Chapter 27 Part III

1. Chapter 27Part III The Russian Revolution Pages 904-910

2. Russian armies suffered from a lack of supplies and equipment. Russia’s political system, with its weak Duma and powerful Tsar, was not conducive to total war mobilization. The tsar, Nicholas II, distrusted the Duma and resisted calls to share power with his subjects. The Fall of Imperial Russia

3. In September 1915 the tsar took direct command of armies at the front, leaving his wife, Alexandra, and her adviser Rasputin in real control of the government. In March 1917 troops in St. Petersburg mutinied as women rioted, demanding bread. The Duma formed a provisional government and the Tsar abdicated. The Fall of Imperial Russia

4. The Provisional Government • The Provisional Government made Russia the freest country in the world on paper, with equality before the law, freedom of religion, the right to strike, and so on. • The Provisional Government shared power with the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. • The Petrograd Soviet issued Army Order #1which stripped power from the officers and gave it to elected committees of common soliders. • Following the failure of Russia’s summer 1917 offensive, the army began to dissolve as peasant soliders headed home to help their families take land in a great agrarian upheaval.

5. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution • Early Life of Lenin • Lenin’s political ideas: a) Only violent revolution could destroy capitalism. b) Socialist revolution was possible even in a backward country such as Russia. c) Human leadership rather than historical laws made real revolutions. d) Unlike many other socialists Lenin did not rally round the flag in 1914.

6. Lenin headed a group of Marxist Socialist called the Bolsheviks, the opposing group was called the Mensheviks. Vladimir Lenin

7. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution • In April 1917 Germans smuggled Lenin out of exile in Switzerland and into Russia. • In the summer of 1917 Bolsheviks won support in Petrograd and by October gained a small majority in the Soviet.

8. Trotsky and the Seizure of Power • In early November militant Bolsheviks under the leadership of Leon Trotsky seized power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin became the leader of the new gov’t. Reasons for Bolshevik success: a) By late 1917 Russia was in anarchy. Power was available to anyone who would seize it. b) Bolshevik leadership was superior to that of the Imperial or Provisional Governments. c) In 1917 the Bolsheviks succeeded in appealing to many soldiers and urban workers.

9. Dictatorship and Civil War • The Bolsheviks immediately legalized peasant seizures of land. • The Bolsheviks made peace with Germany in March 1918 in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. • In January 1918 the Bolsheviks dispersed by force the democratically elected Constituent Assembly, which was to write a constitution for Russia. • The Bolshevik destruction of democracy led to civil war (Whites vs Reds) in Russia from 19181921.

10. Dictatorship and Civil War • The Bolsheviks won the civil war for several reasons. a) They controlled the strategic center of the country. b) The Bolsheviks’ “White” opponents were divided and lacked a single clear political program. c) Trotsky created a superior army to the Whites. d) The Bolsheviks mobilized the home front, introducing forced labor, grain requisitioning, and rationing (war Communism-total war to a civil conflict). e) The Bolsheviks used terror to maintain discipline and subdue opposition with the Cheka (secret police). f) Allied military intervention against the Bolsheviks allowed the latter to appeal to Russian patriotic sentiment against foreign invasion.

11. Dictatorship and Civil War • The Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik triumph were one of the reasons why the 1st WW was such a great turning point in modern history. • A radically new gov’t, based on socialism and 1 party dictatorship, came to power in a great European state and eagerly encouraged worldwide revolution.