RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
BIRTH OF COMMUNISM
TSAR NICHOLAS II
• Under Nicholas II the country was beginning to fail
• Industrialization was lagging behind
• Soldiers were not prepared to fight and suffered
great casualties
• The Tsar led troops in WWI and neglected his duties
at home
• Alexandra and Rasputin
MARCH REVOLUTION
• March 1917:
• Quote 789
• March 8, women’s day, women called for a strike and
wanted “peace and bread”
• Alexandra says its not a big deal to Nicholas II
• Guards start to shoot at the women and men but then
switch sides
• Duma comes back and meets and kicks out Nicholas II
March 15
• Constitutional Democrats led the Provisional Government
• Mostly middle class men they wanted a shortened work day,
suffrage, and civil equality
THE SOVIETS
• Soviets, more radical group of workers, divide into
two groups
• Mensheviks wanted a socialist democracy (like
Fabian Socialists)
• Bolsheviks, Marxist group, was led by Lenin
• Shipped to Siberia early in life and then exile to Switzerland
for leading underground Marxist groups
APRIL THESES
• April 20, 1917 Lenin made it back to Russia
• Lenin claimed that if they could get the backing of
soldiers, poor and workers they could remove the
provisional government
• Lenin promised “peace, land, and bread” and
worker control of production
BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
• July 1917, Alexander Kerensky becomes prime
minister in the new government and releases
Bolshevik prisoners
• Leon Trotsky helps popularize the Bolshevik
movement with Lenin in exile
• Nov 6-8 Provisional government is destroyed with
little bloodshed and Lenin made the ruler
• Breaks up the Constituent Assembly which had just voted a
new congress by force
LENIN MAKES GOOD ON PROMISES
• First law Lenin makes nationalizes the land
• Alexandra Kollontai helps create more equality
between men and women
• Zhenotdel
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed in March of 1918
officially withdraws Russia from WWI
• Fight between the Reds and Whites continues but
Bolshevik red win and take territories
NO MORE TSAR
• Nicholas and family taken to Tobolsk, Siberia and then
Ekaterinburg in July of 1918 and executed
• Whites inability to come to a consensus compared with
the Red single minded effort allowed for Bolshevik victory
• Whites also seemed less patriotic relying on foreign
powers
• War Communism acted like Total War efforts
• Cheka helped Bolsheviks maintain power with violence
and terror