Chapter 4: The Fall of Tsarism

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Chapter 4 The Fall of Tsarism

• Revolution

www.mennosimons.ab.ca/resource/russ_rev.ppt
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What is a Revolution?

• A complete change in the way things are done
  (Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution,
  Russian Revolution)
• Sometimes peaceful
• Sometimes violent
• Russian Revolution the overthrow of the Tsars
  government and the establishment of Communist Rule

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Events and Personalities Leading up the 1917
Revolution

• Karl Marx
• Spontaneous revolution of the working class
• Let the ruling classes tremble at the prospect
  of a communist revolution. Proletarians have
  nothing to lose but their chains. They have the
  world to win. Proletarians of all lands, unite!

• Vladimir Lenin
• Planned revolution by professional
  revolutionaries
• Revolution of all oppressed classes of society

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Bloody Sunday

• Unarmed peasants, led by Father Gapon, marched to
  Winter Palace singing, God Save the Czar
  carrying petition requesting shorter work days,
  minimum wage, calling of a constituent assembly
  to create a constitution for Russia.
• Palace Guards fired upon crowd killing hundreds,
  injuring thousands (without orders)
• Bond between Czar and his people broken forever

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Tsar Nicholas II

• Not a strong leader
• Did not keep promises made to increase personal
  freedoms (free speech, freedom of religion,
  freedom of movement, freedom of language)

• Easily influenced by Rasputin
• Did not give DUMA (national parliament, much
  power)

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World War I

• Russia unprepared for war
• Not enough supplies (food, weapons, clothing)
• Army poorly organized
• Soldiers didnt understand why they were fighting
• Tsar Nicholas II and his ministers provided poor
  leadership and organization

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Events of the Revolution

• February 1917
• Spontaneous uprising of peasants
• Protesting shortage of bread
• Industrial strikes
• Tramcars (city transit) forceably stopped
• Breaking of shop windows
• Waving red flags that read, Down with war!

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Revolutionaries Take Over

• When revolutionary leaders realized the
  revolution was actually happening, they tried to
  organize the events to their benefit.
• Leaders of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Social
  Revolutionaries all joined together calling a
  three-day general strike
• At least 60,000 soldiers join the revolutionaries
• These leaders, together with soldiers set up a
  Soviet (council)
• Take control of Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
• Duma disobeys Tsars orders to dissolve and form
  the Provisional Government to run Russia
• Tsar Nicholas II steps down in favour of his son,
  Alexis, with Tsars brother acting as regent
• Tsars brother refuses succession
• Romanov line to Russian throne ends
• Romanov family placed under house arrest
  (confined to palace)
• Russia now governed by a Provisional Government

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Provisional Government

• Declared all Russian citizens equal
• Freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly
  given to all citizens
• Unions and strikes legal
• Planned on continuing war
• Provisional Government made these promises, but
  asked people to wait
• People tired of waiting and listened more and
  more to the revolutionaries

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Alexander Kerensky

• Leader of small socialist party became Russias
  Prime Minister in July
• Wanted to establish Parliamentary Democracy
• Well educated and an excellent speaker, he lacked
  strong leadership abilities

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Bolsheviks

• Believed that a small group of trained
  revolutionaries could lead the workers to
  overthrow the Provisional and establish communism
  in Russia
• Led by Lenin
• Tried to attract the people with slogans like,
  All Power to the Soviets and Bread, Peace, and
  Land

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Bolsheviks

• Lenin headed the Bolsheviks, the radical wing of
  the Russian Social Democratic Party
• The Bolsheviks capitalized on the governments
  insistence on continuing the war, its inability
  to feed the population, and its refusal to
  undertake land reform
• Eventually the Bolsheviks gained control of the
  Petrograd soviet

1922 poster declaring Starvation is strangling
Russia
ocean.otr.usm.edu/w416373/102/HIS102Lsn11RussianR
evolutionCommunismFascismNationalSocialism.ppt
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Bolshevik Revolution

• By end of September, there was widespread peasant
  rebellion in Russia
• Lenin left Finland in disguise and attended a
  secret Bolshevik meeting in Petrograd
• Bolsheviks held mass meetings with thousands in
  attendance
• Kerensky declares Russia to be in a state of
  emergency and orders arrest of Trotsky and other
  Bolshevik leaders

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Bolsheviks

• On Oct 24-25, 1917, the Bolsheviks stormed the
  Winter Palace and seized control in a virtually
  bloodless insurrection
• The Bolsheviks ended Russias involvement in
  World War I by signing the treaty of
  Brest-Litorsk with Germany on March 3, 1918

Picture purportedly original, but actually a
reenactment, of the Bolshevik storming of the
Winter Palace
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How Did Bolsheviks Win?

• Kerensky not a strong leader
• Provisional Government disorganized
• Other parties not as organized as Bolsheviks
• Bolsheviks composed of professional
  revolutionaries dedicated to their goals and
  capable of carrying them out

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What Did Lenin Do Upon Coming to Power?

• Immediately proposed an end to War (WWI) (what
  peasants wanted most was peace)
• Proposed the distribution of all land to
  peasants, landowners would not be paid for land
  taken from them
• Lenins proposals adopted

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After the Revolution

• Bolsheviks encountered stiff resistance in some
  cities
• Bolsheviks defeated in Kiev (Ukraine)
• Bolshevik power weak in Siberia, Georgia,
  Armenia, and Central Asia
• Strongest in Central Russia and in large cities
  where many workers lived

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Ending WWI

• Bolsheviks needed peasant support to stay in
  power
• Lenin decided to get Russia out of WWI and send
  peasant soldiers home
• In March of 1918, Lenin signed treaty with
  Germany accepting German occupation of Ukraine,
  Belorussia, the Baltics, and Finland
• Russia lost over one quarter of its farmland and
  one third of its population, almost all its coal
  mines, and more than half its industries
• Huge loss to Russias economy

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Civil War

• Civil war lasted from 1918 to 1921
• Some non-Russian nationalities took up arms to
  win independence from Russia
• Fight by Bolsheviks to establish communism in
  Russia, which was renamed the Russian Soviet
  Federated Socialist Republic (USSR) in 1918
• Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist
  Party

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Civil War

• Britain, France, Japan, and the US all sent
  troops and supplies to aid the Whites but the
  Whites were defeated in 1920
• 10 million are estimated to have died in Russias
  civil war

1919 Bolshevik poster showing the three White
generals as vicious dogs under the control of the
US, France and Britain.  
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Civil War

• The Bolsheviks and their opponents fought a civil
  war from 1918 to 1920
• Lenin established Moscow as his capital and
  initiated the Red Terror against the Whites
• Secret police (the Cheka) killed 200,000 of
  Lenins opponents
• In July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas II
  and his family to prevent them from being
  manipulated by the Whites

The Romanov Family
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End of Romanovs

• Taken to Western Siberia
• After Bolsheviks took power taken to Ekaterinburg
  (in Ural Mountains)
• Lenin sent telegram authorizing their execution
• Taken to cellar at 130 a.m. with family doctor
  and servants
• Nicholas and Alexandra fell first under the hail
  of bullets
• Bullets bounced off the daughters, diamonds found
  in their corsets
• Those who survived the bullets were killed by
  bayonets
• Bodies loaded onto truck, stripped of jewels,
  thrown into a mine
• Mine not deep enough to hide them, bodies dumped
  into a pit in a marshy area
• Even the family dog was killed

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Bolshevik Success

• Their enemy was not united
• Trotsky created a well-organized and disciplined
  army increasing the size of the Red Army by
  conscripting thousands of workers and peasants as
  well as former Tsarist soldiers
• Bolsheviks increased their support among workers
  and peasants by promising land and a brighter
  future
• Used terror against opponents
• In newly conquered areas, Bolsheviks used secret
  police to destroy all opposition, arresting and
  executing people on the spot

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Results of Civil War

• Much of Russia in ruins
• Cities, land, factories destroyed after almost
  eight years of fighting
• Millions died or fled country
• Bolsheviks had mammoth task of rebuilding country

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War Communism

• During the civil war, the Bolsheviks adopted a
  hasty and unplanned course of nationalization
  called war communism
• The Bolshevik government assumed control or
  ownership of banks, industry, and privately held
  commercial property
• Landed estates and the property of monasteries
  and churches became national property
• Private trade was abolished

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War Communism

• By 1920, industrial production had fallen to 1/10
  its prewar level and agricultural output was down
  50
• Workers went on strike, demobilized soldiers
  flooded the workforce, peasants rebelled
• Lenin had to do something

1920 Bolshevik poster entitled The Last Battle
shows a Red Army soldier knocking a capitalist
businessman off the world.
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New Economic Policy

• Lenin realized he needed to win back the workers
  so he radically reversed war communism,
  implementing the New Economic Policy in 1921
• Temporarily restored the market economy and some
  private enterprise
• However, Lenin died in 1924 before the plan could
  get a decent chance to work
• A struggle for power ensued and Joseph Stalin
  emerged in control in 1928

Lenins body on display in Moscow
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Five Year Plan

• Stalin replaced Lenins New Economic Plan with
  his first Five-Year Plan in 1929
• Designed to transform the Soviet Union from a
  predominantly agricultural country to a leading
  industrial power
• Set targets for increased productivity in all
  spheres of the economy, especially heavy
  industry, at the expense of consumer goods
• Expropriated privately owned land to create
  collective or cooperate farm units whose profits
  were shared by farmers
• Even though consumer goods were almost
  non-existent, full employment in the midst of
  Global Depression made a centrally planned
  economy appear a viable alternative

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The Great Purge

• Stalin consolidated power by inciting a civil war
  within his own party to remove opposition
• Between 1935 and 1938 he removed all people
  suspected of opposition from their positions of
  authority
• By 1939, 8 million Soviet citizens were in labor
  camps and 3 million were dead

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
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Soviet Labor Camp in Siberia
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Possible References

• This PowerPoint
• Your textbook
• The following websites
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_revolution
• http//www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture6.html
• http//www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture7.html
• http//campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/EastE
  urope/OctRev.html
• http//www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
• http//www.encyclopedia.com/searchpool.asp?target
  _at_DOCTITLE20Lenin2020Vladimir20Ilyich
• http//www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSlenin.htm
• en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/leni
  n_vladimir.shtml
• www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/timeline/1900/1917-b
  .html
• http//www.virtualclassroom.net/tvc/rusrev/sld007.
  htm
• http//www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUScivilwar.h
  tm
• www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/classroom/alevel/revol
  .htm

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Events of Bolshevik Revolution

1. Cruiser Aurora listens to Trotskey and disobeys
   Governments order to go out to sea
2. Trotsky orders the removal of thousands of guns
   from the Fortress of Peter and Paul to arm the
   Red Guards (Bolshevik troops)
3. Small bands of armed Bolsheviks seize important
   buildings (rail stations, telegraph exchanges,
   banks, printing plants, and powerhouses). Most
   regiments in Petrograd did not get involved.
4. Trotsky declares Provisional Government
   overthrown, power now in hands of Soviets
5. Kerensky escapes in American Embassy car
6. Bolshevik troops surround Winter Palace and give
   ultimatum to surrender or be shelled ministers
   would not surrender
7. Cruiser Aurora fires blank shells at Winter
   Palace to signal beginning of attack
8. Bolsheviks (composed of soldiers, sailors, and
   workers) storm Winter Palace
9. Bolsheviks encounter little resistance, mass
   confusion but few injuries
10. Bolsheviks control Government, Lenin was new
    leader