Why were there two revolutions in Russia in 1917?

revolutions happened in the same year and this fact can only be understood through an analysis of Russian society in the early twentieth century.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 of the population were largely self-sufficient peasants. The social structure meant the lack of a strong liberal middle class such as exists in the Western European states; the Tsarist autocracy had stifled the growth of political consciousness along western lines and the social structure seemed not to be capable of producing effective "reformist" politics.The only real political opposition was in the cities among a Socialist/ Populist intelligentsia; their ideas were intellectual and radical, and Lenin's ideas were essentially anti-western and anti-liberal; the contrast between the Bolshevik and Menshevik approaches; the Mensheviks attempting to retain the orthodox Marxist view of the two revolutions, in spite of the realities of Russian society.The effects of the First World War: a huge economic boom, but the Government and administration were not flexible enough to cope; the Government broke down under the strains of war in 1917; the failure to feed the towns; financial chaos; the distrust of Tsarist circles; the mismanagement of the war effort; desertion of troops.The March Revolution: a liberal revolution bringing the Provisional Government to power; this had fundamentally no effective new approaches to the problems of Russian society; it did nothing to reclaim the control of local government, which was lapsing into anarchy; it maintained the alliance with the Western Powers as popular support for the war against Germany was rapidly waning; the Provisional Government was forced to share power with the Petrograd Soviet.The Bolsheviks: the acceptance of Lenin's "April Theses"; the false start in the July Days; the Provisional Government under Kerensky and the Kornilov affair; the Soviet came to be dominated by Bolsheviks as workers became disillusioned and as local organisers came to see the Bolsheviks as the only sound base on which to build a new form of government.The March Revolution occured because of the crisis in Russia's economy and society, and because of the strains of the very rapid development to meet the demands of war; but the liberal bourgeois revolution did not work out in practice; there was no substantial liberal middle class and no true capitalist economic structure to form the base of a Western-style political order; the November Revolution occurred as a logical outcome, almost as a reaction, to Western theory and influence; the Bolsheviks alone seemed to offer a 'real' enough solution to the crisis of Russian society, more particularly the land question. Significantly, the Bolshevik takeover was consolidated by the decrees on land and peace.