ene was nonexistent due to lack of running water or toilets, and disease and death were common. World War I only exacerbated the social problems. The vast demand for war supplies caused even longer hours and worsening working conditions, which resulted in many more labor riots and strikes during the war. Conscription pulled skilled workers from the cities, and their unskilled peasant replacements could not keep production flowing. When urban famine became unbearable, workers left the cities in droves to look for food, and industrial production fell even further. Soldiers were ill-equipped to fight, had incompetent officers, died by the tens of thousands in battle, and finally deserted toward the end of 1916 to return home angry, hungry, and wanting to settle accounts with Russia’s autocratic leaders.
Russian peasants, workers, and middle classes had additional reasons to be dissatisfied with the despotic Russian political system. These classes had no representation in the government; Czar (or Emperor) Nicholas II (1868–1918) was an absolute ruler accountable to no one, and he remained intellectually and emotionally detached from the nation’s problems. Dissatisfaction with Russian autocracy culminated in the 1905 Revolution after the Bloody Sunday (January 9) massacre, in which the Czar’s troops shot thousands of unarmed protestors as they approached the Winter Palace to petition him to help end their strike on terms favorable to the picketing workers. Popular anger at the massacre crippled the nation with strikes and insurrections led by activists from workers’ soviets who wanted to overthrow the autocracy and create a socially just and democratic state. To placate the populace, Nicholas promulgated an October Manifesto, which promised a representative parliamentary government (Duma). After the urban working-class radicals were defeated and civil order restored, the Czar felt safe enough in 1906 to weaken his promises of representative government with Article 47 of the Fundamental State Laws, which restricted voting rights. Even with a weakened franchise, the parliament proved too radical for the Czar, and as head of state, he dissolved the first two Dumas.
By the eve of World War I, the Czarist government’s failure to solve the country’s economic backwardness and the people’s physical suffering, along with their unfulfilled desire for democratic institutions as Russia industrialized and moved toward a capitalist economy, led Russians to a more revolutionary idea for achieving social justice: the overthrow of the Czarist regime. The pressure of World War I was the catalyst for undoing Russian autocracy. Though the Russian army enjoyed some initial successes against Austria-Hungary in 1914, it was no match for the German army which easily encircled and defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg in eastern Germany in late August 1914. As the war continued, Russia’s inadequacies in equipping and training soldiers, designing appropriate and reliable weapons, and replacing equipment losses speedily became more and more evident. Soldiers could not be supplied with food, shoes, munitions, or weapons due to Russia’s small and underdeveloped industrial base and poor infrastructure. By 1915, the Russian war effort was in danger of crumbling when Germany finally went on the offensive. German forces, with the efficient industrial might of Germany at their backs, their highly trained officer corps, machine guns, and heavy artillery, cut through the badly equipped, poorly trained Russian forces. Despite his complete lack of actual military experience, Nicholas no longer trusted the competence of his generals and insisted on taking direct command of the warfront in 1915, hoping that his semi-divine presence would inspire soldiers to fight more effectively. Despite her complete lack of political or administrative experience, he left his wife, the Czarina Alexandra (1872–1918), in charge of the government. Such a decapitation of the political power center and the exposure of the Czar’s incapacities simply compounded Russia’s paral