Hi there

Hi there. So today we are gonna be looking at lesson two of our Russian looms, which is looking at world war.

I Russia's kind of role in world war I, but mainly looking at the problems that world war I caused for Russians and why this effectively led to more and more people dislike in this saw and his leadership.

So the first thing that we are going to look at is why the saw went to war in first place.

So first of all, he believed that the war could make people forget about all of the problems we looked at in our last loom that were happening in Russia.

At the time, it was all believed that Russia might be able to gain more land. If they invaded east pro in particular, the SAR also believed if I win the war, maybe I could become more popular than ever.

So actually winning the war. Could it turn people's opinion against his poor leadership that we'd looked in our previous loom.

It was also important due to alliances. So Austria-Hungary declared were on Serbia and Russia believed they must help Serbia, Serbia, sorry, because they are fellow SLS.

The French had also asked for Russia's help in invading geese pusher. So they saw it as kind of like their duty within their alliances to support these other countries.

Now, what we don't really look at in this study is kind of what Russia do during the war. We really look at how it impacted people at home in Russia.

So the first thing we'll look at are the effects, particularly in terms of the military. So Russia will really, really, really kind of confident because they had a huge army and they believed they could inflict huge defeat on their enemies, Germany and Austria Hungary.

But after really early advances, they were actually defeated by Germany who proved themselves to be very, very strong by 1917 in particular, Russia had lost large areas of their empire, for example, Russian Poland, and Lihue Lithuania, as well as LA via.

So militarily, it wasn't that successful at all for Russia. Now, the second impacts we're gonna look at are more so on the eco economic side of things.

So looking at the money problem in Russia now, it was very, very, very expensive for the war for Russia and for lots of countries obviously, and paying for it caused problems for ordinary Russians in particular.

So first thing we'll look at the government actions and the problem that caused. So the government printed too much money, and these were called Rubal notes.

And because of this, it made paper money worthless. This led to huge levels of inflation and therefore increased living costs for ordinary Russians.

Secondly, between 1914 and 1917, the government spent over 17,000 millions on the war, therefore, to pay for it for the ordinary people.

This meant that taxes went up to pay for the government spending. And this hits the order people the hardest, which again, increases their dislike towards the saw overall, the spending increased by eight times between 1913 and 1916.

So because of this Russia for into huge levels of debt, because the government were borrowing huge amounts of money from other countries.

So economically the war was pretty much a disaster. And as we've said, it hit the pockets of the ordinary people, the most who were the people who were already against the saw such as the peasants, such as the Ariat.

So the last, oh, sorry, the next impact we're gonna look at are the social impacts. So these are things that impacted ordinary people more socially.

So mainly we're gonna look at food shortages. So in 1916, food shortages grew much worse because the army took over control of the roads and the railways.

So this meant that large amounts of food, food, and fuel will go into the army instead of the ordinary people, the railway systems virtually collapsed, meaning supplies to towns and cities suffered massively just as an example, in Petrograd for example, the, which was really, really far from food produced areas, these major areas struggled.

So in 1916, the daily bread rush, therefore went from 1.2 kilograms per person. And then by 1917 had fallen to no 0.8 kilograms over 15 million peasant metal.

So fought in the war. This led to a huge loss of manpower. Socially horses were also seized by the military, which had a huge turn in terms of impacting, um, plowing a farm.

So more so for the peasants. And it was also really hard for peasants to get fertilizer because it was being used.

The focus of, sorry, industry was not on fertilizer and food produce. It was more so on weapons and industry. So it just became really, really hard to get hold of.

So the last impact we're gonna look at are the political impacts. So the tumor itself who were the parliament and Russia at the time did not support the SAR because they were very much sidelined in the lead up to the war.

So because of this, the SAR dissolved them in 1914, just meaning he basically got rid of them. However, because he faced so much criticism or the government faced so much criticism in 1915, he had to allow them to meet again.

But the, the Douma request to replace lots of the SARS advisors and ministers with new ones that they supported and said, but heed users and relationships completely deteriorate the doer.

In fact, by 1917, become the center for opposition against the government. And this was a huge turning point. So the doer become a huge level of opposition towards the SAR.

The SAR also takes personal control of the army in 19. This is one of his greatest mistakes. He has little experience I in elements of warfare and he is therefore blamed for lots of the military defeats that we'd previously looked at.

His new role also meant that he wasn't really in the capitals or he wasn't really in any of those major area where lots of disruption was soon to take place.

So he wasn't there to take control. Taking control of the army was one of his greatest mistakes. This wouldn't have mattered if he was, if he was successful, any success would've made him look good, but as we've looked at the SAR, militarily had massive levels of failure.

He lost respect, and there was virtually no one to come to his assistance because he'd fallen out with the Douma as well.

He became dangerously, dangerously isolated, which is gonna lead onto our next loom, which is looking at the February revolution. So if you think about both of our looms that we've looked at so far, guys loom one and two, these both look up the build up to the February revolution.

So the February revolution, which is our next loom happens a lot due to these problems that we've looked at. So the peasants and theary acts not liking the SAR disagreeing with his leadership, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, also organized opposition.

So lots of political opposition that he had, and then fourthly all the problems that were created because of world war.

I so just be thinking about how both the looms that you've looked at simultaneously link, and then that will lead on to the problems in February lead into the February revolution.