A carelessly dropped match will be enough to start a terrible conflagration ... Whatever the government – whether good or bad – a strong government is needed now more than ever before.”

The hope that the tzar, under the burden of defeat, would grant concessions, was so great that in the liberal press there appeared in August the slate of a proposed “Cabinet of confidence” with the president of the Duma, Rodzianko, as premier (according to another version, the president of the Land Union, Prince Lvov, was indicated for that office), Guchkov as Minister of the Interior, Miliukov, Foreign Minister, etc. A majority of these men who here nominated themselves for a union with the tzar against the revolution, turned up a year later as members of the “Revolutionary Government.” History has permitted herself such antics more than once. This time the joke was at least a brief one.

A majority of the ministers of Goremykin’s cabinet were no less frightened than the Kadets by the course things were taking, and therefore inclined towards an agreement with the Progressive Bloc. “A government which has not behind it the confidence of the supreme ruler, nor the army, nor the cities, nor the zemstvos, nor the nobles, nor the merchants, nor the workers, not only cannot function, but cannot even exist – the thing is obviously absurd.” In these words, Prince Sherbatov in August 1915 appraised the government in which he himself was Minister of the Interior. “If you only arrange the scene properly and offer a loophole,” said the Foreign Minister Sazonov, “the Kadets will be the first to propose a compromise. Miliukov is the greatest possible bourgeois and fears a social revolution above everything. Besides, a majority of the Kadets are trembling for their own capital.” Miliukov on his side considered that the Progressive Bloc “would have to give in somewhat.” Both sides were ready to bargain, and everything seemed thoroughly oiled. But on August 29 the Premier, Goremykin, a bureaucrat weighed down with years and honours, an old cynic playing politics between two games of grand-patience and defending himself against all complaints by remarking that the war is “not my business,” journeyed out to the tzar at headquarters and returned with the information that all and everybody should remain in their places, except the rambunctious Duma, which was to be dissolved on the 3rd of September. The reading of the tzar’s order dissolving the Duma was heard without a single word of protest: the deputies gave a “hurrah” for the tzar, and dispersed.

How did the tzar’s government, supported according to its own confession by nobody at all, survive for over a year and a half after that? A temporary success of the Russian troops undoubtedly exerted its influence and this was reinforced by the good golden rain. The successes at the front soon ceased, to be sure, but the profits at the rear continued. However, the chief cause of the successful propping up of the monarchy for twelve months before its fall, was to be found in a sharp division in the popular discontent. The chief of the Moscow Secret Service Department reported a rightward tendency of the bourgeoisie under the influence of “a fear of possible revolutionary excesses after the war.” During the war, we note, a revolution was still considered impossible. The industrialists were alarmed, over and above that, by “a coquetting of certain leaders of the Military Industrial Committee with the proletariat.” The general conclusion of this colonel of gendarmes, Martynov – in whom a professional reading of Marxist literature had left some traces – announced as the cause of a certain improvement in the political situation “the steadily growing differentiation of social classes concealing a sharp contradiction in their interests, a contradiction felt especially keenly in the times we are living through.”

The dissolution of the Duma in September 1915 was a direct challenge to the bourgeoisie, not to the workers. But while the liberals were dispersing with cries of “Hurrah!” – to be sure, not very enthusiastic cries – the workers of Petrograd and Moscow responded with strikes of protest. That cooled off the liberals still more. They feared worst of all the intrusion of an uninvited third party in their family discussion with the monarchy. But what further step was to be taken? Accompanied by a slight growl from the left wing, liberalism cast its vote for a well-tried recipe: to stand exclusively on legal grounds, and render the bureaucracy “as it were, unnecessary” in the course of a mere fulfilment of their patriotic functions. The ministerial slate at any rate would have to be laid aside for a time.

The situation in those days was getting worse automatically. In May 1916 the Duma was again convoked, but nobody knew exactly what for. The Duma, in any case, had no intention of summoning a revolution, and aside from that there was nothing for it to say. “At that session” – Rodzianko remembers – “the proceedings were languid; the deputies attended irregularly...The continual struggle seemed fruitless, the government would listen to nothing, irregularities were increasing, and the country was headed for ruin.” In the bourgeoisie’s fear of revolution and its impotence without revolution, the monarchy found, during the year 1916, a simulacrum of social support.

By autumn the situation was still worse. The hopelessness of the war had become evident to all. The indignation of the popular masses threatened any moment to flow over the brim. While attacking the court party as before for Germanophilism, the liberals now deemed it necessary to feel out the chances of peace themselves, preparing their own future. Only in this way can you explain the negotiations of one of the leaders of the Progressive Bloc, the deputy Protopopov, with the German diplomat, Warburg, in Stockholm in the autumn of 1916. The Duma delegation, making friendly visits to the French and English, could easily convince itself in Paris and London that the dear Allies intended in the course of the war to squeeze all the live juice out of Russia, in order after the victory to make this backward country their chief field of economic exploitation. A defeated Russia in tow to a victorious Entente would have meant a colonial Russia. The Russian possessing classes had no other course but to try to free themselves from the too close embrace of the Entente, and find an independent road to peace, making use of the antagonism of the two more powerful camps. The meeting of the Duma deputy with the German diplomat, as a first step on this road, was both a threat in the direction of the Allies with a view to gaining concessions, and a feeling out of the actual possibilities of rapprochement with Germany.