Russian Revolution

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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
  • 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
Bolshevik
  • 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.

http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/russianrevolution.htm#IV. The October Revolution/The Struggle For Power and the Rise of the Bolsheviks