RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
CHARACTERISTICS
OF
19TH CENTURY CZARS
•
•
•
•
•
Autocracy
Harsh measures against opponents
Secret police
Pogroms violence against Jews
Oppression of non-Russians  restrictive
laws
• Resistance to change
Some of the Causes…
• Rapid
industrialization
– Development of industries for
the production of machine
made goods
– # of factories
doubled between
1863-1890
– 4th leading
producer of steel
by 1900
Why build the
Trans-Siberian
Railroad?
What are some
problems you may
encounter during the
building of the TransSiberian Railroad?
Video Reflection
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH6Xpr
_kyxQ end 8:50; start again 13:00-19:00
• When watching the video, answer the
following…so write these questions in your
notebook.
• 1. Why did Russian czars feel it was
necessary to build the railroad? Benefits?
• 2. What were the major problems
Alexander III faced in order to build the
railroad?
Industrialization…a cause?
• What is needed when a nation begins to
industrialize?
• Land, labor, and money(capital)
• Problems?
– Low wages  trade unions outlawed
– Gap between rich and poor widened
– Influence of Karl Marx
Workers of the World Unite!
• Karl Marx influenced the new class of
workers
• “Haves” vs. the “Have-nots”
• Workers  “dictatorship of the proletariat”
• Mensheviks(moderates) and
Bolsheviks(radical) form Marxist groups
Russo-Japanese War
• Russia and Japan fought over control over
Manchuria and Korea
• Russia lost  embarrassing
• Unrest grows at home
EVENTS OF 1905
Bloody Sunday
• 200,000 workers march on czar’s winter
palace  wanted better working
conditions and wages
• Troops fire on crowd, 1,000 + killed
Creation of Duma
• First parliament of Russia
• Czar forced to share power; dissolved it
after 10 weeks  who really has the
power?
NICHOLAS II’s MISTAKES
• Brought Russia into WWI  many defeats
• Czarina Alexandra given power; she
became influenced by Rasputin
• Rasputin was freaky, crazy, and corrupt
• People were poor and starving; lots of
unrest
Russian Revolution – Part I (The
March Revolution)
March 1917: strikes expand in
Petrograd; riots over bread and fuel
shortages.
Soldiers ordered to fire on people but
turned guns on commanding officers
(mutiny).
FYI: At start of WWI, St. Petersburg sounded too German and was renamed
Petrograd. After Lenin’s death in 1924, renamed Leningrad.
Czar Nicholas II forced to abdicate his throne in March 1917. The end of
300 years of Romanov rule.
I guess they won’t
call you “Nicholas
the Great!”
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
Temporary Government
Led by:
Alexander Kerensky
But the Provisional Government did not
have as much power as the…
• Formed by social
revolutionaries
• Local councils in cities
• Consisted of workers,
peasants, and soldiers
MISTAKES OF PROVISIONAL
GOVERNMENT
Biggest mistake: kept Russia in World War
One
Also, did not help workers or peasants with
food and fuel shortages
Lost all support!
Bolshevik REVOLUTION
Led by:
Vladimir Lenin, leader of Bolshevik Party
(Communists!)
His slogan:
“Peace, Land, and Bread”
• Bolshevik Red Guards took over gov’t
offices; arrested Prov. Gov’t leaders
• Bolsheviks in power November 1917
• All farmland distributed to
peasants
• Factories controlled by workers
• End Russia’s involvement in
WWI Treaty of BrestLitovsk(costly)
• Gained many opponents, leading
to Russian Civil War
RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR
1918-1920
RED ARMY
• Bolsheviks
(Communists!)
• Led by…Leon Trotsky
WHITE ARMY
• Opponents of
Bolsheviks in Russia;
western nations like
the USA
RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR
• Red Army crushes all
opposition to Bolshevik rule
• Russian economy destroyed:
no trade or industrial
production
BOLSHEVIKS BECOME KNOWN
AS…
THE COMMUNIST PARTY
(still led by Lenin)
THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY
1921
To help Russia recover from the war Lenin
allowed for a little bit of capitalism
• Peasants could sell surplus (extra) crops
for profit
• Individuals could buy and sell goods for
profit
• Some small factories, farms, and
businesses allowed
NEW
COUNTRY
• Lenin organized Russia into self-governing
republics
• Central Government controlled them!
• 1922: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR)
• Capital: Moscow
• Lenin had created a “Dictatorship of the
Communist Party”
• This becomes known as Leninism
Lenin dies in 1924.
By 1928, country’s factories
and farms recovered and
returned to prewar levels of
production.
Lenin is #35 on the Biography
of the Millennium list.
Lenin's Tomb, in Red Square in Moscow, serves as the
current resting place of Vladimir Lenin. His embalmed
body has been on public display there since shortly after
his death (with rare exceptions in wartime).