How far was WWI the main cause of the fall of the Romanovs in February 1917?

Another factor that led to the downfall of the Romanovs was the very circumstances that the war created. Russia could not have avoided entry into WWI, not only because they knew of the existence of the Schlieffen Plan and expected an attack from Germany anyway, but also as a result of previous humiliations, such as the Bosnian Crisis and the Russo-Japanese war, which meant that their imperialistic status would begin to be threatened if they avoided this war too. However, those humiliations very much act as proof that the country’s entry into the war was a reckless move, if the economy and the social instabilities are taken into account. The war effort was largely incoherent, with defeats in Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes leading to losses so great, that they would still cause problems in offensives to follow. In the Great Retreat, 1.5 million men were lost, along with railway lines, fortresses packed with shells, and strategically important cities. Chaos ruled over the front, with irregular supplies, high levels of desertions and a growing worry that there would have to be a call-up from the large agricultural reserve. This was dangerous for several reasons: Firstly, with the ongoing scarcity of food, the last thing that needed to happen was to decrease the people working the land to produce it. Secondly, they were untrained, and thirdly the peasant population was seen as largely unreliable and volatile. In addition to this unstable situation, the war effort itself was not even. In the south, the war effort was going great, with Brusilov achieving swift and spectacular victories. On the other hand, the north was stuck in a stalemate with the Austro-Hungarians. Such a situation only showed to the people back home that the people in charge of the war very much incapable, and despite the fact that it was not his decisions that etched the way for the war effort, the man acting as a figurehead for all this was the Czar.

This failure however and the chaos that ruled at the front, was also affecting the situation back home directly. As it has become obvious, the strains that a war of that scale imposed on the economy were such that its yet to develop industrial capacity would not be able to pull it off.  The measures that the government tried to take to solve this problem only made things worse: the prohibition of vodka only created further discontent amongst the people, as vodka was essentially a part of their staple diet. In addition to this, 30% of the country’s revenue came from the tax on alcohol, so the only great achievement of the government was to decrease its available cash flow. Other measures, such as the introduction of war bonds and income tax also failed, as by 1917, Russia was deeply indebted, needing five times its gross revenue to keep up a war, and handling inflations that were soaring at 400%, meaning that people would queue up in front of stores for an entire day to get food. Such a huge inflation meant that living and working conditions deterioted greatly and also that the rising prices were not matched by a proportional raise in salary. The social strains continued, as the war’s consequences were also creating the critical lack of food that was the immediate course of the February revolution. Had it not been for WWI, then Turkey (that was fighting on the side of Germany) would not have closed off Russia’s passage into the Black Sea, cutting off 90% of its trade. Although this did not have an effect in 1915, when St. Petersburg was available as a port, the problem became very evident in 1916 to 1917, when this breakdown of trade led to the breakdown of the economy, too. Russia’s stability, ever since Alexander II, depended on modernization and industrialization. The war had already paralysed modernization by stopping Stolypin’s reforms so as to gear towards a war economy, but the fact that now trade had been cut off too led to consumer goods and the expansion of industry to be stopped too, making for a very irregular market, where prices fluctuated according to the supplies. This situation eventually led to a grain crisis, since the farmers withdrew their supplies from the markets as they could not get a steady price for it. This happened at a time when urban population was rising exponentially, so the effect of this crisis was that the cities were starving, in the midst of a radicalized and concentrated workforce, of which a large percentage was not used to such rigid situations, since it had just recently moved to the city.

So what we realize from here, is that so many interlinked problems where the entire country’s structure was essentially breaking down were created, that would not have been caused had the war not happened. Russian society, however tough, was not coherent enough to withstand such a complete breakdown and still retaining faith in their system of government.