workers of Russia where more unacceptable against the tsars why
Answers
The first sign that something big was happening was on International Women’s Day—February 23, 1917, in the old Russian calendar. Crowds of female factory workers gathered in the center of Petrograd, the Russian capital (formerly known as St. Petersburg). Even as disaffected and hungry workers, male and female, joined in the protests, some revolutionaries remained skeptical. Aleksandr Shlyapnikov was a leading figure of the Bolshevik movement, whose leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, had been living outside Russia for long periods of time since 1900. Shlyapnikov observed on February 25: “Give the workers a pound of bread and the movement will peter out.”
Hunger, War, Rage
Despite initial doubts that the growing February protests would amount to much, many observers at the time—including Lenin’s Bolsheviks, Russian liberals, and foreign diplomats—were nevertheless certain that a revolution was only a matter of time.
The roots of Russia’s turmoil ran deep. During a devastating famine in the early 1890s, the inability of the government to provide sufficient relief had fanned revolutionary fervor in the country. In the cities, the appalling exploitation and squalor suffered by the workers triggered waves of protests and strikes.
The pressures of industrialization were worsened by the actions of Tsar Nicholas II. Reigning from 1894, Nicholas had inherited Russia’s colossal empire and the autocratic ideas of his family, the Romanov dynasty. In 1905 the tsar’s popularity was ebbing due to continuing domestic problems as well as an unpopular war with Japan. During a peaceful demonstration in St. Petersburg in January 1905, protesters were fired on and killed, an event that triggered months of protests.