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Historians debate whether it was inevitable that the tsar would abdicate in March 1917. A significant factor was the First World War. The conflict created poor conditions in Russia. Food and fuel shortages caused mass protests in Moscow and Petrograd. With a proper government, these issues may have been solvable.
- Overview
- World War I and the decline of the Russian Empire
Corruption and inefficiency were widespread in the imperial government, and ethnic minorities were eager to escape Russian domination. Peasants, workers, and soldiers finally rose up after the enormous and largely pointless slaughter of World War I destroyed Russia’s economy as well as its prestige as a European power.
Russian Revolution of 1905
Learn about the uprising that laid the foundation for the 1917 revolution.
World War I
Learn about World War I, an important catalyst for the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Why is it called the October Revolution if it took place in November?
Centuries of virtually unchecked Russian expansion in Asia ended with an embarrassing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). This military reverse shattered Russia’s dreams of establishing hegemony over the whole of Asia, but it also contributed to a wave of domestic unrest. The Revolution of 1905 compelled Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto, which ostensibly transformed Russia from an unlimited autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. The tsar’s reactionary policies, including the occasional dissolution of the Duma, or Russian parliament, the chief fruit of the 1905 revolution, had spread dissatisfaction even to moderate elements of the nobility. The Russian Empire’s many ethnic minorities grew increasingly restive under Russian domination.
Despite some reforms that followed the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian army in 1914 was ill-equipped to fight a major war, and neither the political nor the military leadership was up to the standard required. Nevertheless the army fought bravely in World War I, and both soldiers and junior officers showed remarkable qualities. The Russian invasion of East Prussia in August 1914 was defeated by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff at Tannenberg, but it required the Germans to send reinforcements from the Western Front and so saved France from defeat and made possible the victory on the Marne. The campaigns of 1915 and 1916 on the Eastern Front brought terrible casualties to the Russian forces, which at times did not even have sufficient rifles. As late as July 1916, however, the Russian army was capable of making a successful offensive under Gen. Aleksey Brusilov in Volhynia and Bukovina.
Britannica Quiz
Plots and Revolutions Quiz
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Nov 28, 2016 · The group’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, found in his supporters a smaller, more disciplined party that was determined to transform the First World War --“an imperialist war”—into a broader ...
Oct 30, 2017 · Englund, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the Washington Post, surveys how a cast of historical figures traversed through the upheaval leading up to March 1917, placing emphasis on the United States’ entry into World War I, and on the Russian Revolution.
Sep 18, 2014 · The success of the 1917 Russian Revolution had to do with the acquiescence of the military and the support it gave for the revolutionary uprising. Indeed, in every successful spontaneous revolution, the military had been acquiescent and/or supportive of the revolution (see also Tiruneh, 2010 ).
- Gizachew Tiruneh
- 2014
Sep 22, 2021 · The former was a spontaneous uprising that began in Russia’s capital in late February 1917 and led to the collapse of the tsarist monarchy and the establishment of the Provisional Government, a regime based on the premise that Russia should have a parliamentary government and free-enterprise economic system.
Protests began on March 7, 1917, with factory workers striking in Petrograd. Women took to the street the following day to celebrate International Woman's Day and joined the factory workers to protest the government and its policy of food rationing.
