CHAPTER 23
THE BEGINNING OF THE
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CRISIS:
Revolution & Depression
War and revolution
• Q: What were the causes of the Russian
Revolution of 1917, and why did the
Bolsheviks prevail in the civil war and gain
control of Russia?
Collapse of Old Order
• Tsars reliance on military power to uphold
regime
– Industry ill equipped to arm soldiers led to
devastating losses in war
• 2 million dead/4-6 million killed or captured
– Failed to address declining conditions of
peasants and workers
– Invested in war rather than the people
The Women’s March in
Petrograd
•“Peace & Bread” March 8, 1917, Petrograd
© Bettmann/CORBIS
Internal unrest, 1917
• Series of strikes in capital of Petrograd
• Bread rationing imposed
– Tsar sent military to repress the movements,
soldiers joined instead
• Workers continued to join and called for a
General Strike
– Total shut down of factories
Struggle for power
• Duma (legislative body) met and declared
power, tsar abdicated
– New Provisional government led by Alexander
Kerensky
– Soviets (councils of workers and soldier
deputies) formed in army units, factory towns
and rural areas.
• Represented interests of working classes
• Many socialists
• One were the Marxist-socialist democrats
Marxist Socialist Democrats
• Established in 1898, Split in 1903
• Mensheviks
– goal to create a mass electoral socialist party
based on the western model
• Bolsheviks:
– Russian social democrats led by Vladimir
Lenin (lawyer)
• Dedicated to violent overthrow of capitalist system
• Vanguard – small party of disciplined professional
revolutionaries to lead the masses
Vladamir
Lenin
•November 8, 1917
•Announced the
new government at
The Council of
People’s
Commissar’s
•With himself as
leader
© Getty Images
Factors of Success of
Bolsheviks
• “Peace, land & Bread”
– Land reform redistributed land to peasants
• “Worker control of Production”
– Transfer of factories & industry to committees
of workers
• “All power to the soviets”
– Relegation of power from provisional
government to soviets
“Peace” with Germany
• Treaty of Brest-Litvok, march 3, 1918
• Ceded East Poland, Ukraine, Baltic
Provinces to Germany
– Ended war externally
– Civil war ensued as a result of opposition to
new government
• Opponents
– Loyal Tsarists
– Bourgeois & aristocratic liberals
– Anti-leninists
Civil War, 1918 - 1921
 Anti-Bolshevik (Whites) forces attacked to
be defeated by Red Army (Bolsheviks)
 Bolshevik or “communist regime”
expanded into Georgia, Russian Armenia
& Azerbaijan
 Tsar family killed
Leon Trotsky
•Red Army well
disciplined &
Organized by
Trotsky
–Reinstated draft
–Rigid discipline
–No tolerance for
desertion or lack of
obedience
© Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS
War Communism Policy
• Nationalization of Banks & Industry
• Compulsory requisition of grain from
peasants
• Centralized Bolshevik Control
• Use of Revolutionary Terror
• Cheka – secret police- to destroy
opponents
Russia, 1921
• Creation of a centralized state & SingleParty political system
• Economic collapse as a result of Industrial
decline and agricultural disaster
• NEP New Economic Policy
– Modified version of capitalism instituted by
Lenin to create rapid economic recovery
• Considered a temporary tactical retreat from goal
of communism
USSR, 1922
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republic
• Alexandra Kollantai – social reform program
of Bolsheviks
– Women’s rights & Social welfare programs
• “Palaces for protection and maternity for women”
established healthcare for women & children
• Marriage established as a civil act and divorce
legalized
• Decree on equity between the sexes
• Permitted Abortions
• Zhenotdel – women & men sent out to explain new
social order
Politburo & Power struggle
• Lenin’s death, 1924
– 7 member Politburo divided
• Trotsky wanted to end NEP & Launch
rapid Industrialization at expense of
peasants & continued revolution & spread
of communism
• Others rejected cause of world revolution
& wanted to construct a socialist state
Joseph Stalin
•
•
•
•
Gained control of Communist Party
Expelled Trotsky by 1927
Eliminated Bolsheviks
Established a dictatorship
– Form of government in which one person or a
small group possesses absolute power
without effective constitutional limitations.
– Tyranny: resorts to force or fraud to gain
despotic political power, maintained through
use of intimidation, terror and Suppression of
basic civil rights
Aftermath of War
The Great Depression
• What was the aftermath of the Great War?
What problems did Europe and the United
States face in the 1920s?
1. Global Issues at the end of
WWI
• A. Economic concerns over “peace”
• John Maynard Keynes infuriated by terms
of Treaty of Versailles
• Failure of victors to develop adequate
economic rehabilitation plan for Europe
Economic Consequences of
Peace
• Dangers of governments not dealing more
directly with economic recovery in Europe.
– Internal Productivity – Falling dramatically
– Internal transport & exchange broken down
• Markets, supply & demand non-functional
Predictions
• Last phase of war and afterwards
– Governments responded incorrectly to inflation
• printing more paper money, failed to regulate supply of
essential commodities
– Conditions persisted
• Only rich would have purchasing power
– Consequence:
• “An inefficient, unemployed, disorganized Europe faces us,
torn by internal strife and international hate, fighting, starving,
pillaging and Lying”
B. Economic Outcomes of
Europe’s predicament
• Western World began to work on credit
– U.S. Europe’s creditor
• Potential investors began to lose
confidence in the economic system
– High levels of credit & slow-to-recover
productive capacity
Creditor Relationship
• Germany found it impossible to recover
economically
• U.S. loans to Germany to pay reparations
to Britain and France
– Dawes Plan: stabilized Germany’s ability to
pay (1924-29)
– 200 million loan for recovery
C. Political Outcomes
• Uncertainty & political discontent
• What model to follow in Europe – capitalist
or socialist?
• National Survival becomes primary goal –
no matter what…
Nature of World Economy
•
•
•
•
Disparity of Wealth increased
Unstable monetary & banking system
Strengthened business cartels & unions
Reparations, war debts & cost of war
damaged post war economy
D. Post-Developments in U.S.
• “Roaring Twenties”
– Optimism & Prosperity
prevailed
– 1924-29 veil of 20%
• Reality – longer term
pattern emerging
– Optimism a shallow veneer
What happened next:
• By mid –1920’s 5% of population received
1/3 of all its income
• Some people getting wealthy quickly
• Wages for majority stagnating
– Wages kept low
– Unions discouraged
• Repressive political period
• A shortage of purchasing power
II. Results: Great Depression
Begins
• A. Downward spiral of Spending
– Decline of income – decline in demand &
spending
– In response – decline in production
– Led to – decline in employment
– Income further depressed, spiraling
downward in that pattern
• Affecting investors confidence
B. Stock Market Crash
• October 29, 1929
– Black Tuesday
• 12 million shares traded – prices
plummeted – chaos
– Loss of 75% of investments
• Suicides began
Keep In Mind
• Crash was not the cause of the depression
• Overall economic situation of the world
post WWI
An 18 Year Old Mother in a Camp
Former Tenant Farmers at a Camp
A Refugee Camp Along a Highway
An Ex-Migrant Farmer at Home
An Ex-Migrant Farmer & Her Son at Home
A Mother & Baby On the Way
To California
IV. Global Effects Devastating
• International banking collapsed
• European Industries shut down
• Britain 1929-1931
– Unemployment 25%
• German 1930-1932
– Unemployment 50%
– 44% decline in production
V. Responses
• A. United States
• Franklin D. Roosevelt elected 1932
• Campaign of “New Deal”
– The federal government would intervene to
stop the depression by
• Creating jobs to stimulate demand
• Raising income taxes on the richest
John Maynard Keynes
• Rejected idea that depression should be
left to work them selves out
• Unemployment stems from decline in
demand
• Increase demand by putting people back
to work
– Deficit spending by government
– Stimulate the economy
– Government investment in domestic economy
Examples:
• Emergency Banking Act
– Federal loans available to private bankers
• Economy Act
– Committed Government to balancing the budget
• Unemployment Relief Act
– Civilian Conservation Core – 2 million single men
• Federal Emergency Relief Act
– National Relief System – Civil Works Administration4 million/400,000 small scale government projects
B. Populist Critics
• Banking Reforms
• Agricultural Adjustment Act –
– Reduced cultivation and supply, tenant farmers and
laborers out of work
• Public Works Administration
– Internal improvements, Infrastructure
– 3 large dams constructed
• Favored Large economic interests, not the
ordinary citizen
– Classic liberal remedy: deflationary policy of
“balanced budgets”
– Cut costs by lowering wages and raising tariffs &
taxes
C. Rebirth of Labor
• Shared working class experience
• Labor Unions: workers fired for joining a
union in violation of laws. Corporation not
held accountable.
• Pleas unanswered
• Strikes – full scale riots – deaths and
millions of dollars of property damage
• Took it to the Polls
Rise of Radical 3rd Parties
• Voters prepared to abandon democrats
who refused to endorse a more socialist or
at least comprehensive program of reform
• Growing appeal for socialism and
communist Party
D. 2nd New Deal
• Roosevelt in response to Labor unrest of 1934
sought to reinvigorate appeal among poorer
Americans and turn them away from radical
solutions.
• Social Security Act
– Foundation of American Welfare state
• National Labor Relations Act –
– right to join a union, obligation of employers to
bargain in good faith.
Mobilized voters
• 6 million people voted for the first time
– Many of them ethnics – 5 million voted for
Roosevelt
– Among the poorest, he received 80% of their
vote
– Black voters deserted the Republican party
for the “party of the common man”
Rhetoric Vs. Reality
• Promises radical, legislation conservative and
on the side of corporations, the wealthy, and
white supremacy
– Holding Companies he promised to break up,
remained in tact
– Took Considerably less taxes from wealthy and
estates than promised
– Little effort to protect basic civil rights or restore black
suffrage
Nations Poor
• Did not benefit from Social Security act or
other legislation that promised to help the
poor
– Farm workers
– African American Share croppers
– Chicano farm workers
Set Backs for Women
• Job Competition
– Women seen as taking jobs
• Legislation against hiring married women
• Blamed women for unemployment of men
– Solution: fire 10 million working women
Overall
•
•
•
•
•
Efforts slowed depression, did not stop it
Reinvigorated Democracy
Created beginnings of a welfare state
Broke with Laissez-faire policy
Increased military spending and mobilization for
war
• Responses by European countries
– Ultra-nationalistic, fascist, depended on mobilization
to create jobs and boost economy
Weimar Republic, Germany
• Inflation & economic devestation
• Pushed middle class to right wing radical
parties hostile to republic
• 1924-29 3 mill unemployed grew to 4.4
mill
The Great Depression: Bread
Lines in Paris
© Roger Viollet/Getty Images