Revolutions in the Romanov Empire

1917-1921

Russia before WWI

  • Social cleavages:

o      urban society versus ruling elite

o      working class versus all elites

o      City versus countryside

  • Peasants

o      Overpopulation

o      land poor

  • Nicholas II unwilling to reform
  • Tsar Nicholas II and family

Russia during the war

  • Front experience

o      Soldiers radicalized

o      Increasingly refused to fight

  • Home front

o      impoverished (food and clothing supply)

  • Tsar and his government losing war and legitimacy
  • KEY: Nicholas decided to go to the front

o      Tsarina Aleksandr

o      Rasputin

February (1917) Revolution

  • Feb. 23, 1917: International Women’s Day
  • Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
  • DUAL POWER:
  • Petrograd Soviet:

o      workers

o      Soldiers

o      Radical left parties:

§       Bolsheviks

§       Mensheviks

§       Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs)

  • Provisional Government

o      Middle classes, urban dwellers

o      Liberal democratic parties

o      Prince L’vov

o      Aleksandr Kerensky

o      Mistakes:

§       Continued the war effort

§       Refused to give land to peasants

§       Failed to solve food supply problem

 

Peasant Revolutions

  • Seized:

o      Land

o      Forest

  • Fought over the spoils
  • Localism

October (1917) Revolution

  • Bolsheviks

o      V.I. Lenin

o      L. Trotsky

o      Marxists

o      Tightly organized

o      Led and followed the masses

  • Slogans:

o      “Bread, Peace, Land!”

o      “All Power to the Soviets!”

Civil War, 1918-1921

  • Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government
  • Most applauded
  • All-Socialist Coalition Government
  • Lenin refused
  • January 1918: Constituent Assembly
  • March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
  • Reds (pro-Bolshevik troops)
  • Whites (anti-Bolsheviks from SRs to Army officers)
  • Greens (peasant insurgents)
  • Nationalists
  • Western Allies

 

Why did the Bolsheviks win?

  • Strategic, industrial center
  • Red Army (Trotsky)

Whites

  • on periphery
  • lacked unity
  • refused to cooperate with nationalists

Nationalists

  • on periphery
  • lacked unity
  • popular support

Peasants

  • poorly organized
  • local concerns
  • Sometimes supported Reds
  • Soviet Power” (local power)