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
"In spite of the warning of the Military Governor, the mob is becoming increasingly disorderly and aggressive; in the Nevsky Prospekt it is getting larger every hour. Four or five times the troops have been compelled to fire to escape being brushed aside. There are scores dead.Towards the end of the day, two of my secret informers whom I had sent into the industrial quarters returned with the report that the ruthless measures of repression adopted have taken the heart our of the workmen, who were saying that they had 'had enough of going to the Nevsky Prospekt to be killed!'But another informer tells me that the Volhynian Regiment of the Guard refused to fire. This is a fresh factor in the situation and reminds me of the sinister warning of October 31."
Excerpt from the entry for Sunday, March 11, 1917, from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia. The demonstrations begun on March 8, International Women's Day, had grown each day, and become more threatening to the government, filling the Nevsky Prospect, a broad boulevard through the heart of the city. In attempting to suppress the demonstration, the Volhynian Regiment had fired on the demonstrators, then returned to their barracks where the soldiers debated through the night. On the following day they would come out for the demonstrators and revolution. October 31, 1916, was the second day of strikes in Petrograd when a skirmish between strikers and facotry foremen and engineers led to the police being called. The police, unable to handle the situation, called for two infantry regiments to assist. The infantry sided with the strikers and killed several policemen. Order was restored when four regiments of mounted Cossacks drove the infantry men back to their barracks. The Ambassador recorded on November 9 that 150 soldiers of the regiments that turned on the police had been shot. Workers went on strike on hearing the news.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, page 217, publisher: George H. Doran Company
1917-03-11, 1917, March, Petrograd, strike
