"Don't shoot at your brothers and sisters, join us!"
Gripping the cold bayonets and muzzles with both hands, the women affectionately appealed to the conscience of the St. Petersburg garrison, hoping that they would not shoot at the unarmed parade.
However, the gunshots continued to ring out at the officer's orders, and more than forty women fell in pools of blood.
On March 8, 1917, International Women's Day, women workers in St. Petersburg took to the streets, shouting slogans such as "We want bread", "We want peace", "Down with the tsar", "Give us back the husband in the front trenches", and took to the streets in droves.
In fact, since January of this year, the strikes and marches in St. Petersburg have not stopped, and in addition to commemorating the "Bloody Sunday" of 1905, the workers are also demonstrating to the tsarist government, demanding that the government solve the problem of food shortages as soon as possible.
However, at that time, the women were still lining up at the gate of the almshouse, waiting to receive the bread, and occasionally irritable women would join the procession.
This time, however, unlike in the past, the more than a month of workers' demonstrations did not attract the attention of the Tsar, and the government even closed factories where women were the majority of workers in order to deter the workers.
The women workers could not bear it anymore and spontaneously took to the streets to protest and became the vanguard of the demonstration.
As the procession marched towards the Hermitage, people continued to join the procession, and the size soon swelled to more than 90,000 people.
Tens of thousands of soldiers, policemen, mounted policemen, gendarmes, and Cossack cavalry, lined up and stood ready for the battle, as if the black muzzles, the cold bayonets, and the gorgeously crafted sabers could swallow up the entire procession in an instant.
The women walked at the front of the ranks, without fear, without flinching, without hesitation, wanting to arouse the sympathy of the soldiers and avoid bloodshed.
But unexpectedly, the officer still gave the order to shoot at the crowd, which completely ignited the anger of the procession, and the women still rushed to the front, fearlessly rushing to the soldiers who were waiting for them.
The soldiers were moved by the death-defying procession, and riots began to erupt in the procession.
The officer's orders were not followed, the line was constantly retreating, and some soldiers even turned their guns on the verge of turning their guns on their comrades.
The Cossack cavalry, brandishing their sabers, rushed into the crowd in an attempt to break up the procession, but were shot off their horses by their comrades.
Many of the marchers were arrested by the police and rescued by the defective soldiers.
The march in St. Petersburg grew in size, swelling to 250,000 people in two days, including workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, small business owners, and even many rank-and-file officials, officers, and soldiers.
The 150,000 garrisons of the capital, from the very beginning, when soldiers defected, were like a flood that burst the embankment, and in less than 12 hours, 66,700 people joined the march.
Not only did the anti-water soldiers carry weapons and ammunition, but they even took the initiative to open the doors of the armory and hand out weapons, including pistols, rifles, machine guns and artillery, to the unarmed marching crowd.
In an instant, a peaceful demonstration turned into an armed uprising to overthrow the Tsarist autocracy, thanks to the intervention of the military.
In just 5 days, the rebel contingent waving the red flag occupied almost all of St. Petersburg.
The weapons of the military police and gendarmes were disarmed, the key departments of the city, such as water, electricity, mail, government, food, stations, barracks and police stations, were occupied, and St. Petersburg could not send even a single telegram without the permission of the rebels.
The Red Uprising in St. Petersburg quickly spread throughout Russia, with red flags flying everywhere in the cities and countryside, and even the troops at the front fell to the revolutionary ranks.
Nicholas II, who was stranded at the station of the Lesser Visela in the Nov-Russian Rhodost province, received the news of the great changes in Russia on the special train back to St. Petersburg, and the accompanying officials said with a serious expression: "This is not a riot, Your Majesty, it is a revolution!"
A few days ago, Nicholas II, who was in the base camp of the front, had just received a letter from Empress Alexandra, in which he wrote: "There have been some riots in the capital, dear, but it's no big deal, it will be calmed down soon, don't worry!"
Nicholas II naively thought at the time that this might really be a small riot, but nothing more than an innocuous parade of "bread".
His handling of the matter was as simple and crude as before, and he sent a telegram to Khabarov, commander of the Petrograd garrison: "The riots must be suppressed. ”
However, the magic weapon of force suppression not only did not work, but instead lit the flame of the uprising.
Nicholas II then sent a loyal veteran general, the commander of the South-Western Front, Ivanov, to St. Petersburg to suppress the rebels.
However, Ivanov led his troops to the outskirts of St. Petersburg only to find that the officers and soldiers under his command were out of control, and they actually joined forces with the rebel army who went out of the city to meet them.
Ivanov, escorted by his personal escort, quickly fled back to the base camp and hid.
Not only that, but the Naval Guards, who defended Tsarskoye Village, also fell to the rebels under the leadership of Nicholas II's cousin.
The army defected, the nobility defected, and even the Cossack Guards, loyal to the Tsar, raised the red banner, and the 170,000 Russian troops ordered to march to St. Petersburg to quell the rebellion sided with the rebels.
There were also tens of thousands of Russian troops who received orders, which were blocked by the rebels in the middle of the road, and it was difficult to take a step forward to St. Petersburg.
In the whole of St. Petersburg, only the Admiralty building, which was next to the Winter Palace, was still stubbornly resisting, and it was only a matter of time before it was occupied by the rebels, and Nicholas II fell into complete despair.
He wanted to leave the small Visera station and return to the front headquarters, but because of the interference of the railway workers, the railway line could not be used, so he had to change to a horse-drawn carriage and return to the front base camp.
Nicholas II could not understand why a "bread" parade had developed to the point where it is today.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette and sat there dejectedly without saying a word.
At some point, Duma Chairman Rodencko walked up to him and said meaningfully: "Your Majesty, if you still want to keep the Romanov dynasty, you have only one choice - abdication!"
Nicholas II froze, he had long been aware of the problem, but still wanted to hear the opinion of the generals.
Vice Admiral Kolchak, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, who had just been promoted, did not express an opinion on this; among the remaining army generals, in addition to Sakharov, commander of the Romanian Front, Ruzsky, commander of the Northwestern Front, and Brusilov, commander of the Southwestern Front, all supported Rodchenko's proposal.
Tsar Nicholas II, who was intrigued, immediately signed the abdication document, but passed the throne not to his only son Alexei, but to his younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail.
Interestingly, Mikhail was far more sober than his royal brother, and had long seen the irreversibility of the situation and refused to accept the crown.
In this way, the Tsar's crown fell to the ground, the Romanov dynasty in 304 withdrew from the stage of history, the tsarist system in 371 came to an end, and Russia began the era of Soviet Russia in which two regimes coexisted.
This tremendous revolution was the turning point in Russian history - the "February Revolution"!
It should be noted that although the time of this official outbreak was "March 8", the Julian calendar was used during the Tsarist period, which was exactly 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar, which was "February 23", so this revolution was called the "February Revolution".
And 1917 was not only the most turbulent year in the history of Russia, but also the year in which Russia attracted the attention of the world.
This was the year in which two revolutions broke out in Russia: the "February Revolution", which overthrew Tsarist rule, and the "October Revolution", which changed the political landscape of the world.
Without the "February Revolution," the Bolsheviks, representing the proletariat, as they are often called, the "Soviets" and the "Communist Party of the Soviet Union," would not have been able to grow by leaps and bounds, and naturally there would not have been the "October Revolution" that followed.
Therefore, the "February Revolution" was seen as the starting point for changing the political landscape of the world.
There are many reasons for the outbreak of the revolution, such as historical problems, social contradictions, the impact of World War I on Russian society, the chaotic government of the demon monk Rasputin, and the extremely cold weather that occurs once in a century, etc., and many factors combined to trigger the "February Revolution".
It is worth mentioning that it was the women workers in St. Petersburg who opened the revolution and decided the course of the revolution at the cost of their lives.
Therefore, there is also a view in the historiographical circles that "women knocked out the Tsar's crown", which also proves the power of women to a certain extent.
As an American scholar said, there are two kinds of people in this world that are best not to be provoked: one is a mentally abnormal person, because a lion never bites a mad dog, and the other is a woman, because history has proved that a woman can burst out with superhuman destructive power at a certain time!