Of Tsars and Revolutionaries

The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success.

Had Tsardom advanced far along the path of Westernisation before 1914? Was the Great War the major cause of the February Revolution? Or was a new revolution in the process of gestation in the period 1912-1914? This pamphlet seeks to re-evaluate the constitutional monarchy in the light of recent research.