Why did the Tsarist regime fall in 1917?

Strange as it seems, the immediate events leading to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication are practically irrelevant when discussing the ultimate cause of his fall from power in February 1917. Unlike the events of October later that year, the causes of the ‘February Revolution’ are complex and wide-ranging, stretching back to the Emancipation Edict of 1861 and the subsequent failure of the Russian Empire to modernise economically and militarily. Studying the protests and strikes that resulted in the toppling of the Tsarist regime is only useful in revealing the widespread extent of discontent in Russia (250,000 striking workers marched through Petrograd despite street gatherings being banned); whereas the Bolshevik seizure of power was a coup d’etat in every sense, Nicholas’s downfall was inherently spontaneous.

In 1861, Tsar Alexander II signed the Emancipation Edict, freeing around 50 million people from being quite literally owned by noble landowners. The motives surrounding this reform are widely debated, but it is clear that it was at least in part expected to contribute to the ‘modernisation’ project that Russia needed to embark on in order to retain its status as a great power. Serfdom had been abolished in other European countries centuries earlier, and with Russia’s technological and economic backwardness exposed in its defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856) the need for radical change was clear. It was hoped that allowing a vast bulk of the Russian population, around 38%, to partake in normal economic activity would go at least some of the way to bringing the country in line with its competitors abroad — unlike Britain, Germany and the USA, Russia had no entrepreneurial middle class and hence was relatively undeveloped industrially.

This, and a swathe of other reforms in the judiciary, local government, education and the military, earned Alexander the nickname ‘Liberator’. His reputation is justified, despite the reactionary streak displayed after an attempt on his life in 1866. It would take years for the effects of emancipation to be fully realised because of a system of ‘redemption payments’ former serfs were required to pay to their landlords, but the result was still a radical overhaul of the basis of Russian society. Between 1861 and 1905, one third of noble-owned land was transferred to townsmen and peasants, and kulaks, peasants who bought up land and made profits, started to appear (this class would later be ruthlessly targeted by Lenin and Stalin as enemies of the Communist state).

Yet Alexander was unsuccessful in his aim of modernising Russia. An early indicator of this came during his time as Tsar in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, which Russia only barely won; issues of supply and leadership which had contributed to defeat in the Crimean War were once again prominent. Emancipation failed to fundamentally change the everyday lifestyle of the average Russian peasant, who continued to cling to the security offered by the technologically backward mir and farmed in ‘strips’ rather than the more efficient method of consolidated land holdings. The middle class grew, but it was still miniscule relative to the overall population. Economic growth did, admittedly, accelerate, but Russia remained an overwhelmingly agricultural economy with nowhere near the industrial prowess required to truly be considered a ‘great power’.

Had Alexander been succeeded by another reformist Tsar, the regime might well have survived. He was not. His son, Tsar Alexander III, was by every measure a reactionary — upon ascending to the throne, the younger Alexander issued a ‘Manifesto on Unshakable Autocracy’, rejecting his father’s liberal attitudes and restating the God-given right of the Romanov family to rule over the Russian Empire. His reign was characterised by the relentless persecution of opposition groups and ethnic minorities, censorship, and a more conservative overall policy direction. Alexander III died in 1894 having increased the influence of the Orthodox Church and other elite bodies and established the office of ‘Land Captain’, which in many ways resembled the old serf-owner.

Tsar Nicholas II, although not quite as renowned in his conservatism as his father, similarly failed to implement reform. Despite a visit to the House of Commons in 1893 which allegedly endeared him to the merits of constitutional monarchy, it would take a near-revolution for Nicholas to implement anything of the sort. In January 1905, following an embarrassing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (once again, the Russians had failed to correct the shortcomings of the Crimean War), Father Georgi Gapon led a peaceful march of striking workers through the streets of St. Petersburg, many carrying patriotic banners and singing God Save the Tsar, in order to present a petition to Nicholas demonstrating their loyalty to him, but also requesting reform. The response of the troops allocated to supervise the demonstration (Nicholas was away on holiday) was to fire on the workers, leaving 150 dead.

This senseless action was to trigger a series of events colloquially referred to as the 1905 Revolution. It confirmed the suspicions of many Russians that Nicholas was out of touch with their interests — suspicions that had been raised when he essentially ignored the deaths of 1,389 people at a festival in Moscow, attending a ball with the French ambassador that night. The strong ties between the population at large and their ‘little father’ were becoming strained, and with it the fabric of the autocracy was coming undone.

Nicholas survived the nine months of turmoil in 1905 by publishing an October Manifesto introducing elements of democracy into the national structures of the Russian Empire for the first time. It is perhaps unfair to criticise the ‘indirect voting’ system used to elect the State Duma and the fact that the elected chamber was subject to a veto by an unelected, noble-dominated body — after all, Britain at the time denied working class men the vote and was dominated by the aristocratic House of Lords. Nevertheless, Russia could by no means ever be considered a constitutional monarchy, as Nicholas constantly meddled in the workings of the Duma after it had become a hotbed for radical opposition. Democracy, just like emancipation, became a reform which had failed to do anything significant to alter Russia’s course.

That is, apart from fester opposition. Alexander II had made moderate reforms to censorship legislation, which were quickly tightened again under Alexander III. Once moderate criticism had been permitted, liberal and socialist ideas were in circulation amongst ordinary peasants and workers, a situation that was worsened by the concentration of industrial workers in slums (ideas quickly spread through word of mouth and pamphlets). Nicholas was forced into creating the Duma, and he quickly resolved to undermine it, but the body still gave an air of legitimacy to the groups which would ultimately play a part in his demise.

It has been suggested by many that had Russia not entered the First World War, the Tsars would have survived. There is some validity to this view; the vast government expenditure on the war, and logistical problems, caused the closure of several factories and starvation, in turn leading to the unrest which brought down the regime. To only concentrate on these factors, however, is to be unnecessarily short-termist. What the war did was expose the shortcomings of Tsarist government, not create them.

Nearly sixty years after the end of the Crimean War, Russia’s military was still plagued by incompetence, which was laid bare by the epic scale of losses at the Battle of Tannenberg. This was admittedly not helped by Nicholas II’s disastrous decision to assume the position of Commander in Chief of the army and navy, but had serious military reform been undertaken there would have been no need for such drastic measures. It was, however, Russia’s outdated economic system which ultimately brought about Nicholas’s downfall. Unlike Britain, which by this time had an economy made up of only 10% agriculture, Russia still relied on tens of millions of peasants to produce the grain that would feed industrial workers. When these peasants started to hoard grain because of the low prices offered by the government and a lack of consumer goods to buy (this problem would continue decades into Communist rule), discontent in cities was almost inevitable, a problem made worse by the inefficiencies of distribution which plagued efforts to get food to those who needed it most.

Therefore, given that the events leading to revolution were so blatantly enabled by the faults of Tsarism, it can be assumed that any event that disrupted the fragile supply of grain to the cities might have produced the same outcome. Russians went into the war on a wave of patriotic spirit, with the population as a whole generally supportive — it was not war that riled up the workers, but the economic problems it caused.

The period from 1861 until the fall of the Romanovs in 1917 was marked by a series of failed reforms, most notably relating to the economy and the military. Russia as an absolute and illiberal autocracy was stable, and so it would have been as a constitutional monarchy, but in the middle ground it found itself in in the early twentieth century disorder and chaos reigned supreme. Perhaps a Tsar of greater competence would have prevented revolution in 1917, but that would merely be a delay. By allowing liberal reforms, Russia had bred a revolutionary movement whose attitudes spread amongst the population at wide; sluggish economic growth legitimised claims that a socialist system would function better for the ordinary person. The Tsarist regime was brought down by chaos it had permitted, but the real roots of revolution lay in the failure of Russia to adapt.