1. The Russian Revolution

2. Background Information
1881Czar Alexander III wants total power
DON’T YOU DARE:
Question absolute authority
Worship outside orthodox church
Speak anything but Russian
russification
Censorship on published materials
Secret police in high schools and university
Spread of anti- Semitism
pogroms

3. -Under Nicholas Russia is unstable
The Reign of Nicholas II – Romanov’s since 1613
Results:
-Under Nicholas Russia is unstable
-Liberals want a democratic government
-Repressed minorities wanted independence
-Peasants want land reform, and workers want better conditions
Military lost war with Japan in = humiliation (Russo-Japanese War)
Conditions:
Shy and quiet, private, family man
Absolute monarch
Naïve to the dissatisfaction in Russian society
Czarina Alexandra
4 daughters and a son that is a Hemophiliac
Believed Russia faced no threat to its stability from inside the empire
Believed loved by Russians as their “Little Father”.

7. The 1905 Revolution: BLOODY SUNDAY January 22, 1905 Conditions:
Peaceful march of workers
Czar’s Winter Palace, St. Petersburg
Desire to Issue a petition describing:
Hardships
Desire for constitution
Desire for better working conditions
Czar wasn’t at home
Palace guards opened fire hundreds killed or wounded
THIS IS THE SPARK

8. The Battleship Potemkin
The 1905 Revolution:
Results:
Revolts and strikes spread
Mutinies by soldiers and sailors
The Battleship Potemkin

9. The 1905 Revolution: Results: Revolts and strikes spread
Mutinies by soldiers and sailors
10 days of strikes in October virtually shut down Russia
First Soviets: Worker councils led by radical, well-educated middle-class
Discussed revolutionary ideas and chose representatives for regional/national meetings
Used the working class to spread ideas

10. The 1905 Revolution: Results: - The October Manifesto (October 30)
Freedom of conscience
Speech
Assembly
Press
-DUMA (congress or National Assembly)
All laws would be approved by Duma
-May 1906
Czar reclaimed most autocratic powers
Appointed ½ the Duma

11. St. Petersburg = Petrograd = Leningrad
World War I in Russia
Conditions:
- Russia honors alliances and joins WWI
- Czar Nicholas II takes personal command of the Army
-Left Petrograd to the front
St. Petersburg = Petrograd = Leningrad

12. World War I in Russia
Conditions:
Army suffers many defeats
Transportation problems
Forced to fight with clubs
Peasants drafted = food shortage
- Strange monk, Rasputin, gains power with Czarina

13. From movie Anastasia

14. The February Revolution 1917
Conditions
-Women’s march for “Bread and Peace”  widespread revolt
-Petrograd Soviet
Socialists took advantage of confusion
Reconvened soviets (illegal since 1905)
Became true center of authority
Elected representatives to Petrograd
-Provisional Government
Duma formed Provisional Government
Competed for control of Russia

15. Tsar Abdicates At the front Tsarina oblivious to discontent
March 15, Abdicates in royal railroad car

16. The February Revolution Results Alexander Kerensky
Dominated the Provisional Government
Decided to keep Russia in the war
Hoped to gain land
 Alienation of soldiers
Unpopular with Petrograd Soviet -

17. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) 1870-1924
Middle Class
Becomes familiar with Marxism while traveling in 1895
1897, exiled to Siberia for revolutionary activities

18. Lenin Lived in many European countries 19 years
1903 Russian Social Democratic Party split
BOLSHEVIKS
MENSHEVIKS
Majorityists
(small dedicated group)
Minorityists
Only career revolutionaries should be in the party
Party membership should be open to anyone

19. Lenin returns to Russia
April 1917
Aided by the Germans, hidden in box car
Arrives in Petrograd, April 16 and denounces the Provisional Government and calls for
“All power to the soviets! Peace, Land, and Bread”

20. Lenin and the Great October Revolution
Conditions:
Charismatic
Gained support among commoners
Alienated everyone else
Provisional Government planned national election in November for a new government

21. Leads Bolshevik militia “The Red Guard”
Lenin and the Great October Revolution
Conditions continued:
Leon Trotsky
Leads Bolshevik militia “The Red Guard”
Becomes best trained revolutionary force in Petrograd
Gains stockpiles of weapons and ammunition

22. Trotsky’s Red Guard seized most of Petrograd without a fight
Results
October Revolution
October 25, 1917
Trotsky’s Red Guard seized most of Petrograd without a fight
Lenin announces a Bolshevik state
Nationalizes all land = the end of private property
March 3, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Peace, Land & Bread!

23. White Army Red Army Cheka Results Russian Civil War 1918-1921
*Anti-Bolshevik forces
Mensheviks
Anti-communists
Foreign Powers
Red Army
War Communism – Seized grain from peasants
Cheka

24. The Soviet Union Under Lenin
Conditions:
Russia was devastated after WWI and Civil War – lost ½ of its population
By 1922, wages dropped to 1/10 of prewar level
Lenin concerned new socialist experiment would fail

25. The Soviet Union Under Lenin
Results:
Lenin described his New Economic Policy (NEP) as “taking one step backward to go two steps forward”
Peasants can sell their food for profit
Entrepreneurs produce consumer goods
Private retail shops reopened
Foreign investment encouraged
Government controls major industries
Mining, steel production, transport.

26. The Soviet Union Under Lenin
Results:
-The NEP helps jump start the economy with small-scale capitalism
Huge success
Many Russians become wealthy
Healthy economy resurfaces
 Now Lenin can turn to creating a classless society