russia and WW1

THE FIRST WORLD WAR ON RUSSIA!!

RUSSIA'S MILITARY PERFORMANCE --> 1914 - 1916

the war began well for them, and therfore the country was filled with a strong sense of pride, this however, did not last long. the russian advance was stopped at the battle of Tannennburg in which the german generals won a crushing defeat over them. 30,000 troops were killed / wounded and 95,000 were captured

they then defeated them at the battle of lodz december 1914 and by 1915 russian forces had been completely driven out of Poland

nicholas 11 then made one of the most disaterous decisions,

he took control of the army, thus meaning that all blame was sent to him for all the failiures that were happening in the war.

he could not control an army let alone one of many millions

carrying on...

what didn't help...

it turned out that nicholas 11 was a very poor comander - in - chief

and there was also very poor internal communications - the railways in particular led to a shortage of war equipment getting the the front, and it had been shown that they were producing a huge amount - in september 1916 they produced 4.3 million shells.

by christmas 1916,

• the army was facing major shortages of war materials being limited to 3 shells per day. 
• 1.6 million soldiers were dead, 
• 3.9 million were wounded and
•  2.4 million were captured

THE HOMEFRONT

it had an enormous impact on russia, by 1916 15.3 million men had experienced military service. the cost of maintaining a war and such a large army put great strains on the economy.

the national budget rose eightfold between 1913 and 1916 therefore financing out higher taxes, borrowing from france and britain. the government printed more money leading to inflation with prices rising over 200% in just 2 years. 

the loss of agricultural workers and horses to the army and the takeover of the railway lines led to shortages of food in towns and the cities. in 1914 moscow had been recieving 2200 food wagons but by 1916 this had dropped to 300 

the political impact of the war on russia

at the beggining of the war, with the high level of patriotism there were many groups that helped the war effort, for example...

* the creation of the union of zemstva provided medical facilities for the army

* the creation of of the central war committee by bussinness men to help stimulate the production of weapons and ammo - something that russia badly needed were VERY successful

however to many the creation of these highlighted the complete incompetence of the government as they did not use these groups effectively

THE ROLE OF RASPUTIN

he was a russian orthadox monk, who by many, said that he had the the power of healing. he got called into the tsar's palace in the hope that he could cure the tsar's haemophilic son, he did and by 1914 he became a significant member in court and in particular a personal confident of the tsarina

when nicholas took control of the army, it left alexandra in control of the whole country and because she was german by birth people HATED her!