The year 1917 dawned upon Russia, a country that had been fighting for over three years. In the defense of Serbia, which had fallen over a year ago, millions of boys lay dead, wounded, or were captured, morale was low, desertion rates were high, and the hard core of the army was all but gone. General Brusilov wrote in his diary:

"[i]The men sent to replace casualties generally knew nothing except how to march. Many could not even load their rifles, and as for their shooting...The less said about it, the better. Such people could not really be considered soldiers at all. Time after time I asked my men in the trenches why we were at war. The inevitable, senseless answer was that "A certain archduke and his wife had been murdered and that consequently the Austrians tried to humiliate the Serbians. Why Germany should want to make war on us because of the Serbians no-one could say.[/i]"

Russia had weapons, soldiers, industry and infrastructure enough to fight, it seemed. But the most important component of a war was missing: The will to wage it. The army's officers were changing. No longer were they obedient like dogs, but they began to question the legitimacy of the Emperor and the war. Platoon Commander Dmitry Os'kin wrote:

"[i]What are we doing in this war? Several hundred men have already passed through my platoon alone, and at least half of them have ended up on the field of battle either killed or wounded. What will they get at the end of the war?[/i]"

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[i]Russian soldier tries to stop his comrades from deserting[/i][/CENTER]

The situation of the army was desperate, and so the Tsar decided to act. He put on his uniform and assumed personal command of the armed forces, leaving behind the running of the Russian state to his wife and ministers. The situation at the front was bad, but the situation at the homefront was worse. The railroad system was overstretched and fifteen million boys had been pulled from their farms, so that famine was looming. Early in the year, the collapsing logistical system of Russia dealt the final blow to public order. A bread riot in Petrograd developed, which was joined by industrial workers and disgruntled soldiers. The response was what it always had been: Shoot them.

But this time, it went differently. The officers, let alone the troops, realised they were witnessing a revolution, not a little demonstration as had occured many times in the past. They did not have any reason to remain loyal to the Tsar, and many sympathised with the demonstrators. When a crackdown was ordered on February 26th, A company of the Volinsky Regiment fired into the air rather than into the mob, and a company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards shot the officer who gave the command to open fire. On February 27th, the entire Imperial Guard, even the legendary Preobrazhensky regiment, mutinied. The arsenal was pillaged, the Ministry of the Interior, Military Government building, police headquarters, the Law Courts and a score of police buildings were put to the torch. By noon the fortress of Peter and Paul, with its heavy artillery, was in the hands of the insurgents. By nightfall, 60,000 soldiers had joined what was now a revolution.

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[i]Soldiers demonstrating in Petrograd[/i][/center]

With the government collapsing a replacement had to be found, and two institutions claimed to be this. First was Georgy Lvov's Provisional Government, replacing the Council of Ministers and intending to prepare the way for elections for the Russian Constitutional Assembly. The other one was the socialist Petrograd Soviet, made up of the workers, the soldiers, and their representatives. The two nominally worked together, but on the ground they competed for legitimacy as the Soviet controlled the entire country as the Provisional Government held next to no power. The "autocrat" of the world's largest continuous country had no power left as he signed the instrument of abdication in which he passed the crown to his brother Michael, who denied it until the provisional government consented. With this unstable system and an influx of revolutionaries, uncertain times lay ahead for Russia