On February 23 of the Russian calendar and March 8 of the Gregorian calendar in 1917, the weather in Petrograd was clear, and the severe cold and wind and snow that lasted for several weeks receded slightly, and the temperature reached minus five degrees. A group of women weavers, who had been waiting in line outside the bakery for hours, could no longer hold back the anger in their hearts, and when they heard that the bread in the shop was gone, they immediately burst into an unprecedented rage, and the angry women rushed into the bakery and looted what little bread was left, while many more spontaneously organized a demonstration.

Within an hour or two of the march of the weaver women, thousands of workers of both sexes quickly gathered in the city, shouting: "Bread! "Peace!" Cross the Neva Bridge to the city council to fight for food and vent grievances.

Bread became the trigger of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Women became the vanguard of lighting the fuse of the revolution. A revolution that everyone had expected broke out in the most unexpected way!

In the morning, in the face of thousands of demonstrative workers, the police in Petrograd were still able to control the situation. In the afternoon, however, tens of thousands of women, who had been suffering from hunger and cold, waiting and lacklustre bread, took to the streets, and the revolutionaries in Petrograd immediately began to hold mass meetings in some of the large factories and led the workers to march through the streets singing the revolutionary songs of 1905, in which the few bakeries in the city were looted. But on the whole, the day was spent peacefully.

"A revolution is brewing!"

When the procession, waving red flags and singing revolutionary songs from the last revolution, passed the Chinese Embassy in Russia, Liu Jingren of the Russian Embassy immediately sent such a telegram to the country. In fact, the same telegrams were sent from the embassies of various countries in Russia, and at this time, any diplomat noticed the drastic changes in the domestic situation in Russia.

"Now Russia. Losing control! ”

When he said this to Counselor Wei Li'an beside him, another question came to Liu Jingren's mind, how to ensure the safety of Chinese investment in Russia and the safety of Russian aid materials in this turmoil.

"Prepare the car, I'm going to visit the East Asia Expeditionary Force Command!"

Perhaps, there is some protection there!

The next day, Friday, the usual meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers was held at the Palazzo Maria, at which the members of the Cabinet continued to discuss the issues of war and supplies. Especially the problem of bread and fuel supply in the city, which naturally brings us to the march in Petrograd, but everyone knows that if you want to solve the parade, you have to solve the problem of bread. However, there was no agreement on how to solve the problem of bread.

It was only after the meeting that the cabinet ministers were shocked to find that they could no longer go home. All the main streets of Petrograd have been blocked by demonstrators, who have numbered 200,000 people. And in this situation, the cabinet members almost immediately thought of the Cossack cavalry, with the help of this army loyal to the tsar, to maintain order for the prime minister.

The authorities then sent Cossack cavalry to maintain order. The workers gathered from the Vyborg district and marched towards the city center, where the demonstrator met the Cossack cavalry in a narrow place. Workers facing the march. The officers first rushed into the ranks of the masses with straight faces, and rode their horses to open the way. The cavalry behind them carefully followed the passage opened by the officers and passed in columns. This is not the usual way to disperse a crowd! The demonstrators saw some of the Cossack cavalry smiling and some winking at the workers in a friendly manner.

This discovery shocked everyone.

The Cossack cavalry, which had always been at the vanguard of the suppression of demonstrations, did not wave a whip at them! The Cossack cavalry, always loyal to the Tsar, also understood the mood of the population! In fact, after three years of war, even these belligerent Cossacks were tired of endless wars, and of course even more tired of never being able to taste the fruits of victory. …,

The change in the Cossacks only made the demonstrators more confident in communicating with them and more courageous in their own steps. In the same way, the courage shown by a handful of soldiers infected the Cossacks, and the blinking one found an imitator. No matter what the officers ordered, the Cossack cavalry just did not disperse the masses. The crowd gave them a friendly shout, and they smiled good-naturedly. Individual Cossack cavalrymen also answered the questions of the workers and communicated with them. The boundaries between the repressors and those repressed have been broken. Faced with this situation, the Cossack cavalry officers could only abandon the idea of dispersing the population and ordered the Cossack cavalry to cross the streets with horseback and prevent the demonstrators from going to the city center. The Cossack cavalry was ordered to stand in a horizontal column, but they did not prevent the workers from getting under the belly of the horse.

On this day, citizens and employees who were constantly watching joined the demonstration procession, and they broke through the obstacles in various ways, and tens of thousands of people rushed into Lijiein Street. On Vasilyev Island, university students unite with workers. Crowds demonstrated at the Kazan Bridge, Nevsky Prospect, Suvorov Prospect, Lydein Prospect and Znamensky Square, where the demonstrators snatched the tram driver's keys from the tram driver, the streets were littered with messy barricades, and some shops in the natural rich areas were beaten, smashed and looted by the so-called "revolutionary masses". After the demonstrations broke out, the small business owners who rushed to the door to "demand their support for the revolution" and feared that their shops would be attacked could only plant red flags in front of their doors according to the demands of the revolutionaries, and then provide free food and drinks to the participants in the demonstrations, so as to avoid being smashed and looted by the revolutionary masses.

The Tsar, who had learned of the situation in the capital, gave the commander of the Petrograd garrison, General Khabarov, a stylized edict to quell the unrest as soon as possible, which was only a small part of his full-day work. On this day, he was awarded the Belgian medal of "Crusader", however, he was not happy. Alexandra telegraphed from Tsarskoye that her son and two daughters had measles. His heart was tied to the sick children like the queen.

After receiving orders from the Tsar, General Khabarov issued a circular warning the population not to take to the streets in recent days, and that social order must be restored, otherwise the government would be forced to use force to restore order to the Prime Minister. Khabarov believed in the deterrent effect of military repression on the Russian people, and he had seen too many protests of all kinds. He had extensive experience in suppressing popular movements, and in fact, in 1905 he fully demonstrated his ability to suppress popular uprisings and demonstrations.

Based on past experience, on March 8. He mobilized only the police in the capital. After the police mobilization failed, on the next day, March 9, he was able to move the cavalry into the streets again. In the uncertain future of this major war and the emergence of endless domestic contradictions, it is indeed a matter of time and how much force to use to suppress the popular movement, and for General Khabarov, the decision he can make depends on the development of events.

And the government's wait-and-see attitude in the first two days. And objectively provoked the revolutionary impulse of the population, in which case the capital immediately lost order, but life went on. Lermontov's "Masquerade", directed by the dramatist Meyerhold, who is on the same level as Stanislavsky, is about to be presented to the Petrograd public after five years of preparation. The premiere was on March 10. The streets are plastered with advertisements for "The Masquerade". On the evening after the last rehearsal, the actors discovered a sight that they will never forget: "Bonfires were lit everywhere in the streets and squares, and workers sat around them - there were no police!" ”

Until late at night, there were demonstrations on Nevsky Prospect by people who had been operating underground. They took to the streets and made impassioned speeches in front of the crowd. …,

On March 10, the popular movement continued to rise throughout the city, and even small and medium-sized enterprise workers joined the march. The mass of marches and demonstrations reached 300,000 people, planned and led by the revolutionaries. There was constant unrest in the city, and the mood of the people was also getting high. The demonstrators shouted slogans that read "Russian Socialist Labor Party", "Down with the war!" Red flags with the words "and so on."

The Socialist Labour Party is based mainly on the urban working class and the lower classes. A political party with the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat as its program. They advocated the overthrow of the system by revolution, and the leader of the last revolution was the Socialist Labour Party. At this point, for the working masses, they chose to express an uncompromising attitude towards the "system" in a fighting mood.

Khabarov's warnings had no effect, and the gathered crowd was forcefully dispersed by the police, who responded with stones and ice. At the same time, the revolutionaries mixed with the procession, in order to agitate the people, began to preach "The Cossacks promised not to shoot", and then the phrase was spread among the demonstrators.

In fact, the Namu Cossack cavalry became more and more sympathetic to the demonstrators, and when the demonstrators clashed with the police and were driven away by the crowd, the cavalry watched and laughed as if they were laughing. Even the demonstrators fled under the whipping of the mounted police, and he and several other workers fled to the Cossack cavalry, shouting:

"Cossack brothers, help the workers in their struggle for peace, and see how the Pharaohs (a slang for the police) treat our hungry workers. Please help us! "The Cossacks looked at each other, then raised their whips and divided the police and the population with their horses, although they did this to stop the mass bloodshed, but no one expected that their actions would condone the demonstrations in the capital, and even give everyone the illusion that the Cossacks had begun to fall towards the revolution!

Soon the police in the capital disappeared completely, leaving only the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison. The workers asked the soldiers, who had dealings with them on a daily basis, in a panic:

"Are you here to help the police?"

But the answer they got was just a crude one

"Go away".

When questioned again, the result was the same. Faced with this situation, the social workers, who were going underground, planned to pick out the most beautiful women among the people, and then put them in the most beautiful clothes, and the women who knew the soldiers walked in front, and then rushed into the soldiers' lines, holding the soldiers' guns in their hands, and prayed:

"Soldiers, take off your bayonets and stand with us."

Faced with these beautiful women, the soldiers were shaken at this moment. They raised their bayonets high over the heads of the crowd, the sentry line was scattered, and the soldiers were surrounded by the crowd that swarmed in, and everywhere there were arguments, accusations, and pleas. The composure of the human mind is fully demonstrated at this moment, when the soldiers are confronted with far more popular demands than they are, their only choice is to follow the choice of the vast majority, and even the officers cannot stop it, and when some of the officers try to stop it, they are often surrounded by a group of strong workers, who will be beaten by the workers with their mouths covered, stabbed with daggers, and then dragged into the river or thrown into the alley surrounded by the workers.

At this time, when the whole of Petrograd was out of order, there was only one place in the city of Petrograd where order was still maintained, in front of a palace-like courtyard on Pushtinskaya Street, hundreds of Chinese soldiers with loaded guns occupied the ends of the street, and pulled several barbed wire fences in the shape of snakes in the streets, and behind the barbed wire, Chinese soldiers wearing steel helmets and rifles in their hands, who had succeeded in preventing any marchers who tried to enter the city in the past few days, and according to the orders they had received, "force may be used if necessary." Every time the demonstrators tried to storm the street, the bayonets with their rifles and scabbards did not hesitate to stab at the demonstrators, and in their screams, the impact was stopped. …,

"It seems that Russia has lost order!"

Looking through the glass window at the shouts and small teams of smashing and looting from time to time on the streets outside the cordon, Xu Shuzheng, the chief of staff of the East Asian Expeditionary Force, shook his head and sighed lightly.

"General, now I am worried about the country's investments in Russia, and we must ensure the safety of these investments......"

Faced with the request of the ambassador to Russia, Xu Shuzheng smiled bitterly, and then turned to look at Liu Jingren, who came to visit again.

"With what to ensure? Ambassador Liu"

With a wry smile, Xu Shuzheng pointed to the door and said.

"Now, the only troops I can mobilize at hand are soldiers from this battalion......"

"General, what about the East Asian Expeditionary Force? I think it is important for us to get in touch with the Russian government as soon as possible, and since the Cossacks and the Russian army are out of control, move the expeditionary force into Petrograd to help the Russian government restore order here before the situation deteriorates further......"

Before Liu Jingren finished speaking, Xu Shuzheng took out a telegram, and then handed it to Liu Jingren and said.

"The East Asian Expeditionary Force? See for yourself! ”

"This ......"

After receiving the telegram, Liu Jingren was taken aback, how could this be, how could it be...... (To be continued......)

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