The First World War was the main cause of the 1917

February revolution in Russia. To what extent do you

agree with this statement?

The First World War was crucial for the future of the Russian Empire. At the onset of
war, it looked like that the war could temporarily unite the often-conflicting nations
and classes inside the Empire. However as the war went by, the continued
mobilization was met with bigger and bigger hostility. In addition the initial
successes in the war started to turn into defeats. This indirectly resulted in Tsar
losing the support of the army, which was essential in suppressing the previous
1905 revolution. Without the army behind his back, the Tsar had no tools to stop the
revolution. Nonetheless, other factors like the Tsars lack of leadership and the weak
political system also need to be considered. The lack of peoples representative in
the Duma just added to the overall dissatisfaction. The shortage of food was
another factor, but this stemmed from the war again. So even though, the war
didnt directly create the forces of revolution, it certainly set them in motion and
fuelled them.
After the humiliation by the Japanese in 1905, the Russians quickly wanted to
improve their reputation. The Tsar and his ministers therefore decided to turn their
attention to Balkans. When the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated
in Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb nationalists, it kicked off series of events that led to
conflict in whole Europe. When Austrians blamed Serbia for the assassination,
Russia leapt to Serbias defense and declared war not only on Austria-Hungary, but
also its ally Germany. Within few weeks, the whole Europe was in state of war. The
First World War had officially began. As elsewhere in Europe, the war was met with
waves of patriotic enthusiasm in Russia. Crowds gathered in Moscow and St
Peterburg to sing hymns and celebrate Russias opportunity to finally restore its
international prestige, that was so tarnished after the Crimean and Russo-Japanese
war. At first Russian army rode on the waves of public enthusiasm and was winning
the war. The soldiers, whose training and conditions had greatly improved since
1905, swiftly advanced into East Prussia. Things however started to turn from good
to bad when the Germans defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg in
August 1914. Eventhough, 300,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, this
wasnt a catastrophe. Nontheless, this defeat was followed by another, this time at
the Masurian Lakes. The initial enthusiasm quickly evaporated and so the hopes for
a short and victorious campaign. Once the early enthusiasm dissapeared, the
economic weaknesses of the country began to show. If Russia was to win the war, it
was likely to be long struggle for organization and production and most importantly,
where quality to improvise was needed. These however were exactly Russias main
weaknesses. The WWI was also the first European war, where the new technology
was used. The Germans were superior in this aspect. Their army was well organized

and supplied with the latest modern weapons with much higher killing rate than
their opponents. The Russian army lacked all of these. Added with inept military
leadership, there was no way the Russian Empire could win the war. All in all, the
First World War ended in total catastrophe for Russian Empire and had critical
consequences for the Tsarist regime. First of all, because of the heavy defeats and
huge number of Russians killed, lots of Russians started to be angry about the way
the Tsar and the government were conducting war. Also because of the fact that the
Tsar went to the front in 1917 to take personal charge, lots of ordinary Russians felt
that Nicholas II was personally responsible for all the defeats. Also the living
conditions noticeably worsened because of the war. The war caused acute distress
in the cities, especially Petrograd and Moscow. The war meant that food, goods and
raw materials were in short supply and hundreds of factories closed and thousands
of workers put out of work. Also the problem of inflation and lack of fuel turned the
urban workers against the Tsarist government. The problems were even on
countryside, where the peasants became increasingly angry about the conscription
of all young men, who seldom returned from war. To add to that, the Tsar made a
huge mistake in leaving his wife and the monk Rasputin in charge of the
government while he was at front. Because of that, ministers were changed
frequently in favour of friends who performed poorly and as a result, the situation in
the cities deteriorated quickly with food and fuel in short supply. The Tsar was
blamed by the whole society by putting them in charge and soon the higher
intelegentsia of the society and the army generals became disenchanted with the
tsars leadership and stopped supporting him, by 1917 very few people were
prepared to defend him. And finally, it was the failure to do any political reforms
(concessions) during the war that could save his job. The Tsar for example could
have started to cooperate with the Duma or set up a constitutional monarchy, which
would have taken away some pressure away from the Tsar personally. The
Progressive Bloc emerged who suggested that the tsar establish a government of
public confidence, but the tsar rejected even this approach and any other
concessions. This diminished any possibilities of Tsar receiving any support. By the
end of 1916, the support for the Tsar was practically inexistent, even the generals
told the Tsar that they would no longer support him. The WWI and Tsars unability to
react to it was the main reason for this sudden loss of support. However the
revolution was the outcome of a vast array of interacting forces. The war played a
big part in causing and catalysing the events, however the revolution would surely
didnt happen without other factors.

To find the other factors that affected the February Revolution we must move
deeper into history. One of the main problems of the Russian Empire was in its own
people. Because large parts of Russia was added until the 19th century, the Empire
consisted of vast amount of different nationalities, which had nothing in common. In
fact, the Russians represented only half of the population. Each nationality had its

own language, culture and traditions, which made it very difficult to keep all of them
under one rule especially if the Tsar didnt have total control over all the areas of
the Empire. Many nationalities resented Russian control, especially the policy of
Russification, which aimed to force the minorities to use Russian language instead
of their own and adapt to Russian customs. This ignited many uprisings and strikes
by the minorities, who saw Russification as discrimination of their rights. The
dangers to the autocratic government also lied in the problematic social structure of
the Tsarist Russia. As the industry developed, the number of merchants, bankers,
industrialists, lawyers and doctors increased. What was more important, all of them
wanted to change the current autocracy and sought more participation in the
politics. The growing unrest was also present among the ordinary peasants. Even
after the Stolypin land reforms in 1906-1911, the situation of peasants didnt
improve so much. The change was too slow. Even Stolypin himself said that the
reforms would need 20 years of peace to take effect. To add to that the conservative
peasantry was reluctant to abandon the security provided by the communes. Very
few peasants possessed the education, desire for self-improvement and ability to
plan ahead that the reforms required. For that reason, their life continued to be a
quest for survival as most of them only owned small patches of land and had to
work on the states of the nobility for some part of the year. The situation got even
worse by sudden bad harvest, which resulted in widespread starvation and death of
more than 400,000 people in 1891. Also the methods used in agriculture were
inefficient and backwards, wooden ploughs were still used up to this point. In
addition, there was simply not enough land, the vast expansion of the peasant
population in the later half of the 19th century led to overcrowding and relentless
competition for land. The last social class was the urban class. 58% of them were
literate, which was twice the national average. Because lots of them were educated,
they were able to precisely articulate their problems and grievances and were very
prone to the revolutionary ideas. Wages were generally very low and there were
high number of deaths from accidents and works related issues. There was no
insurance in the Tsarist Russia, the regime did very little to help or ease the life of
ordinary workers. The dark, heartless and inhumane side of Tsars regime was well
seen in the Lena Godfields Massacre in April 1912. On one of the strikes where
workers petitioned for better conditions of employment, the Tsars troops decided to
react by firing into the crowd of 5000 people. More than 270 people died. Even
though the Minister of Interior, Nikolai Makarov, defended the action, the Goldfield
massacre like the infamous Bloody Sunday provoked significant wave of outrage
among the workers and politicians of the left. It was then followed by two years of
protests beginning with the May Day strike of 1912, which involved 500,000 workers
and ended with a general strike in St Peterburg in July 1914. The workers were
denied to form trade unions or the right to political representation and so the only
way, by which they could show their dissatisfaction with the regime was by
violence. Beside these long term causes, there were also issues with the
modernization of the country. Because of many peasant unrests and uprisings,
which made the regime much more unstable , and the bad state of the agriculture

and industry, it was crucial to industrialize and modernize the whole economy and
to move people from the land to the cities. However the modernization meant a
serious danger to the autocratic regime, as it was difficult to maintain Tsarist
autocracy with all the liberal changes. There was therefore some kind of
contradiction in Tsars effort for modernization. This view is supported by Orlando
Figes, British historian who specializes on Russian history: Collapse is certainly the
right word to use. For the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal
contradictions. It was not overthrown. On one hand, he wanted to modernize the
stagnating country with liberal, but at the same time he wanted to keep the
autocratic rule. These two things could never work together and so the autocratic
regime was doomed to collapse. To add to that there was pressure on the Tsar from
outside as all of the modern industrial countries had democracies and parliaments
in which the middle class was featured. Significant social tensions were also created
when millions of people moved from land to cities looking from work and better life.
Their situation in the cities however wasnt much better, which led to growing
discontent among workers. Finally, the last problem was with the traditional view of
the Russian monarchy held by Tsar Nicholas II. His backward looking and
unwillingness to change to the modern era was clearly visible in the lavish
celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913. He clearly
believed that the Romanovs will be in power for many years to come. His reluctance
to concession of power, working with Duma and help with the evolutionary process
in politics eventually led to slow, but certain fall of the Tsar and rise of the February
Revolution. The whole process was later on significantly stimulated by the First
World War.

The Revolution had been incubating in Russia for at least a half of century before
1917. The new, modern liberal forces that were supposed to change the politics,
economy and society were being held by the autocratic political system. The war
wasnt solely responsible for the February revolution, it were the deficiencies of the
whole society and the unwillingness of the Tsar to change, which ultimately led to its
collapse. Nonetheless, the war did a great deal to quicken the whole process.
Without it, the state wouldnt weaken in the way it did. Once the Russian Empire
was losing the war, the army and Duma turned against the Tsar. Without their
support, the Tsar had no option than to abdicate and so remove all the obstacles for
February Revolution.