Russian Revolution

• Women textile workers led a strike
• Sparked riots over shortages of bread and fuel
• Soldiers soon joined the protesters

• Lenin returned to Russia with the help of Germany
• Bolshevik Red Guards, armed factory workers, stormed the Winter Palace and took control of the Provisional Government

• Lenin ordered that all farmland be distributed among the peasants
• Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (terms upset many Russians)

• White Army: opponents who wanted the czar back, wanted democracy instituted, or socialists who opposed Lenin's style
• Supported by Western nations
• Red Army: Bolshevik armed forces
• Led by Leon Trotsky

New Economic Policy

• Small scale version of capitalism
• Allowed peasants to sell their surplus crops instead of turning them over to the government
• Government controlled major industries, banks, and means of communication
• Allowed for some private factories and businesses

• Alexander III
• Nicholas II
• Trans-Siberian Railway
• Mensheviks
• Bolsheviks
• Father of the Revolution
• Lenin
• proletariat
• Bloody Sunday
• October Manifesto
• Duma
• Rasputin

• Czarina Alexandra
• Russo-Japanese War
• March Revolution
• Provisional Government
• Kerensky
• Soviets
• White Army
• Red Guard
• Trotsky
• USSR
• New Economic Policy (NEP)
• Peace, Land, Bread

• collective farms
• Kulaks
• Five Year Plans
• Gulag
• Comman Economy
• Great Purge
• League of Militant Godless
• Totalitarianism

Review

Stalin

Childhood

10 min

Context

Power

Five Year Plans

10 min

Joseph Stalin

• "Socialism in One Country"
• Stabilize socialism within USSR

• Supported by moderates
• Favored continuing the NEP to secure domestic growth

Nikolai Bukharin

1924

• Most radical Bolshevik leader
• Believed in actively spreading the revolution abroad

R.I.P.

Lenin

Leon Trotsky

Lenin Restores Order

Bolsheviks renamed

Communists

Red = revolutionary

Hammer & Sickle = Union of workers and peasants

1923

Red Star = Rule of the Communist Party

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

USSR

Russian Revolution

Threatening

Nationalism

Lenin

Proletariat and the peasants were not capable of leading a revolution so they needed the guidance of professional revolutionaries

Revolution would end only with the guidance of a single party administration

AND the peasants

capitalism vs. the proletariat

History was the story of class struggle

Revolution would end with a "dictatorship of the proletariat"

Spontaneous revolution would occur when the proletariat's numbers would become so great and their condition so poor

Marx

Causes

Czars

Resist Change

Nicholas I

Alexander II

Alexander III

• Autocratic
• Used censorship & secret police
• Monitored education
• Sent prisoners to Siberia
• Made Russian the offical lagnuage and the Orthodoz Church the offical religion
• Utilized Pogroms (organized violence against Jews)

Nicholas II

Road

Mensheviks

• Moderates
• Broad base of support

• Followed views of Karl Marx
• Industrial class (proletariat) would overthrow the czar

Bolsheviks

Revolutionaries

• Radicals
• Small, committed base

• Poor working conditions
• Low wages
• Child Labor

Industrialization

• Leader of Bolsheviks
• Brother was hanged for plotting to kill the czar
• Planned to overthrow the czar
• "Father of the Revolution"
• Fled to western Europe to escape arrest by the czar

Lenin

• Government sought foreign investment & raised taxes
• Focused on production of steel
• Constructed the Tans-Siberian Railway
• Factories doubled between 1863 & 1900

Bloody Sunday

• January 22, 1905
• Workers led by priests marched to the Winter Palace in hopes of improving poor working conditions
• Gaurds opened fire killing & wounding 1,000
• Provoked a wave of strikes and violence
• October Manifesto: Nicholas promised more freedom, including the creation of the Duma (which was absolved 10 weeks later)

To

• Russia was unprepared to handle the military and economic costs
• Within one year, over 4 million Russian soldiers were killed
• Nicholas II moved his headquarters to the war front
• Czarina Alexandra, who was left in charge, ignored the chief advisers and followed the advice of Rasputin

6 min

Crisis At Home & Abroad

WWI

• "holy man" who claimed to have magical healing powers
• Nicholas and Alexandra's son, Alexis, suffered from hemophilia
• He opposed reform efforts and appointed his friends to powerful positions
• Nobles attempted to assassinate

Rasputin

• Competed for control of Korea and Manchuria
• Russia broke series of peace agreements
• Japan retaliated by attacking

Russo-Japanese War

March Revolution

Revolution

• Nicholas II abdicated throne and was later executed
• Duma established a provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky. He chose to keep Russia in WWI.
• Socialist revolutionaries, competing for power, formed Soviets (local councils consisting of workers, peasants, and soldiers)

Civil War

Petrograd

14 Million

died during the Civil War and the famine that followed

The Bolshevik Revolution

Peace, Land, Bread