Russian Revolution

Growing Tension

• Czarist Russia like a bomb with a long fuse• Exploded 1917, but fuse burning for ~100 yrs

Autocratic Czars

• Russia unstable to begin with• 1881-1917: Czars respond to revolutionary

pressure with secret police and persecution of minorities

Industrialization• Late 1800s: Russia industrializes• Terrible working conditions, low wages• Some favored revolution

Marxist Bolsheviks

• Bolsheviks- a radical Marxist (Animal Farm?) communist group

• Believed in revolution of workers and peasants (AF?) led by revolutionaries

• Leader: Lenin (AF?)

Bloody Sunday• 1905: Soldiers fire on workers petitions for

legislature and working conditions• Nicholas agreed to legislature later that year,

but soon dissolved it • Unrest!!

WWI• Russian army weak and

unprepared, Nicholas joins troops

• Wife governs with crazed holy man/hemophilia healer Rasputin

• 4 million Russians die in war• Revolts and strikes across

country

Revolution, 1917

• March: Nicholas steps down, weak provisional representative gov

• Soviets (local councils of workers) gain control• November: Lenin and his Bolsheviks arrest

provisional gov, redistribute farmland and take over factories (cuz they’re commies)

Civil War• Disunited White Army (czarists, democrats,

moderate socialists) fight unified Red Army (Bolsheviks)

• 14 million die from fighting and famine• Reds win

Reforms

–Bolsheviks now “Communist Party,” one-party dictatorship –Russia now “Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics” --communism aims for global revolution, so often avoids nationalism

Stalin assumes power

• Stalin (“man of steel,” AF?) increases power from 1922 until full control in 1928

• Lenin dies 1924• Stalin drives out

competition (Trotsky, AF?)

Don’t worry, he gets less attractive