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Social, Social And Political Causes Of The Russian Revolution In 1917

1533 Words7 Pages

In all probability, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, never uttered the famous phrase “let them eat cake” about the peasants protesting about bread shortages on the eve of the French Revolution! What matters is, not whether she spoke the words or not, but that they reflect the divide between the upper classes, buffered from poverty, and the starving masses on the brink of revolution. In Russia in 1915, Alfred Knox, the British Military Attaché wrote, “If there has ever been a Government that richly deserved a revolution, it is the present one in Russia” (Pitcher, 2001). Knox was not alone in sensing that tumultuous change was coming to Tsarist Russia, as discontent festered amongst the population. By 1915, Russia had embroiled itself in World War 1, an event that initially rekindled a mass spirit of nationalism that was short lived, as the Russian army suffered massive …show more content…

Previous grievances, social, economic and political, that had bubbled just below the surface for so long, were now catapulted back into the public conscience. Combined with the horrors of war, these problems proved a burden too many for the Russian people to bear. The combination of these factors provided numerous, social, economic and political causes that brought about the Russian Revolution in February 1917. Problems of social discontent, both of the peasant farmers and urban workers, coupled with harsh economic difficulties, exacerbated the political instability brought about by a weak Tsar and the failure of the Duma, made Russia rife for revolution. The hardships of World War 1 served as a bellows to the already smouldering problems in Russia, causing the eventual collapse of the old autocratic regime, and reduced the Romanov dynasty to ashes. (Salomoni,

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