• tal@lemmy.today
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    13 hours ago

    Maybe, but I don’t think that the conditions are nearly as bad as they were in 1917. They’re obviously worse than they would have been had Russia not entered into the war, but the collapse in 1917 was due to urban food shortages. I don’t mean “luxury X is unavailable”, but that people couldn’t get staple food to survive because of demands of the war.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/russias-february-revolution-was-led-women-march-180962218/

    Like the French Revolution in 1789, a bread shortage in the capital precipitated unrest. After long shifts in the factories, female factory workers stood in bread lines alongside other women including domestic servants, housewives and soldiers’ widows. In these bread lines, news and rumors about planned rationing spread. When Saint Petersburg municipal authorities announced on March 4 that rationing would begin ten days later, there was widespread panic; bakeries were sacked, their windows broken and supplies stolen.

    As he had throughout the previous months, Nicholas once again underestimated the extent of the unrest and again departed for military headquarters more than 400 miles away in Mogliev, which is now in Belarus, against the advice of his ministers. In the czar’s mind, leadership of the military took precedence during wartime, and he was concerned by the mass desertions occurring in the aftermath of munitions shortages and defeats at the hands of the Germans.

    Though in past moments of revolutionary sentiment, the military had stood by its czar, by 1917, the armed force was demoralized and sympathetic to the demonstrators’ cause. The presence of large groups of women among the demonstrators made soldiers particularly reluctant to fire on the crowds. When the soldiers joined the demonstrators, as opposed to firing upon them, the end of the Romanov dynasty was near.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/ztyk87h/revision/5

    There was a severe lack of food in Moscow and, in 1917, Petrograd only received half of the grain required to feed its citizens.

    Now, okay. It’s possible that standards for political support are different, that the bar has changed. But the public in Russia of 2026 — though it may be in a worse state than Russia of 2020 due to resources consumed by the war — is also not experiencing the degree of deprivation of Russia of 1917.

    • stickyprimer@lemmy.world
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      9 minutes ago

      It’s true. Looking back on revolutions, starvation is a common cause. What we haven’t seen is a relatively better off population revolt because their conditions got notably worse, from pretty good to pretty bad but not close to starvation.

    • ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      That is definitely true, but 21st century examples of revolution don’t necessarily need a food shortage to begin (Maidan, Nepal, etc.)

      • stickyprimer@lemmy.world
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        7 minutes ago

        I’m no historian but I think self-determination is up there with starvation as a common cause for revolt. But Russians wouldn’t be throwing off the shackles of a foreign empire.

    • egyto@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      This is consistently true of most revolutions. Once a lot of people are staring at the possibility of starvation you hit critical mass on people with nothing to lose.