The Great War, Revolution and the Struggle Over Peace: Russia, 1917

Abstract

War and revolution were so tightly intertwined in 1917 Russia that the question of continuing the war to victory or finding a way to a negotiated peace became the basis for fundamental political conflict. This caused a dramatic realignment of politics and parties and drove the revolution steadily leftward. The question of the war was central to the three big crises of the Provisional Government’s period – the April Crisis, the July Crisis and the Kornilov Affair – as well as to the coming of the October Revolution. Despite their leadership of the soviets and effective control of the Provisional Government, the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary led Revolutionary Defencist bloc failed to solve the many problems facing Russia in the spring and summer of 1917. In no area, however, was the failure so disastrous as the failure to find some way to get Russia out of the war. The tragedy, perhaps pathos, of the Russian Revolution is that hope for a broad democratic outcome depended on a negotiated peace programme that, in the political and military conditions of Europe of 1917, had virtually no chance of success.