Russian Revolution

(not the Disney Anastasia Version)

Russia – it’s big

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Problems with Size of Russia

• 5000 miles • 1/6 of world’s surface• Multiple ethnic groups and languages• Much of landmass has 6 months of had winter• City-states

Demographics/Economics c.1900

Population doubled 1850-1900 (remember France)?

34m out of 36m were serfs (though emancipated in 1861)

Industrializing (around Moscow) but far slower than Western Europe

Many farms were huge (often 50 sq. km)

Debt issues for government – importing too much

Early History

• Ruled since 1328 by Czars – total autocracy

• Ruled from Moscow – isolated, not on sea. Reflects isolation of history - neither Asian nor European

• Changed with Peter The Great

Peter The Great (1682-1725)• Wanted to Westernize and modernize

• Beard tax

• Swedish army model

• Azov

• Science

• Built and moved capital to St. Petersburg

• Kept serfdom

Early trouble

• Decembrists attempted coup in 1825

• Czar Nicholas I clamped down on revolutionaries but ideas gained a foothold

• Revolutionaries represented a small class (no substantial middle class – remember?)

Alexander II (1855 – 1881)

• Abolished serfdom

• Free but no wealth – riots

• Revolutionaries spur on peasants

• Alexander assassinated in 1881

• Alexander III – ruthless, secret police, seized printing presses (Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s brother executed in plot to kill him in 1887)

Nicholas II (1894-1917) – The Last Czar

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo9sNh5InkY

• Not very savvy with what ordinary people went through

• Devoted to family

Marxism

• 1848 – Karl Marx wrote “The Communist Manifesto” – the history of all previous societies.

• History is the story of class struggle

• Capitalism exploits

• Revolution is inevitable

Marxism

• However, Marx did not think revolution would happen in Russia first – why? (Think about the triangles). England/Germany/France

• Russian was mostly agrarian (with growing industry from 1880s) with a small m/c and poorly educated proletariat and peasantry

Russian Marxism

• Revolutionary change should come through the peasant

• Land redistribution

• Split into two groups

Bolsheviks and Menchiviks

Bolsheviks Mensheviks

Lenin Plekhanov

small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries

Build a mass party

No cooperation with any other parties Work with sympathetic groups

Jump straight from current situation to communism

Will have to an interim government led by middle class

“majority” “minority”

1905 Revolution

• 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War

• Humiliating Defeat

• Food shortages and high bread prices

• Jan 22, 1905 – unarmed march to Winter Palace

Bloody Sunday

• Father Gapon

• Carried pictures of the Czar, sang patriotic songs

• Fired upon

• Several hundred killed

1905 Revolution

• Unrest, strikes, peasants seized estates

• Sailors mutinied on Battleship Potemkin, raising red flag

• Czar desperate, calls duma (parliament), elections and promises to consult

• General strike in October

• First soviets (workers councils) formed by Mensheviks

Reforms

• Duma

• Count Witte, prime minister

• Constitution

• Moderates brought on board, revolution loses steam

Period of Hope

• 1906 – 1914 Duma meets (although becomes more conservative under Peter Stolypin)

• Perhaps first step to gradual democracy

• Need data on improvements

1914 - 1917

• Wave of patriotism

• War goes badly after initial successes

• 1915 – Czar goes to front line and takes charge – now will get blamed personally for defeats

• He’s incompetent

Rasputin

• Czar left govt under control of unpopular German wife, Alexandria and the monk Rasputin

• Rasputin slept with most of the court

• Could fix czar’s son’s hemophilia

• Murdered in the end of 1916, but faith in govt lost

March (Feb in Russia) 1917

• Starvation, bread riots in St. Petersburg, barricades

• Massive strike

• Soldiers refused to fire on rioters; they joined them

• City fell to revolutionaries but this was a disorganized revolt

Dual Government

• Soviet and Duma agree to share power. Soviets told soldiers to come home, Duma wanted to keep fighting

• New provisional government formed

• Revolution spread

• March 16 – Czar Nicholas abdicated throne

March – November 1917• Germans sneak Lenin into Russia (on a train, dressed as a woman)

• Lenin stirs up trouble – “all power to the Soviets”, more strikes, demonstrations

• July - Kerensky (leader of prov gov) called for one last offensive against the Germans. Failed

• Lenin urged soldiers to desert

• “Peace, Bread, Land”

• Lenin indicted for treason, flees to Finland

November (October) Revolution

• Gen. Kornilov want to restore order, symbol of anti-Rev

• July 31 – Kornilov marches on St. Pete. Kerensky panics, arms Bolsheviks. Kornilov loses, Bolsheviks empowered

• More support for Bolsheviks

November 1917

• October – Lenin returns

• Military HQ set up under Trotsky

• Nov 7 – Aurora ship fires blank shot to signal start of revolt

• Winter Palace stormed – not as dramatic as made out to be

• Bolsheviks in total power, elections held Nov 25

• Results not good for Bolsheviks, assembly dissolved in January

Staying in Power

• Got to get out of the war – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – gave up 1/3 of income, 1/3 farming areas, ½ industry

• Civil War 1918-21. Trotsky leads Reds to victory vs Whites (Germany, Czech, America, UK, France)

• War Communism

• NEP