Download Russia`s Revolutions

Russia’s Revolutions
Russia - Part 2 - Russia's Revolution
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Russia and World War I
• Declaration of war in Russia evoked a moment
of “patriotic union”
• Military defeats and domestic strains rekindled
the smoldering social and political conflict.
• By early 1915 German divisions had dealt a
string of shattering defeats.
– “Relentless” German advance
– Russia needed “total war” – a complete
mobilization of resources, human and material.
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Russia’s Problems
• Russia’s stock of ammunition and weapons
was low.
• Neither domestic production nor imports
could satisfy the huge demand of this first
modern war.
• As morale plummeted, the army replaced
decimated officer corps with young officers
from lower social ranks– non-aristocrats
who had minimal training and little
authority over peasant soldiers.
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The End of the
Romanov Dynasty
• Tsar Nicholas II
assumed personal
command of the army.
• He relinquished power
to chosen viziers, his
unstable wife , and her
unsavory entourage
that included Rasputin.
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Russia - Part 2 - Russia's Revolution
The February Revolution (1917)
• Russia’s scorched-earth policy denied
Germany the spoils of victory, but also
unleashed a tidal wave of refugees that
overwhelmed the administration and
economy of interior provinces.
• Street demonstrations in Petrograd to protest
food shortages.
– Petrograd was virtually paralyzed by a general
strike.
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The February Revolution (1917)
• As the government in Petrograd
disintegrated, Nicholas desperately struggled
to retain power.
– He formally dissolved the State Duma.
– He attempted to return to the capital, but
found himself stranded in a provincial town.
• He agreed to abdicate for the sake of
domestic tranquility and the war effort.
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The February Revolution (1917)
• Why was it successful?
– Failures in the war
– Discontent in the countryside
– Formation of soviets  Strikes
– Food shortages
– Mutiny in the army (supported protests)
– Tsarina and Rasputin
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Provisional Government
• Members of the Duma were willing to form an
alternative provisional government.
– Nicholas II’s abdication, compounded by the
dissolution of the Duma, raised the question of
legitimacy that would bedevil the Provisional
Government throughout its brief existence.
– The Duma was a mixture of capable men such as
Kerensky and inexperienced, angry
revolutionaries
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The Provisional Government
• Faced three overwhelmingly urgent decisions
– To continue the war or to make peace
– To distribute land to the peasants (who were
already taking it) or wait until elections had been
held
– How to get food to the starving workers in the
cities
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The Provisional Government
• The decisions that were made:
– Promised the allies that it would continue the war
– Urged the peasant to be patient and wait for
elections to be held
• The Provisional Government took a cautious
approach because it felt that there were
questions about its legitimacy until elections
were held
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The Provisional Government
• The Provisional Government was not the only
possible government
– The Petrograd (Russified version of the Germanic
St. Petersburg) Soviet had the support of
• workers in many key industries
• much of the army
• In the spring of 1917, the Soviet and the Provisional
Government worked together
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Vladimir Lenin
(1870-1924)
• A child of modest privilege and a law-school dropout, he
had spent most of the years prior to 1917 in foreign
exile, participating in small revolutionary discussion
circles and writing voluminously.
• Lenin had managed to return to Russia after the
abdication of Nicholas II.
– Thanks to the Germans who sent him on a special
“sealed” train across front lines to foment further
chaos against their military foe.
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Russia - Part 2 - Russia's Revolution
Vladimir Lenin
(1870-1924)
• Lenin set out his programme in his April Theses
– Urged people to support a second revolution
– Two main slogans
• ‘Peace, Land and Bread’
• ‘All Power to the Soviets’
– Message contrasted sharply with the caution of
the Prov. Govt - support for the Bolsheviks rose
rapidly
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The Summer of 1917
• The authority of the Provisional Government
was collapsing
– War effort was failing under German attacks
– Peasants were not waiting to take land – soldiers
(most were peasants), did not want to miss out,
deserted
– Bolsheviks were gaining power
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The Summer of 1917
• In July (the ‘July Days’), Bolshevik protests against the
war turned towards rebellion
– Kerensky produced evidence of Lenin’s help from
the Germans – Lenin fled to Finland
– Kerensky cannot return order as real power now
lay with the soviets (particularly the Petrograd
Soviet)
• Bolshevik majority, Bolshevik Chairman
(Trotsky), support of much of the army, support
of all of the workers
• Ordinary people did not support the Prov Govt
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The Summer of 1917
• The Kornilov (leader of the army) Affair
– Sept, 1917 – marches troops into Moscow
intending to get rid of Bolsheviks and Prov. Gov’t
– Kerensky had too little support from his troops 
turned to Bolsheviks for support
– Bolsheviks form the Red Guards (Red Army) to
oppose Kornilov – Kornilov’s troops will not fight
members of the soviets
– Bolsheviks now have military strength
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The October Revolution (1917)
• In Russia the Gregorian calendar was accepted
after the October Revolution (so named
because it took place in October 1917 in the
Julian calendar). On 24 January 1918 the
Council of People’s Commissars issued a
Decree that Wednesday, 31 January 1918 was
to be followed by Thursday, 14 February 1918.
Russia - Part 2 - Russia's Revolution
The October Revolution (1917)
• Kerensky
– Did not have the support of the army – war
failures
– Did not have the support of the peasants –
tried to stop peasant takeover of land
– Did not have the support of the urban
workers – w/o peasant support food was not
coming to the cities – prices spiraled
• The Bolsheviks promised what people
wanted
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The October Revolution (1917)
• Lenin decided that the time was right – overruled
internal opposition
• November 6th – had Red Guards take control of key
positions in Petrograd
• Nov. 7th – arrested ministers of the Prov Govt –
Kerensky escaped – tried to rally loyal troops – failed
– fled into exile
• Nov. 8th – Lenin proclaims new government
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The October Revolution (1917)
• Lenin did not have the support of the Russian
people. Key factors in his success were
– Unpopularity of the Prov Govt
– Bolsheviks were disciplined
– Bolsheviks had support in the right places (1/2+
army, sailors at Kronstadt, Petrograd and Moscow
soviets)
– Outstanding leaders in Lenin and Trotsky
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The October Revolution (1917) –
Lenin’s Promises
• Lenin knew that he must deliver on his promises or
suffer the same fate as the Provisional Government
– See the list of early Bolshevik Decisions
– Lenin had promised free elections and they were
held in late 1917
• Bolsheviks did not get a majority
• When the Assembly met in January, 1918, Lenin
sent in the Red Guards to close it down –
democracy lasted less than 24 hours
• Lenin intended to establish a dictatorship of the
proletariat leading to true communism
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The October Revolution (1917)
• Lenin had promised to end the war
– Trotsky was to spin out the negotiations but, by
Feb., the Germans were again advancing
– The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was accepted to
safeguard “the socialist revolution” at all costs.
Russia gave up:
• 34% of its population; 32% of its agricultural
land; 54% of its industry; 26% of its railways;
and 89% of its coal mines
• The Bolshevik leadership relocated the capital from
Petrograd to Moscow.
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Opposition and Civil War
•
•
•
•
Lenin was sure to create enemies
August – Lenin is shot 3 times but survives
December – Cheka is set up to crush opponents
Anti-Bolshevik elements unite as the Whites to
crush the Bolsheviks. The Whites included
Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Tsarists,
landlords and capitalists, Czech Legion
• The reaction was the immediate creation of the
Red Army. Control was enforced through the Red
Terror (Hostages, Cheka, Beatings, Hangings,
Shootings)
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Whites vs. Reds
• Fearing the spread of socialist revolution, Britain,
France, Japan, and the U.S. sent armies to Russia to
subvert or at least contain Bolshevism.
– The Bolsheviks executed the tsar and his family in July
1918, then rallied support for their cause.
– They mobilized to fight a vicious civil war (1918-1921).
• Whites or “counterrevolutionaries” vs. the Bolsheviks
or Reds.
– Their opponents could not dislodge the Bolsheviks from the
Muscovite core of the former Russian empire.
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The Imperial Family
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Centralized Rule
• The civil war provided an excuse for Bolshevik-led armies to
reconquer, in the name of the revolution, many of the
former tsarist lands that had seceded from the empire.
• From 1921 until 1923, Russia suffered from a severe
famine.
– Some 7 to 10 million people died.
– This allowed the Bolsheviks to enact dozens of decrees (New
Economic Policy).
• In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(U.S.S.R.) was formed.
– Centralized rule from Moscow.
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Communist
Russia
• One-Party Dictatorship
– The Communist Party was controlled by a small group,
the politburo (political bureau), which assumed a
dictatorial role.
• The key leaders—Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and a few
others—determined policy within the
government.
– No other political parties were tolerated. The politburo
used execution, terror, and forced-labor camps to
achieve monolithic party unity.
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Communist Russia
• They abolished the power of the Orthodox Church
and wiped out the educated upper class of
bureaucrats, landowners, professional people, and
industrialists.
• They outlawed the ownership of income-producing
private property; sought to advance Soviet state-run
large-scale industry.
• They used education, from kindergarten through
university, in press and radio, and in literature and the
arts, to control the minds of people and promote
Marxism-Leninism. (brainwash)
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Marxism-Leninism
• The Soviet leadership understood history
moving in the stages defined by Karl Marx.
as
– Feudalism – to Capitalism - to Socialism- to Communism
• But before achieving communism, a final stage in which
there would be a classless society and a withering away of
the state, they believed that the Communist Party would
have to build socialism.
– Socialism would have economic planning and full employment.
– Socialism would outlaw private trade and private property.
– Soviet or revolutionary socialism increasingly defined as opposition
to capitalism.
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Russia - Part 2 - Russia's Revolution
Joseph Stalin
(1879-1953)
• Lenin died in 1924, and Stalin took over
the fact that Trotsky had been Lenin’s
hand- picked successor.
despite
– Stalin had used his position as general
secretary of
the party to build support.
– He would kill all those loyal to Trotsky and ultimately Trotsky
himself. (Mexico 1940)
• Stalin launched a massive program for industrialization
(railroads, steel mills, military hardware), despite what it
would require in human suffering.
– Five-Year Plan to “catch an overtake” the leading capitalist
countries.
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Collectivization
• He also started a revolution in Soviet
agriculture forcing peasants to forcibly
participate in collectivization.
– This meant the pooling of farmlands, animals,
and equipment for the sake of more efficient,
and state-run, large-scale production.
• Knowing that the well-to-do peasants (kulaks)
would not accept this, Stalin decided to “liquidate
them as a class.”
– Millions were killed outright or sent to forcedlabor camps to suffer a slow death.
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Purges
• Many of the remaining peasants refused to go along,
killing their herds and intentionally sabotaging their
crops.
– From 1931 to 1933, millions starved to death.
– By 1935, practically all farming was collectivized.
• To wipe out any remaining resistance, Stalin unleashed
terror to crush opposition through a series of purges.
– 750,000 were executed between 1936 and 1938.
– Those who were not executed were sent to forced labor
camps, collectively known as the Gulag.
• In the 1920s and 1930s, between 10 and 20 million
people died as a result of Stalin’s policies.
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Conclusion
• It appears that most inhabitants of the
Soviet Union accepted the upheaval and
mass arrests as a response to internal and
external opposition and as a method for
creating a new world.
– Violent crusade of building socialism in a hostile
world.
• Moreover, despite the staggering losses, the
elite continually expanded because the
planned economy had a voracious need for
officials and administrators.
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