Russia Emergence (1861 - 1922)

1861 - 1922

Lenin and Trostsky

abolition of serfdom by Tsar Alexander II

• 1904 - 1905

  • War with Japan over Manchuria and the Korean empire to provide a transit route

  • Major Defeat

  • Russia’s reputation as a major power suffered

• 1905

• Over one hundred thousand demonstrators in St.Petersburg marched peacefully to the Winter Palace to present the Czar with a list of complaints concerning working conditions in the factories to plead with Tsar Nicholas II for reform.

• When the Tsar failed to appear, tension mounted. In a moment of panic, soldiers opened fire on the crowd.

• Led to worker strikes all over empire and Railway closures

creation of DUMA

• a legislation led by prime minsiter

• Lower state DUMA: elected representatives

• Upper: state council (representatives of public bodies

1906

made all bills have to be approved by both senates and Tsar

• there would be constant Vetos

• declared freedom of assembly, speech and press, petition

• introduced habeas corpus

• freedom to change one’s profession

• to travel abroad

• to aquire property

• 1906

• removed all restrictions of peasant movement restoration of public order

• resettlement benefits for peasants who moved to Siberia

• Led to rapid changes in the village which would have prevented revolution of not for his death in WWI

• Russian peasants did not like his reforms

1914-1918

• “ The immediate cause of the revolution of 1917 would be the collapse of Russia under the strains of war” (Pipes)

• Bad weapons and equipment

• constant defeats: demorilization

• Huge foreign debt

• peasant unwilling to sell grains

• closing of factories

• general outrage

• shortages of consumer goods and food in cities in Russia, great inflation

1902

power pamphlet for propaganda

party composed of full-time professional revolutionaries dedicated to the overthrow of the tsarist regieme

Boleviks

• Lenin

• More peasants in their ranks

• pro immediate and radical revolution led by professional revolutionaries

• Party structure highly heirarchial

• Minority party

Mensheviks

• Martov

• for gradual and progressive changes

• more lower class - urban inhabitants, skilled workers, intellectuals, and professionals

• party struture more democratic

• majority party

• 1917

• Bread shortages and general dissatisfaction lead to strikes

• Taking over railway stations; telephones off; artillery supplies taken over; city in hands of protestors

• Women’s March: women textile workers of 200,000 protest food shortages

• Tsar Nicholas II advocated

• Provisional Government

• Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers

• wanted to contain the revolution

• Duma: lack of legitimacy, lack of means to control the mobs

• Did not dissolve the Red Army

• In charge until constitutional assembly is elected

• wanted to deepen the revolution

• Bolsheviks: the freedom to attack the P.G. for the problems it wasn’t solving

1917

• April 16, 1917

• 1917

• PEACE (army)

• LAND (peasants)

• BREAD (city folk)

• April 17, 1917

• wrote a telegram to the allies assuring them that Russia isn’t withdrawing from war

• Telegram was leaked to the Bolsheviks

• Public enraged, support for Bolsheviks increased

• peasants sieze lands of their landlords

• Lenin calls for seizure of the Soviets

• Trotsky agrees

• bolshviks establish a military committee to conduct propaganda

• October 10 vote in Bolshevik central committee: 10: 2 - sieze power

• Bolsheviks seize buildings, railway stations, and storm the winter palace where provisional gov. was in session

• Lenin and Bolsheviks call for transfer of power from P.G. to Soldiers and peasants

SOVNARKOM

• Trotsky as a minister of foreign affairs, Stalin of nationalities

• Announces that there will be no election

Lenin’s secret police

Pravda Newspaper to show a list of executed people under the heading “Red Terror”

June 1918 - June 1921

• Grain Requistioning/procurement from peasants

• famines and rural revolts

• Lenin announced a war against peasants who held back surplus grain

• 10 year prison and confiscation of property

• coersion and violence towards peasants

For them to be hanged in 1918

• 75% of them were peasants

• “peasant support will ensure victory in the civil war”

• undisciplined, needed training, despised proletarian office

• lack of food, uniforms, military supplies, medical equipment

• spread to diseases, mass desercions

1917-1920

• confiscations of church lands

• Started in 1921: prohibition of religious practices and services

• anti-religious campaigns with propaganda, arrests and trials of clergy & believers

• Mass political education

• built up infrastructure of dissemination of communist views

• “Bring enlightenment to the masses”

• “create the new socialist man”

• “Instill class consciousness among the worker and peasants”

Nov 1917

shut down of all newspapers

March 1918

Mater plan: to produce pieces of art that would propagate communist ideas

• schools (young pioneers)

• cinema

• the arts

• theatre

• the worker

• peasants

• women

• enemy

• the leader

• democratic centralism

• ban on factionalsim

Marxism: focused on proletariat

Marxism-Leninism emphasized the potential of peasants as well

1917

Lenin and the Bolsheviks

• made divorce readily available and a purely civil matter

• all children born in our out of wedlock had equal foot with regards to Maintence and inheritence

• established that a wife didn’t have to live with her husband or take his name

equality among all citizens regardless of sex, race, and nationality and equal right of men and women to vote and be elected to the soviets

womens department in the communist party that tried to make women’s intersts more represented

dissolved when the feminist and emancipating aspirations of the 1920’s were replaced by Stlain’s focus on industrial production

1890’s

• the governments industrialization policies

• foreign investment modernization of the banking and credit structure

• modest development of native entrepreneurial activity.

• “ The immediate cause of the revolution of 1917 would be the collapse of Russia under the strains of war” (Pipes)

political campaign of repercussions and executions carried out by Cheka.

Lenin did not advocate violence as an absolute essential mean, but he was convinced that violence was necessary to overthrow the autocracy