Crash Course European History: The Russian Revolution and Civil War

Tsar Nicholas II

The Russian monarch whose failure to organize an efficient administration for food, medical care, and weaponry during World War I led to military collapse, mass protests, and his eventual abdication.

Zemstvos

Local Russian civilian organizations that stepped in to care for the wounded, handle civilian well-being, and maintain the home front when the imperial administration failed, before being closed by the Bolsheviks.

Duma

The assembly of elected representatives established reluctantly by Tsar Nicholas II following the revolution of 1905, whose members later formed the Provisional Government.

Provisional Government

The temporary governing body formed by members of the Duma in 1917, composed of monarchists, conservatives, liberals, and socialists, which attempted to continue Russia's participation in World War I.

Soviets

Councils revived by Russian workers and soldiers during the 1917 revolution that claimed a major role in governance and competed for administrative supremacy against the Provisional Government.

Bolsheviks

A revolutionary faction that broke with traditional Marxist theory by asserting that an elite cadre of leaders was necessary to direct the revolution, later renaming themselves the Communist Party.

Vladimir Lenin

The Bolshevik leader returned from Swiss exile by Germany in April 1917 who championed 'Peace, Bread, Land,' insisted on the necessity of violence over democratic politics, and established the Soviet state.

Peace, Bread, Land

The populist platform and slogan promoted by Vladimir Lenin upon his return in 1917, explicitly rejecting the ongoing war and addressing the desires of hungry, landless, and war-weary Russians.

Alexander Kerensky

The charismatic lawyer who took leadership of the Provisional Government in the summer of 1917 with the primary objective of restoring Russia's fighting capacity in World War I.

Constituent Assembly

A democratically elected body convened in January 1918 where the Bolsheviks held only a minority of seats, resulting in the Bolsheviks forcibly dissolving it to eliminate 'constitutional illusions.'

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

A punitive treaty offered by Germany and accepted by Lenin in late 1917, ceding Russia's western territories to the Central Powers in order to end Russia's involvement in World War I.

Comintern

The Communist International, established by the Bolsheviks in 1919 to foster and oversee the development of Communist parties worldwide.

Red Terror

A campaign of perpetual state-sanctioned violence, imprisonment, and executions used by the Bolshevik dictatorship against civilian opponents and perceived counter-revolutionaries.

White Movement

A loose, diverse coalition consisting of monarchists, liberals, and moderate socialists who united around their shared opposition to the Bolshevik 'Reds' during the Russian Civil War.

Chekha

The Bolshevik secret police organization created to eliminate, target, and pick off political adversaries during the Russian Civil War.

War Communism

The Bolshevik economic policy during the Civil War under which the military confiscated grain from the peasantry to sustain the state and military forces.

Kronstadt

The naval base where Russian sailors who voiced opposition to the rising privileges of the Bolshevik elite were executed by the Bolshevik government.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

The federation established in 1922 uniting the various ethnic territories of the former Russian Empire under a nominal commitment to preserve their local languages and cultures.

Aleksandra Kollontai

The daughter of an imperial general who directed the Bolshevik welfare system and authored popular novels exploring relationships between men and women under communism.

Sergei Eisenstein

A pioneering Soviet filmmaker who created 'Battleship Potemkin,' a cinematic tribute celebrating ordinary sailors rising in revolt against tsarist cruelty.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

An economic program introduced by Lenin in 1921 that permitted limited capitalist ventures and private business ownership to stimulate industrial and agricultural productivity.

NEP-men

Entrepreneurs who accumulated significant personal wealth and prospered under the market-oriented allowances of Lenin's New Economic Policy.

Leon Trotsky

A key Bolshevik organizer who constructed the Red Army during the Civil War, later lost a power struggle against Stalin, and was assassinated with an ice axe in exile.

Joseph Stalin

A Bolshevik activist who helped assemble the USSR from the former empire's diverse ethnic populations, directed Lenin's lavish funeral in 1924, and purged his rival Leon Trotsky.