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Soviet Union [USSR] The Strains of the War Effort and the Weakening of Tsarism
The onset of World War I had a drastic effect on domestic
policies and a weak regime. A show of national unity had
accompanied Russia's entrance into the war, but military reversals
and the government's incompetence soon soured the attitude of much
of the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and GermanOttoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its
foreign supplies and potential markets. In addition, inept Russian
preparations for war and ineffective economic policies hurt the
country financially, logistically, and militarily. Inflation became
a serious problem. Because of inadequate matériel support for
military operations, the War Industries Committee was formed to
ensure that necessary supplies reached the front. But army officers
quarreled with civilian leaders, seized administrative control of
front areas, and would not work with the committee. The central
government disliked independent support activities organized by
zemstvos and various cities. The Duma quarreled with the
bureaucracy, and center and center-left deputies eventually formed
the Progressive Bloc, which was aimed at forming a genuinely
constitutional government.
After Russian military reversals in 1915, Nicholas II went to
the front to assume nominal leadership of the army. His German-born
wife, Alexandra, and Rasputin, a debauched faith healer, who was
able to stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac heir to the throne,
tried to dictate policy and make ministerial appointments. Although
their true influence has been debated, they undoubtedly decreased
the regime's prestige and credibility.
While the central government was hampered by court intrigue,
the strain of the war began to cause popular unrest. In 1916 high
food prices and a lack of fuel caused strikes in some cities.
Workers, who won for themselves separate representative sections of
the War Industries Committee, used them as organs of political
opposition. The countryside was becoming restive. Soldiers, mainly
newly recruited peasants who had been used as cannon fodder in the
inept conduct of the war, were increasingly insubordinate.
The situation continued to deteriorate. In an attempt to
alleviate the morass at the tsar's court, a group of nobles
murdered Rasputin in December 1916. But his death brought little
change. In the winter of 1917, however, deteriorating rail
transport caused acute food and fuel shortages, which resulted in
riots and strikes. Troops were summoned to quell the disorders.
Although troops had fired on demonstrators and saved tsarism in
1905, in 1917 the troops in Petrograd (the name of St. Petersburg
after 1914) turned their guns over to the angry crowds. Support for
the tsarist regime simply evaporated in 1917, ending three
centuries of Romanov rule.
* * *
A good summary of Russian history is provided in The New
Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, "Russia and the Soviet
Union, History of." Three excellent one-volume surveys of Russian
history are Nicholas Riasanovsky's A History of Russia,
David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran's A History of Russia and
the Soviet Union, and Robert Auty and Dmitry Obolensky's An
Introduction to Russian History. The most useful thorough study
of Russia before the nineteenth century is Vasily Kliuchevsky's
five-volume collection, Course of Russian History. Good
translations exist, however, only for the third volume, A Course
in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century, and part of the
fourth volume, Peter the Great. For the 1800-1917 period,
two excellent comprehensive works are the second volume of Michael
T. Florinsky's Russia: A History and Interpretation and Hugh
Seton-Watson's The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. The roots and
nature of Russian autocracy are probed in Richard Pipes's
controversial Russia under the Old Regime. A useful, if
dated, translation of a Soviet interpretation of this subject is
P.I. Liashchenko's A History of the National Economy of Russia
to the 1917 Revolution. Social history is treated by Jerome
Blum in Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the
Nineteenth Century. Cultural history is discussed in James H.
Billington's The Icon and the Axe and Marc Raeff's
Russian Intellectual History. (For further information and
complete citations,
see Soviet Union USSR -
Bibliography.)
Data as of May 1989
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