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Essay on Reasons Behind the Russian Revolution

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Reasons Behind the Russian Revolution In March 1917, the situation for the Russians had become desperate and the workers wanted political changes as well as food and fuel. In Petrograd (as St.Petersburg had been renamed to avoid any German connection), 40,000 workers went on strike for higher wages and the people and troops overthrew the Tsar. The Rominov dynasty was to end after 304 years, bought down by the March 1917 revolution. So what were the long and short-term causes that led to this milestone in …show more content…

This angered the people as they felt the Tsar was ignoring them and did not care about their opinions. Nearly 90% of people were peasants and most were poverty stricken. They worked with the most basic tools. Half the farming land belonged to 300,000 landowners but the other half was shared with 15 million peasant families. In the cities and countryside the government and bureaucrats and secret police appeared to be in control, but underneath Russia was seething with discontent especially the living and working conditions of the poor.

From this discontent, various opposition parties were active throughout the country, even though they were usually executed, imprisoned or sent to Siberia. The main group was the Socialist Revolutionaries; they had a lot of support from peasants. Another was the Russian Social Democratic party, founded in 1898; it appealed to many town workers but then split in 1903 to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. These two groups followed the teachings of Karl Marx. The Bolsheviks allowed only fully committed members to join in with opposing the Tsarist system. The Mensheviks were more cooperative and stood in elections for duma parties and issued propaganda and organized strikes against the Tsar. Then there was the problem of the wide range of nationalities in Russia. Less than half the Tsars subjects were Russian, invaded nations like the Poles from

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