Revolutio Revolution A Turning Point In Russia

While every revolution oftentimes shares the same cause, discontentment towards the government and the desire for change, not all revolutions end similarly. Having dictated the rise and fall of numerous nations, revolution continues to happen all around the world. Some may call it rebellion and mutiny, others may refer to it as patriotic, an improvement, maybe even a new era; but, one idea remains certain, progress cannot happen without change. Revolutions during 1917 created a turning point for Russia from an illiterate, backwards empire to an educated, industrial superpower. Although the transition of the Russian Empire to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic cost many lives and freedoms, the reasonable causes and socioeconomic progressions of this momentous revolution often go unheard under the din of the demonization of communism and socialism.

Death reaped the fields of the ill-equipped Russians in the war, while poverty and famine danced among families at home. Instances such as the Battle of the Masurian Lakes where Russians lost three times as many troops as the Germans crushed morale for the soldiers (Trueman). At home, ravenous wolves, in the form of kulaks (landlords) who bribed their way around conscription, pounced on lands once owned by drafted, and now, dead peasants (“Kulaks”). By 1916, food prices tripled the wages when the kulaks, who owned most of the Russian farmland, began to hoard food away from the market to increase the demand (“February Revolution”). Workers, laboring vigorously for little pay, found themselves growing resentful of the Russian Empire as well as the “bourgeois.” This boiling hatred set the stage for a socialist government perfectly, one that speaks for the downtrodden and poor. With famine and death ravaging its people, the Russian Empire sealed its own inevitable