How Far Do You Agree That the First World War Was Mainly Responsible for the February Revolution of 1917?

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How far do you agree that the First World War was mainly responsible for the February Revolution of 1917? The First World War is hugely responsible for the February revolution in 1917 for 3 main reasons which will be talked about in this essay; an example of one of the reasons is that Ww1 destroyed the Russian economy. However Ww1 was not the sole reason for the February revolution the other factors which had a great effect on the revolution are the rumours surrounding the Tsar and his closest friends namely Rasputin, another reason is the defection of the army. The First World War was responsible for the for the 1917 revolution for 3 main reasons. Firstly, the loss of agricultural workers and horses to the army, combined with the takeover of railway lines by the army, led to food shortages in towns and cities due to poor internal communications between most main cities due to how spread out they all were. Moscow, for example, had been receiving 2,200 railway wagons of grain per month in 1914, but by Christmas 1916, this figure was down to around 300 wagons. Therefore, there was not enough food to feed the people of Russia – and to make matters worse, rationing was in place, under which each Russian citizen was entitled to only 50g of bread per day. This resulted in the people of Russia becoming agitated and taking part in the strikes and demonstrations in Petrograd, this created great unrest with Russian citizens but also meant all classes where affected by this. Secondly, the First World War crippled the Russian economy. The country mobilised 5.3 million men (9% of the population) in 1914, and, by Christmas 1916, 15.3 million men had experienced military service. The cost of fighting the war and of maintaining such a large armed force put great strains on the economy; the National Budget, for example, rose eightfold between 1913 and 1916, loans from
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