Discontent among the working classes was the main reason for the downfall of the Tsar in March 1917
• How far do you agree with this statement?
I disagree with this statement because ultimately the people of Russia believed he lacked the qualities of a leader, and as many of the people were poor, hungry, discriminated against, living and working in bad conditions the Tsar was blamed. The turmoil of the country was on Nicholas’s shoulders and it was his fault that he had to abdicate in 1917 after his poor work in his role.
Russia entering into World War One in 1914 was, I believe, a key reason why the Tsar was forced to abdicate three years later in 1917. At firstly, World War One was greeted with patriotism and enthusiasm but after it was proved that the tsar was incapable of governing his nation so he lost popularity quickly. However without other more long term causes such as the tsar’s autocratic leadership, size of Russia and opposition parties the failure of the tsar throughout World War 1 wouldn’t alone have caused the abdication of the Tsar in 1917.
Russia had many difficulties that had not been solved by the beginning of the 20th Century which could not be solved by the power of an autocracy. Russia had an unfair class system where the conditions of the workers and peasants were unfair because of living conditions and insufficient payment. Workers and peasants made up a majority of the army which fought in World War One. The soldiers were faced with defeat and death, armed with no rifles or ammunition, all because of the incapable generals and the Tsar who allowed them to be appointed. In September 1915 when Nicholas decided to go to the front and run the war himself, he trusted the tsarina to run Russia. This is because lack of success throughout the war increased unpopularity towards the Tsar.
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Tsar Nicholas was proven a weak ruler of a vast country with over 125 million people spread over Europe and Asia. The Tsar could not rule such a vast empire, with so many different nationalities by autocracy. This resulted in him soon losing authority so he enforced a secret police to help control the country. Their methods were brutal; they killed any who opposed the Tsar and his government, dissidents were taken from their families to be jailed or exiled. This made Tsar Nicholas unpopular and he lost the favour of his people with his policy of Russification.
Tsar Nicolas did not handle opposition well, he was violent and threatened by opposing parties including the Kadets wanting a democratic parliament, Social Revolutionaries demanding the land of the nobles be given to the peasants and Communists who were the followers of Karl Marx and divided into the moderate Mensheviks and the more extreme Bolsheviks who wanted a violent proletarian revolution. After 1900 there were many assassinations and protests by these parties, including Bloody Sunday in 1905 and Stolypin in 1911, but the Tsar would always respond with force or only reform his government as little as possible such as the formation of the Duma given next to no power.
The Orthodox Church had always supported the Tsar and his power with the divine right to rule and the Startsy had preached to workers to think of the Tsar as their ‘Little Father’ who as God’s representative on earth was to be a trusted head of the country and church. However when the Tsar allowed Rasputin, the possible member of the Kylysty sect, to have such great presence in parliament, preach false doctrine to the people and even have improper relations with women of the upper classes, their support faltered as they began to question the Tsar’s suitability for ruling and encouraged the workers to do so also.
Nicholas’ reluctance to reform Russia was one of the main reasons he was forced to abdicate in 1917. There remained to be a largely out-dated farming economy but towns in Russia were beginning to industrialise, for example the development of the trans- Siberian railway in 1904. However there was extreme worker poverty and poor living conditions which created a large workforce, disaffected and concentrated in Petrograd which wanted more reasonable working hours and conditions but did not receive them despite their constant strikes. There was also the wealthier middle class, including the factory workers, who were beginning to want a say in the government from 1913. However both of these classes found that the Duma although elected by the people, saw few workers represented but instead a parliament with a majority being of the nobility and who in 1905, if they acted too radically, would instantly be dissolved by Nicholas.
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CHECHNYA Chechnya is an independent republic located in the middle of the Caucasus Mountains. This land has always belonged to the Shemite people, decedents of the Shem. The neighboring republics all around them are very similar ethnically. The people that live in the Caucasus Mountains are not the same as the Russian people. In 1864, Chechens surrendered to Russia. During Russia's quest for ...
The working classes of Russia had revolted before to no avail in the earlier revolutions of 1905 where they were faced with the extreme brute force and weapons of the Army and the Cossacks. This shows that proletariat revolution had no real effect on the power of the Tsar whilst he still had command over the military. But the Tsar, even though trained as a soldier himself and not in statesmanship, did not lead them well. The appointed generals were incompetent and the Tsar’s advisers untruthful. In 1905 the Tsar had had to pay the navy so that they would remain loyal, but the army as well had grown more discontent during the First World War and workers and peasants alike had been conscripted to fight but without weapons or the winter uniforms. As the military chose to join the revolution the Tsar lost his last hope of retaining the throne and not abdicating.
Russia had been defeated before in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 where the Tsar had hoped to boost the support he had from his people by gaining territory in China for trading purposes. But when japan, a much smaller nation than Russia, defeated both the Tsar’s navy and army repeatedly which were being run by incompetent generals who were giving bad orders to their men and even advising their fellow generals poorly and went as far as trying to make each other fail. There were mutinies on ships at this time such as on the Potemkin in June 1905 when the sailors made their discontent know by revolting.
The Duma struggled to do work efficiently even after the start of the war in 1914. Now on the forth elected Duma they had begun to get results for the Russian people and be granted more power at parliament when the Tsar moved to the front and left the Tsarina to run the country with the Duma. However this was a fatal decision by the tsar because his wife was unwilling to cooperate with the parliament but instead allowed the bribery, corruption and loss of order to be instigated by her close friend Rasputin. Rasputin, although having cured Alexi, did not aid the Tsar well in ruling Russia, but instead ruined the Romanov’s reputation as rumours spread. With Rasputin accepting bribes and suggesting the men were chosen by god, the Tsarina would have them promoted to ministers. However with these incompetent men in such powerful positions things started to fail such as the Minister of Defence. There were often no deliveries of food or fuel into cities adding to the workers growing discontent as the country was run badly by ‘our men’.
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Russia enjoyed a relative peaceful period under Tsar Alexander II, with the obvious exception of the Crimean War of 1854-6. His Great Reforms of the 1860's which had seriously overhauled military service and abolished serfdom had still failed to produce any serious kind of power sharing proposal. The autocracy was on a path that could only lead to the end of the Romanov dynasty with the ...
In conclusion, I agree to a certain extent that the workers were indeed responsible for the abdication of the Tsar in 1917. If there had been no workers involved in creating a movement over such a long period of time in order to force the Tsar to renounce the throne and the Duma to take control, then there would not have been a mass revolution for others including soldiers to join, nor there any pressure on the Tsar to relinquish his throne. However I remain convinced that even with the state of Russia as it was in the countryside with the peasants, the cities with the workers, the corrupt government and secret police and the pressure of fighting the war whilst in an economic slump; the tsar did not lead Russia well and his autocratic, ill-informed decisions were the reason he had to abdicate in 1917.
