ABSTRACT
The pomp and circumstance which attended the tercentenary celebrations of the Romanov dynasty in 1913 matched the occasion. The First World War imposed intolerable strains on the State. Russia had been undergoing a process of modernisation before 1914 and the war quickened the pace but the demands were too great. Labour's radicalism hastened the onset of War Communism. The police force disintegrated with the February Revolution, and law and order became the responsibility of local organisations. The Soviet wanted international socialist action to secure a just peace without annexations and indemnities. The government immediately enacted much progressive legislation. The Kadet party contained both conservatives and liberals and its members came from the nobility, the civil service, the military and the professions. The October Revolution was timed to coincide with two other revolutions: the worldwide socialist revolution and the peasant revolution in the Russian countryside. Sovnarkom was a provisional government, provisional until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.
