The Great War and the February Revolution, 1914-1917

Initial patriotic support• Duma deputies• Major cities• middle-class• Workers stopped striking• Peasants – resignation

and misunderstanding• Large-scale anti-German

propaganda (popular): e.g. Petrograd

• Initial military gains: East Prussia and Galicia

But soon ended, not a short war

• April-September 1915: Great Retreat from:– Galicia– Prussia– Russian Poland– Lithuania– Latvia

• Why?– Germans better armed– Russian generals

incompetent• Radicalized soldiers

Great Retreat’s effectsHuge losses (G.F. Krivosheev) : • Killed in action 1,200,000• missing in action 439,369• died of wounds 240,000• gassed 11,000• died from disease 155,000• POW deaths 190,000• deaths due to accidents and

other causes 19,000• Total war dead 2,254,369• Wounded 3,749,000• POW 3,342,900

A Whole Empire Walking (Peter Gatrell)

• Massive refugees problem

• Military command incompetent

• Six million fled front zone• One million forcibly

expelled Jews, Germans and other foreigners

• Jewish pogroms• ‘scorched earth’• Increased ethnic tensions

Peasants’ lives transformed• Most soldiers were

peasants– 50% of working-age men

mobilized• Livestock massively

requisitioned• Many impoverished• Soldatki• Stolypin land reform

protests• Bazaar riots against price

controls

War’s economic impact• Prohibition stopped

vodka revenues• Cut off markets• Cut off foreign

investment• Impoverished

government printed tons of money

• Inflation• War effort greatly

impeded food supply

Greater public participation• All-Russian Union of

Zemstvos and Municipal Councils (ZemGor)– Aid to refugees, injured

soldiers• Military-Industrial

Committees– Involved middle-class, but

workers often boycotted.• Led to greater public self-

confidence• Progressive Bloc in Duma

-- increasingly critical

Workers’ war situation• Many mobilized• Increasingly valuable to

military production• But real wages fell; by 1917

a quarter of pre-war levels• Food supply and other

necessities increasingly expensive and scarce

• Illegal to strike• But by summer 1915 strikes

began to increase– 1915: 1000 strikes– 1916: 1600 strikes,

increasingly political and assertive demands.

Then, Nicholas went to front• Aug 1915: Progressive Bloc

demanded a “Government of public confidence”

• Nicholas refused, ignored the Duma, went to the front.

• Left Alexandra and Rasputin in charge• The “German Woman” and the

“Mad Monk”• Ministerial ‘leapfrog’

• Left no one else to blame for military failures

• Greatly undermined legitimacy of Romanovs

Nicholas at the front

Alexandra and Rasputin

1 November 1916: “Stupidity or Treason?”

• Pavel Miliukov• State Duma• Attacked Sturmer, Rasputin,

and “the court party grouped around the young tsarina.”

• Nicholas replaced Sturmer with Trepov.

• MVD Protopopov remained.• Trepov tried to work with

Duma.• Tried to remove Protopopov.• Trepov dismissed.• Liberal opposition united

against tsarist government

Rasputin murdered, 16/29 December 1916

• Prince Felix Yusupov• Grand Duke Dmitri

Pavlovich• Vladimir Purishkevich• Did not solve the

problem.

February (1917) Revolution

• February 23 (March 8), 1917: International Women’s Day

• Women joined by locked out Putilov workers

• Police over-reacted.• 25 February: General

strike of 240,000 workers

• Key: (27 Feb.) Volynsky regiment mutinied.

Revolutionary Petrograd

February Revolution, final acts• 27 Feb: Temporary

Committee of State Duma (Chair: Rodzianko)

• 1 March: Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1

• March 2 (15), 1917: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates at Pskov.

• March 3 (16): Grand Duke Mikhail declines the throne.

End of the Romanov Dynasty, 1613-1917

Provisional Government