The main premise of Service's argument is that the Russian Empire had to deal with many problems (some of which were caused by the tsars themselves) even before the war. Russia was behind other nations because of governmental inadequacy. Russian didn't have a nationalistic culture, and society on the whole didn't support the decisions the government was making. The tsar obstructed civil society, but didn't fully suppress them which made them stronger in the end. These problems heightened because of WWI. One piece of evidence that would support this is that Russia had been trying to modernize and Westernize for a long time before this, but its leaders rejected liberalism and nationalism. This is one reason why there was discrepancy between the government and the people which led to governmental inadequacy and tensions between the leaders and the people. Another piece of evidence was that Russia was agricultural and slow to industrialize which kept the conservative tsars in complete power so that Russia fell behind other nations. The conditions of the land were very harsh even after the freeing of the serfs, so that the peasants were tied to the land. This supports why Russia was in a bad economic condition. The inefficient policies of the government caused the Bolsheviks to have to resort to violent measures to get results. This is evidenced by the fact that the Bolsheviks executed thousands of political enemies. One piece of evidence that doesn't support this premise is that when Russia was first declared a Soviet Republic, they were a true multiparty state with representatives from Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Revolutionary Soviets. This shows that there was not complete discrepancy between the government and the people (at least in the beginning) as there were legitimate representatives for each party.
