Russian Revolution

1st/ March Russian Revolution ( 1917)

To get rid of the czar

Political causes of the 1st /march Russian Revolution

• Most people hated the autocracy (execpt for the noble)

  • Czar ( Nicholas II) made decisions to help himself, not the majority

• The Duma had no power to make laws, just advised czar

  • Ruma consisted of only landowning males → boyars / nobles

• Ohkrana

Economic causes to the 1st / March Russian Revolution

• The urban/ industrial working class was terribly abused( like all nations were beginning to industrialize/ mechanize)

• Only 15% of the jobs in Russia were industrial working class( proletariat)

• Only began industrialization in 1860s, so it lacked industrial, mechanized capacity → not enough factories

  • 80% of Russian goods were made by domestic/ cottage industries

  • Very few goods, very expensive goods

Cultural causes to the 1st/ march Russian Revolution

• Pogroms

  • Ohkrana

• WWI → lots of raw materials very few factories

  • Not enough guns for each other

  • Only 1 automatic rifle for every 2 soldiers

  • 1 in 5 families lost a son, spouse, brother, father in Russia

Boyars/ nobles

• Landowning males

• What the Duma consisted of

1916 drought

• Caused widespread food shortages

  • Mostly a 1 crop growing season so, food prices increased 400%

• Strikes were called by Soviets → workers councils/unions

• Army disobeyed the czar who ordered soldiers to "shoot unarmed protesters”

• Nicholas II resigns on march 15,1917

• Only 1 in 10 Russian farms had modern farm machinery

  • Most food went to the army

• Protests began in Petrograd / St. Petersburg

• Demonstrations/ pickets → "peace & bread” & "down with autocracy”

Provisional govt

Duma takes control → Alex kerensky

• Write a new constitution

• What to do about fighting in WWI

• How to improve economic hardships

  • Duma believed it needed to prevent chaos & disorder

  • Duma continued to fight Russia( couldn't win)

  • ¼ of Russia was starving to death, could not produce as many goods as other western nations

Alex kerensky

Speaker of the Duma

Lenin

Exiled communist/ Marxist ( radical socialist)

Returns in April 1917 to lead opposition to Kerensky & the Duma

Soviets

Russian word for workers councils → unions

Mensheviks

Socialists & wanted govt to help the poor

• Improvement for workers/ proletariat through reform laws governing

  • Wages

  • Suffrage

  • Health & safety laws

  • Unemployment insurance

Bolsheviks

Communists & seize the private businesses & property ( proletariat dictatorship)

Proletariat dictatorship

Get rid of govt (Duma)

2nd/november Revolution

To set rid of kerensky & the Duma

"Peace, bread, Land”

Lenin's way to broaden his attractiveness /appeal

Peace

Get Russia out of wwI because they couldn't win the war

Land

Take land from the boyars/nobles & give it to the peasants

Bread

Modernize/mechanize food production to feed all ( share scarce machinery → farming)

• Purpose was to spread the communist message to the poor wether they were factory workers or rural peasants

The provisional govts mistakes

Create a revolutionary force strong enough to get rid of the provisional govt & kerensky

Reasons to get rid of the provisional govt & kerensky with a revolutionary force

The provisional govt was not

• Getting Russia out of WWI

• Wasn't helping to feed the people

Red army

Leon Trotsky & was the military organizer

The Bolshevik takeover

To get rid of the provisional govt /kerensky

• The govt /duma forces were vastly outnumbered

• St. Petersburg /Petrograd capital was seized by the red army

Bolshevik/ red Army seize Moscow

Kremlin / old st. Basil's cathedral becomes their headquarters

Hammer & sickle

Union between industrial rural working class

Treaty of Bret - litovsk

Got Russia out of WWI

• Germany & A-H got 300,000 sq. Mi. Of western Russia

• The land made up most → - Poland , Finland, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Reds

Industrial & rural working class ( hammer & sickle)

Whites

• Former nobles/boyars

• Liberals / middle class

• Socialists

Russia's former wwi allies

• UK

• US

• France

The former Russian Allies provided:

• $$$

• Equipment

• Soldiers to fight communist forces

Who feared what?

Russia greatly feared the spread of a communist Revolution because each nation had many more abused factory workers than Russia did