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Causes of Russian Revolution

Causes of Russian Revolution

Instructions: Today we are going to examine two different causes of the Russian Revolution. Study the different exhibits of evidence. Identify what each piece of evidence proves and decide which exhibit is the strongest. 

Section 1: The revolution happened because people were upset about economic conditions.

Exhibit A
Although industrial development had begun to transform Europe at the turn of the century, Russia's economy remained predominantly agricultural. This photograph of a peasant family and horse-drawn cart portrays the traditional forms of transportation and technology that shaped rural life in the country. Peasants tended to live in extreme poverty.

Exhibit B

This cartoon of Russian society dramatizes the exploitation of the workers and peasants whose labor supported the upper layers of the "cake" of society. In this era, a system of estates existed in Russia - clergy and nobility at the top and factory workers and peasants at the bottom. The factory workers and the peasantry struggled to overcome poverty.

Exhibit C


This photograph of people waiting in line to buy bread illustrates one of the most important effects of the World War I on people on the home front in Russia. The state's inability to manage the grain market, food distribution, and food pricing emerged as a main issue in the early stages of the war. By 1917, popular unrest over food shortages focused on the government's inability to deal with the unfairness of supply and demand when dealing with food. In February of that year, workers' demonstrations over the shortage of bread were the immediate cause of the regime's collapse.

Exhibit D

A Police Report on Deteriorating Conditions in the Russian City of Petrograd (1916)

In October 1916, a division of the police filed this report to the government on the deteriorating conditions in Petrograd:

“The economic condition of the masses is worse than terrible. While the wages of the masses have risen 50 percent, and only in certain categories 100 to 200 percent (metal workers, machinists, electricians), the prices on all products have increased 100 to 500 percent…The impossibility of even buying many food products and necessities, the increasing incidence of disease due to malnutrition and unsanitary living conditions (cold and dampness because of lack of coal and wood), and so forth, have made the workers, as a whole, prepared for the wildest excesses of a “hunger riot”…Never have we observed such nervousness as there is now.”'

Section 2: The revolution happened because people were upset about the war.

Exhibit E

The supply of weapons was a constant concern for the Russian army, as illustrated in the photograph below in which only a fraction of Russian soldiers had rifles to use in training. Concerned by the inefficiencies of the state's bureaucracy, private businessmen formed war industry committees to address the chronic shortages of munitions and weaponry.

Exhibit F

The high costs of the war are evident in the photograph below of a Russian field hospital. The army sustained nearly one million casualties in the summer of 1915 alone, with an equal number of soldiers taken prisoner. Note the women tending to the wounded, the priest blessing the soldiers, and the crowded, uncomfortable conditions for the soldiers huddled on the straw-covered dirt floor.

Exhibit G

The civilian costs of war included refugees forced to leave their homes to escape the front lines of battle. Men, women, and children took to the roads as part of a massive dislocation of the population during the first year of the war. In light of the government's struggle to manage military operations successfully, public organizations, such as the Unions of Local Government, were formed to deal with civilian and refugee needs.