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Russian Revolution in 1917/short term causes (The First World War placed…

- - - - Russia had been humiliated in Russo Japanese war with Japan, 1904.
      - There were many nationalities, languages and religions (the only unity was the Romanov dynasty).
        
        The House of Romanov (Russian: Рома́новы, IPA: [rɐˈmanəf]) was the second dynasty, after the House of Rurik, to rule over Russia, and reigned from 1613 until the abdication of Czar Nicholas II on March 15, 1917, as a result of the February Revolution.
      - Russia was vast – 125 million people spread across Europe and Asia. This made government difficult, especially because of poor communications – bad roads and few railways.
      - An out-of-date farming economy. Most of the population were peasants who lived in the country and are under the control of the nobles.
      - Russia was beginning to industrialise (eg Trans-Siberian railway, 1904). Towns/ factories were starting to grow up. But there was worker poverty and poor living conditions – which created a large workforce, disaffected and concentrated in Petrograd, the capital. Also a small wealthier middle class were beginning to want a say in the government.
      - Tsar Nicholas was an autocrat – Nicholas carried out all the business of government alone, without even a secretary, an impossible load He was a weak Tsar. At first he refused to compromise then, in the crisis of 1917, failed to act.
      - There was opposition to the government from:
        
        • The Kadets - middle classes and liberal landowners who wanted Russia to have a Parliament like England.
        
        • Social Revolutionaries (wanted a peasant revolution, and to take all the land from the nobles).
        
        • The Communists (followers of Karl Marx), who were divided into the moderate Mensheviks (wanted Communism without a revolution) and the extremist Bolsheviks (wanted a violent proletarian revolution).
        
        • After 1900, there were many assassinations and protests (eg Bloody Sunday, 1905 and the murder of Prime Minister Stolypin in 1911).
    - - War-weariness brought about by military defeat and starvation, which fostered strikes in the factories and desertion from, and mutiny in, the army.
        
        The army was badly led and poorly equipped. Russian defeats at Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes – the Russians lost 200,000 men – lost the government the support of the army
        
        The losses in the Russo Japanese War and World War I did not help the Russian situation.
      - The war took 15 million men from the farms and trains had to be used for the war (so they could not bring food to the cities) so there were food shortages and food prices rose, all of which created anger and unrest in Petrograd
    - - The Tsar took personal command of the army – which did not help the war effort and meant he was blamed for the defeats.
      - He left the Tsarina in charge. She was incompetent (she let Rasputin run the government), and (because she was a German) rumours circulated that she was trying to help Germany to win.
        
        Rasputin
        
        Many Russians were not fond of Rasputin. They did not trust him, leading to tension between the tsarist regime and the people of Russia
    - - On 8 March 1917, there were riots in Petrograd about the food shortages and the war.
        On 12 March the Army abandoned the Tsar – the soldiers mutinied and refused to put down the riots.
        
        The government lost control of the country.
        
        Proof of why the military was vital to the tsars survival of the 1905 revolution