Russian Revolution in 1917 Poor

¶ … Russian Revolution in 1917 Poor leadership and the effects of World War I both lead to the 1917 Russian revolution. Autocracy of Nicholas illustrated his poor means of governance. As the leader of Russia, Nicholas together with his associates found it difficult to establish democratic means of governing. Demonstrations, riots, and strikes characterized the unrests that were opposing Tsar's leadership. Poor governance led to poor economic and social situations leading to eventual overthrow of the Russian Monarchy in early 1917.

The start of the World War I gave the opportunity for Tsar's enemies to attack. Because of lack of welfare of the fighters, Tsar exposed his men to dangers of lack of necessary weapons for fighting. The long-term causes of the Russian revolution led to the short-term causes of the same, both working together giving room to overthrow Tsar Nicholas and revolutionize Russia.

First Russian Revolution in 1917 The first Russian revolution abruptly happened in the February of 1917 and to many people it was the expected and it saw the overthrowing of the Russian monarchy. As a badly plotted event, it otherwise resulted from a number of successful successive happenings before, during, and after 1917 (Levine 51).

The start of the new year, 1917, things looked normal and nobody would expect a rapid turnaround of events.1 The hostilities that happened during these times abruptly led Russia to a civil war that later resulted to the establishment of the communist nation. It all connects to the poorly plotted and dictating leadership by Tsar Nicholas, and it was obvious, even from outside Russia that the country was in crisis, and people were desperate for a complete makeover of their country.

This dictating kind of leadership had given Tsar the overall power over the country.2 The dictator, Tsar Nicholas conducted his administration duties from St. Petersburg and did not consider what the citizens thought about the country.3 there were thus both domestic and foreign impact that would shape the world history (Wade 1). Poor leadership and the effects of World War I both lead to the 1917 Russian revolution.

Considering that the Russian country was by them made of almost 90% small farmers majority who were starving, their situations became more worse as they used their equipment, intended just to complete their tasks without compromising on their feelings and sufferings. Looking at how governance was undertaken over the unequally shared land resource, the entire country ranging from the urban areas to the rural areas, the bureaucrats, and the hidden soldiers seemed to be in control but alas! The Russian country was rotting from the inside (University of Liverpool, n.p.).

The following events lead to the overthrow of Russian monarchy The autocracy and the poor economic and social welfare of Russian people contributed mostly to the overthrow of the Russian monarchy. First considering Nicholas dictatorship, the initial efforts of the Russian revolution were in the first place political, geared towards overthrowing him. What followed was a new government in power that had a system a puzzle of the needed change. During the start of 1900s, Russia depicted a dictatorship monarchy that was above the law.

This resulted from Nicholas II, who got to power without unexpected following the sudden death of Alexander III, as the sovereign of the emperor of Russia. At the time Nicholas got to power, the leadership was very demanding and needed high intelligence as dictated by the prevailing events over the world. What Nicholas offered with his associate administrators was a complete disaster. 2 A fraction of the troubles of Nicholas had base on his organization of his government (Levine 46).

It composed of cabinet members and distinguished staff as directly appointed by Nicholas and independently operated with him and this represented a broken system of administration. Even the able people like Nicholas grandfather found unrealistic.3 However, Nicholas was unwilling to relinquish power and with his wife's support on this coupled by what Alexandra had taught him, to remain always autocratic, he continued his dictatorship leadership and could not make any decisive measures, showing how incapable he was.

What his close associates did was to show support for denial to enact the much-needed reform in Russia. Indicating how bad his actions cost his sovereignty, the government remained in a state of inaction where it could not address the increasing number of serious problems and Russia lost two major battles and two revolutions in his 20-year period in power. His governance as a poorly directed system, it could not address civil rights activities of the Russian people as they took the position of subjects rather than civilians.

Being concerned with how different organizations formed and for what reasons, the government could not undermine even the most seemed harmless organization. With censorship as a main control of how information could spread, it resulted to criminal and channels involving great and often violent need for change. Unlike Alexander II who encouraged reforms, the monarchs remained autocratic.

Alexander II contributed, a lot to the 1860s reforms, allowing the creation of locally elected council members with excellent characters, having restricted rights in their governance, obliged to improve communication networks, basic education, health care, agriculture, and other locally needed services. The Nicholas and his associates however could not accept sharing of the most important political authority with anybody (Wade 2). 4 Differently, Nicholas view of the foreign members of the empire was absolute.

Made up of a broad ethnic background, the Russian supreme dominion was a collection of a mixed culture of different nationalists forms both the nineteenth and twentieth century. The Nicholas authority was first concerned with cultural and civil demands as well as self-governance but later went further to restricting local languages, demanding the Russian language, bias on religious backgrounds, changing local government organization and even wanting to nationalize non-Russians.

All these dictating steps limited development and growth of the Russian nation and increased resentments and it lead to the overthrow of Nicholas in 1917, and what followed was an irreversible process of revolution. Turning to the economic and social issues, first, it was the developing unrest, which started the main events leading to the revolution.

In February a confusion erupted and it reached the peak causing a long period of both civil and army dissatisfaction where as the civilians' conditions were getting worse, the military failed to oblige to their duties. For example, the international day for women turned out to be a demonstration that rocked the entire city of St. Petersburg as the women were intensively irritated and they had the best chance at this moment to abandon their works and give a voice on the crisis.

It did not take long and the men became part of the demonstration bringing the city to a standstill. In addition to the civilians and the military displeasure on prevailing governance, different opposing organizations emerged across Russia. 5 The people constituted the opposing parties, which included the significant Socialist revolutionaries who enjoyed a massive support from the majority poor compatriots.

In addition, there was the 1898 Russian Democratic Party, which interested majority of the city employees but suffered a setback when it separated in to two, Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (Levine 46).6 These were the great threats to the Tsar's governance. Unlike the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks were only committed to recruiting the individuals who were totally dedicated sincerely to fighting the Tsar's dictatorship. On their part, the Mensheviks compromised the Tsarist governance and its members were at peace to vie for positions as well as elect leaders of the Duma State.

As loyal servants of the Tsar governance, they used this opportunity to secretly organized and spread propaganda that opposed the Nicholas leadership. In addition to the opposition of the two parties, there were troubles caused by the large number of varying nationalities that lived in Russia. 7 When the withdrawal of support for Tsar reached climax, he had a small percentage with him thus invaders from Poland and Finland could not wait to overthrow Tsar Nicholas.

Their wait was over after the start of the World War 1 and there they had the ultimate chance to fulfill their wishes.8 This damage was an irreversible long-term and a bad reputation to the Nicholas' government. However, Russia joined World War I in support of France and Britain, thus fighting against the Germans who had joint forces of Austria and Hungary (University of Liverpool, n.p.). The First World War assisted Tsar during the initial times.

9 It was after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by the political rivals that took place in Serbia 1914 when the southern Hungarian group of States under the one authority announced openly that they were going to attack their surrounding nations. The year was 1915 during August when Tsar Nicholas saw the need to be in charge of the military, leaving power to again incapable people (Wade 30).10 Apart from the poor leadership of Gregory Rasputin, he significantly contributed to the Russia's revolution.

As a monk belonging to the Orthodox Church of Russia, he managed to have an ever raising significant and influence on the Nicholas' rule .11 His ridicule views about the first family made the Russian citizens to regard him as worthless or inferior because of his resistance and the general talk he had on issues. Despite there being a demanding leadership crisis that could cause challenges to even the best leaders of the time, the presence of Tsarina and Rasputin worsened the conditions.

They reshuffled the cabinet, sacking talented cabinet ministers and in their place, putting useless ones and the acknowledgements they got were widespread rumors that both had become lovers.12 It was at this moment when Nicholas directed the army to take control of the situation and because of the atrocities, they had suffered in the hands of the Tsar, many soldiers chose to deny Nicholas' call to fight riots and rather joined the demonstrating crowds.

The denial by the armed forces to take control of the demonstrating crowds lead to fighting that tuned the St. Petersburg city into a battle zone. For example, the consequences were that by the October 28, there were approximately 80,000 soldiers, who had declined to fight the demonstrating crowds and by their resignation from the force, it ignited a widespread robbing and stealing. At this moment, Nicholas was facing extreme pressure on his leadership and thus, he renounced his sovereign power where his brother took over power.

Unfortunately, Michael failed to acknowledge the authority as he (Nicholas' brother) failed to accept the challenge from his brother as he opted for election to power by Duma and due to his stand on the matter, the following day saw his resignation leaving Russia without a national leader (Wood 59). In the process of the long-term impacts to Russian, full revolution could have been by 1905. 13 Instead at this time, the country's economy was dipping deeper and deeper in to crisis and Russia was in desperate need of a complete change.

The large number of poverty-stricken employees who ended up working for long durations in exchange for meager compensations coupled by their slam dwelling status further fueled the worsening situations. The poor conditions touched the renown Karl Marx and he ended up in describing the peasants as only supposed to lose the chains and nothing else (Kowalski 32). 14 By this time, Tsar only concerned with the affluent and this did not change even after Nicholas took over power from Tsar. Despite ignoring the poor, Russian geography was a major obstacle in communication.

For example, the communication network could delay information and mails for longer periods across Russia. 15 Moreover, the poor transport system increased the starvation of people not resulting from food shortage, but the lengthy time taken to transport the food leading to its destruction on transit. The food shortages and political instabilities fueled the 1917 revolution and revolution was at the verge of happening. After the long wait, the unavoidable happened in February 1917 and Russia found herself abruptly forced into a revolution, just as many had anticipated this for quite some time.

Successive events lead to others and created more unrest and in fact, the entire period of the long-term unrests, they all saw the opposing of Tsar as well as the social organizations of the suited family (Wood 60). 16 World War 1 impact to Russian revolution Considering the opposition that Tsar received, the political, social, and economic instabilities, the World War I, as well as the Russian geography characterized some among the many short- and long-term causes of the 1917 revolution.

However, amongst these many, there happened to be one that resulted to the others and this was the First World War during 1914, which lasted for four years and left Russia in tatters.

Despite first benefiting from the outbreak of the First World War I, where the lower classes looked up on their leaders for assistance and good governance, Tsar's leadership collapsed later.17 The Russian military was succeeding wonderfully but motivation did not last for long as the first casualties of the war were at Tannenburg, where the Germans devastated the Russian fighters. In the following month of September of 1914, the second casualties of Russia were the military in the Eastern parts of Germany.

Seeing the eventual consequences of smaller fighting groups or army, The Russian army rejoined to fight Galacia despite losing over a million fighters, and to their relief, they managed to defeat the Austrians. What followed was a mere disaster as significant sides of the Russian empire were receiving fighting from their enemies (Bunyan, and Fisher 471). When conditions got worse, Nicholas had to leave Petrograd by the eighth month of 1915 to take command of the army.

Little did he know that earlier failures by preceding authorities were to be entirely on him? Taking control of the army cost his marriage and left his wife Tsarina with Rasputin, her adviser. Being a foreigner, she did not receive much support from the Russians and neither her advisor could impress the Russian people because of his opposing stand.18 World War I being the event that contributed to the overthrow of the Russian Monarchy in 1917, it gave the killing kick to Nicholas' dictatorship.

During the initial counters with Germans 19, they suffered another blow by loosing hundred thousands of troops that was a huge number compared to their opponent twenty thousand casualties. This continuous loosing of battles and reversal of his progress in his intentions caused his departure from St. Peterson in 1915 so that he can have independent directing of the military.

It was such a desperate moment for Russia because the pressure saw the deployment of compulsory State military services as well as unqualified armed forces in the front lines and to make matters worse, these untrained soldiers did not have the necessary weapons and because they were frequently put at front lines, there was no doubt about the massive number of causalities.

It was in 1916 when the fighting force lost much of its motivation as the war got tougher and tougher to the disadvantaged class, who saw their sons dying in the front lines as well starving. With such a failure, the Tsar Nicholas governance had to bear all the responsibility for the failures and these critics went on to reach the climax of seeing Nicholas overthrown (Bunyan, and Fisher 471).

The composition of the Russian military was made of a large number of the disadvantaged men who were able to work in factories, but instead recruited in to army. The soldiers who survived at war saw the suffering that their fellow men were undergoing and the blame again went to the authorities. It is also important to note that the recruitment of able men to the military caused shortage of workforce in the industries, further worsening the economy.

With the collapsing economy, business went down and salaries fell and at the same time, riots were continuing and by December 1916, Russia was collapsing and the army, together with the other citizens became more frustrated where they ended up joining forces to fight Tsar Nicholas. By January the following year (1917), it saw Russian military thrashed from Poland and Romania and because Tsar refused to listen to Duma concerning change of strategies in leadership, it led to more rioting.

Therefore, all citizens withdrew their support for Tsar and this lead to his giving up of leadership in March 1917.20 When Tsar saw this, he commanded his army to fight the rioters, but they failed to abide by his directions and rather joined the demonstration rendering Tsar helpless and eventually surrendering and relinquishing power (Bunyan, and Fisher 480). In conclusion, poor leadership and the effects of World War I both lead to the 1917 Russian revolution.

Unlike the preceding authorities of Alexandra II who accepted some form of sharing supreme power, Nicholas could not tolerate it and opted for an autocratic mode of leadership that was not mindful of.