I note that he specifies "The soldiers of Petrograd". Can we take it that those at the front felt the same way?
Probably. I was surprised to learn that as late as the Constituent Assembly elections--i.e., *after* not only the disastrous summer offensive and the Kornilov affair but the October insurrection as well--the soldiers at the front were not unanimous in their preference for the Bolsheviks, even though they were the only party offering any real hope for peace. Rather, it depended on the front:
"The voting at the front and in the navy seems to have been determined by one circumstance alone — the extent to which Bolshevik agitation had been carried on among the rank and file. If the district were remote from the metropolitan centers, and specifically from the influence of the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolshevik party organization, the SR's carried the day, and the farther removed the district was, the greater their degree of success; but on the Northern and Western Fronts the old-line agrarian appeal of the PSR had been overbalanced by intensive propaganda in favor of immediate peace and immediate seizure of the estates, so that here the SR's sustained a crushing defeat and Lenin's party won a great victory.35 The contrast is seen in the accompanying tabulation.
Western Front Roumanian Front
SR 180,582 679,471
Bolshevik 653,430 167,000
Constitutional Democrat 16,750 21,438
Menshevik 8,000 33,858
Ukrainian Socialist Bloc 85,062 180,576
Residue 32,176 46,257
Total 976,000 1,128,600
The observer can only wonder whether the Roumanian Front would have differed from the Western had it not been more insulated against the Bolshevik contagion. Certainly the facts point in that direction. Between the two fronts lay the Southwestern, and here the SR's were already stronger than their rivals, though only by a ratio of 4:3. On the other hand, the Caucasian Front was even more remote than the Roumanian, and it was precisely here that the SR's displayed their greatest strength, electing five deputies against one for the Bolsheviks on the basis of incomplete returns. The explanation of their success is simple: the SR leadership of the soldiers' soviets, strongly in favor of national defense, had used its authority to throttle Bolshevik agitation on the front, even denying to that party representation on electoral information committees, and had gotten away with its one-sided policy because of remoteness from the hearth of revolution. Thus the strength of Bolshevism steadily wanes as the influence of the metropolitan centers recedes. Not only the SR's but also the Mensheviks were helped by distance: thus on the Western Front Menshevism was already virtually extinct by the time of the election, whereas on the Roumanian Front it still retained a following, albeit a modest one. The figures presented above show that Constitutional Democracy had no appeal for the rank and file of the troops--few besides the officers could have chosen its list. On the other hand, the figures reveal that the Ukrainian movement had achieved a not inconsiderable following at the front, where leaders like Simon Petliura, deputy from the Roumanian Front, bore the standard ostensibly of Ukrainian socialism, but actually of Ukrainian nationalism." Oliver H. Radkey, *Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917,* pp.38-39
If as late as November 1917 ''defensist" parties could still get majorities on the Southwestern, Romanian, and Caucasian fronts, one has to assume they had overwhelming support there in March. The Northern and Western Fronts are therefore the key, but it is unlikely that they would turn against the war until the garrisons and soviets in places like Petrograd became radicalized and centers of anti-war and pro-Bolshevik agitation which were then transmitted to the fronts.