WAW: Lesson - The Russian Revolution

A family portrait of the RomanovsThe Russian Revolution

The roots of the Russian Revolution stretch back to the Russo-Japanese War. When Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 CE, it came as a huge shock to Russians and Europeans alike. Russia was a large nation—and European, to boot—and it lost to an Asian nation at a time when Europeans were not looking upon their Asian neighbors with much respect.

Plus, amid that war, moderate Russians marched on the Czar's palace to encourage the enactment of Enlightenment reforms to the nation. The response of the palace guards was to fire on the marchers resulting in the day becoming known as "Bloody Sunday." But Czar Nicholas II did create the Duma to serve as a representative, legislative body within his government. The problem was that every time the Duma disagreed with the czar, he disbanded them. In the end, it did not calm the Russian people’s distaste for its absolutist government.

Image note: official portrait of the Romanovs. Czar Nicholas II is seated and surrounded by his wife, four daughters, and son. Side note: his son inherited hemophilia, and his mother’s costly attempts to cure her son and heir to the throne were also among the reasons people resented the royal family. Everyone in this photo was put under house arrest and then executed during the Russian Revolution.

During World War I, many resources were sent to the Russian military forces in combat - so many resources, in fact, that it led to food shortages for the civilians of Russia. Meanwhile, Russia lost more soldiers in World War I per year than any other nation and experienced the highest percentage of casualties among the Allied Powers. People resented the Czar’s poor military and economic management.

Nicholas II was deposed as Czar of Russia in February 1917 CE. This marked the end of the Romanov Dynasty for the Russian Empire. In less than a year, the Bolsheviks ousted the provisional government during the October Revolution of 1917.

The Russian Revolution

The Soviets—formerly local assemblies of workers, peasants, and soldiers—formed a Socialist Party (known as the Bolsheviks) with the motto "Peace, Land, Bread" that formed a new government in 1918 CE. Their leader, Vladimir Lenin, was a student of Marxism. He issued the April Theses in April 1918 demanding peace, a redistribution of land to benefit the peasant class, and the granting of the political right to rule to the Soviets. The result of his April Theses was the nationalization (the transfer of private ownership to government ownership) of individual assets and industries in Russia and the end of Russian participation in World War I.

To complete their takeover of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks quietly executed the imperial Romanov family in July 1918. Former czarists, social democrats, and independent peasants formed the White Army and waged a civil war against the Red Army Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks won in 1921. The following year "Russia" became the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"—or the USSR.

The Rise of Stalin

When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin rose up as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union. He immediately reversed Lenin's approach to Marxism (which had been to allow some private ownership of farms and small businesses) and forcibly collectivized all farms and nationalized all industries during his Five-Year Plan.

A Russian parade celebrating communism. The figures on the banners are Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
Image note: Parade celebrating the evolution of Communism – from L to R: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin

Stalin, fearful of a revolt coming from his fellow communists, consolidated his power and eventually started purging his own government, the military, and Russian intelligentsia in the 1930s. This led the USSR into Totalitarianism, where one party controlled all private and public life. Only the Communist party was allowed, and individual freedoms were limited by secret police (the KGB). The 1930s marked the Great Purge, a period of one-sided trials that led to the executions of perhaps over a million people—no one was safe from being accused of treason (including the Communist military hero Leon Trotsky whom Stalin had assassinated while living in exile in Mexico in 1940.) Stalin even had images purged as exemplified in the below pictures that, at one time, included Stalin's head of the secret police, Nikolia Yezhov, before Stalin purged him from the planet and the photograph.

The original image: Stalin pictured with YezhovA doctored photo: Stalin pictured without Yezhov
On the left, the original photo includes Nikolai Yezhov, head of the secret police, standing beside Stalin. On the right, we see the doctored photo. After Nikolai Yezhov was executed, this photo (and others) had his image purged.

Practice Activity

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