Another old event was “Blood Sunday” in 1905. Peaceful marchers in St. Petersburg carried a petition to the Tsar asking for higher wages, a shorter work day, better working conditions, a legislative assembly, and universal manhood suffrage. Hoping reform would come from above. In reaction, guards fired into the unarmed crowd; when news of one hundred dead and hundreds more wounded escaped, public opinion almost universally turned against the old regime. People believed it was the Tsar who gave the orders and the “Little Father” image was completely destroyed. Women and children were killed and this caused strikes all over Russia.
But the real problems occurred in 1914 as things started getting progressively worse. The workers and peasants set off with a will to win the First World War against Germany. Conscription fell, as ever, on the peasants. Within three months, many of those trained before 1914 were dead. Russian casualty lists were building for what the Russians had in great abundance was men. Therefore more and more peasants were required to serve in the armies. News of the fate of the soldiers was slow in reaching their relatives. Gradually news, often in the form of a returned soldier disabled by his wounds, slipped through. The effect on the peasants of mismanagement and defeat at the front was not advantageous to their war effort.
The workers were experiencing longer hours of work in conditions which had changed little in the past twenty years. Not even after “Bloody Sunday” did change occur. Conditions for workers, which had been bad in 1914, were being made worse by the war. They were experiencing inflation and food shortages. It is true that less was being grown by the peasants but the real shortages of food were because of poor distribution. Russia had enough food but it was not reaching the cities. Many peasants were literate so were able to read the newspapers and political pamphlets produced. Strikes for better conditions and pay increased in 1916.
Choosing to leave his capital where he was needed, to go to the battlefront where he was not, was a poor political decision by Tsar Nicholas II. There was no question of exposing the Tsar to danger at the front and he did not have any real grasp of tactics. He spent his time writing letters each day to his wife, writing his diary and playing dominoes. This was not helping Russia and this built up even more pressure for his own downfall
Meantime Alexandra ruled the country in the Tsar's name. Most unfortunately she was greatly influenced by Rasputin who did not hesitate to interfere in matters of state and whose unsavoury presence at court gave rise to all sorts of rumours and suspicion. In 1911 Rasputin had advised on political matters: the absence of the Tsar was to give him even greater authority.
By the beginning of 1916 the Progressive Bloc had been formed. This was an alliance of different parties against the Tsar. Since the sheer incompetence of the government was becoming increasingly obvious, demands from the very groups so loyal to the Tsar, and so determined to further the war effort in 1914, hardened. All that was necessary to gain high office in Russia during this period was to gain the ear of Rasputin and, it was said, bribe him. From September 1915 to February 1917 Tsarist ministers were men of high aspirations but little ability. Such crushing incompetence was impossible to overlook and hardened the attitude of those who, now in increasing numbers, believed in the need of a change in government. The Tsar returned from the battlefront briefly at the beginning of 1917 and there was another round of dismissal of ministers but no new rulers were appointed.
I believe that the downfall of the Tsar was down to many different reasons and events. The war and the casualties made everyone in Russia distraught and disheartened. The "German woman" (the Tsarina Alexandra) and Rasputin caused many conspiracies, people believed it was that the Germans were bringing down Russia. They were “German spies” in the eyes of Russian people. The lack of food supplies reached crisis point in 1917. Failure of the railway system to meet the demands of war. These are all massive reasons why the downfall of the Russian Tsar was made undeniable.
-John Garvey