The days went by. I began to receive many--both slight and important-- expressions of bewilderment and questions from the units of my corps: Who represents the Supreme Power in Russia? Is it the temporary Committee which created the Provisional Government, or is it the latter? I sent an inquiry, but received no answer. The Provisional Government itself, apparently, had no clear notion of the essence of its power.
For whom should we pray at Divine Service? Should we sing the National Anthem and "O God, Save Thy People!" (a prayer in which the Emperor was mentioned)?
These apparent trifles produced, however, a certain confusion in the minds of the men and interfered with established military routine. The Commanding Officers requested that the oath should be taken as soon as possible. There was also the question whether the Emperor Nicolas had the right to abdicate not only for himself, but for his son, who had not yet attained his majority.
Other questions soon began to interest the troops. We received the first Order of the Day of the War Minister, Gutchkov, with alterations of the Army Regulations in favour of the "Democratisation of the Army" (March 5th). By this Order, inoffensive at first sight, the officers were not to be addressed by the men according to their rank, and were not to speak to the men in the second person singular. A series of petty restrictions established by Army Regulations for the men, such as no smoking in the streets and other public places, no card-playing, and exclusion from Clubs and Meetings, were removed. The consequences came as a surprise to those who were ignorant of the psychology of the rank and file. The Commanding Officers understood that if it were necessary to do away with certain out-of-date forms the process should be gradual and cautious, and should by no means be interpreted as one of "the fruits of the Revolutionary victory." The bulk of the men did not trouble to grasp the meaning of these insignificant changes in the Army Regulations, but merely accepted them as a deliverance from the restrictions imposed on them by routine and by respect to the Senior Officers.
"There is liberty, and that's all there is to it."
All these minor alterations of the Army Regulations, broadly interpreted by the men, affected, to a certain degree, the discipline of the army. But that soldiers should be permitted, during the war and during the Revolution, to join in the membership of various Unions and Societies formed for political purposes, was a menace to the very existence of the army. G.H.Q., perturbed by this situation, had recourse to a measure hitherto unknown in the army--to a kind of plébiscite. All Commanding Officers, including Regimental Commanders, were advised to address direct telegrams to the Minister of War, expressing their views on the new orders. I do not know whether the telegraph was able to cope with this task and whether the enormous mass of telegrams reached their destination, but I know that those that came to my notice were full of criticism and of fears for the future of the army. At the same time, the Army Council in Petrograd, consisting of Senior Generals--the would-be guardians of the experience and traditions of the army--decided at a meeting held on March 10th to make the following report to the Provisional Government: "The Army Council deems it its duty to declare its full solidarity with the energetic measures contemplated by the Provisional Government in re-modelling our armed forces in accordance with the new forms of life in the country and in the army. We are convinced that these reforms will be the best means of achieving rapid victory and the deliverance of Europe from the yoke of Prussian militarism." I cannot help sympathising with a civilian War Minister after such an occurrence. It was difficult for us to understand the motives by which the War Ministry was guided in issuing its Orders of the Day. We were unaware of the unrestrained opportunities of the men who surrounded the War Minister, as well as of the fact that the Provisional Government was already dominated by the Soviet and had entered upon the path of compromise, being invariably on the losing side. At the Congress of the Soviets on March 30th, one of the speakers stated that in the Conciliation Commission there never was a case in which the Provisional Commission did not give way on important matters.