Problems increased for ordinary Russia because the military had priority over the limited food produced and the use of the transport system. They commandeered the railways and roads resulting in difficulty to maintain food supplies to civilian areas. Borderline famine was a constant reality for much of Russia during the war years.
During the war Lenin was calling on his true revolutionaries “to transform the imperialist war everywhere into a civil war” although at the time Russia and Europe were predominantly against him. Key Bolsheviks were exiled or had to leave the country for their safety but in the time they were in exile the lack of activity from their party allowed time for the Russian people to defocus themselves from any dislike felt for them because of such things their associations with the Germans. However when the war was over, because of Lenin’s ability to take advantage of events and because at the time of the revolution the Bolsheviks had policies to end war, control employers and increase food supplies, they were able to boost party popularity. The majority of the Bolshevik’s support was in the peasant workers mostly because they were the people most affected by war.
Wartime shortages were due mainly to the disruption of the transport system rather than decline in food production. Although the railway had grown from 13,000 to 44,000 between 1881 & 1914 it did not meet the demands of the war.
The attempt to transport millions of troops and masses of supplies to the war fronts created unbearable pressures. Engines and signalling systems broke down and there was a lack of coal. Less than 2 years after the war began the Russian railway system had virtually collapsed. The war played a major role in the radicalisation of the industrial workers and the peasants. The war had dangerous consequences for the government, severely pressurising their regime and greatly weakening their resilience.
The Optimist Schools would argue war acted as a catalyst to the Tsar’s collapse. Other schools would argue war merely accentuated the existing problems and deficiencies in Russia. The economic backwardness added to military in capabilities which were symbolized in the great retreat of 1915. Opposition was growing and the structure of Tsarism had begun to collapse. By March 1917 the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet filled, though with mutual suspicion, the political void left by Tsarism. There had been significant political opposition to the tsar building up to its collapse, due to the war and his refusal to replace his incompetent cabinet with ‘a ministry of national confidence’ Nicholas II lost all chance of retaining the support of the politically progressive parties. 236 of the 422 Duma deputies formed themselves into a Progressive Bloc, composed of Kadets, Octobrists, Nationalists and the party of Progressive Industrialists. Though it did not initially challenge the Tsar’s authority, they voted in resolutions that criticised the government’s handling of the war and also tried to persuade him to make concessions. The bloc, as described by one member Vasily Shulgin, was intended to prevent revolution so as to enable the government to finish the war. The Tsar and his government only showed themselves increasingly incapable of running the war.
Although the war was a necessary cause for the Bolsheviks gaining power it was only essential in timing, and acting as a catalyst.
The problems which the Tsar faced were brought upon himself long before a suggestion of war. His ineptitude was characterised by the lost trust and prestige of his position in the eyes of both his opponents and supporters. Right through his reign, Tsar Nicholas II had gradually lost touch with his people. On his orders, Cossack guards brutally repressed the 1905 revolution, named ‘Bloody Sunday’, and the 1912 Lena goldfields protests. The Moscow okhrana cited the Lena goldfield incident as the main reason ‘the people can be heard speaking of the government in the sharpest and most unbridled tone’. The people of Russia realized their tsar was not the giving and compassionate leader they thought he was but that he was ruthless and was only concerned with keeping order.
The Tsar’s tyranny and autocratic rulings were most clearly seen in his dealing with calls to reform, and here is where unrest began. In 1905 he was forced, reluctantly, to introduce a limited constitution, a parliament and legalise trade unions. Liberals then unsuccessfully demanded more. However, over the following ten years he tried to reverse these concessions. The Fundamental Laws immediately rebuffed the October Manifesto and Order No. 1 gave the Tsar power of refusal over the Duma, itself obstructed by Tsarist conservatives. Furthermore this led to revolutionary parties like the Bolsheviks growing influence from 1905 to 1917.
The economic instability was worsened by the militaries needs, as they were prioritised and put in front of things such as the railway improvement creating problems with migration. The economy was growing, but was in no way equal to the other European nations such as Britain, France and Germany. Living conditions were still poor. The rapid industrial growth caused problems as it enlarged the working class and drew labourers from the countryside, putting strain on very old urban infrastructure and overstretching farmers. The industry was also still reliant on foreign loans and if Russia had tried to pull out from the war it would have resulted in economic collapse which later on would have implications in the failure of the Provisional Government. These things cancelled out any improvement in the standard of living created by a stronger economy. The political situation was also perturbed: the number of people who took strike action in 1914 was the highest it had been since 1905.
The February 1917 Revolution, which grew out of pre-war instabilities and technological backwardness, along with tremendous mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic disturbance, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy, resulted in the creation of two potential Russian national governments after the Tsar had abdicated. One was the Provisional Government formed by members of the Duma to restore order and to provide leadership pending convocation of a popularly elected Constituent Assembly based on the French model, the dual authority. The Constituent Assembly was to design Russia's future political system and take responsibility for the promulgation of other fundamental reforms. The second potential national government was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and its moderate socialist-led Executive Committee.
Arguably the Provisional Government proved itself to be almost as incapable as the Tsar. The Russian people were unhappy with the lack of change. The changes the Provisional Government made did not touch on the critical issues in Russia’s situation, issues left by the war and pre-existing problems of the land. This destroyed the fragile partnership of the dual authority and it was Lenin who began the process of destruction. At the time of the February Revolution, Lenin was in Switzerland. He returned to Petrograd in early April 1917, demanding an immediate second, "socialist" revolution in Russia in his ‘April thesis’ and an end to the Provisional Government. However, he backed off this idea after he realised the realities of the prevailing situation (including little support for abrupt, radical revolutionary action even among Bolsheviks), his great achievement at this time was to orient the thinking of the Bolshevik Party toward preparation for the replacement of the Provisional Government by a leftist "Soviet" government as soon as the time was ripe. Lenin also changed the Marxist policy of working with just workers to incorporate peasants to win popularity. He played on the weaknesses of the Provisional Government and promised “Peace, Land and Bread” the things that the Russian people were most concerned about. The Bolsheviks manipulated the circumstances that the Provisional Government had ended up in. The response of the masses signalled that the next government had to find a way of making the people able to identify with the government. This was one of the main weaknesses of the Provisional Government and strength of the Bolsheviks.
The Provisional Government was incapable of exercising real power its whole existence was tenuous. It left all important decisions such as land distribution to the formation of the Constituent Assembly. This in turn meant that decisions were temporary. Its numerous laws aimed at fighting the excess of the Tsar rule were not replaced by new institutions. This laissez-faire political structure was not well received by a country accustomed to centuries of autocracy. Dual power was instrumental in creating an ineffective government. Lenin’s main goal was that wanted great power and the speed at which he jumped at the unexpected chance given to the Bolsheviks landed them in power. The kornilov affair a struggle between the commander in chief of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov and Aleksandr Kerensky in August/September, 1917, in between the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the October Revolution. It was said that the affair was a turning point in the revolution and eventual triumph for the Bolsheviks and their return. Although Kerensky survived the Kornilov coup, the event weakened his government substantially and paved the way for the Bolsheviks to seize power shortly thereafter in the October Revolution.
Lenin's last promise of bread was the hardest to deliver. The Provisional Government, barely more literate in economics than Lenin, had imposed a price ceiling on food, resulting, as any "bourgeois" economist could have told them, in severe shortages of food in the cities. Arguably this hurt the Provisional Government as much as its failure to sign a separate peace with the Germans; for the price ceiling angered both peasants, forced to sell their grain for a pittance, and workers, unable to obtain food at any price. Although Lenin merely intensified the brutality of enforcement of the price controls on food; rather than starve in the cities, large percentages of the urban population returned to their family farms in the country. (In the end, even this desperate move would not save many of them from starvation).
It is important to remember for much of the time around the time of the October revolution Lenin was either in hiding or out of touch regular touch with his colleagues. Top Bolshevik leaders tended to be divided into three distinct groups: Lenin and Leon Trotsky, among others, for whom the establishment of revolutionary soviet power in Russia was less an end in itself than the trigger for immediate worldwide socialist revolution; a highly influential group of more moderate national party leaders led by Lev Kamenev for whom transfer of power to the soviets was primarily a vehicle for building a strong alliance of left socialist groups which would form a socialist coalition government to prepare for fundamental social reform and peace negotiations by a socialist-friendly Constituent Assembly; and a middle group of independent-minded leaders whose views on the development of the revolution fluctuated in response to their reading of existing conditions.
By summer of 1917 it seemed the government was no longer in control of events. There was spreading of the soviets, workers controlled factories, widespread seizure of land by peasants and the creation of breakaway national minority governments. The July uprising ended in an apparent defeat for the Bolsheviks. Lenin was forced into hiding, numerous Bolshevik leaders were jailed, and efforts to form a united left-socialist front were temporarily ended. Still, in light of the success of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, perhaps the main significance of the July uprising was that it reflected the great popular attraction for the Bolshevik revolutionary program, as well as the party's strong links to Petrograd's lower classes, links that would prove valuable over the long term. The failure of the provisional government was a sufficient cause of the Bolsheviks rise to power, it allowed them to manipulate the situation and take over. The war had been a necessary factor but the failure of the provisional government was entirely essential. The background causes that lead to the October revolution and the fall of the Tsar, set a path for the failure of the Provisional Government because of the situation they inherited from the Tsar and ultimately meant the Bolsheviks could rise to power
