Imperialism, War, and Revolution, 1881–1920 549clothing; conscripts were even sent into battle without
equipment. Army morale collapsed. On the home
front, a shortage of skilled labor, caused by an ill-
planned mobilization, led to shortages of critical sup-
plies and chaos in their transportation and distribution.
The cost of basic consumer goods rose dramatically as
the government printed worthless money to pay for the
war; a pound of meat and a sack of potatoes each in-
creased by 700 percent (see table 27.4). Food shortages
became severe because peasants refused to sell grain for
paper money. The government seemed mired in scan-
dals and corruption, of which the influence of Grigori
Rasputin (a religious mystic who was close to the royal
family, especially the czarina), and his dramatic assassi-
nation by a group of prominent aristocrats, most
aroused criticism. Russia had no stable government:
Four prime ministers were dismissed in slightly more
than two years, and the czar remained at the front with
his army. Even moderates in the Duma expressed out-
rage at the incompetence and repressiveness of the
government. Paul Milyukov, Kadets, put it bluntly:
“How did Russia get here? Stupidity or treason?” In
1916 real wages fell by approximately 20 percent,
prompting more than fourteen hundred strikes in
Russian cities. Sporadic mutinies began in the demoral-
ized army. An imperial decree ordered conscription
of 400,000 people for civilian labor, and violent resis-
tance broke out, especially in southern portions of
the empire. By winter, bread was becoming scarce in
major cities.
The February Revolution of 1917 began, like many
rebellions of the Old Regime, when food shortages
made life intolerable for urban workers. The year began
with fifty thousand workers striking in Petrograd (for-
merly St. Petersburg), and the number grew to eighty
thousand in the next month. Demonstrations and bread
riots, led by women as they had been in the French
Revolution, occurred in early March 1917 (February in
the old Russian calendar). By March 10th Petrograd
was in the grip of nearly general strikes, and Nicholas II
ordered the army to “end them tomorrow.” After offi-
cers ordered soldiers to fire on the crowd on March 11,
killing 150 civilians, discontented soliders of the Petro-
grad garrison mutinied on March 12 and joined the
demonstrators. The czar tried to suspend the Duma,
but parliamentary leaders refused to disband. The revo-
lutionary tide in Petrograd was rapidly passing by the
Duma, however, and the mutineers elected a competing
body, a council (soviet) of soldiers, which joined with a
soviet of labor deputies, led by Alexander Kerensky (a
socialist lawyer), to set up an alternative government.
On March 13 the Petrograd soviets called on soldiers
throughout the army to elect their own soviets to take
control from imperial officers, and the fate of the
regime was settled.
On March 15, 1917, six days after the first protest
marches and four days after the army fired on the
crowd, Czar Nicholas II abdicated for himself and for
his son, passing the throne to his brother, the grand
duke Michael, who also refused the crown. Leaders of
the Duma, the Petrograd Soviet, and the Zemstva as-
sumed power and announced a Provisional Govern-
ment headed by Prince Georgi Lvov, a liberal aristocrat
and Kadet who presided over the national union of
Zemstva. This government included democratic cen-
trists such as Lvov and Milyukov and democratic
socialists such as Kerensky, but none of the leading Bol-
sheviks, who were returning from exile and attacking
the government in their newspaper, Pravda,which cir-
culated openly in Russia. The Provisional Government,
under Lvov and soon under Kerensky, won interna-
tional praise for its democratic program—an amnesty
for political crimes, a constitutional assembly elected
by universal suffrage, equal rights for minorities, and
full civil liberties—but it remained a severely divided
coalition. Lenin (who was in exile in Zurich) urged the
soviets to withdraw their support from the government,
and conservatives (many of whom rallied behind the
Cossack commander of the Petrograd garrison, General
Lavr Kornilov) considered a coup d’état to forcibly sup-
press the Bolsheviks.The 1914 ruble equaled 100 kopecks or 50 cents.
Commodity April 1914 April 1917
Sack of potatoes 1 ruble 7 rubles
Sack of wheat flour
(c. 36 pounds) 2.5 rubles 16 rubles
Pound of meat 10 kopecks 70 kopecks
Lard 12 kopecks 90 kopecks
One pair of shoes 5–8 rubles 40 rubles
One cubic meter of firewood 3 rubles 20 rubles
Source: Marc Ferro, La Révolution de 1917,vol. 1 (Paris: Flammarion,
1967), and Francis Conte, Les Grands dates de la Russie et de l’URSS
(Paris, Larousse, 1990), p. 175.TABLE 27.4The Cost of Basic Russian Consumer Goods,
1914–17