Europe had been performed by a more economically defined bourgeoisie. In Russia, however, the capitalist class was politically unassertive, deeply segmented by region and branch of
industry, and tied to the traditional merchant estate. Industrialists in key sections of the mining, metallurgy, and engineering industries relied on the state for orders, subsidies, and preferential tariffs, and showed little will to confront it.
The growth of an industrial proletariat posed a challenge of a different kind. In 1917 there were still only 3.6 million workers in Russia's factories and mines, yet their concentration in particular regions and in relatively large enterprises gave them a political clout out of all proportion to their numbers. Mainly recruited from the peasants -'snatched from the plough and hurled into the factory furnace' in L. D. Trotsky's memorable phrase - they varied considerably in the extent to which they were tied to the land, involved in urban culture, educated, and skilled. There were big differences, for example, between the skilled metalworkers of Vyborg district in Petrograd, the textile-? workers of the Moscow industrial region, and the workers from the g mining settlements of the Urals. Nevertheless the proportion of workers e who had severed their ties with the village and who were becoming jg socialized into the urban-industrial environment was increasing. Towns
Following the general strike of 1905, the autocracy conceded limited legalization of trade unions, but employers showed little desire to reform the authoritarian system of industrial relations. Moreover, since the response of the authorities to strikes and demonstrations was to send in police and Cossacks, workers were easily politicized, seeing in the state and capitalists a single mechanism of oppression. Deprived of the chance to pursue improvement by gradualistic means, Russian
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workers became the most strike-prone in Europe: in 1905-6 and again in 1912-14, the annual number of strikers was equivalent to almost three-quarters of the factory workforce.
In October 1905, under intense pressure from the'all-nation struggle' of the labour movement and the middle-class and gentry opposition, Nicholas II, in the October Manifesto, conceded an elected legislature, or duma, plus substantial civil rights. The revolution had exposed the vulnerability of the autocracy, but it also rekindled the reformist energies of the bureaucracy. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin's bold legislation to allow peasants to separate from the agricultural commune by consolidating their land holdings into private plots. Many of the middle classes, alarmed by the extent of worker and peasant insurgency, were ready to work with a constitutional monarchy in the interests of social reform. Yet the massive unrest in the countryside in 1906-7, which saw the burning and looting of gentry estates, together with the radicalism shown by peasants in elections to the first and second dumas in 1906 and 1907, demonstrated the perils of controlled modernization.
Once the revolutionary storm had died down, Stolypin in June 1907 launched a 'coup' against the duma, limiting its power and drastically reducing peasant representation. Thereafter the regime became steadily more isolated. The middle classes continued to support the faltering efforts at reform, but felt betrayed by the way in which Nicholas and his ministers clawed back the concessions granted in the October Manifesto. Workers, needless to say, remained profoundly alienated from the regime and from the wealthy and privileged classes. More worryingly, the autocracy was losing its traditional supporters. The 1905 revolution had destroyed peasant loyalty to their 'little father' the tsar, and the Stolypin reforms failed by 1914 to create a layer of conservative farmers who might have provided a new base for the regime. The authority of the Orthodox Church was in decline and the once liberal gentry, debt-ridden and aghast at peasant insurgency,
harried the bureau era су for failing to protect its interests. Finally, the project of orderly modernization was also threatened by the appearance of nationalism among the non-Russian peoples of the empire.
In 1906 the tsarist state was weak but not necessarily doomed. Orderly modernization in a world of intensifying competition between empire-nations and in a society torn by social conflict was never going to be easy. But it might have succeeded had the resolve of the regime not been undermined by the unwillingness of the tsar to tolerate any weakening of his authority. The tsar sincerely believed that, as God's appointed representative, he did not have the right to compromise his power. The omens were evident in the first line of Basic Law of 1906, which ostensibly enshrined a constitutional monarchy: TotheAII-Russian Emperor belongs the Supreme Autocratic Power.' Consequently, by 1907, with the revolutionary crisis at an end, the ? regime began to retreat from its commitment to open up the political g process to new social forces. By 1913-14, Russia's cities were once again e awash with conflict. Nevertheless the autocracy collapsed not because jg of its unwillingness to reform, nor even because of the intrinsic
The war marked a watershed in Europe's history, destroying empires, discrediting liberal democracy, preparing the way for the totalitarian politics of the 1920s and 1930s. It exposed all the belligerents to the severest of tests and found the Russian autocracy wanting. The war had a devastating impact on the empire. Over 14 million men were mobilized; about 67 million people in the western provinces came under enemy occupation; over 6 million were forcibly displaced, of whom half a million were Jews expelled from front-line areas. The eastern front was less static than the western, but neither side was able to make a decisive breakthrough and offensives proved hugely costly. Perhaps 3.3 million died or were lost without trace- a higher mortality than any other belligerent power (although Germany had a higher number of
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counted dead) - and the total number of casualties reached over 8 million. The mass slaughter and seething hatreds to which the war gave rise fatally compromised the chances of democracy after the autocracy had been overthrown.
They drove us and we went Where was I going and why? To kill the Germans! But why? I didn't know. I arrived in the trenches, which were terrifying and appalling. I listened as our company commander beat a soldier, beat him about the head with a whip. Blood poured from the poor man's head. Well, I thought, as soon as he begins to beat me, I'll skewer him with my bayonet and be taken prisoner. I thought who really is my enemy: the Germans or the company commander? I still couldn't see the Germans, but here in front of me was the commander. The lice bit me in the trenches. I was overcome with dejection. And then as we were retreating I was taken prisoner. F. Starunov, a peasant conscript in the First World War
Russian soldiers fought valiantly and generally successfully against Turks and Austrians, but proved no match for the German army in matters of organization, discipline, and leadership. General Brusilov's offensive of June 1916, however, testified to the resilience of the Russian soldiers and by that stage the army had overcome the shortage of shells that had dogged its first months in the field. When the February Revolution came, it was not as the result of military defeat, or even of war weariness, but as the result of the collapse of public confidence in the government.
In November 1915, after a disastrous first year of battle, Nicholas took personal command of the armed forces. Though diligent, he had neither the ability nor imagination to coordinate the external and the home fronts
