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31 - War and revolution, 1914–1917

from Part VII - Reform, War and Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Dominic Lieven
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Summary

With the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II on 2 March 1917 in favour of the Grand Duke Michael and the latter’s subsequent refusal of the crown, the Romanov dynasty came to an end. The struggle for power and for the definition of the new regime continued through more than four years of revolutionary turmoil and civil war. This chapter outlines Russia’s involvement in the First World War, concentrating on the specific ways in which it caused the end of the old regime.

Any attempt to attribute causes must begin with a definition of the event to be explained. When describing ‘the end of the old regime’, historians are often primarily concerned with the social and national transformations of the revolutionary era that brought the end of the old social order. This chapter focuses on explaining the more specific political end point of regime change when the tsar abdicated and representatives of the national parliament (the Duma), in consultation with representatives of worker and soldier councils, formed a new provisional government. This event marked the end of the Romanov dynasty, the end of Imperial Russia, and the beginning of the social and national revolutions which swept the land through the rest of 1917 and beyond.

The proximate causes of February 1917

The immediate events leading to the abdication began with the confluence of several factors to bring large numbers of people into the Petrograd streets. First, heavy snows in early February 1917 slowed trains, exacerbating chronic wartime problems with flour supply to the cities. Many bakeries temporarily closed due to shortages of flour or fuel.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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References

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Golder, F. (ed.), Documents of Russian History, 1914–1917 (New York: Century Co., 1927).
Holquist, Peter, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002).
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McKay, S. N., Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
McKey, Arthur, ‘Sukhoi zakon v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: prichiny, kontseptsiia i posledstviia vvedeniia sukhogo zakona v Rossii, 1914–1917’, in Markov, V. L. (ed.), Rossiia i Pervaia Mirovaia Voina (St Petersburg: RAN, 1999).Google Scholar
Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, D. H., Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).
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