1914
June-July: A wave of general strikes in St Petersburg reaches a crescendo.
June 15th: The Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, is assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo.
July 8th: Government suppression of striking oil workers in Baku triggers a short but intensive wave of strikes in St Petersburg, lasting almost a week.
July 19th: Germany declares war on Russia, boosting patriotic fervour and dampening support for socialist groups.
July 30th: Prince Georgy Lvov creates the All-Russian Zemstvo Union for the Relief of Sick and Wounded Soldiers.
August 17th: The Battle of Tannenberg ends: the Russian Second Army is decimated by a much smaller German force.
August 18th: St Petersburg is renamed Petrograd, a rejection of the Germanic connotations in its original name.
September 1st: The Battle of the Masurian Lakes ends with another decisive German victory and 125,000 Russian casualties.
October 22nd: The five Bolshevik deputies in the Duma are arrested. They are put on trial in February 1915 and all are sentenced to exile in Siberia.
1915
March 19th: Russian forces capture 120,000 Austrian soldiers in Galicia.
June 18th: The Russian government forms a Central War Industries Committee to address a dire shortage of rifles and other weapons.
July 9th: Russian forces begin retreating from Poland and Galicia in large numbers. Most withdraw to behind Russia’s borders.
July 23rd: Russia is forced to abandon the Polish capital Warsaw to German and Austrian troops.
August 9th: The Kadets, Octobrists and other liberal-conservative parties form an alliance in the Duma and begin demanding political reforms.
August 23rd: The tsar prorogues the hostile Duma. He also assumes control of the military and departs Petrograd for the army headquarters at Mogilev.
1916
February 6th: The Duma reconvenes in Petrograd.
February 29th: The government conscripts striking workers at the Putilov steel factory and takes charge of production there.
June 20th: On advice from Rasputin and the Tsarina, Nicholas orders the temporary dissolution of the Duma.
October: The ultra-conservative Alexander Protopopov is appointed the interior minister, at the behest of the Tsarina and Rasputin.
November 1st: The Duma is reconvened and immediately calls for an overhaul of the tsarist government.
December 17th: Rasputin is assassinated by three conspirators, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, who are concerned about his impact on the tsarist regime.
December 30th: The tsar is warned by his advisors that the army would no longer support him if there was a revolution.
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This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, John Rae and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn et al, “Russian Revolution timeline 1914-1916” at Alpha History, https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/russian-revolution-timeline-1914-1916/, 2018, accessed [date of last access].