Alexander P. de Seversky and the Quest for Air Power

3. Revolutionary Changes

30 3 Revolutionary Changes Early in March 1917, Alexander P. de Seversky received appointment as squadron leader of the Second Pursuit Squadron being established on Ösel Island and employing the new M-11 flying boat. Unfortunately, on one of his Petrograd trips between the Shchetinin Aircraft factory and the Admiralty building, headquarters of the Imperial Russian Navy, the young aviator suffered a bad accident. Freezing weather and reckless driving explain why a truck skidded into de Seversky’s motorcycle. It left him with bruises and injuries, including multiple fractures of his good leg along with absolute destruction of his wooden one. He stayed in the hospital not only until his injuries were all healed but until he was completely rehabilitated and refitted with a new prosthesis. The hospital did not release him until May 21.1 Russian Revolution As a result, de Seversky missed both his combat assignment and the first phase of the Russian Revolution. Bread and fuel shortages in Petrograd ignited on March 8, 1917, a popular uprising in opposition of the regime of Tsar Nicholas II. Four days later, some members of the dismissed Duma— the unrepresentative assembly with limited powers—met in the Tauride Palace and appointed themselves and other public figures to the Provisional Government. Overly sensitive of their temporary status, the new ministers deferred many decisions, including such pressing issues as land reform and the status of minorities. Elected delegates representing the capital’s workers as well as soldiers, who generally came from the peasant masses, occupied 31 Revolutionary Changes another hall in the same Tauride Palace on March 12, to establish a popular council, or soviet. Dominated by socialist parties and soon to be imitated in most Russian towns and cities, the Petrograd Soviet exercised real power because of its electoral base in the larger population. When de Seversky left the hospital in May, he certainly understood that dramatic events had taken place. He was not a Slavic version of an awakened and clueless Rip Van Winkle. While recuperating from his injuries, he read newspapers and journals and heard stories and rumors from patients, nurses, and visitors. Nevertheless, he reentered a world turned upside down. He had pledged his life and loyalty to a tsar and government that had collapsed. Moreover, the military system he had known no longer existed. The Petrograd Soviet had issued Order Number One on March 15, 1917. It established a system of soldier and sailor committees that undermined officers’ authority. Over the next several months, discipline seeped away from the Russian army as peasant soldiers walked out of the war, especially in midsummer, to participate in removing land from the gentry during the greatest confiscation of property in the history of the planet.2 When committees mandated by Order Number One asserted power over officers, de Seversky found his privileged status in both nobility and military transformed into a liability. Indeed, the greatest potential threat to him and other naval officers came from the lower ranks. Often sharing a proletarian heritage with the Marxist-oriented working class and often receiving harsh treatment from arrogant officers, sailors quickly resorted to violence once the opportunity arrived. As March riots in the capital unleashed turmoil, seamen in the Baltic Fleet sought revenge for real or imagined grievances by murdering seventy-six officers, including the commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet, Adm. Adrian I. Nepenin. Later, many of these same sailors from the Baltic theater served as the armed guardians upholding and protecting the second, or Bolshevik, phase of the Russian Revolution.3 While traditional command and harsh discipline gave way to an increasingly ill-disciplined and hard-to-command military force, exceptions existed. Two of them influenced de Seversky’s life for the remainder of the war. One departure centered on the Gulf of Riga. Naval officers and men who had served together on dangerous missions possessed a bond missing for those in ships anchored months on end in ports outside of the combat area. This bond allowed officers to command ships as they had in the past but 32 Revolutionary Changes now under loose protocol and with the endorsement of sailor committees. Another deviation occurred at military aerodromes. True, mechanics now wanted better food, housing, and pay for their services, while some lower ranks that had provided muscle, maintenance, and security drifted away from their posts. Nevertheless, even under lax conditions and growing shortages, aerodromes continued to...