The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, Despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. Chief among these was Imperial Russia's failure, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, to modernize its archaic social, economic and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. As historian Richard Pipes writes, "the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter"
