All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.18of26.Fat.Rodzianko.Has.Sent.Me.Some.Nonsense.divx.mp3

Russia, October 1917.

From Petrograd,
a shockwave pulsed and widened

through all this vast land
which had once been an empire.

The billows beat
in every quarter of the world.

Let everyone remember that
in this war there are no reverses

of the Russians, of the English,
or of the French alone

and that success or failure
is one and the same thing for all.

The fervent hopes once expressed by
a Russian politician, now, in the
winter of 1917, sounded ominous.

In the east, a spectre more awful
than all the shapes of death itself

had appeared upon the battlefield,

a spectre that had long haunted
the war leaders' minds.

For here was
the most dreaded casualty of all -
the will to war itself.

Russia could go on no longer.
Hindenburg said,

Hitherto,
the unwieldy Russian colossus

had hung over the whole European
and Asiatic world like a nightmare.

Time and time again,
her efforts had produced
considerable crises for us.

Tannenberg, August 1914.

The enemy losses
were extremely heavy,

but our high command believed
themselves compelled prematurely

to draw away to the east
strong forces from the west

where they were trying to secure
a rapid decision.

Masurian Lakes, February 1915.

Mighty masses rolled up against us,

overwhelming masses, each one
larger than our whole force,

but German resolution
bore this load

and Russian blood
flowed in streams.

Galicia, May 1915.

The fearful, continuous tension of
the situation in the Carpathians,

and its reaction
on the political situation,

imperiously demanded some solution.

We found ourselves compelled
to send large forces there

to keep up our pressure
upon the enemy.

Gorlice-Tarnow, 1915.

There was something unsatisfactory
about the encounters of this year.

The Russian bear
had escaped our clutches,

bleeding, no doubt,
from more than one wound,
but still not stricken to death.

Did he have enough life force left
to make things hard for us again?

Her casualties are the highest
of all the combatant nations.

No-one knows the figures -
five or eight million.

All we know is, sometimes
in our battles with the Russian,

we had to move the mounds of enemy
corpses from before our trenches

in order to get a fresh field
of fire against assaulting waves.

Yet in 1916, the Russians
had won a great victory
over the Austrians in Galicia.

The Germans and Austrians had had
to stretch their manpower resources
to the utmost to resist this blow.

In January 1917, an
Allied delegation arrived in Russia

to develop efficiency for
the planned offensive of that year.

The British military attache
in Russia wrote,

The prospects for the 1917 campaign
were brighter than in 1916.

The Russian infantry was tired, but
less tired than 12 months earlier.

The stocks of arms and equipment
were larger

and supplies from overseas were
arriving in appreciable quantities.

In fact, desertions from the front
ran into hundreds of thousands.

Russia had lost as many dead as the
British and French put together.

She had suffered
literally beyond endurance.

She had reached her limit.

Her soldiers,
once so brave, had had enough.

Now they were getting out
of the trenches

to fraternise with the Germans,
man to man.

In the rear, industrialisation had
changed the face of Tsarist Russia,

drawing peasants into the towns

and creating
a new, incoherent proletariat.

The economy functioned in a welter
of administrative confusion,

but committees set up
to organise production,

after the appalling breakdowns
of the early days of the war,
had begun to have some effect.

By the end of 1916, great
improvements had been achieved.

Patriotic spirit ran high.

Victory over the Germans
was the simple aim
of most of the population.

Pressure for more efficient
management of the war

was exerted by liberal politicians
through the parliament, or Duma.

But Tsar Nicholas II had no use
for constitutional government.

At his coronation he said,

I shall maintain the principle
of autocracy

just as firmly and unflinchingly as
it was preserved by my dead father.

But Nicholas II was gentler,
weaker than his father.

Lloyd George,
the British Prime Minister, wrote,

He would never have been chosen
by a responsible board of directors

to manage any business
of any magnitude,

and certainly not a business
confronted with a serious emergency.

He was a devoted family man, deeply
fond of his son, the tsarevitch,

who suffered from haemophilia,

a blood disease
which made every scratch dangerous.

There was nothing
the Tsar liked better

than to be with his soldiers
and sailors.

In 1915, he had made himself
Supreme Commander.

He loved the simple link,
as he saw it,

that bound him
to his wider family -

the 170 million people of Russia.

Emotional faith in a paternal Tsar
and the mystery of their religion

were the simple guiding principles
of their lives.

The peasants' lives were miserable.

Often, they lodged in the same
single-room hovel as their animals

on earthen floors with a hole in
the roof for the smoke to escape.

Their diet was poor and the gross
mishandling of wartime distribution

meant that, though food was there,
many went hungry.

Chaos was aggravated by hundreds
of thousands of refugees who poured
into Russia in the early defeats.

A British member of parliament
observed their misery.

Serried ranks of emaciated,
huddled humanity,

brutalised by their abject
surroundings, corroded by disease.

Men, women and children
of different races and languages,

crowded and congested
like litters of pigs

in an asphyxiating sty.

In the towns and factories,
too, there was misery.

Strikes had been increasing sharply
just before 1914.

War, with its shortages and
inflation, aggravated the unrest.

The Tsar himself left affairs
more and more to the Tsarina,

a German-born but English-educated
niece of Queen Victoria.

The Tsarina's close friendship with
her spiritual adviser, a lecherous
and drunken monk, Rasputin,

led to a widespread campaign
against the entire Tsarist regime.

To the public, this relationship
assumed vast dimensions.

It became the symbol
of all Russia's ills.

Rasputin's murder was hailed as
an act of the highest patriotism.

The winter of 1916-17
was particularly severe.

Fuel was short.

Food queues lengthened.

Pressures on the Tsar
to change incompetent ministers
continued from all sides.

His own cousin wrote to him,

Shall Russia be a great state, free
and capable of developing strong,

or shall she submit
to the iron German fist?

Certain forces are leading you,
and thus Russia, to inevitable ruin.

It is absolutely indispensable that
the ministers and the legislative
chambers should work together.

The existing situation,
with the whole responsibility
resting on you and you alone,

is unthinkable.

The British Ambassador,
Sir George Buchanan, doing what
he could to keep Russia in the war,

told the Tsar he must regain the
people's confidence. HE replied,

Do you mean that I am to
regain the confidence of my people

or that THEY
are to regain MY confidence?

Suddenly,
in the early days of March 1917,

frustration in the Petrograd food
queues spilled over into revolt.

People came out to protest, found
many others there and took courage.

For the first time,
there was doubt about the troops.

The Tsar, true to character,

washed his hands of the awkward
situation and went to the front,

leaving matters to the palace guard
and the Petrograd garrison.

Now turbulent forces suddenly
broke the surface of Russian life.

The French Ambassador watched
from the safety of his room.

A strange and prolonged din seemed
to come from the Alexander Bridge.

Almost immediately, a disorderly mob
carrying red flags appeared at the
end on the right bank of the Neva

and a regiment came towards it
from the other end.

It looked as if they would collide,
but the two bodies coalesced.

The army was fraternising
with the revolt.

The vast Petrograd garrison
of some 200,000 men

was not typical of the army
as a whole.

It consisted of raw recruits,
war-weary reserves, convalescents

and even punishment battalions.

Many deserters from the front had
drifted to the capital's streets.

Before long, the whole garrison
had joined the mob.

In a desperate move to get the Tsar
to introduce the necessary reforms,

the President of the Duma,
Rodzianko, sent him a telegram.
The Tsar received it at his HQ.

This fat Rodzianko
has sent me some nonsense

to which I will not even reply.

Nothing could stop the sudden
upsurge against the monarchy,
symbol of the country's sufferings.

Within days, the Tsar was forced to
abdicate and a 300-year-old dynasty
came crashing to the ground.

A general amnesty was declared

and political prisoners were
set free among the jubilant crowds.

The Tsar's unpopular ministers
were arrested.

It is difficult to say how many
died in the bloodless revolution,

but most accounts
say under a thousand.

Petrograd, thanks to the measures
taken by the government,

rapidly resumed its normal aspect
and order generally prevailed.

This was especially noticeable
at the burial of the victims
of the revolution on April the 5th

when a never-ending procession
filed past in perfect order

from ten in the morning
till late in the evening.

There were in all
but some 200 coffins

and as each one
was lowered into the grave,

a salute
was fired from the fortress,

but no priests officiated
at the ceremony which was divested
of any religious character.

Somewhat dazed
with the success of the revolution,

Russia had to face the bleak task
of deciding where she would go.

The rising in the streets had been
AGAINST something. Now the people
had to decide what it had been FOR.

The wish to run the war better had
given the revolution its spark,

but hatred of the war
had given it momentum.

In the confusion that followed,
responsibility fell upon the Duma,

responsibility to make good
their implied promises.

Now they had to do better than the
autocracy they had so criticised.

A Provisional Government was formed
with a liberal, Prince Lvov,
as the first Prime Minister.

A young socialist lawyer, Kerenski,
became Minister of Justice.

In the Allied capitals, where
the events in Russia looked simple,

the revolution was hailed
as a triumph for the Allied cause.

The London Times commented,

The army and people joined hands
to overthrow the forces of reaction

which were
stifling national aspirations
and strangling national efforts.

Lloyd George declared
in the House of Commons,

We believe that the revolution

is the greatest service
the Russian people have yet made

to the cause for which the
Allied peoples have been fighting.

In America, herself about to
enter the war on the Allied side,
the revolution seemed providential.

The Secretary of State declared,

The revolution in Russia has removed
the one objection to affirming

that the European war was a war
between democracy and absolutism.

In Petrograd, one of the
Provisional Government's first acts

was to declare that it would
loyally maintain its alliances

and endeavour to carry the war
to a victorious conclusion.

The French Ambassador reported,

Patriotism, intelligence and honesty
is on every face,

but the task they have undertaken
is patently beyond their powers.

Heaven grant that they do not
collapse under it too soon.

Their task was complicated by the
fact that a separate revolutionary
body convened in the same offices -

the Soviet. The Soviet,
or council, claimed to represent
factory workers and soldiers.

Its majority wanted to continue
the war to defend the revolution.

One of its first acts was to issue
Order Number 1 to the army,

directed against
the powers of officers
and setting up soldiers' councils.

In this uneasy alliance,
the Provisional Government
had to accept the Soviet's order.

A struggle for the soul of Russia
now began. A French observer noted,

Groups were constantly forming with
no actual reason in the streets.

One man would have a discussion with
another and passers-by would listen.

People thus witnessed exchanges of
political opinions where opposing
ideas were set against each other.

Groups were constantly forming
and dispersing.

At first sight, the crowd
appeared to be full of unrest.

Actually, it was only idle.

The Germans had always regarded
a revolution as their best hope
for an early defeat of Russia.

Now was the time
to ensure the outcome.

They saw as their instrument,
Lenin, head of the Bolshevik group
among the Russian revolutionaries.

Lenin had spent the war years
in Switzerland with his wife,
Krupskaya.

The Germans had so far made little
contact with them, finding other
revolutionaries more cooperative.

Lenin himself was no pro-German.
Pitilessly single-minded,

he saw all the warring nations
as capitalist imperialists.

He wanted peace and worldwide
revolution against capitalism.

As late as January 1917, he said,

We of the older generation
may not live to see the decisive
battle of this coming revolution.

When revolution came, only two
months later, he was unimpressed.

The militant monarchy in Russia

has been followed
by a militant republic -

capitalists who want to continue
the imperialist war

and to adhere to the robber treaties
of the Tsarist monarchy.

Lenin's aim of peace at any price
was at variance with the Petrograd
Soviets and even many Bolsheviks.

Now, in Churchill's words,
the Germans transported Lenin

"like a plague bacillus"
from Switzerland into Russia.

He arrived in Petrograd
on April the 16th, determined to
capture control of the revolution,

but his moment was not quite yet.

The man of the moment was Kerenski.
Unlike Lenin, this socialist
lawyer - a compelling orator,

honest, shrewd, energetic -
wanted to continue the war.

His efforts
to reinvigorate Russian society

in defence of the revolution
against German imperialism

found a response
among the Petrograd crowds.

A freedom loan, launched to support
the revolution, had great success.

Patriotic fellow socialists from
Allied countries, like the French
socialist minister, Albert Thomas,

were welcomed on goodwill visits
to cement Allied solidarity.

Thomas was very impressed. Eyes
sparkling as he glanced about him,
he said to the French Ambassador,

Now we see the revolution
in all its grandeur and beauty.

The strength of Russian democracy
lies in its revolutionary fervour.

Kerenski alone is capable of
establishing, with the Soviet's aid,
a government worthy of confidence.

Soon Kerenski was Minister of War
in a new government,

which included members of the
Soviet, and with dynamic confidence

he went ahead with his plans for
the Russian army's summer campaign.

As in 1916,
it was to take place in Galicia.

But in the army,
the virus of revolution had spread.

The cracks in discipline
were widening.

An English observer wrote,

Desertion had set in wholesale.

Few men left the front trenches, but
as soon as they were moved into the
reserves they decamped in a body.

The movement
was something elemental.

They packed
even the roofs of railway carriages.

A photograph of this was published
in England entitled, "Russian
Soldiers Hasten To The Front."

The Germans
purposely left the front inactive

to encourage this crumbling
of Russian discipline.

General Brusilov,
victor of last year's campaign,

had to spend hours arguing with
soldiers, delegates and committees
who had their own strategic ideas.

However, Brusilov was optimistic.
So was Kerenski,

who issued the order of the day -

I call on the army, fortified
by the strength and spirit of the
revolution, to take the offensive.

Kerenski's offensive
was launched on July the 1st.

There were some initial gains.
The Provisional Government
issued an intoxicating communique.

July 1st has shown the whole world
the might of a revolutionary army,

organised on democratic lines

and inspired by a firm belief
in the ideas of the revolution.

It was a pipe dream. After a
few days of partial breakthroughs,

the Russian offensive petered out.

The British military attache
reported,

They had lost many officers and
had no incentive to further effort.

They knew they could retire
without being punished.

As a Russian artillery general
expressed it,

"They felt lonely out in front,
and went to their dugouts to sleep."

Then the Germans and Austrians
counter-attacked. The rout of
the Russian army was overwhelming.

The real meaning of the revolution
now made itself felt.

It had meant a breakdown,
not just of the Tsarist regime,
but of Russia herself.

Solitary, helpless and dismayed,
the individual Russian
was looking for direction.

This was a chaos
which anyone might exploit,

provided he was ruthless
and single-minded enough.

Lenin was such a man. He constantly
attacked the Provisional Government

and when the news of the disasters
at the front reached Petrograd,
it seemed that his moment had come.

Crowds flooded the streets, calling
for peace, bread and freedom

and for the overthrow
of the Provisional Government.

To foment an armed uprising,

the Bolsheviks called in sailors
from the naval base at Kronstadt

Everything now depended
on the loyalty of the army.

An observer wrote,

Looking onto the square,
I saw an endless multitude

packing the entire space
as far as the eye could reach.

A mass of placards and banners with
Bolshevik slogans rose above them.

To the left, the black, ugly masses
of armoured cars loomed up.

A French correspondent reported,

Suddenly a shot rang out.
Whence had it come from? By whom
and against whom had it been fired?

Nobody seemed to know, but it was
immediately followed by other shots,

which soon increased
to a wild fusillade, dominated by
the sinister rattle of machine guns.

The bullets whizzed
through the wildly fleeing crowd.

The army
stood by the Provisional Government

and when it was announced
that the Bolsheviks had been
receiving funds from German sources

Lenin had to flee to Finland
on a forged passport.

Other Bolsheviks, including
Trotsky, were briefly arrested.

General Kornilov,
the commander in chief,

unsatisfied
with the Government's efforts to
restore order and continue the war,

marched, with his troops,
on Petrograd.

But Kerenski, afraid of being
branded as a counter-revolutionary,

refused to accept his support.

He even enlisted Bolshevik aid
to stop Kornilov

and thus armed his worst enemies.

Trotsky drilled the workers into
a Bolshevik army - the Red Guard.

They were to act as shock troops
when the moment came
for the Bolsheviks to strike

and that moment
was now not far off.

The Germans did their best
to hasten it.

They launched an offensive
in the north towards Petrograd,

turning the Russian flank above
Riga by an amphibious landing on
an island in the Gulf of Finland.

Hindenburg
described the operation as,

The one completely successful
enterprise on either side in which
an army and a fleet cooperated.

Our plans were rendered so doubtful
by bad weather at the outset

that we were already thinking of
disembarking the troops on board.

The arrival of better weather
let us proceed with the venture.

From that point,
everything went like clockwork.

We succeeded
in possessing ourselves of Osel

and the neighbouring islands.

One more pressure was thus added to
the sense of crisis in the capital.

In Petrograd, and at the front,

Bolsheviks worked tirelessly.

Soldiers, do not trust
these wolves in sheep's clothing!

They call you to fresh slaughter!
Well, follow them if you like.

Let them pave the way for the return
of the Tsar with your corpses!

Let your orphans, your widows
and children, deserted by all,

pass again into slavery,
hunger, beggary and disease!

The Bolshevik following multiplied.
Lenin himself returned secretly
to supervise the insurrection.

On November the 7th, in
a superb stroke of political bluff,

Trotsky simply proclaimed that the
Provisional Government had fallen
and that the Soviet was in power.

20,000 Red Guards
appeared on the streets.

Bolshevik oratory and subversion
worked among the troops.

During the next few days,
Trotsky's statement became a fact.

The Bolsheviks besieged the
Winter Palace where the Provisional
Government was protected

only by a few officer cadets
and the women's battalion.

In a few hours, the Bolsheviks
captured the Palace and arrested
the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government,
like the Tsar before it,
had fallen without a struggle.

Now Lenin could honour
his promise of peace.

An armistice was arranged with
the Germans, and Russian emissaries
went to meet them at Brest Litovsk.

The two sides
made a strange contrast.

The Germans -
stiff, correct, experienced -

apparently
with all the cards in their hands.

The Russians - nervous, uncertain -
but with at least one good card.

They could play for time.

To counter the stranglehold
of the Allied blockade,

the Germans and Austrians
desperately needed access to
the vast granaries of the Ukraine.

So they made a separate peace with
the independent, anti-Bolshevik
government of the Ukraine.

A peace treaty with Rumania,
now near the end of her tether,
followed.

But there was no peace with Russia.

The endless Bolshevik delaying
tactics enraged the Germans.

They resumed their advance.

The Russian army did not try to
fight, but fell back in a rabble.

"War is dead in the hearts of men,"
noted an American observer.

The Bolsheviks were forced to
accept the harshest terms of peace.

The eastern front was finished.

Hindenburg said,

In spite of the peace with Russia,
it was even now impossible

for us to transfer all our troops
from the east.

It was necessary for us to
leave behind strong German forces.

Our operations in the Ukraine
were not yet at an end.

We had to penetrate into their
country to restore order there.

Only when this had been done,
had we any prospect
of securing food from the Ukraine.

Of a very different import
was the military assistance

which in the spring
we sent to Finland in her war of
liberation from Russian domination.

The Bolshevik government had not
fulfilled the promise it made us

to evacuate this country.

We hoped, by assisting Finland,
to get her on our side.

The rest of our fighting troops
which still remained in the east

formed the source from which our
western armies could be reinforced.

Now the patient,
enduring German army

might at last bring off
the decisive victory

which had escaped its grasp.

The troop trains rumbled
across Europe, bearing division
after division from east to west.

Every click of their wheels echoed
the ticking away of precious time.

For Germany, it was now or never.