Russian+Revolution

Dawon Lee

World War One and Russian Revolution caused the complete collapse of Russia Empire


 * Tsar Nicholas II - last Tsar of Russia; ruled during WWI
 * Tsar Nicholas II's wife, Alexandra - fell under influence of Rasputin
 * Rasputin - Siberian peasant that indulged in sexual orgies & stopped bleeding of Tsar's hemophiliac son & interfered w. government & assassinated
 * WWI magnified Russia's problems and challenged government because Russia was unprepared militarily and technologically

The March Revolution
 * series of strikes broke out in Petrograd
 * price of bread increased dramatically
 * March 8... International Women's Day... demanded "Peace and Bread" & "Down with Autocracy"
 * troops joined demonstrators
 * The Duma (legislative body) met on March 12 to establish Provisional Governmnet

Soviet of Petrograd - radical interests of lower classes and composed of socialists Socialist Revolutionaries - interested in establishing peasant socialism by seizing land & establishing rural democracy

Marxist Social Democratic Party
 * made up of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
 * Mensheviks: Social Democrats to be mass electoral socialist party based on Western model
 * Bolsheviks: under leadership of Vladimir Ulianov Lenin; dedicated to violent revolution

V.I. Lenin - enemy of tsarist Russia Bolshevik
 * Oranized illegal group, Union for liberation of the Working class
 * Exiled in Switzerland, but assumed leadership of Bolshevik of Social Democratic Party
 * believed only violent revolution could destroy capitalist system
 * arrived to Russia illegally & opened new stage of Russian Revolution
 * "April Thesis" - blueprint for revolutionary action based on own version of marxist thoery... explained it wan't necessary for Russia to experience a bourgeois revolution
 * propaganda: mass support through promises to end war
 * "Peace, Land, Bread" & "Worker Control of Production" & "All Power to the Soviets"
 * Alexander Kerensky (prime minister in Provisional Government) released Bolsheviks from prison, showed weakness of Provisional Governmnet
 * Lenin and Trotsky organized military revolutionary committee to overthrow governmnet
 * Red Army
 * November 6-7, Bolshevik forces seized Winter Palace (seat of Provisional Government)

Civil War
 * Bolsheviks (Red) recieved threats from Siberia (White) - anti-Bolshevik force under Admiral Alexander Kolchak
 * attacks from Ukrainians and Baltic regions
 * Cheka - new Red secret police/ the Red Terror... destroyed all those who opposed new regime

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - removing Russia from the war, involved German confiscation of Russian land but never fully implemented because of germany's defeat in the war

Sources:

Pearl, Kenneth.. //AP European History Exam//. New York: Random House, Inc., 2011. Print.

Spielvogel, Jackson J.. //Western Civilization//. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomason Learning, 2000. Print.

[]. The October Revolution/The Struggle For Power and the Rise of the Bolsheviks