BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
 Nicholas II and Alexandra Romanov
– Doomed from the day of their wedding
– 1300 people died on that day
– The couple went ahead and attended a ball
given by the French embassy.
– Already the people began to loathe the
seemingly callous couple
In the Beginning
 The Tsar was cursed from birth
– Did not want to be tsar
– Tortured psychologically by his father
 His priorities were his family not his
country.
 Would rather go on a cruise with his family
than deal with the problems brewing in his
country.
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY
LONG TERM REASONS
 People were angry with the government.
– Russia was an autocracy.
– Peasants wanted more land
– Bread lines were long,
– Working conditions (factory workers) were
poor.
RASPUTIN
 “Holy man” from Siberia
 Tsar trusted Rasputin
 Healing Powers??
 No political experience
BLOODY SUNDAY
 January 22, 1905
 Proletarians protested at the Winter Palace
– Working conditions were bad
 The guards began to fire into the crowd.
 Many were killed
 “Bloody Nicholas”.
BLOODY SUNDAY
STRIKES AND REVOLTS
 Bloody Sunday caused many revolts and
strikes.
 Tsar did not care about the people
 Gap between upper and lower class
widened.
 Ideas of revolution began to stir.
BAD DECISIONS
 Russo-Japanese war 1904-1905
– Wanted a port that would not freeze.
 15,000,000 soldiers.
 Battle of Tsushima straights
 Yula River.
 Portsmouth treaty
 People wanted Freedom of speech as well
as political freedom.
DUMA
 Imperial Manifesto
 The Duma-elected government body
– Seemed Nicholas was making an effort.
 Tsar would not keep his bargain.
THE GREAT WAR
 Russia a united front
 Transportation was inadequate
 food shortage around the country
 3 bullets a day.
 Moral started to nosedive with the Russian people
 Protest and strikes started up again
 Nicholas commanded his army to put an end to all
disorderly conduct in the streets of the capital
LENIN
 In the background was a man named Vladimir
Ilich Ulyanov or Lenin.
 Exiled to Siberia in 1895 for joining a communist
ring
 He returned in 1900 and begin to fuel the fire of
revolution.
 Leader of the Bolshevik party which believed in a
five year socialist state in a conversion to
communism.
 War cry was “Peace, Land, and Bread.”
Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov “Lenin”
DEATH OF THE MAD MONK
 Nobles assassinate Rasputin
 Poisoned
 Shot twice
 Thrown into the Neva River
 Too little too late
MARCH REVOLUTION
 Lenin created a new Bolshevik
– the red army
 The Menshevik Party
– the white army.
 The red army beat the white army
 Ended in the abdication of Nicholas and his
son.
END OF THE ROMANOVS
 Family exiled to Siberia.
 Bolsheviks moved the family to
Yekaterinberg.
 Family was assinated on July 16-17, 1918
END OF AN ERA
 1918 peace treaty signed to end WWI.
 The white army was defeated by the Reds in
1920.
 Communist state of Russia would last 74
years.