ABSTRACT
From the very beginning of the war the Russian bureaucracy made it perfectly clear that, although the help and support of the entire nation was essential for victory, the direction of the war must remain exclusively in their own hands. Tsar and his Government made the most desperate efforts to exclude the popular forces from the sanctuary of war administration and to keep the entire responsibility in their own hands. The Galician disaster laid bare the terrible lack of munitions in the Russian Army, which was regarded as the primary cause of the military collapse. The mobilisation of industry was a kind of illness; some sort of fever which took possession of Russian patriotic society. The rapidity with which the mobilisation of industry was achieved was the first great blow to the national economy. In a few months the Russian Army had plenty of munitions, but the nation was exhausted, its transport system paralysed, and its industry almost ruined.
