February Revolution (Russia)

Not to be confused with the February Uprising in 1934 in Austria.

The February Revolution (which actually occurred in March) was one of the two revolutions that happened in Russia in 1917. Food riots, factory strikes and mutinies in the army led to the end of the Russian Empire and Tsarist (sometimes spelt Czarist) monarchy and the formation of a new progressive republic and the rise of soviets. 1,443 people were killed during the revolution in gunfights with police across Petrograd.

Background

The Russian Empire had ruled much of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia for almost two centuries and was a significant geopolitical force, but it had largely been left behind in the Industrial Revolution and European Colonisation of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. It was left the poorest country in Europe, and was a brutal police state, ruthlessly hunting down and suppressing all dissent. Thus, radical ideas spread among urban workers in the city, conscripted military men, peasant farms and in the universities. A series of key failed decisions by the ruling government left the country bankrupt, in an unwinnable war, with massive food shortages and an increasingly angry population.

Vodka Tax

According to The Dictator's Handbook:

Kerensky’s revolutionaries were able to storm the Winter Palace in February 1917 because the army did not stop them. And the army did not bother to stop them because the czar did not pay them enough. The czar could not pay them enough because he foolishly cut the income from one of his major sources of revenue, the vodka tax, at the same time that he fought World War I. Czar Nicholas confused what might seem like good public policy with bad political decision making. He had the silly idea that a sober army would prove more effective than an army that was falling-over drunk. Nicholas, it seems, thought that a ban on vodka would improve the performance of Russia’s troops in World War I. He missed the obvious downsides, however. Vodka was vastly popular with the general populace and, most assuredly, with the troops. So popular and widely consumed was vodka that its sale provided about a third of the government’s revenue. With vodka banned, his revenue diminished sharply. His expenses, in contrast, kept on rising due to the costs of the war. Soon Nicholas was no longer able to buy loyalty. As a result, his army refused to stop strikers and protesters.