The Collapse of the Tsarist Regime in 1917 and Its Ties to the First World War

The Collapse of the Tsarist Regime in 1917 and Its Ties to the First World War

There are two views on this, the first one says that the Tsarist

regime was doomed from the start with the increasing strikes, poor

conditions for the majority of the population and that the war only

speeded up the process but did not cause it. The second view is that

the Tsarist regime was basically stable up to 1914 despite the

problems as it was slowly making progress to becoming a modern state,

but the war stopped it dead in its tracks.

The first view says that from the beginning of his reign the Tsar said

himself that he knew nothing of how to rule an empire so large. From

the chaos of Bloody Sunday the Tsar had a chance to reform his ways

and share out his power in the Duma. However it soon became obvious

that the Tsar still believed that he should own all the power. The

Duma was unable to pass any laws without the Tsars approval and could

also be dismissed by him at any time without question giving it very

little power. The Fundamental laws agreed to the existence of the Duma

but it only managed to pass laws to give workers accident insurance

and measures to do with the armed forces. For every 90,000 workers

there was one representative where as there was one representative for

every 2000 nobles meaning that the 1% of nobles elected 2/3 of the

representatives in the third Duma.

Workers were still not allowed to strike for better wages or working

conditions as shown in the Lena massacre in 1912 where workers went on

strike for better working conditions. The employers called in the

police who opened fired at the protestors showing that the workers

still had no rights. The workers were still living in the same

appalling conditions and there was economic downturn after 1912.

Stolypins land reforms allowed 15% of peasants to get lots of high

quality land to become kulaks and left the rest landless and very