Relative economic backwardness as a cause?
The first proximate cause, the bread shortage in Petrograd, is inextricably linked to a larger question about the significance of relative Russian economic backwardness as an underlying cause ofthe revolution. Many memoirs, foreigners' accounts and narratives portray the link between war and revolution in terms of a relatively backward economy unable to hold up under the demands of total war or to produce the shells and weapons needed to compete on the battlefield. But, as Norman Stone has convincingly argued, in many battles, it was not so much a lack of shells, guns or technology that explains Russian defeats as failures of tactics, strategy and command efficiency. He puts the blame on the Russian generals and their strategies, such as the wasteful stockpiling of millions of rounds of ammunition and guns in a massive network of fortresses, which in the end had almost no tactical significance in the fighting. Moreover, old-style social prejudices and outmoded notions of honour contributed to prejudices against the enhanced role of artillery and defensive positioning. As on the western front, a senseless cult of the offensive led to countless wasted lives.[117]
But economic factors also mattered. While the Russian army was superior to the Ottoman army and arguably had a technological edge on the Habsburg army, it was significantly behind the German. At the beginning of the war, the average German division had more than twice the artillery of a Russian division, and Russia was never able to fully close the gap. Unless overwhelmingly outnumbered, technical superiority enabled German troops consistently to defeat Russian troops throughout the entire course of the war. The crucial role of high-powered precision artillery and shells and the drawn-out nature of the fighting behind entrenched defences rapidly turned the war into a production contest.
The mobilisation of Russian industry to increase production for the war effort began slowly and faced many obstacles. Only gradually did the government turn to the kind of aggressive state measures to influence and direct economic activity towards the war that were so successful in Germany. Defence production was further constrained by the relatively poor financial state ofthe empire. Compared to other countries, Russia had only a very small domestic market for government debt, making it heavily reliant on foreign loans for extraordinary expenditures. This added to the costs and limited the extent of direct state action to expand the output of military products. Moreover, in the decades prior to the war Russia relied heavily on massive yearly inflows of loans and direct investments from abroad. In fact, foreign investment accounted for nearly half of all new capital investment in industry from the i890sto 1914.[118] The war brought a sharp and sudden end to this key source of industrial growth.
Germany had been the largest single source ofdirect investment in the Russian economy. Upon the outbreak of the war, German loans were frozen and by early 1915, the regime embarked on a radical campaign to nationalise businesses and industrial firms owned by enemy citizens. Moreover, from the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war in October 1914, the Straits were closed, leaving only distant Vladivostok and the northern ports of Archangel and Murmansk to receive allied shipments of war materiel. Archangel was frozen half the year and had only a single-track railway line incapable of handling even a portion of the burden. Murmansk had no railway link at all until a wartime project was completed in January 1917. As a result, even when allied shipments finally began to arrive in substantial quantities in mid-1915, many of them simply piled up at their ports of entry. The blockade of Russia was thorough and caused tremendous difficulties for Russian industries and businesses of all kinds by suddenly severing ties to suppliers, engineers, technicians and firms producing specialised items.
These problems were greatly exacerbated by the declaration of prohibition- first of nearly all types of alcoholic beverages during mobilisation, and then of vodka for the duration of the war. On the eve of the war, as throughout its long history, the Russian state had received roughly a quarter of its revenues from alcohol taxes and state sales of vodka. Most studies conclude that prohibition probably curbed some of the traditional drinking bouts as soldiers gathered and travelled to the front, and likely had some positive impacts on health and efficiency in the short run. But the cost to the treasury was immense. Moreover, as the war dragged on, home distilling and illegal markets for alcohol took on a massive scale. The continued sale of wine in elite restaurants added to social resentments, and crowds breaking into alcohol storage facilities contributed to the violence of mobilisation riots, pogroms and the 1915 riot in Moscow. By 1917, the cumulative effects of prohibition were extremely serious. One contemporary financial expert claims the cost reached 2.5 billion roubles by mid-1917, or 10 per cent of all expenditures on the war.[119]
Not least of the impacts of prohibition was that the massive demand for alcohol switched to consumer items and manufactured goods, thereby contributing to inflation - one of the most important links between the war and the revolution. Inflation, of course, had other important sources. Most fundamentally, the lack of a domestic market for government debt, difficulties in acquiring foreign credit and the sharp reduction of exports all combined to leave the government with only one way to pay for its massive defence orders: expansion of the money supply. Russia abandoned the gold standard already on 27 July/8 August 1914 and by January 1917, the amount of money in circulation had more than quadrupled. Inflation affected the domestic situation in a number of ways. In April 1915, the first significant riots broke out in Moscow over price increases in shops and markets. Inflation riots became an increasingly common and important occurrence on the home front as the problems of the wartime economy accumulated.[120] It also contributed to ethnic violence. The right-wing press and police officials often blamed Jewish, German and foreign shopkeepers and speculators for inflation, especially after the head of the extreme right faction in the State Duma, A. N. Khvostov, was appointed minister of interior in October 1915. Liberals in the Ministry of Agriculture and in co-operatives, zemstvos (local elected assemblies) and other public organisations involved in food supply also campaigned against speculators and the market. All co-operated in attempts to require below-market price sales of grain to the army and state and, at the same time, to get rid of the 'middlemen' involved in the pre-war grain market. Both efforts only exacerbated shortages and tensions in the countryside.[121]
Inflation also contributed to the problem of shortages of grain deliveries to the cities. The grain-delivery problem was not the result of an actual shortage of grain. With the blockade, massive exports were entirely shut off, leaving more than enough grain for both the army and for domestic consumption. The problem was the decline in the amount of that grain that was reaching urban markets. Here one of the key problems was that military commanders often used their martial law authority to ban 'exports' of grain from given areas thinking they could thus ensure its delivery to the army at artificially low prices. The civilian administration also tried to regulate prices and work around the commercial grain market. Peasants responded to these kind of administrative measures by waiting for higher grain prices. Unwilling to sell grain to buy industrial products at inflated prices, peasants in increasing numbers chose to store their grain, feed it to their livestock or illicitly convert it into alcohol rather than deliver it to market as inflation accelerated in late 1916 and early 1917.
118
J. P. McKay,
119
ArthurMcKey 'Sukhoizakonvgodypervoimirovoivoiny: prichiny,kontseptsiiaiposled- stviiavvedeniiasukhogozakonav Rossii, 1914-1917', in V L. Markov (ed.),
120
Iu. I. Kir'ianov, 'Massovye vystupleniia na pochve dorogovizny v Rossii (1914-fevral' 1917 g.)',
121
Lars Lih,