Central detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, the Finland Train Station, east of the Fortress, where Lenin made his triumphal return, the Tauride (Taurisches) Palace, which housed the Duma and later the Petrograd Soviet.
St Petersburg (Petrograd); Neva River, Peter and Paul Fortress; Nevski Prospect, Finland Bahnhof (Train Station); Taurisches (Tauride) Palace
"On Thursday, March 8, as Nicholas's train was carrying him away from the capital back to Headquarters, the silent, long-suffering breadlines suddenly erupted. Unwilling to wait any longer, people broke into the bakeries and helped themselves. Columns of protesting workers from the industrial Vyborg section marched across the Neva bridges toward the center of the city. A procession, composed mainly of women chanting 'Give us bread,' filled the Nevsky Prospect. The demonstration was peaceful; nevertheless, at dusk a squadron of Cossacks trotted down the Nevsky Prospect, the clatter of their hoofs sounding the government's warning."
March 8 is, and was in 1917, International Women's Day, and women marched through the Russian capital of Petrograd demanding bread. Men joined the march, workers from the Vyborg section north of the Neva River, in the largest demonstration yet. The food shortages that had heightened the tension in the city had brought the demand for food to the fore, and the demand for Peace and Bread had been truncated to the one essential: Give us bread! Mounted Cossacks, used by Tsar Nicholas II and his predecessors to crush dissent, did not intervene on the 8th. Oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, the Tsar, commander of the Army, returned to his headquarters.
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie by Robert K. Massie, page 399, copyright © 1967, renewed 1995 by Robert K. Massie, publisher: Random House, publication date: 2011
1917-03-08, 1917, March, Petrograd, Nicholas, bread line, International Women's Day
