Double Revolution in Russia

a.1905 Russian Revolution

1. Tsar Nicholas II
i. Never wanted to tsar, was a passive family man
ii. Will be dominated by wife who gets her answers from
Rasputin
i. (a “holy” man who claimed to be able to cure
their son’s hemophilia)
ii. Was fraud
iii. Assassination: Poisoned, shot multiple times, he
was still coming at them, dumped him in the
frozen river
1. He drowned
iii. Firmly believed it was his duty to uphold the autocracy,
could not see how to become a constitutional monarchy
without letting down his ancestors
iv. Poorly advised from the start, surrounded by
sycophants
2. As cities grew, there was more working class unrest.
i. 19th century development Growing discontent with
traditional forms of government led to the
development of new political ideas
3. Emancipation of serfs had not led to economic success in
agriculture.
4. Defeat in Russo-Japanese War unleashed massive protests.
5. Mass political unrest, terrorism, worker strikes, peasant unrest, and
military mutinies.
i. Bloody Sunday: Massacre of peaceful protests by tsar’s
armies
6. Reforms:
i. Tsarist regime creates Duma (national parliament) to appeal
to liberal demands.
ii. Stolypin Reforms (1906-1917) introduced
i. Peasants were granted greater freedom from
redemption payments and could buy and sell land
more freely.
ii. Reforms failed
b.Russia at War
1. Largest army in the world, incompetent generals, insufficient
supplies, poorly trained soldiers, poor communication
i. Ready for a 6 month war, not one of attrition
ii. As the nature of warfare changed the other countries
could adapt but Russia’s rigid tsarist system could not
 iii. The leadership was from noble families, in complete
denial about the nature of war, more worried about
losing favor of tsar then the millions dying
iv. Poor military intelligence, so the enemy knew what they
were doing but they never knew what the enemy was
doing
i. Plus limited telegraph wires meant no
communication between armies
2. Lost many battles
i. Ran out of ammunition, ordered into battle without
weapons (grab guns from your dead comrades)
i. Stupid mistakes about not thinking through how
to properly equip the army (like they didn’t
have winter boots, and there was only one
factory in the country that could make the
boots, but they needed a chemical from
Germany which they didn’t think to stockpile)
ii. In fact, they didn’t stockpile supplies at all
3. Home front
i. Railroads were broken
ii. Crops rotted in fields
iii. Civilians were starving in cities
i. Peasants in rural areas never had it better
because they didn’t have to / weren’t able to
send their crops away
iv. In cities food and fuel was scarce
4. Tsar Nicholas II – lived the high life with extravagance and
corruption
c. February Revolution
1. March 1917 – food ran out in St. Petersburg
2. Women staged mass demonstrations
3. Soldiers mutinied and joined the protesting workers
4. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, provisional gov formed
5. Enter the Bolsheviks
i. Bolsheviks: Radical Marxist political party founded by
Vladimir Lenin in 1903, seized power in Nov. 1917
during the Russian Revolution
i. also led by Leon Trosky
6. July 1917 – Tsar Nicholas II and his family murdered
d.Marxism – Leninism
1. Vladimir Lenin: leader of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party. He
lived in exile in Switzerland until 1917, then returned to Russia to
lead the Bolsheviks to victory during the Russian Revolution and the
civil war that followed.
 i. son of a gov. official, became a revolutionary in his
teens when older brothers were executed for plotting
to kill the tsar
ii. spent years in exile first in Siberia, then Switzerland
iii. devoted attention to organizing followers
iv. wanted to create a party that would lead the revolution
not wait for it
v. German gov let Lenin back into Russia, hoping to
destabilize it
2. Vladimir Lenin introduced alterations to Marxist theory to make it
“work” for Russia.
i. Marxism says urban workers (proletariat) will unite against
bourgeoisie . . . The problem is that Russia has not
industrialized enough to have a proletariat. Instead, they
have millions of peasants; the industrial proletariat was a
small minority of Russia.  Lenin claims Russia can have a
proletarian revolution without a proletariat.
ii. Marx claimed the proletariat must self-emancipate  Lenin
claims revolutionaries can seize power for the working class
(this means Russia does not need a universal peasant revolt)
3. Lenin’s ideas introduced a group of Russian Marxists called the
Bolsheviks (“majority”).
i. Immediate peace, all power to the soviets (councils) and
transfers of land to the peasants and factories to the
workers
ii. Popular among exhausted soldiers and workers
iii. Argue for the emancipation of the peasants using a
Marxist alternation of Lenin’s making
4. Private property should not be protected; government should
control resources to ensure equity among citizens
i. In Russia, this is particularly appealing as many ex-serfs have
little to no individual resources
5. Q: Describe Russian industrialization. What are Lenin’s two
“alterations” to Marxism?
e.1917 revolution
1. February Revolution
i. March 1917 – food ran out in St. Petersburg
ii. Women staged mass demonstrations
iii. Soldiers mutinied and joined the protesting workers
iv. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, provisional gov formed
v. Enter the Bolsheviks
i. Bolsheviks: Radical Marxist political party
founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903, seized
 power in Nov. 1917 during the Russian
Revolution
vi. Tug of war between provisional gov and various
revolutionary factions of Petrograd
i. The Russian general orders another offensive
against the Germans the the soldiers just refuse
1. Desert by the hundreds of thousands;
Germans advance
2. October Revolution
i. Bolsheviks overthrow Provisional gov and arrest the
other revolutionary groups
ii. Seize Petrograd
iii. Russia in Chaos
i. Nationalize all private property, ordered
peasants to hand over crops with no
compensations
ii. Peasants, having captured the estates, refuse
iv. Bolsheviks took over the factories, drafted workers into
compulsory labor brigades
i. Lenin uses the Cheka, secret police, to enforce
his orders and execute enemies
3. Peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary
i. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
ii. Lost territories containing a third of its population and
wealth
i. Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
ii. They become independent republics
iii. In Central Asia and the Caucasus – colonies break away
4. The collapse of the Russian Empire under the stress of the First
World War enabled this
f. Soviet union used propaganda to build support for centrally directed
economic programs in the Soviet Union
g.Q: How did the war lead to revolution in Russia?