Chinese and Russian Revolutions

1
Chinese and Russian Revolutions

• By Vanessa McCormick

2
Chinese Revolution

• Idealist youth-committed to building a utopian
  society-were mobilized as "Red Guards."
• "Red Guards" were urged to go on the road and
  make revolution.
• started as an idealistic movement
• The "Four Olds"old ideas, old culture, old
  customs, old habitswould be replaced by the
  "Four News."

• Time Period 1911-1949
• Background
• involved a lot of the people, no one knows the
  definite cause
• was a time of great hope and great sorrow
• It was an extraordinary, contradictory time, of
  exalted idealism and horrific mistakes.

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Major Players of the Chinese Revolution

• Gough Whitlam
• Whitlam Government
• Geremie Barmé
• Song Binbin
• the woman who first pinned a Red Guard armband
  on Mao
• Mao
• used young students to overthrow the status quo

• Gough Whitlam
• Mao

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Causes of the Chinese Revolution

• Political
• Inefficient emperors
• Lack of able Manchu leadership
• Downward spread of administrative inefficiency
  in the government
• Sale of government posts
• Corruption in the government
• Political decentralization
• Growth of the scholar-gentry's local power

• Social and Political
• Population growth and social poverty
• cultivable land was limited in amount
• no large industrial development to absorb the
  excessive manpower and to raise the standard of
  living
• greater social poverty
• Poor economic conditions of the government

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Causes of the Chinese Revolution

• Military factors
• Administrative inefficiency and the lack of
  cooperation
• Poverty of the soldiers
• The Manchus' loss of fighting spirit

• Ideological factors
• anti-Manchu attitudes were preserved at the
  lowest level of society where central government
  control was weak
• anti-Manchu feelings that had long been kept
  underground re-surfaced
• ideological basis of the Manchu rule was
  challenged

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Major Events of Chinese Revolution

• Central Committee replaced with the Cultural
  Revolution Committee, and local governments with
  revolutionary committees.
• many revolutionary elders, authors, artists, and
  religious figures were purged and killed
• Founding of the People's Republic of China'
  adopted on June 27, 1981
• Mao began the Great Leap Forward
• widespread famine
• first version of a historical drama published
• "Group of Five" was disbanded

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Short and Long Term Results of Chinese Revolution

• Chinese people leave behind many uncritical
  habits of conformist and authoritarian thinking
• students formed factions
• Communist Party Rule reestablished
• Establishment of the Peoples Republic
• Economic disruption
• Industrial production dropped

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The Russian Revolution

• Time Period 1917
• Background
• weakest in relation to the other powers engaged
  in the Great War
• contained within its large landmass a multitude
  of nationalities, religions, and resources
• the size of the country made it difficult to
  rule and the population existed as a feudal
  society

• poor farming peasants were under the control of
  powerful landlords who controlled their lives
• little industry or manufacturing of goods except
  in the very large cities
• a giant and backward nation
• tradition of a strong Tsar with the support of a
  powerful secret police, was belied to be the only
  way

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Major Players of the Russian Revolution

• Nicholas II of Russia
• last tsar of Russia
• Vladimir Lenin
• led Bolshevik party
• Sir George Buchanan
• British Ambassador in Russia

• Nicholas II
• Vladimir Lenin

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Causes of the Russian Revolution

• culmination of a long period of repression and
  unrest
• czardom increasingly became an autocratic
  bureaucracy that imposed its will on the people
  by force, with wanton disregard for human life
  and liberty
• The university became a seat of revolutionary
  activity nihilism, anarchism, and later Marxism
  were espoused and propagated
• The reforms of Alexander II brought the
  emancipation of the serfs and opened the way for
  industrial development
• emancipation imposed harsh economic conditions on
  the peasants and did not satisfy their need for
  farmland
• A reactionary and often ignorant clergy kept
  religion static and persecuted religious
  dissenters. Pogroms were instituted against the
  Jews, which turned many radical Jews to Zionism

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Causes of the Russian Revolution

• Non-Russian nationalities in the empire were
  repressed
• Russia was divided into several political groups
  
• The autocracy was upheld by the landed nobility
  and the higher clergy the capitalists desired a
  constitutional monarchy the liberal bourgeoisie
  made up the bulk of the group that later became
  the Constitutional Democratic party peasants and
  intelligentsia were incorporated into the
  Socialist Revolutionary party and the workers,
  influenced by Marxism, were represented in the
  Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Social
  Democratic Labor party

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Major Events of the Russian Revolution

• Cheka Secret Policy
• Red Army
• New Economic Policy
• Kronstadt Uprising
• Commissar of Nationalities
• Revolution February 1917
• Revolution October 1917
• Red Terror
• Brest-Litovsk Treaty
• Constituent Assembly
• April Theses
• Provisional Government

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Long and Short Term Results of the Russian
Revolution

• Caused a revolutionary wave
• no other Marxist movement succeeded in keeping
  power in its hands
• socialism's success needs the workers of other
  countries in order to happen
• ended the long reign of tsars in Russia and
  created the communistic Soviet Union

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Similarities between the two Revolutions

• Ideas of Mao and Lenin similar
• Both revolutions resulted from similar factors
  and conditions
• Both countries were backwards at the beginning of
  this century
• Relations of production and their patterns of
  exploitation were semi-feudal and were
  predominantly based on agriculture
• populations were largely peasant
• Religious beliefs permeated both societies,
  reflecting the social conditions in China
  Confucianism, and in Russia Greek Orthodoxy

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Continued

• The social reality In each country formed the
  basis of similarly oppressive regimes the Tsars
  in Russia and the Manchu Emperors in China
• revolutions had to solve the same political and
  economic tasks
• had to destroy feudalism and to free the
  productive forces in agriculture from the fetters
  in which existing relations bound them
• The economic and political problems were those of
  a bourgeois revolution that is, of a revolution
  that was to make capitalism the dominant mode of
  production.

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Differences in the two Revolutions

• Russia was very militant
• Russia had an intelligentsia
• In China history repeated itself but in a
  somewhat different form
• enormous difference in tempo in China

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Works Cited

• http//library.thinkquest.org/26469/culturalrevolu
  tion/
• http//www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/ordinarylife
  /history.htm
• http//www.washington.edu/burkemus
  eum/ordinarylife/rebel.htm
• http//info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_and_Journal
  s/ANU_Reporter/Autumn
• httpwww.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0860855.html
• http//flag.blackened.net/revolt/disband/solidarit
  y/china_rev2.html