Russia and Emergency Legislation During the First World War

Abstract

ABSTRACT Emergency legislation had played an important part in the governance of the Russian Empire since the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, but the outbreak of war in 1914 provided the opportunity for the Tsarist state to intensify its emergency provisions. The military authorities gained significant additional power, but this generated sustained conflict with the civil government and upset the uneasy equilibrium that had enabled the Tsarist state to maintain its hold on power. Russia’s military proved incapable of carrying out the functions of civil administration that it had been granted under emergency legislation, providing the opportunity for local government to extend its own authority and weaken the position of central government. The emergency powers that the Romanov regime introduced in summer 1914 were intended to strengthen the position of the state and continue the process by which the St Petersburg government was reinforcing its position after the upheavals of 1905. The reality of the introduction of additional emergency powers was, however, very different: emergency legislation served to weaken the authority of the Tsarist state and to hasten its eventual demise in 1917.