Causes Of The Russian Revolution Essay, Research Paper
Causes of the Russian Revolution
The Russian revolution was caused by the continual breakdown of
the governments in Russia and the incompetency and authoritarian views
of it’s czars. Their failures as leaders included policies that
neither pleased nor benefitted the people. By the end of the
nineteenth century, Russia’s economy, government, military, and social
organization was at an extreme decline. Russia had become the least
advanced of the major European nations in terms of political and
social development. There was no parliament, and no middle class. The
Church, officers, and other important people and institutions were
firmly against social progress. The disastrous defeat of Russia in the
Crimean War in 1855 and 1856 exposed weaknesses of Russia’s various
organizations.
For the first few decades of the 1800’s, Russia’s outlook was
brighter under Alexander I, who was relatively liberal. He became more
reactionary however, and following his death, a group of young army
officers tried to overturn the Czardom. This was called the Decembrist
Revolt. The next czar, Nicholas, was a die hard authoritarian. The
Administrative system continued to decay regardless of his iron fisted
rule. The gap between the rich and the poorer continued to widen. Over
five hundred peasant revolts took place during his reign.
Alexander II, who took the throne in 1855 tried to avert revolt
by attempting reform. In 1861 he freed the serfs and gave them
expectations of free land allotments. But to their surprise, and
anger, they were only given the opportunity to share it as members of
a village commune(mir). In addition, the mir had to pay back the
government for the land over a period of 49 years with interest.
Alexander also formed a series of elected local councils that gave
districts restricted jurisdiction of certain aspects of life. He too
became more of a reactionary towards the end of his reign. The result
was his assassination by a group of conspirators called the People’s
Will movement. The next Czar, Alexander III, was yet another
reactionary. He was active in silencing criticism of the government,
exiling agitators, and stamping out revolutionary groups.
Industrialization began to appear and with it an increase of
dissatisfied workers. They were underpaid and forced to work in
unfavourable conditions. The peasants farmers were doing fine on their
farms but a famine in 1891 caused extensive suffering. Revolts again
became fairly frequent. Intellectual groups organized and continued
the fight against serfdom and autocracy.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian people were in the
mood for revolution. The loss of the Russo Japanese war to Japan, and
the resulting hardships, made concrete the opposition to the
autocracy. In December of 1904, unrest surfaced in Baku. Strikes
occurred in factories in the capital. Priest Father Gapon lead a
peaceful march to petition the czar for a redress of grievances but it
ended violently with the Czar’s troops firing on the crowd. In October
of 1905 a general strike was declared that crippled the country.
On October 30th, Nicholas dispatched the historical October
Manifesto which provided for a constitution under which civil
liberties were granted and an elected state institution called the
duma was formed. This broke the czar’s absolute power. However, the
czar chose reactionary ministers to lead the duma and the secret
police force was improved and strengthened. The first two were filled
with radicals but quickly dissolved. The members of the third were
conservative in outlook. Social conditions improved too slowly to
reverse public opposition to the absolute monarchy. Poor political and
military leadership in the First World War led to widespread desertion
of Russian soldiers. Their army suffered great casualties and a
battered economy.
It was the accumulation of discontent for governments, czar’s,
and living conditions along with Russian defeats in various wars,
including WWI, of the working class citizens in Russia that eventually
boiled over and resulted in revolution. The public dissatisfaction
continued to fill for over a decade like a powderkeg and eventually
was set off and caused an explosion of great impact to the future of
Russia. They displayed their anger in various ways, but the
authoritarian Czar’s which attained power did not react to the
incoming tide. In fact, they resisted change at every avenue possible
and proved to outrage certain people to such a point that Czar’s were
assassinated. By 1917, the Russian people had had enough, and a public
disturbance in Petrograd soon spread throughout the city and had
become a widespread revolt. The resulting revolution proved to
restructure the politics in Russia for years to come.
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Hayden, David. “Russian Revolution.” Merit Students Encyclopedia. New
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