and ammunition imports. (12)
This compounded Britain's financial and diplomatic crises. British conservatives desired a hard break from America, but this would require either reducing the army's annual procurement of munitions and weapons or finding some means of boosting domestic munitions production. Some of the Liberals in the cabinet advocated for a strategic retrenchment, but with the support of Lloyd George, Bonar Law pressed ahead with the ambitious winter offensives; then, with the support of Churchill, who held increasing influence in Whitehall following the Dardanelles offensive, he secured the support necessary to exit the Alexandria accords and begin a complete blockade of Germany.
Winston Churchill, the Irascible Naval Secretary and the Hero of the Hour
To increase its munitions production, the British government created a new guest-laborer program to draw in manpower from the colonies. In 1917 alone, 600,000 Indian workers arrived to work in Britain's munitions factories. While this offered a temporary fix to the issue of man-power, it did not resolve the long-simmering political tensions in the cabinet. The Liberals around Lloyd George felt that they had to stand on principle if they were to have any hope of defeating the independent liberals in the next parliamentary elections.
Nowhere were political battle lines drawn more sharply than on the Irish issue. During the formation of the coalition government, Lloyd George's liberals and Bonar Law agreed to a truce on the matter, but in reality the government's policy favored the Unionists (many of the cabinet liberals were themselves Unionists). In late 1915, the decision of the government to arrest and detain James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, and Tom Clarke led to a series of strikes in early 1916 that were brutally suppressed by the local British garrison. The three men were all involved in the Irish Republican movement, and the government charged them with planning a revolt. In retrospect, most historians agree that there was not sufficient evidence to convict them in a neutral court of law, and that the prosecutions were themselves politically motivated. (13)
The arrest of three of the most prominent leaders of the Republican movement did have the effect of delaying the formation of organized Irish resistance to the war. Despite frequent strikes and protest in 1916, no coordinated insurrection against the British occurred; while the government steadily increased the size of the Dublin garrison, it did not take any emergency measures throughout 1916 to avert a future Irish uprising.
This was a grave mistake. Neither the Irish Republican Brotherhood nor the Irish Citizen Army were decapitated by the loss of their leadership. In the Citizen Army, the syndicalist James Larkin became the de facto leader of the group with the support of Jack White and Constance Markievicz. His organizing skill and widespread discontent over declining labor conditions led to a boom in its membership. The secretive Republican Brotherhood, a conspiratorial group of republicans of a more bourgeois and literary variety, also managed to recover in short order from the loss of Pearse and Clarke. Though they were technically led by the tubercular language scholar Eoin MacNeill, the real force behind the group was the diplomat Roger Casement, who worked in the British foreign office and used the connections he made there to arrange for German weapons shipments to the Republican resistance.. (14)
On May 14th, three American merchant ships left from Rotterdam for Dublin. As neutral American ships heading for British waters, two of them slipped through the British blockade without being inspected. The manifest of the ships claimed that they were bringing a variety of dry goods to Ireland from the Netherlands and Sweden, as the same set of ships did just a few months ago before making their return journey to America. In reality, there were large stashes of German small arms and medical supplies stocked on the bottom decks. (15)
Roger Casement knew that May 14th was a day when the blockade would be strained. With the German counteroffensive in Bulgaria, the British navy was split between enforcing the blockade and supplying their troops in the Balkans. He knew, too, that returning American ships would occasion little suspicion. The inspection of the only ship stopped was cursory and failed to uncover the weapons. Later that day, all three of the vessels landed in Dublin, where friendly dockworkers directed the cargo to the Irish Citizens Milia and Irish Republican Brotherhood. On the morning of the 15th, the cabinet became aware of the suspicious weapons shipment, but at this point there was little chance to halt events.
In Dublin, 3,500 armed volunteers began seizing key locations in the city. Dublin City Hall and Dublin Castle, the centre of British rule in Ireland, both fell within the first hours of the rebellion. Three hours later, Trinity College, the South Dublin Union, and most of the police stations were in the hands of the rebels. The next day, both of Dublin's key ports were seized, preventing the British from shipping reinforcements to the area. Early attempts of British soldiers to assault the well-dug Irish trenches outside the city were rebuffed. As the last British soldiers in Dublin surrendered on the 16th, James Larkin and Roger Casement declared the formation of an independent Irish Republic. (16)
In Rural Ireland, the rebellion had considerably less success. Though crack-militia groups formed in several towns, they were not nearly as well-supplied or well-organized as the Dublin forces. While they managed to successfully seize several villages, Cork and Limerick remained in British hands fo the duration of the rising, and rural guerilla activity was markedly more mild than the organizers of the coup hoped. (17)
On the 18th, the first of several British reserve divisions landed in Ulster. The rebels had not made any real effort to extend their power base beyond Dublin, but had established forward, entrenched positions north of the city. A series of pitched battles over the following days forced the militias to retreat into Dublin proper.
On the 23rd, the battle of Dublin began. William Jennings Bryan called on Britain to respect the democratic aspirations of the Irish people. The coalition Liberals balked; they warned that the destruction of the city would make martyrs of the revolutionaries and end any prospects of Home Rule. They proposed meeting with the rebels to ascertain if they would stand down in return for amnesty of low-level participants and a guarantee of home rule. This proposal was unlikely to succeed, but the conservative refusal to "bargain with the enemy" contributed to the fractiousness in the ruling coalition. On the 28th, the Manchester Guardian published an article describing the opposition of coalition liberals to the government's Irish policy; it is likely the specific quotes were leaked by liberal backbenchers sympathetic to Lloyd George.
By June 5th, the last rebel strongholds in Dublin had fallen, and the Irish Republic quashed in its infancy. In all, around 1,800 soldiers and 10,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the fighting. One suspect, however, was missing: Roger Casement, one of the two leaders of the rebellion, had improbably escaped out of Ulster stowed away at the bottom of an ocean liner. He arrived in New York on June 10th to cheering crowds. William Jennings Bryan refused Britain's extradition request, successfully enraging both pro-entente opinion and the British public. (18)
Meanwhile, the British government was in a state of deep crisis. The coalition liberals felt with good reason that they were being iced out of the actual process of governance. Elections slated to occur in 1915 had been delayed because of the war, but now it was felt that wartime elections were needed to "clarify" the opinion of the nation. The coalition liberals hoped to unseat many of Haldane's backbenchers, and the conservatives believed that liberal division and patriotic sentiment would propel them to victory. To ensure that the pro-war majority would remain intact, the acrimonious governing partners agreed not to run candidates against each other. In response, the independent liberals and increasingly antiwar British Labor Party did the same, forming the "Progressive-Democratic Alliance" to contest the elections.
Patriotic sentiment was still present in Britain, but it was challenged by the battle-field losses in May, declining standards of living, and growing discontent in both the middle-class and labor movement. It was believed that a clear parliamentary victory for the pro-war coalition would both quiet pacifist protest and make clear what the real correlation of forces ought to be in the cabinet.
The conservatives received several electoral windfalls before the scheduled December vote. Firstly, the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare led to a "rally around the flag" effect. A series of limited French offensives in the north successfully pushed the Germans back in Flanders, while the October Revolution in Russia polarized middle-class opinion against the left. In Germany, Ludendorff's dissolution of the Reichstag reinforced the government's claim that the war was a fight against German autocracy. Finally, the defection of the widely beloved Churchill to the conservatives provided them with a charismatic surrogate adept at rallying patriotic opinion. The leaders of the party may have detested the arrogant and volatile Churchill, but they soon found him to be an invaluable asset.
The election campaign was marred throughout by a lack of clarity from many of the parties. Labor refused to take a clear and consistent antiwar line, while the independent liberals moderated their position before the election to try to broaden their base, advocating for the beginnings of negotiation rather than an immediate exit from the war. Lloyd George faced increasing pressure from the liberal press to denounce the policies of his Conservative partners, which he felt reluctant to do publicly while still in coalition with the Tories. Instead, he ended up making equivocal statements which pleased nobody.
The results provided a stinging rebuke to the policies of the pro-war coalition liberals. The unpopularity of his government among the party's voting base was made quite clear on election day, as the independent liberals received more than twice the vote of the coalition government. Middle-class liberal discontent had led to a wave of defection. Yet the Independent Liberals did not have a banner night. The surge of pro-war sentiment in the country meant that most competitive ridings were lost to the conservatives, who picked up a whopping 123 seats and gained an absolute majority in parliament. Labor fared somewhat better, and looked increasingly as if they might displace the liberals as the main opposition to the Tories. (19)
The rise of Sinn Fein caused alarm across the British political spectrum. The militant republican group had ties with many of the participants in the May rising, and the collapse of the moderate Irish parliamentary party was a sign that the Irish would no longer be content with home rule after the brutal British crackdown in May. As the spectre of more Irish unrest loomed, the Tories were tasked with forming a government of their own.
2Living standards in Austria-Hungary moderately better-off than IOTL. Germany is somewhat more generous with its loans, which means that there's a bit less inflation. More importantly, because Galicia is never lost and the British blockade is only partial for the first two anda half years of the war, there's much more food to go around.
3Of course, Franz Ferdinand was dead IOTL, so instead his nephew Karl, known as Charles I, became Emperor.
4All in line with his thinking IOTL!
5IOTL,Tisza convinced Karl to go ahead with an early coronation. Ferdinand is a significantly more wily political operator, so he sees through this ploy here.
6Karl, who was significantly more reformist, did call parliament into session in 1917, which actually ended up causing a number of problems for him. Of course, not calling parliament into session will also cause problems for Franz Ferdinand. Such is the parlous state of Austria-Hungary…
7Similar protests occurred IOTL, but they were actually somewhat larger. Better living standards, less defeats in the field, and a somewhat more competent administration all mean that they're not quite as pronounced.
8Without American entry into the war, the Czechs have much less of an incentive to stall in the hopes of achieving self-determination and complete independence.
9IOTL, attempts to implement a form of trialism were frustrated by Hungarian intransigence. Here, because Austria-Hungary is in a significantly stronger position than IOTL and is led by a figure with a much more keen sense of the politics of the Empire, a form of trialism succeeds. Note that this is still far from the ambitious attempts to federalize the empire that were talked about before the war. And as we'll see, it will have consequences that are far from salutary.
10IOTL, the sentence was commuted from death to 18 months imprisonment. Ferdinand is significantly more hostile to social democrats and socialists, so the commutation only comes here after significant pressure is placed on the government.
11All of the entente armies besides the British and Romanian are in a much worse state than IOTL.
12Britain also faced manpower problems IOTL, but they were not nearly as severe because the army expansion happened more slowly.
13IOTL, Connolly, Pearse, and Clarke were the main leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Here, because of butterflies and the dominance of the unionist conservatives, they are arrested before they get a chance to execute their plot.
14IOTL, these were also the two groups most instrumental to the Easter Rising IOTL.
15In the Easter Rising, a germans weapons shipment was also sent, but here it is significantly larger because Casement has more time to prepare and the British blockade is less airtight.
16The May Rising is significantly larger and better armed than the easter rising IOTL (and thus more successful). This is mostly because there is much more discontent with the war by this point, which means there are more volunteers enlisted in the various republican militias.
17This is a point of continuity with OTL's easter rising.
18Casualty numbers were significantly smaller IOTL's Easter Rising (around 2,000 civilian dead or wounded), primarily because British troops were able to directly use the city's port to reinforce their positions in Dublin, which meant the city itself never had to be placed under siege. Consequently, there is also much more destruction of infrastructure and private residences in the city ITTL.
19IOTL, there was no parliamentary election of 1917, though there was one in 1918. Compared to that election, ITTL the pro-war coalition liberals do significantly worse and independent liberals much better. The conservatives actually also do slightly better in this timeline's election as a consequence of the country polarizing: they receive around 2% more of the vote and 15 more seats, though in both elections they win an absolute majority in parliament.
Austrian forces may not have performed spectacularly in the first two and a half years of the war, but they did far better than anyone expected. The Russian Army assaulting Lviv was beaten back. With German assistance, Congress Poland was conquered and Austro-Hungarian troops garrisoned in Lublin and Warsaw. Further east, innumerable peasant towns in Western Ukraine and Belarus were occupied. In the south, Italian attempts to seize the Isonzo were frustrated time and again by the elite troops of the Austro-Hungarian army. The Serbian threat appeared to have been vanquished once and for all. (1)
The Dual Monarchy, widely believed to be a fragile and tottering house of cards, had shown itself to be more than adequate in the field. Living standards were certainly hard hit by the war, but German loans and Russian plunder helped to prop up the economy. When Franz Joseph died on December 15, 1916, tens of thousands of Viennese citizens attended his funeral and participated in the vast burial procession. (2)
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, immediately succeeded to the throne as Ferdinand II following the death of his older brother. In his politics and outlook, he represented a mixture of old and new. Like the recently deceased Franz Joseph, Ferdinand was an autocratic archconservative at heart who believed in the paternalistic role of the crown. He had little tolerance for socialism, mass politics, or democracy. (3)
He was also a committed trialist with a sincere commitment to the slavic people of the Empire. Ferdinand had a particularly robust base of support among the Poles in Galicia and the Croats in Hungary. Yet it is clear that his desire to federalize the Empire arose as much from his concerns with the threat that Hungarian nationalism posed to the traditional dominance of the Austrian aristocracy as it did from goodwill toward the Slavs. The schemes for federalization he endorsed involved a greater centralization of power in Vienna, made possible by a partition of Hungary between Croatia, Slovakia, Transylvania, and several German enclaves. (4)
Hungarian political elites reacted to Ferdinand's ascension with unease. To assuage their concerns, he met with the Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza on December 17th, who attempted to persuade him to have an early coronation. As part of the coronation, Ferdinand would be required to take a pledge committing him to maintaining the integrity of Hungarian territories, forestalling any attempt to reform the Empire. After consulting with some of his advisors, Ferdinand determined to delay the coronation for at least five months. (5)
Ferdinand appointed a cabinet of Austrian-Germans, Croats, and Poles from the Belvedere circle, a pre-war group of trialists and federalists. The reform plans drafted were less drastic than those considered before; in particular, Bohemia and Galicia would not, for the time being, cease to be Austrian crownlands, though both would be granted increased autonomy. It was feared that directly sundering either of the Austrian territories would lead to a revolt of the Austrian elite, a group whose support Ferdinand required to push his reforms on an unwilling Hungary.
Franz Ferdinand, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary
The Czechs would not be happy about trialist plans being implemented which ignored their own aspirations to make Bohemia a co-equal Kingdom. This is part of why Ferdinand avoided calling parliament into session, a body in which he may have found some support for his reform efforts but which would likely be used by the Bohemian parties to voice their discontent with the government. Neither did he immediately issue any decrees indicating his plans for Hungary, which involved the transfer of its southern, croatian-majority lands to a south Slavic, majority-croatian kingdom. (6)
It was felt that some propaganda victory was needed before commencing the trialist plan, a boost to the regime's legitimacy that would allow it to weather Hungarian recalcitrance. Thus with the full cooperation of the Germans, a military offensive was planned in Italy later that year in May to coincide with a counteroffensive in Bulgaria. Ferdinand believed that a decisive victory here would give him the political capital necessary to begin reforming the Empire without outright Hungarian revolt.
A week before the counter-offensive was to begin, the government was shaken by protests and strikes in Vienna. There were calls for an end to the war, the phasing out of the de facto wartime military dictatorship, and for the Reichsrat (the lower house of the Austrian parliament) to be called back into session. The protest was mostly contained to Vienna and of a mostly working-class character; after two days, the protests fizzled out. Despite this, they put a scare into Ferdinand and prompted him to enter into a more direct dialogue with political elites in Bohemia and Galicia. (7)
He could not offer them much. Germany would not agree to a Polish state under Austrian suzerainty, and the ambitions of the Bohemians were at odds with Austro-German nationalists. The Czechs in particular were wary of engaging in negotiations at this point, as they felt that they were best off stalling for time until an allied victory, which seemed fairly plausible following the successive blows dealt to the Central Powers in the winter of 1917. Ferdinand did provide an assurance to the Czechs that there would be no partition of German-speaking areas of Bohemia without their full consent, a gesture which was crucial in building trust between the two parties.
The May offensives changed matters. The spectacular victories in Asiago and Caparetto and the reconquest of eastern Bulgaria suddenly placed the Entente on the back-foot. With fears now rising that both Russia and Italy might make a separate peace, the Czechs showed a renewed willingness to negotiate. In return for accepting autonomous German enclaves in the southern Sudetenland, parts of western slovakia would be transferred to Bohemia, which would gain autonomy but remain an Austrian crownland. Hungary would be compensated by gaining Romanian territory and receiving explicit assurances of its future territorial integrity; Transylvania and Eastern Slovakia would be recognized as integral parts of Hungary. (8)
Of course, this was all decided without the active participation of the Hungarians. When the reorganization of the Empire was imposed unilaterally upon Hungary by a series of decrees, protests broke out in major Hungarian cities and Istan Tisza threatened to resign. Ferdinand accepted the resignation, but it never came. Tisza, feeling cornered after Czech, Galician, and Croatian parties announced support for the reform, instead entered into negotiations with Ferdinand to lessen the blow to Hungary. He successfully won a series of Vojvodina and increased funding for Hungary's military. On June 14th, the Kingdom of Croatia, incorporating Dalmatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Istria, and half of Slavonia, was officially declared. (9)
Though the Croats would prove to be some of the most loyal subjects of Ferdinand, creating the new Kingdom was hardly a panacea for the Empire's problems. With food prices rising and Austria still governed by a de facto military dictatorship, domestic unrest continued to percolate through the remainder of the year. Throughout July, new protests in Vienna centered around the government's refusal to issue a pardon for the popular social democrat Friedrich Adler, sentenced to death after being convicted for assassinating the Austrian Minister-President Karl von Sturgkh. Eventually, Ferdinand commuted his sentence to life-imprisonment. (10)
The emperor also faced increasing pressure from the nationalist right as Austrian and Hungarian revanchists denounced the loss of territory. Radical "Free Hungary" societies formed which advocated for Hungary to seek a separate peace and declare independence. In August, Austrian nationalists killed several Croatian politicians in Slovenia, and paramilitaries associated with the free hungary movement burned the offices of prominent Croatian-language newspapers in Hungarian Slavonia. The same month, renewed protests broke out in Austria demanding the Reichsrat to be called back into session. This time, Ferdinand allowed their grievances to be aired, but still refused to end de facto military rule.
Britain in 1917: The Coalition Collapses
The spectacular British victories of the winter of 1917 concealed an underlying weakness: the armies of all three of Britain's principal allies in the war were nearing exhaustion. Prince Lvov insisted that the Russian Army was in no state to launch any offensives; he would sooner make peace than throw Russian youth once more into German and Austrian machine guns. For France, the battle of Verdun had not utterly destroyed the French Army, but it had inflicted casualties so devastating upon it that it would be incapable of offensive action for at least eight months. And the Austrian asiago offensive in 1916 and the costly Italo-British counteroffensive which followed had forced the Italians onto the defensive for the foreseaable future. (11)
The plans for the winter of 1917 initially involved concurrent offensives from Russia and France sometime in February. Without their participation, the British hardly had the means of pressing home the attack. When they reached their Kulminationspunkt, no German ally was knocked out of the war. The Ottoman Empire was temporarily reduced to a national redoubt in Ankara and most of Bulgarian territory was occupied for a time, but both nations would regain a good deal of their lost territory.
Britain confronted a series of crises in 1917. Firstly, there was the manpower crisis. Having rapidly expanded its army, Britain was facing critical shortages of workers in many key industrial sectors. The entrance of women into the workforce could only partially make up for the loss of skilled workers. With munitions production starting to dip, Britain became increasingly dependent on American weapons and ammunition imports. (12)
This compounded Britain's financial and diplomatic crises. British conservatives desired a hard break from America, but this would require either reducing the army's annual procurement of munitions and weapons or finding some means of boosting domestic munitions production. Some of the Liberals in the cabinet advocated for a strategic retrenchment, but with the support of Lloyd George, Bonar Law pressed ahead with the ambitious winter offensives; then, with the support of Churchill, who held increasing influence in Whitehall following the Dardanelles offensive, he secured the support necessary to exit the Alexandria accords and begin a complete blockade of Germany.
Winston Churchill, the Irascible Naval Secretary and the Hero of the Hour
Nowhere were political battle lines drawn more sharply than on the Irish issue. During the formation of the coalition government, Lloyd George's liberals and Bonar Law agreed to a truce on the matter, but in reality the government's policy favored the Unionists (many of the cabinet liberals were themselves Unionists). In late 1915, the decision of the government to arrest and detain James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, and Tom Clarke led to a series of strikes in early 1916 that were brutally suppressed by the local British garrison. The three men were all involved in the Irish Republican movement, and the government charged them with planning a revolt. In retrospect, most historians agree that there was not sufficient evidence to convict them in a neutral court of law, and that the prosecutions were themselves politically motivated. (13)
The arrest of three of the most prominent leaders of the Republican movement did have the effect of delaying the formation of organized Irish resistance to the war. Despite frequent strikes and protest in 1916, no coordinated insurrection against the British occurred; while the government steadily increased the size of the Dublin garrison, it did not take any emergency measures throughout 1916 to avert a future Irish uprising.
This was a grave mistake. Neither the Irish Republican Brotherhood nor the Irish Citizen Army were decapitated by the loss of their leadership. In the Citizen Army, the syndicalist James Larkin became the de facto leader of the group with the support of Jack White and Constance Markievicz. His organizing skill and widespread discontent over declining labor conditions led to a boom in its membership. The secretive Republican Brotherhood, a conspiratorial group of republicans of a more bourgeois and literary variety, also managed to recover in short order from the loss of Pearse and Clarke. Though they were technically led by the tubercular language scholar Eoin MacNeill, the real force behind the group was the diplomat Roger Casement, who worked in the British foreign office and used the connections he made there to arrange for German weapons shipments to the Republican resistance.. (14)
On May 14th, three American merchant ships left from Rotterdam for Dublin. As neutral American ships heading for British waters, two of them slipped through the British blockade without being inspected. The manifest of the ships claimed that they were bringing a variety of dry goods to Ireland from the Netherlands and Sweden, as the same set of ships did just a few months ago before making their return journey to America. In reality, there were large stashes of German small arms and medical supplies stocked on the bottom decks. (15)
Roger Casement knew that May 14th was a day when the blockade would be strained. With the German counteroffensive in Bulgaria, the British navy was split between enforcing the blockade and supplying their troops in the Balkans. He knew, too, that returning American ships would occasion little suspicion. The inspection of the only ship stopped was cursory and failed to uncover the weapons. Later that day, all three of the vessels landed in Dublin, where friendly dockworkers directed the cargo to the Irish Citizens Milia and Irish Republican Brotherhood. On the morning of the 15th, the cabinet became aware of the suspicious weapons shipment, but at this point there was little chance to halt events.
In Dublin, 3,500 armed volunteers began seizing key locations in the city. Dublin City Hall and Dublin Castle, the centre of British rule in Ireland, both fell within the first hours of the rebellion. Three hours later, Trinity College, the South Dublin Union, and most of the police stations were in the hands of the rebels. The next day, both of Dublin's key ports were seized, preventing the British from shipping reinforcements to the area. Early attempts of British soldiers to assault the well-dug Irish trenches outside the city were rebuffed. As the last British soldiers in Dublin surrendered on the 16th, James Larkin and Roger Casement declared the formation of an independent Irish Republic. (16)
In Rural Ireland, the rebellion had considerably less success. Though crack-militia groups formed in several towns, they were not nearly as well-supplied or well-organized as the Dublin forces. While they managed to successfully seize several villages, Cork and Limerick remained in British hands fo the duration of the rising, and rural guerilla activity was markedly more mild than the organizers of the coup hoped. (17)
On the 18th, the first of several British reserve divisions landed in Ulster. The rebels had not made any real effort to extend their power base beyond Dublin, but had established forward, entrenched positions north of the city. A series of pitched battles over the following days forced the militias to retreat into Dublin proper.
On the 23rd, the battle of Dublin began. William Jennings Bryan called on Britain to respect the democratic aspirations of the Irish people. The coalition Liberals balked; they warned that the destruction of the city would make martyrs of the revolutionaries and end any prospects of Home Rule. They proposed meeting with the rebels to ascertain if they would stand down in return for amnesty of low-level participants and a guarantee of home rule. This proposal was unlikely to succeed, but the conservative refusal to "bargain with the enemy" contributed to the fractiousness in the ruling coalition. On the 28th, the Manchester Guardian published an article describing the opposition of coalition liberals to the government's Irish policy; it is likely the specific quotes were leaked by liberal backbenchers sympathetic to Lloyd George.
By June 5th, the last rebel strongholds in Dublin had fallen, and the Irish Republic quashed in its infancy. In all, around 1,800 soldiers and 10,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the fighting. One suspect, however, was missing: Roger Casement, one of the two leaders of the rebellion, had improbably escaped out of Ulster stowed away at the bottom of an ocean liner. He arrived in New York on June 10th to cheering crowds. William Jennings Bryan refused Britain's extradition request, successfully enraging both pro-entente opinion and the British public. (18)
Meanwhile, the British government was in a state of deep crisis. The coalition liberals felt with good reason that they were being iced out of the actual process of governance. Elections slated to occur in 1915 had been delayed because of the war, but now it was felt that wartime elections were needed to "clarify" the opinion of the nation. The coalition liberals hoped to unseat many of Haldane's backbenchers, and the conservatives believed that liberal division and patriotic sentiment would propel them to victory. To ensure that the pro-war majority would remain intact, the acrimonious governing partners agreed not to run candidates against each other. In response, the independent liberals and increasingly antiwar British Labor Party did the same, forming the "Progressive-Democratic Alliance" to contest the elections.
Patriotic sentiment was still present in Britain, but it was challenged by the battle-field losses in May, declining standards of living, and growing discontent in both the middle-class and labor movement. It was believed that a clear parliamentary victory for the pro-war coalition would both quiet pacifist protest and make clear what the real correlation of forces ought to be in the cabinet.
The conservatives received several electoral windfalls before the scheduled December vote. Firstly, the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare led to a "rally around the flag" effect. A series of limited French offensives in the north successfully pushed the Germans back in Flanders, while the October Revolution in Russia polarized middle-class opinion against the left. In Germany, Ludendorff's dissolution of the Reichstag reinforced the government's claim that the war was a fight against German autocracy. Finally, the defection of the widely beloved Churchill to the conservatives provided them with a charismatic surrogate adept at rallying patriotic opinion. The leaders of the party may have detested the arrogant and volatile Churchill, but they soon found him to be an invaluable asset.
The election campaign was marred throughout by a lack of clarity from many of the parties. Labor refused to take a clear and consistent antiwar line, while the independent liberals moderated their position before the election to try to broaden their base, advocating for the beginnings of negotiation rather than an immediate exit from the war. Lloyd George faced increasing pressure from the liberal press to denounce the policies of his Conservative partners, which he felt reluctant to do publicly while still in coalition with the Tories. Instead, he ended up making equivocal statements which pleased nobody.
British Parliamentary Election Results, 1917
| Party | Vote | % | Seats Before | Seats Won | Change |
| Conservative | 4,363,154 | 40.3 | 271 | 394 | +123 |
| Liberal | 768,694 | 7.1 | 272 or 150* | 44 | -228 or -106 |
| Labour | 2,349,391 | 21.7 | 42 | 80 | +38 |
| Independent Liberal | 1,786,403 | 16.5 | New Party or 122* | 81 | +81 or -39 |
| Sinn Fein | 508,854 | 4.7 | New Party | 75 | +75 |
| Irish Parliamentary | 227,360 | 2.1 | 74 | 5 | -69 |
*Method of calculation for Liberal Party depends on whether one counts members of the antiwar independent liberals as MP's of the Liberal Party. 122 sitting backbenchers of the Liberal Party ran as Independent Liberals in 1917.
The results provided a stinging rebuke to the policies of the pro-war coalition liberals. The unpopularity of his government among the party's voting base was made quite clear on election day, as the independent liberals received more than twice the vote of the coalition government. Middle-class liberal discontent had led to a wave of defection. Yet the Independent Liberals did not have a banner night. The surge of pro-war sentiment in the country meant that most competitive ridings were lost to the conservatives, who picked up a whopping 123 seats and gained an absolute majority in parliament. Labor fared somewhat better, and looked increasingly as if they might displace the liberals as the main opposition to the Tories. (19)
The rise of Sinn Fein caused alarm across the British political spectrum. The militant republican group had ties with many of the participants in the May rising, and the collapse of the moderate Irish parliamentary party was a sign that the Irish would no longer be content with home rule after the brutal British crackdown in May. As the spectre of more Irish unrest loomed, the Tories were tasked with forming a government of their own.
Footnotes
1This paragraph is meant to indicate that the Austro-Hungarian Army has thus far performed far better than it did IOTL. This is mostly because Serbia was already pretty much defeated at the start of the war, which meant the initial Russian offensive into Galicia inflicted substantially less damage on the Dual Monarchy's army.
2Living standards in Austria-Hungary moderately better-off than IOTL. Germany is somewhat more generous with its loans, which means that there's a bit less inflation. More importantly, because Galicia is never lost and the British blockade is only partial for the first two anda half years of the war, there's much more food to go around.
3Of course, Franz Ferdinand was dead IOTL, so instead his nephew Karl, known as Charles I, became Emperor.
4All in line with his thinking IOTL!
5IOTL,Tisza convinced Karl to go ahead with an early coronation. Ferdinand is a significantly more wily political operator, so he sees through this ploy here.
6Karl, who was significantly more reformist, did call parliament into session in 1917, which actually ended up causing a number of problems for him. Of course, not calling parliament into session will also cause problems for Franz Ferdinand. Such is the parlous state of Austria-Hungary…
7Similar protests occurred IOTL, but they were actually somewhat larger. Better living standards, less defeats in the field, and a somewhat more competent administration all mean that they're not quite as pronounced.
8Without American entry into the war, the Czechs have much less of an incentive to stall in the hopes of achieving self-determination and complete independence.
9IOTL, attempts to implement a form of trialism were frustrated by Hungarian intransigence. Here, because Austria-Hungary is in a significantly stronger position than IOTL and is led by a figure with a much more keen sense of the politics of the Empire, a form of trialism succeeds. Note that this is still far from the ambitious attempts to federalize the empire that were talked about before the war. And as we'll see, it will have consequences that are far from salutary.
10IOTL, the sentence was commuted from death to 18 months imprisonment. Ferdinand is significantly more hostile to social democrats and socialists, so the commutation only comes here after significant pressure is placed on the government.
11All of the entente armies besides the British and Romanian are in a much worse state than IOTL.
12Britain also faced manpower problems IOTL, but they were not nearly as severe because the army expansion happened more slowly.
13IOTL, Connolly, Pearse, and Clarke were the main leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Here, because of butterflies and the dominance of the unionist conservatives, they are arrested before they get a chance to execute their plot.
14IOTL, these were also the two groups most instrumental to the Easter Rising IOTL.
15In the Easter Rising, a germans weapons shipment was also sent, but here it is significantly larger because Casement has more time to prepare and the British blockade is less airtight.
16The May Rising is significantly larger and better armed than the easter rising IOTL (and thus more successful). This is mostly because there is much more discontent with the war by this point, which means there are more volunteers enlisted in the various republican militias.
17This is a point of continuity with OTL's easter rising.
18Casualty numbers were significantly smaller IOTL's Easter Rising (around 2,000 civilian dead or wounded), primarily because British troops were able to directly use the city's port to reinforce their positions in Dublin, which meant the city itself never had to be placed under siege. Consequently, there is also much more destruction of infrastructure and private residences in the city ITTL.
19IOTL, there was no parliamentary election of 1917, though there was one in 1918. Compared to that election, ITTL the pro-war coalition liberals do significantly worse and independent liberals much better. The conservatives actually also do slightly better in this timeline's election as a consequence of the country polarizing: they receive around 2% more of the vote and 15 more seats, though in both elections they win an absolute majority in parliament.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
I presume this should be "Vojvodina".
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I wonder if we're going to see more Croatian immigrants coming to the US ITTL.
I'd like to imagine that larger Croatian immigration, plus less of the assimilationist pressures due to "muh patriotism" from OTL World War I, might lead to more growth of/preservation of Croatian culture in the United States.
I'd like to imagine that larger Croatian immigration, plus less of the assimilationist pressures due to "muh patriotism" from OTL World War I, might lead to more growth of/preservation of Croatian culture in the United States.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hell yeah, a big, meaty update! So much interesting stuff happening here. Will it be significant that the now most famous figure of Irish Republican is a Syndicalist?
I think the big cultural impact will be the preservation of a German-American identity, which was incredibly vibrant before WWI.
For starters I could see the IRA swinging to the left much earlier than it did in OTL (or being replaced by a group like the Irish Citizen's Army) with the Irish independence movement following soon there after. It could also change how the Irish War of Independence is fought as I could see strike actions and worker militias replace the guerrilla warfare that defined the OTL Irish War of Independence. Not only that but I think a larger, more organized, more bloody Easter rising might also serve to galvanize the Irish public towards independence on a much larger scale compared to OTL while also radicalizing them.
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