Russian Revolution AOS1

“bound to threaten political stability”

Roger - industrialisation

“downfall was not inevitable, but its own stupidity made it so”

Figes - tsarism

“while not probable, [downfall was] certainly not inevitable”

Pipes - tsarism

"the principal causes... were political, and not economic or social"

Pipes - 1917

“polarisation was self-reinforcing… the tendency was repression and greater extremism”

Nettl - ideology and repression

“collapse was rooted in a crisis of modernisation”

Smith - industrialisation

“i am not prepared to be a tsar. I know nothing of the business of ruling”

Tsar Nicholas II - himself

“suppression first, and then… reform”

Stolypin - Reforms

“no revolutionary movement can endure without… leaders maintaining continuity”

Lenin - 1902

14 May 1896

Tsar’s Coronation / Khodynka Fields Tragedy

8 February 1904

Russo-Japanese War begins

“the might of Holy Russia will crush them”

Tsar Nicholas II - Russo-Japanese War

14 - 15 May 1904

Battle of Tsushima

11 battleships
7 cruisers
7 destroyers

losses of the Battle of Tsushima

23 August 1905

Treaty of Portsmouth

9 January 1905

Bloody Sunday

96 deaths, 300 injured

Bloody Sunday casualties

“mass action became possible”

Malone - Bloody Sunday

“deliver them from the intolerable oppression of the bureaucracy”

Workers’ Petition - Bloody Sunday

14 October 1905

Moscow and St Petersburg economies paralysed by strike

“tsarism came out… alive and strong enough”

Trotsky - 1905 Revolution

17 October 1905

October Manifesto declared

“ambiguous and in some ways unsatisfactory to all concerned”

Fitzpatrick - October Manifesto

“Russia had… half a constitution”

Pares - October Manifesto

“no law shall become effective without the confirmation of the State Duma”

October Manifesto

“…no way out but to cross oneself and give what everyone was asking for”

Nicholas II - October Manifesto

23 April 1906

Fundamental Laws

“we have a constitution but absolutism remains”

Trotsky - Fundamental Laws

“removed the sharing of power offered in the October Manifesto”

Malone - Fundamental Laws

Duma could be dissolved in “exceptional circumstances”

Article 87

“I have created the Duma not to be directed… but to be advised”

Nicholas II - the Dumas

27 April - 8 July 1906

First Duma

20 February - 3 June 1907

Second Duma

“regions that had not yet reached sufficient levels of civil development”

Nicholas II - Voting reforms

“gentlemanly statesmanlike people”

Stolypin - voting reforms

7 November 1907 - 3 June 1912

Third Duma

15 November 1912 - 27 February 1917

Fourth Duma

“heightened the political consciousness”

Malone - Dumas

27 February 1917

Formation of the Provisional Committee

February 1914

Durnovo’s Warning

“in the event of a defeat… social revolution in its most extreme form is inevitable”

Durnovo’s Warning

17 July 1914

Russia’s troops are fully mobilised

“a crushing burden on all nations”

Nicholas II - WWI

“the army is no longer retreating but simply fleeing”

Polivanov - WWI

13 - 17 August 1914

Battle of Tannenberg

70,000 dead/wounded; 100,000 captured

Battle of Tannenberg consequences

27 - 31 August 1914

Battle of the Masurian Lakes

60,000 dead; ordered to retreat

Battle of the Masurian Lakes consequences

22 August 1915

Tsar becomes commander-in-chief

“Nicholas understood next to nothing about military affairs”

Brusilov - Tsar Nicholas II

July 1915

War Industries Committee formed

August 1915

Progressive Bloc forms

1915

Zemgor forms

22 May - 31 July 1916

Brusilov Offensive

550,000 dead/wounded; collapsed Austro-Hungarian front

Brusilov Offensive consequences

December 1916

Supply crisis in Petrograd

“what is it, stupidity or treason?”

Milyukov - Tsarina’s leadership

“…on the eve of big events, compared with which, 1905 was child’s play”

Petrograd Chief of police

“[inflation] made the workers prepared for the wildest excesses of a hunger riot”

Okhrana report, Oct 1916

“leaderless, spontaneous, anonymous revolution”

Chamberlin - February Revolution

“…autocracy collapsed in the face of popular demonstrations and the withdrawal of elite support for the regime”

Fitzpatrick - February Revolution

“ideas were not a key aspect of the motivation”

Malone - February Revolution

9 January 1917

demonstration in commemoration of Bloody Sunday - 150,000 workers

23 February 1917

International Women’s Day March - thousands of women; joined by 100,000 workers

25 February 1917

almost all factories in Petrograd close - 300,000 workers on the streets

26 February 1917

Troops fire on protesters

27 February 1917

Petrograd Garrison Mutiny - 160,000 men;
Provisional Committee formed

28 February 1917

Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Deputies formed

1 March 1917

Soviet Order no.1; Provisional Committee renames to Provisional Government

2 March 1917

Tsar Nicholas II abdicates

“a bread riot became a revolution”

Doboru - February Revolution

“power without authority… authority without power”

Kerensky - dual government

“the soviets subverted the authority… without assuming responsibility”

Pipes - dual government

“we were appointed by the revolution itself”

Milyukov - Provisional Government

“weak to the point of impotence”

Chamberlin - Provisional Government

“to survive it had to keep Russia in the war, but [this] destroyed its chances of survival”

Lynch - Provisional Government

3 April 1917

Lenin returns to Russia

4 April 1917

Lenin’s April Theses

“appeared… out of touch with reality”

Pipes - April Theses

“peace, bread, land” / “all power to the soviets”

Lenin - April Theses

18 June - 2 July 1917

June Offensive

3 - 6 July 1917

July Days; first Machine Gun Regiment ordered to the front lines

“a semi-insurrection”

Trotsky - July Days

8 July 1917

Kerensky appointed Prime Minister

18 July 1917

Kornilov appointed Commander-in-Chief

19 - 30 August 1917

Kornilov Affair

“the Provisional Government, under full pressure from the Bolshevik majority… convulses from within”

Kornilov - Kornilov Affair

“a crisis that undermined the gains it made in the July Days”

Lynch - Kornilov Affair

2 September 1917

Bolshevik majority in Moscow Soviet

13 September 1917

Bolshevik majority in Petrograd Soviet

25 September 1917

Trotsky becomes chairman of the Petrograd Soviet

10 October 1917

Bolshevik Central Committee discuss when to seize power

16 October 1917

Military Revolutionary Committee (Milrevcom) formed

24 October 1917

Red Guards and Bolsheviks seize bridges and communication points in Petrograd

“Kerensky is on the offensive” / “this is defence” / “no compromise is possible”

Trotsky - October Revolution

25 October 1917

Lenin releases to the press that the Provisional Government has been deposed

25 October 1917

Soviet government is established; Mensheviks and SRs walk out and never come back in

“Bolsheviks were pushing against an already open door”

Lynch - October Revolution

“foolishly added to his isolation by assuming command”

Wood - Tsar Nicholas II

“indisputably the executive figure who organised the actual rising”

Lynch - Trotsky