Why were there two revolutions in Russia in 1917?

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Why were there two revolutions in Russia in 1917?

The question requires you to examine why the March Revolution happened in the first place; but further, why it failed to solve Russia's crisis. You must also be able to explain how a tiny minority radical group, the Bolsheviks, came to dominate the Russian state in the second revolution, with the support of the urban proletariat.

Answer plan

1. Marxist ideology in the early 20th century argued that a society had to go through two revolutions - a liberal bourgeois one, followed much later, at the full development of capitalism, by a socialist revolution led and controlled by "the dictatorship of the proletariat". In Russia both revolutions happened in the same year and this fact can only be understood through an analysis of Russian society in the early twentieth century.

2. The contrasts in Russian society: her need to develop the economy in order to be a Great Power; state capitalism and industrialisation; the contribution of Sergei Witte; conversely, the problem of the land and the peasantry - capitalist-run estates were the exception; rapid, but localised, industrial development was taking place in a society where the majority