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Was World War I A Catalyst For Or The Principal Cause Of The February Revolution Of 1917

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The essay question I will be answering is: was the first World War a catalyst for or the principal cause of the February Revolution of 1917? I will be looking at the war itself to prove that it was in fact a catalyst for the February Revolution, and looking at Russian history from 1800-1914 to prove that the Great War was not the primary cause for revolution but rather a few drops in a sea of change which had been occurring for over a century. In my paper I will argue that Russian Tsars had much difficulty in the 19th century trying to keep up with and understand the changing perspectives of the people, building tensions between the peasantry/working class and the nobility leading to lower-class desires for change, socially and economically. …show more content…

Alexander I is a great starting point for this topic as he began his reign very liberally, however the masses had not yet become aligned with liberal idealism. Alexander I’s initial idealism revealed some of the first inklings of major change within the society and politics.(FOOTNOTE TEXTBOOK) Alexander II’s made several of the idea of Alexander I into reality, in spite of his father’s conservative legacy, and the autonomy given to the peasantry class through local governments taught the lower-classes that they could in fact run themselves.(FOOTNOTE Pulonov) The unionization, strikes, and student demonstrations of the time not only demonstrate that there was a mentality within some people to fight for better rights, freedoms, pay, and quality of life occurring long before WWI.(FOOTNOTE Pulonov, Peasant Unions(sumy), little known,by-product) The success of strikes promoted the idea that, if the workers unified, they could influence substantial …show more content…

This project is interesting because it looks at the fact that the people had been working towards a new society which provided greater equality, changes which some wanted to obtain through peaceful means, but having been denied real progress for too long, along with the volatile contemporary events, developed an air of high-pressured tensions. I expect readers of this project to learn that the Russian Revolution had numerous precursors, and that many of the tsars of the 19th century struggled to understand at the time what these precursors were preluding to, which contributed to the vacillation of the last few

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