Who was to blame for the abdication of nicholas the 2nd?
There is only one person to blame for the abdication – Nicholas. Nicholas was not the right man to prevent the February Revolution, he was an inept ruler who believed in his divine right to rule without a parliament. But it was by no means inevitable, even as late as January 1917 he could have quashed the desire for change. He needed to address the following problems: The cities were starving – this was because the peasants needed to bring in the harvests and to transport food to the cities were mostly in the army. The workers were poorly paid for very long hours, worked in harsh conditions and had very poor living conditions. The army was falling apart due to military defeats, poor leadership, infiltration of the army by political groups and the fact that the mainly peasant army wanted to return to their farms. The peasants were dissatisfied with the Emancipation of some 50 years earlier, which saw them take on 50 year redemption mortgages in order to buy their freedom – millions were
