The Russian Revolution

Czarist Russia

Causes of the Russian Revolution

• Russian orthodoxy and autocracy with its rigidity and conformity precluded the development of those institutions that were necessary for reforms

• Internal problems included corruption, graft, ineffectiveness, oppressive bureaucracy, poor leadership and the impact of industrialization

Growing Discontent

• March, 1861 - Emancipation Manifesto (Alexander II)– Recognizes the need to improve the social

and economic status of serfs

• Alexander II implements reforms– Abolition of serfdom (1861)– Establishment of Mirs

• Alexander III begins to industrialize Russia• March, 1905 – “Bloody Sunday”

Bloody Sunday

The October Manifesto (1905)

• Nicholas II responds to Bloody Sunday– Establishment of the “Soviets” or worker

councils– Grants a Duma (Parliament)– Some civil liberties

Russia Enters WWI

• Russia suffers great casualties

• The army is large but unprepared lacking boots and guns

• The people become dissatisfied with the progress

• Nicholas II goes to the front line

• Grigory Rasputin takes control of the Czarina Alexandra

The Czar Steps Down

• The peasant anger intensifies• The population explodes; doubles

between 1860 and 1900• Workers revolt in March 1917• The Petrograd Soviet of Workers and

Soldiers gains power• The Czar abdicates• The Duma sets up the Provisional

Government

Revolutionary Vacuum

• The West hailed the fall of Czarism, and did not believe that Russia was ripe for communism

• The industrial Proletariat was a small but strategically localized minority (Soviets)

• At worst, the fall of the Czar could only be expected to produce a “bourgeois revolution” and the subsequent class struggle seen in the West

• This belief was mirrored by the Provisional Government of Kerensky

Political Chaos

• Immediately following the fall of the Tsar– The masses declared universal freedom,

equality, and direct democracy– The Provisional Government was formed– The various revolutionary parties and

organizations immerged from illegality in a power struggle (Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Kadets, Social Revolutionaries)

– People no longer accepted authority, not even the forces that toppled the Tsar

Weakness of the Provisional Government

• Did not (could not) persuade the masses to obey its laws and decrees

• Did not meet workers demands for food, better wages and shorter hours

• Did not meet peasant demands for land• Did not end the war• Did not make decisive policy decisions (because

it was provisional)• Did however radicalize the workers attempting to

reestablish labor discipline

Rise of Lenin

• Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin gained control of Soviets

• The Provisional Government fell in November 1917• Lenin’s Bolsheviks addressed workers’ and peasants’

concerns propagating the slogan “Bread, Peace, Land”• Bolshevik membership went from a few thousand to

quarter million in months• Lenin argued, if the Bolsheviks failed to seize the

moment, “a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are”

• The USSR was born

Challenges of the new USSR

• To end the war, Soviet Russia had to agree to a penal peace with Germany

• Counter-revolutionary forces financed by Allies

• Two year civil war• Allied forces from Britain, France,

American, Japanese, Polish, Serb, Greek, and Romanian troops were sent to fight on Russian soil