Long+Term+Causes

The Three Main Causes

 * **World War I** which weakened Russia, caused food shortages and showed The Tsar to be sacrificing his people in an imperial jousting competition
 * **The Tsar's __Intransigent__ politics** whereby he alienated any support from his ministers and people by his brutal assertion of autocracy
 * **The Tsarina** who pushed Nicholas to adopt his unflinching attitude towards the strikers/ was unpopular among the Russians due to her German nationality. She also was Tsar Nicholas' point of contact in St Petersburg during the February/ March Revolution.

The Causes of the February Revolution

 * =====It was a spontaneous outburst, a direct result of the war which drove all the potential opposition groups together and the heavy burdens which the Russian people had been forced to carry. The Tsar took charge of the army in August 1915 because it was doing so poorly due to lack of training and equipment(not enough rifles), but he did this in defiance of the generals and ministers surrounding him and all his subsequent actions in government put him increasingly at odds with the Duma and the Russian people. Nicholas' support from the Octobrists (1905) dwindled as Russian defeats mounted during WWI. =====
 * =====Ever since Bloody Sunday in 1905 there had been growing discontent with Russian government and February 1917 was a type of bourgeois revolution welcomed mostly by the middle class who had lost faith in the Tsarist system. =====
 * =====Whenever the Duma tried to mediate with the people's demands, Nicholas asserted his autocracy, backed by his wife Alexandra, and refused their demands such as in 1915, when the moderates in Duma formed 'The Progressive Bloc' the Tsar suspended the Duma in August. Nicholas alienated responsible people across the political spectrum, because he hadn't been trained to be tsar and was a very shabby politician. His personality was not bent towards politics: he was bored by minister's speeches and unconcerned with affairs of state. =====
 * =====During the war there were serious anti-German riots in Moscow 1915. The Tsarina was blamed for Russian defeat: “Down with the German Woman!” =====
 * =====There had long been rumours that Rasputin manipulated the Tsar(through his wife Alexandra), indulging in orgies at court, and this heightened the mistrust of the people in their monarchy. =====