Welcome back 3tha

07-01-2025
Today
Recap from before the Holiday
Summary Exercise.
Russia (1682-1917)

Russia had been ruled by emperors/

Tsars, for over 250 years.
It was an autocracy, meaning that the
Tsar and his family, the Romanov
Dynasty, had all the power.
They were absolute monarchs who
could decide on their own.

They were however dependent on the

Russian nobility who owned large parts
of land.
Life in Russia under the Tsars

Russia had been an agricultural

society of years.  based on
farming.

The people who worked on the land

were owned by the nobility, they
were called serfs. (you could say it
was a kind of slavery).

Serfdom meant that the lower

classed had no influence at all.
1900: 132 million people.
Behind on the
West
Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicolas II
from 1894 onwards.
He did little to modernise the
country, industrialisation was
slow…
Eventually industrialisation kicked
off, the workers of those factories
lived in horrible conditions.

Nicolas II did nothing to improve

the situation of the workers and the
serfs.  unrest and disaffection
against the Tsar grew.
War with Japan
In 1904 Nicolas II decided to go to
Japan, hoping to get the Nation behind
him.

The war went terrible for Russia and in

1905 a peace deal was signed,
humiliating Russia.
 More and more people started to hate
the Tsar and his policies.

To solve this issue the Tsar established

a parliament called the ‘Duma’ they
did not have any real power and could
only advise.
Dissatisfaction amongst
different groups in society:
• Liberals wanted fundamental rights and
more say for wealthy citizens

• Communists wanted an equal society,

without classes
• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels ‘The communist
manifesto’
• Capitalism would enrich a small group of
people
• Class struggle between labour and
management  revolution  classless society

• Lenin adapted the theory of Marx &

Engels
Lenin
• Vladimir Iljitsj Oeljanov
• Prison, Siberia, London & Switzerland
• Back to Russia in 1905 (after Bloody Sunday)
• And back to Switzerland in 1907
• During WWI and the February Revolution,
Lenin got back to Russia with help of the
Germans!
• Why would you think that the Germans
supported Lenin?

• October Revolution
The February
revolution
After the revolution of 1905, the
situation of labourers and farmers did
not improve much.

1914: WW 1 breaks out and Russia

joins on the side of the UK and
France against Germany and Austria-
Hungary.
 Russia performed poorly and was
pushed back into its own territory.
 Famine broke out, all the remaining
food went to the soldiers  Normal
population suffered
The losses and lack of food increased the
people’s opposition to the government even
more. When the tsar decided to lead the
army himself, he made things worse.

In February 1917, an uprising broke out in

Saint Petersburg.

Women led a demonstration against the

rationalisation and demanded bread. They
were also demanding an end to the war and
tsarist rule. Poor labourers joined them.
Nicolas II ordered the soldiers to shoot on the
protesters, they refused and even joined them
in their protest.

The protesters took over the palace and

government, they called themselves the
‘Soviet’ (the council)

Nicolas II abdicated, and the protesters

started to run the country.
 The new government called themselves the
‘provisional government’.
Lenin immediately began to organise his
followers to prepare for a coup. In his ‘April
Theses’, Lenin promised the Russians ‘bread,
land and peace.’

Lenin also said that the power should be given

to the workers, who were organised into
soviets.
On the 25th October, the Bolsheviks gained
enough power to launch an attack on the
Winter Palace, the seat of the government
and a former palace of the tsar.
Lenin became the new leader of
the government. To consolidate
his rule he called for elections
because he was sure that the
people would support the
Bolsheviks. He was wrong: his
party did not get the most votes.

 He did not acknowledge the

results and seized power anyway,
he became a dictator.
Civil war
Not everyone was happy with the new
communist government.
internal tensions kept growing and full-scale
civil war broke out.

Lenin’s right-hand man, Leon Trotsky had

founded the communist Red Army. They felt
this was necessary because there was a lot of
resistance to Lenin’s take over. Pro-tsarists
Russians united in the White Army with those
who opposed the peace treaty.
The Soviet Union

the Red Army’s soldiers proved to be more

motivated and better organised. In 1922,
a new country was founded: the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or
the Soviet Union.
 in 1923 the remainder of the White
Army were defeated

From 1922 onwards Lenin could change

Russia how he wanted, he however died in
1924.

He was succeeded by Stalin.

The Death of Lenin

Lenin died in 1924.

He was succeeded by Stalin, against his

wishes.
(Stalin was able to obtain power by having
his friends in important positions within the
Bolshevik party).

Stalin, meaning man of steel, wasn’t his real

name.
Stalin’s policies
When he rose to power, he immediately
started to develop a secret police.

Everyone who opposed him was arrested and

subjected to a fake trail in which the accused
were already branded guilty beforehand.
They would be sent to workcamps ‘gulags’.

Around 1.5 million people died in these

camps.
 Opposing Stalin was extremely dangerous.
Stalin’s policies
Stalin wanted to turn the Soviet Union into an
industrial superpower.
If everyone joined in, they would outgrow
the West.

Stalin continued what Lenin had started and

turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian
state.  the State controls everything from
economic to the daily lives of people.
The Five-Year
Plan
In 1928, he created his
first Five-Year Plan, in which he
stated the economic goals that
had to be reached between
1928 and 1933.
factories had to produce
according to the demands of the
state.
Everything was dictated from
above.
Collectivisati
on
To pay for industrialisation, Stalin wanted
to revolutionise agriculture.  he forced
farmers to give up their private land.

farmers had to work together

on kolkhozes, which were huge state
farms
During this collectivisation Stalin sold
the yield to foreign countries and used the
money to buy machines that were
necessary for industry.
Resulted in many famines.
Stalin’s indoctrination

Stalin used propaganda to

indoctrinate the Russian people. A
cult of personality was built around
him, in which the Russians were
convinced to believe that he was
an all-powerful, wise and kind
leader.

He was pictured on paintings,

cities were named after him, books
and music were written about him
and almost every city had its own
statue of Stalin.
Stalin’s Death
Stalin died in 1953 after suffering a stroke.

The story goes that the best doctors had been sent to the
Gulags.
The ones remaining were too afraid to enter his room,
fearing they’d been killed If they disturbed him.

After a day they entered and encountered Stalin laying

on the floor