1. Warm Up: p. 438: Skillbuilder Interpreting Charts #1
Russian Revolution
Warm Up:
p. 438: Skillbuilder Interpreting Charts #1

2. Czars and Autocracy Non-Russian cultures oppressed
Opposition sent to prisons in Siberia
Last czar, Nicholas II, continues autocratic rule

3. Revolution Grows
Rapid industrialization leads to discontent due to working and living conditions
Marxists believe the proletariat (industrial workers) will overthrow the government
Split into two groups
Mensheviks: moderate, want popular support
Bolsheviks (Vladimir Lenin): radical, small elite group

4. Crises at Home and Abroad
Russo-Japanese War: loss leads to unrest at home
Bloody Sunday: workers revolted leading to short-lived reforms and the first Duma (parliament)
WWI: while Nicholas led army, his wife Alexandra controlled the government, but she fell under the control of Gregori Rasputin

5. The March Revolution
Women textile workers strike leading to large scale riots shot by the police
General uprising leads to Nicholas’s abdication
Provisional (temporary) government decides to stay in war
Soviets (local councils of workers) gain power

6. The Bolshevik Revolution
Lenin and Bolsheviks take over government, surrender WWI
Civil war between the Red Army (Bolsheviks) and the White Army (all opposition)
Last of the Romanov family assassinated

7. Vladimir Lenin
Economic failures force him to allow small-scale capitalism in New Economic Plan: peasants allowed to sell surplus crops
To lessen nationalism, country divided into self-governing republics, renamed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

8. Joseph Stalin Follows Lenin as dictator
Totalitarianism: total centralized state control
Police terror and violence against opposition
Indoctrination in school system
Strong censorship
Religious and ethnic persecution

9. More Stalinism
Great Purge: terror campaign against political opposition killing 8-13 million
Command economy: government made all economic decisions
Peasants forced to work together on collective farms
Impossible production quotas in Stalin’s Five Year Plans