Download Russian Revolution

Russian Civil War
Background, Timeline, Communism
1917 The Czar is
Overthrown
• July 11 (July 24 NS) - Alexander Kerensky becomes
Prime Minister of the Provisional Government
• October 25 (November 7 NS) - The October
Revolution - the Bolsheviks take over Petrograd (also
called the November Revolution if following the
Gregorian calendar)
• October 26 (November 8 NS) TheWinter Palace, the
last holdout of the Provisional Government, is taken
by the Bolsheviks; the Council of People's Commissars
(abbreviated as Sovnarkom), led by Lenin, is now in
control of Russia
1918 Russian Civil War
• March 3 – The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, between
Germany and Russia, is signed and takes Russia out of
World War I
• March 8 - The Bolshevik Party changes its name to the
Communist Party
• June - Russian civil war begins
• Red Army Vs. White Army
• July 17 - Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed
Communist Government
• After the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, overthrow
the provisional government
• Set up a dictatorship, with secret police
• Lenin is in charge
• Revised economic policy – prosperity for some
peasants (sold crops & paid taxes)
• Right-hand man: Leon Trotsky
• Military leader, led Stalin’s Red Army in many
uprisings & revolutionary battles, including the
defeat of the “White” army (the nobility) in the
Civil War
Civil War, 1917-1918
• Civil war erupts between
• Reds
• (Bolsheviks)
• Whites
• (anti-Bolsheviks)
• primarily displaced
nobility and foreign
interests
• War ends in 1918
5 Year Plans
The Situation
• Stalin took over a country in which:
• Almost all industry was in a few cities
• Workers were unskilled & uneducated
• Many regions as backward as they were
100 years before
Industry & the Five-Year Plans
•
Created 5-Year Plans to modernize (R)
– Plans created by GOSPLAN (State
planning org set up by L in 1921
– Set ambitious production targets in vital
industries (coal, iron, oil, electricity)
– Detailed, down to the individual worker
GOSPLAN set overall target for an industry
Each region was told its target
Region set target for each mine, factory, etc.
Manager of site set target for each foreman
Foremen set target for shifts, each worker
First Five-Year Plan (1928-1933)
• Focused on major industries
• Targets not met, but still impressive
• Created industrial foundation for further
5-Year plans
• Whole cities built in remote areas where
resources were
• Workers moved into new cities to work
• New steel mills, dams, & hydro-electric
power fed industry/energy requirements
• New industries in previously undeveloped
regions (Uzbekistan & Kazakhstan)
Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937)
• Built on achievements of 1st 5-Years
• Heavy industry still priority
•
Other industries developed
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–
–
–
•
•
Lead, tin, zinc mines in Siberia
Transport & communication
Railways & canals
Moscow underground railway
(spectacular!)
In agriculture production of tractors & other farm
machinery increased dramatically
Third Five-Year Plan launched in 1938
– Some factories were to switch consumer
goods (radios, refrigerators, cars, etc.)
– WWII interrupted this plan
– Communist (R) would never produce
large #s of consumer goods
Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?
• Criticisms
• A lot of inefficiency
• Duplication of effort & waste
• Enormous human cost (you’ll see!)
•
Positives
– 2nd & 3rd 5-Y Plans learned from errors in
1st 5-Y Plan
– By 1937 USSR was a modern
industrialized state
– Without this modernizations Germany
would have easily overrun Russia in 1941!
Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?
1913
1928
1940
Gas (billion
m3 )
0.02
0.3
3.4
Fertilizers
(million
tons)
0.07
.1
3.2
Plastic
(million
tons)
-
-
10.9
Tractors
(thousands)
-
1.3
31.6
Were the Five-Year Plans A Success?
Production in 1927-28
Five-Year Plan 1933
Five-Year Plan 1937
Electricity (billion Kw hours)
5.05
Actual
13.4
Target
17.0
Actual
36.2
Target
38.0
Coal (million tons)
35.4
Actual
64.3
Target
68.0
Actual
128.0
Target
152.5
Oil (million tons)
11.7
Actual
21.4
Target
19.0
Actual
28.5
Target
46.8
Pig Iron (million tons)
3.3
Actual
6.2
Target
8.0
Actual
14.5
Target
16.0
Steel (million tons)
4.0
Actual
5.9
Target
8.3
Actual
17.7
Target
17.0
How Was Industrialization
Achieved?
• All extreme programs have costs:
• The workers paid the price
• Foreign experts & engineers marveled @ (R)
workers for their toughness
• Workers bombarded w/ propaganda (posters,
slogans, radio broadcasts, etc)
• All had strict targets to meet (fined if missed)
•
Most famous worker: Alexei Stakhanov
– Mined 102 tons/coal in one shift (14x avg!)
– Became ‘Hero of Socialist Labor’
– Propaganda told workers to be
‘Stakhanovites’
•
Cover of Time magazine Dec 16,
1935
From 1930 gov’t drafted women workers
– 1000s of day-care facilities set up
– By 1937 women 40% of industrial workers
– Between 1932-37 80% of new workers were
women
Workers: The Good
• By late 1930 many workers’ lives better
•
•
•
•
•
•
Some had well-paid skilled jobs
Some earned bonuses for meeting targets
Unemployment almost nonexistent
By 1940 USSR had more doctors than (E)
Education free for all
Training programs in colleges & work places
Workers: The Bad
• On other hand, life was harsh under S
• Factory discipline harsh, punishment
severe
• Lateness, absences punished by sacking
• Sacking meant losing apartment/home
• Internal passports/Checka prevented free
movement of workers within USSR
Workers: The Ugly
• Prison labor used for Massive
projects
• Dams & canals built by soviet citizens
imprisoned for being political opponents,
suspected political opponents, kulaks,
Jews, workers who had accidents or
made mistakes on the job (charged w/
sabotage)
• Estimated 100,000 died on Belomor
Canal
Industrialization Comes at a
Cost
• Few comforts:
•
•
•
•
•
Almost no consumer goods
Severe overcrowding in apartments
Families of ten typically had two rooms
Wages actually fell between 1928 & 1937
In 1932 a husband & wife working made
what just one worker made in 1928
Farmers Revolt
Modernizing Agriculture: Collectivization
• Fact File:
• Peasants were to put their lands together to
form large joint farms (kolkhoz) but keep
small plots for personal use
• Animals & tools to be pooled together
• Motor Tractor Stations (MTS), provided
by gov’t, made tractors available
• 90% of kolkhoz produce to be sold to state
• 10% kolkhoz produce kept to feed peasants
Modernizing Agriculture: Collectivization
– Most peasants either laborers w/o land
or rich kulaks
– Farms too small to afford/make use of
tractors, fertilizers, economies of scale
– Most peasants were content to grow
enough food for themselves, not enough
to feed all citizens of USSR
•
1929: Stalin announces collectivization
Farmers Revolt
• Kulaks resisted
• Simply refused to hand over their land &
produce
• Soviet propaganda tried to turn Russians
against Kulaks
• Requisition parties took all
food>starvation
• 1000s arrested & sent to labor camps
where they were worked to death (Ivan
Denisovich)
• Kulaks retaliated by burning crops &
slaughtering all their animals (If we can’t
have it, nobody can!)
Farmers Revolt
• 1932-33: Food production fell
• Millions starved in Ukraine (best farm
land in USSR!)
• Despite famine Stalin did not ease off. By
1934 there were no more kulaks. By 1941
almost all farm land was collectivized. S
had achieved his aim of collectivization.