The Great War and
the February Revolution, 1914-1917
Initial patriotic support
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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:
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Galicia
Prussia
Russian Poland
Lithuania
Latvia
• Why?
– Germans better armed
– Russian generals
incompetent
• Radicalized soldiers
Great Retreat’s effects
Huge 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 selfconfidence
• 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
Grigorii 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
• Tsar, police and
soldiers 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