Morning at the corps headquarters began unusually quietly.
Wet snow had fallen again during the night, and now the railway station outside the windows slowly disappeared beneath gray spring slush. Locomotives released thick steam into the cold air while endless military trains continued arriving with reinforcements, horses, artillery equipment, and supplies.
But inside headquarters, the attention of the officers that morning was focused elsewhere.
Several fresh telegrams from Petrograd already lay across the long table.
Bezruchko quickly reviewed one of them and frowned.
—"This is more serious."
Sliwinski looked up from the map.
—"What now?"
Without answering, Bezruchko handed him the sheet.
For several seconds, the only sound inside the office was the crackling stove.
Then Sliwinski slowly lowered the telegram back onto the table.
—"God…"
Handziuk irritably reached for the document.
—"Give me that."
He began reading several lines aloud:
—"Creation of elected soldiers' committees… control over weapons… officers' orders to be followed only if they do not contradict the decisions of the Soviet…"
With every new line, the expression on his face became heavier.
Finally, he sharply threw the telegram back onto the table.
—"This is no longer an army."
Silence settled across the room.
Everyone present understood the meaning of the new order too well.
Order No. 1.
Only a few pages of text. Yet for the old officer corps, it looked almost like the beginning of the destruction of the entire military system.
Omelianovych-Pavlenko slowly shook his head.
—"Now this will spread everywhere."
Sliwinski still stared at the order.
—"Does the Provisional Government even understand the consequences?"
—"Right now they are thinking about Petrograd, not the front," Bezruchko answered darkly. —"They are trying to hold the capital together."
Handziuk exhaled heavily.
—"And the army will pay the price for it."
Outside, another long locomotive whistle echoed across the station.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Pavlo Skoropadskyi calmly picked up the telegram and slowly reread the order.
The others quietly watched his reaction.
But outwardly, he remained calm.
Only his gaze lingered slightly longer on the lines concerning soldiers' committees and control over weapons.
That was what worried him most.
Not the revolution itself.
But the gradual destruction of discipline inside millions of armed men.
Skoropadskyi slowly placed the telegram back onto the table.
—"Panic will change nothing now."
Handziuk gave an irritated smirk.
—"And what will?"
Skoropadskyi did not answer immediately.
Outside the station, soldiers unloaded crates of artillery shells. Officers shouted over the noise of steam engines while railway workers hurried between the platforms. Somewhere in the distance, another telegraph machine began clicking rapidly.
The Empire still continued moving forward through sheer inertia.
But now the old mechanisms of authority were beginning to fail one after another.
—"We will have to adapt to the new reality faster than everyone else," Skoropadskyi finally said calmly.
Bezruchko studied him carefully.
—"Otherwise?"
Skoropadskyi glanced once more toward the telegram.
—"Otherwise the army will begin collapsing faster than the command realizes."
Nobody inside the office argued with those words.
By midday, copies of Order No. 1 had already spread through most of the nearby units.
At first, officers attempted to maintain outward calm.
Training schedules continued. Guards remained posted. Supply wagons still moved through the station yards. Officers continued signing reports and checking formation lists as though nothing had changed.
But inside the army, the atmosphere was becoming increasingly uneasy.
Near one of the reserve battalions stationed outside the railway junction, several dozen soldiers gathered beside the barracks shortly after lunch. Someone had brought a newspaper from Kyiv. Others already carried handwritten copies of the new order folded inside their coat pockets.
Voices grew louder with every passing minute.
—"It says officers can't punish soldiers without committee approval now."
—"And we can elect our own representatives."
—"About time."
A few men laughed quietly.
Nearby, several older front-line veterans listened more cautiously. Most had already spent years in trenches stretching from Galicia to Romania. They looked far less enthusiastic than the younger replacements.
One sergeant finally spoke in a tired voice.
—"Careful what you celebrate."
Another soldier frowned.
—"Why? The officers won't be able to treat us like cattle anymore."
The sergeant slowly lit a cigarette before answering.
—"Because once nobody obeys orders, the Germans will not care about your committees."
For a few moments, the group fell quieter.
But only briefly.
The arguments quickly resumed.
Some spoke about freedom. Others about land. Several openly demanded peace and immediate negotiations to end the war.
For the first time, many soldiers no longer lowered their voices while speaking about politics in front of officers.
That change was impossible to ignore.
A young lieutenant approached the gathering with visible irritation.
—"Enough. Return to duty immediately."
Several soldiers obeyed at once.
Others remained standing.
One infantryman looked directly at the officer.
—"We have the right to discuss these matters now."
The lieutenant stopped for a moment.
Not long ago, such words would have resulted in immediate arrest.
Now even he himself no longer seemed certain how far his authority truly extended.
—"You still have obligations as soldiers," he answered more carefully than before.
—"And officers now have obligations too," another voice replied from the crowd.
Several men nodded in agreement.
The lieutenant's expression tightened.
For a brief second, anger flashed across his face. But just as quickly, uncertainty replaced it.
The old rules were disappearing too fast.
In the distance, another train slowly rolled into the station under clouds of steam and coal smoke. Military police escorted several arrested deserters across the platform while railway workers shouted over the noise of unloading equipment.
The machinery of war still functioned.
But now politics had entered the army itself.
And every officer present could already feel how dangerous that would become.
By evening, tension had spread far beyond individual units.
At the major railway junctions, maintaining the old order was becoming increasingly difficult. Military trains carrying reinforcements, wounded soldiers, artillery, and supplies continued moving through the stations without pause, but together with the soldiers, rumors, newspapers, political leaflets, and news from Petrograd were spreading across the country even faster.
Near the corps headquarters station, a crowd of soldiers gathered around a newspaper vendor who had just arrived on a train from Kyiv.
—"What are they writing now?"
—"Will the government survive?"
—"Is it true there will be elections now?"
Newspapers passed from hand to hand faster than officers could confiscate them.
Nearby, several railway workers argued with military officers about the events in the capital.
—"The government should have changed long ago," one worker said while wiping coal dust from his hands. —"How much longer were people supposed to live like before?"
An older captain looked at him darkly.
—"Right now the important thing is not destroying the country completely."
The worker only shrugged.
—"Maybe it's already falling apart on its own."
The captain gave no answer.
Because conversations like these were beginning to sound less like ordinary complaints.
And more like a growing sense that enormous changes were approaching.
Inside one of the railway service offices, transportation officers attempted to untangle another wave of conflicting orders.
Kyiv demanded faster train departures. Army headquarters ordered several formations delayed. A neighboring district requested additional locomotives.
Some instructions already directly contradicted others.
One staff officer irritably threw his pencil onto the table.
—"Every day it becomes harder to manage this."
His colleague gave a tired smirk.
—"And the revolution has only just begun."
Through the open doorway came the endless sounds of the station: locomotive whistles, workers shouting, steel wheels grinding across tracks, soldiers arguing somewhere in the darkness.
Outwardly, the enormous machinery of the Empire still continued functioning.
But inside it, disorder was slowly beginning to spread.
Even ordinary orders were taking longer to carry out. Documents disappeared during transport. Some trains arrived a full day late or more. Arguments between soldiers and officers became increasingly common.
And most importantly, nobody any longer understood where this process would end.
Late that evening, Skoropadskyi once again gathered his closest officers inside the main headquarters office.
Fresh telegrams, morale reports from nearby units, and railway dispatches lay scattered across the large table.
Bezruchko tiredly rubbed his eyes.
—"Committees are appearing faster than we can even receive reports about them."
Handziuk added darkly:
—"And some officers are already afraid to interfere."
Sliwinski calmly reviewed another document.
—"For now, discipline is still holding."
—"For now," Bezruchko repeated irritably.
For several seconds, silence filled the room once again.
Outside the station, evening trains still moved through the darkness. The distant glow of railway lamps flickered beyond the windows while locomotive engines rumbled somewhere beyond the platforms.
Skoropadskyi silently studied the papers spread before him.
Then he calmly said:
—"The worst mistake now would be trying to stop everything through force alone."
Handziuk frowned.
—"So we simply watch?"
—"No," Skoropadskyi answered. —"But if part of the command begins crushing everything too aggressively, it will only accelerate the chaos."
Bezruchko looked at him carefully.
—"Then what do we do?"
Skoropadskyi paused briefly before answering.
—"Maintain control where control still exists."
He shifted his gaze toward the railway map spread across the table.
—"The army still exists. The railways are still functioning. Supplies are still moving."
A short pause followed.
—"As long as the system still holds together, we hold order with it."
Silence settled across the office once again.
Nobody argued anymore about the fact that the old army had begun changing.
The only question now was how quickly the process would move beyond anyone's control.