Why did the Russian Revolution happen?
The Russian Revolution happened because of the Tsar's autocratic refusal to share power, catastrophic military defeats and casualties in World War I, severe food shortages and economic collapse, deep peasant grievances over land inequality, an exploited industrial working class concentrated in key cities, and the organizational ability of Lenin's Bolshevik Party to seize power amid the chaos.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the product of long-term structural weaknesses in the tsarist system, intensified to breaking point by the pressures of World War I. Understanding why it happened requires examining both the deep causes and the specific circumstances that made 1917 the moment of rupture.
Russia's political system was uniquely brittle among the major European powers. While other nations had developed constitutional governments and expanded political participation, the Tsar maintained absolute autocratic power, advised by a narrow circle of aristocrats and resisting any meaningful reform. The 1905 Revolution, triggered by military defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, had forced Nicholas II to create a parliament (the Duma), but he systematically undermined it. Political repression, censorship, and the secret police created a society where legitimate grievances had no peaceful outlet.
Social tensions were explosive. Russia remained overwhelmingly agricultural, with a vast peasantry that resented the concentration of land in the hands of the nobility and the Church. The rapid but uneven industrialization of the late 19th century had created a small but concentrated industrial working class in St. Petersburg and Moscow — workers who labored under terrible conditions with no legal right to organize. The intelligentsia, inspired by Western liberal and socialist ideas, saw the autocracy as an obstacle to progress.
World War I was the catalyst that destroyed the regime. Russia suffered catastrophic military defeats — over two million soldiers killed, five million wounded, and two million taken prisoner by 1917. The war effort consumed resources and disrupted agriculture, creating severe food shortages in the cities. Transport systems collapsed. Inflation spiraled. The Tsar's decision to personally command the army in 1915 made him directly responsible for every defeat. His wife's reliance on the corrupt mystic Rasputin further discredited the royal family.
By February 1917, the system simply broke. Bread riots in Petrograd escalated into a general strike; soldiers refused to suppress the uprising; the Duma formed a Provisional Government; and Nicholas abdicated. The Provisional Government's fatal decision to continue the war, combined with its failure to address demands for land reform and bread, created the opening for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who promised exactly what the people wanted — peace, bread, and land — and had the organizational discipline to seize power in October.