The Revolutionary Masses
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The warring
powers had entered the hostilities in the conviction that they would
relatively quickly achieve their main military objectives. The
governments of the Allies - Britain, France and Russia - believed
that they would be able to crush their main enemy, Germany, by
attacking it on two fronts - from the west and the east. The Central
Powers, on the other hand, represented by Germany, Austro-Hungary
and Turkey, hoped to prevent the Allies’ joint operations, isolate
and rout them, with powerful military strikes, one by one. |
It was
soon clear, however, that such hopes were unfounded. The war
escalated into a world-wide, drawn-out conflict that required from
the belligerents the mobilization of their entire human and economic
resources. In such a war victory, as never before, depended not
just on the military success at the front but also on the strength
of the rear. It required a robust, modern industry, reorganized for
the conduct of war, an efficient and reliable transportation system
and, above all, domestic peace and cooperation of various sections
of society for the war effort. Torn apart by intense internal
conflicts, Russia had little chance of winning a war of this kind.
On the
whole, the Russian people entered the war in an heightened mood of
patriotic euphoria which showed that, despite everything, traditions
of loyalty to tsarism had survived among many sections of the
population. Within a few weeks after the declaration of the war on
20 July 1914, the Russian government responded to the popular mood
by renaming the country’s capital
Petrograd. The new name had a patriotic Slavic ring to it, in
contrast to the old name of St Petersburg, which now seemed too
German.
The upper
classes rallied around the government. In the Duma, all criticism of
the government ceased. In July 1914 its deputies met for one day and
voted war credits.
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A
provisional committee of Duma members was set up under Michael
Rodzianko, the Duma president, to organize aid for victims of the
war.
Zemstvos
and town councils throughout Russia held conferences to consider
how they could support the war effort. By August, the ‘All-Russian
Union of Zemstvos for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded’ had
been formed. In May 1915 representatives of industry and trade set
up another body - the Central War Industries Committee - to
coordinate war production. Alexander Guchkov, the Octobrist leader,
was elected its chairman. In June 1915,
zemstvos and municipal organizations merged in the
‘All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and Cities’. These voluntary
organizations did much to co-ordinate Russia’s war effort. |
Even on the
Russian Left most socialists, with the exception of the Bolsheviks,
followed the example of the veteran socialist Plekhanov and adopted
a pro-war stand. Such attitude was motivated by the conviction that
a victory by the Central Powers would mean the triumph of reaction
and militarism and spell unshakeable domination of Europe by
Germany.
However, by
1915, when Russia’s first major military set-backs occurred, the
patriotic euphoria started to wane, as it became increasingly clear
that the country’s economic, social and political system, as well as
its armed forces, were failing the ultimate test of war. It became
more and more obvious that the imperial government had again failed
in its tasks, as in the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War, but
on a much larger scale.