Draft:Outline of the Russian Revolution

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Russian Revolution:

Below is a structured list of topics related to the Russian Revolution.

Pre-Revolution Russia

 * Final true autocracy in Europe
 * No representative political institutions
 * Nicholas II became Czar in 1884
 * Believed he had the divine right of kings
 * Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
 * Defeat led to political instability

The Revolution of 1905

 * Rapid growth of (discontented) working class
 * Vast majority of workers concentrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow
 * Little help from the countryside
 * Impoverished peasants
 * No individual land ownership
 * Rural Famine

Conservatism Continues: 1905-1917

 * Czar neglected the Duma
 * Political parties suppressed
 * Only token land reform was passed
 * Nicholas became increasingly remote as a ruler
 * Numerous soviets began to appear

Alexandra: The Power Behind the Throne

 * Even more blindly devoted to autocracy than her husband
 * She was under the influence of Rasputin
 * Origins of Rasputin’s power - ?
 * Scandals surrounding Rasputin served to discredit the monarchy

World War I: “The Last Straw”

 * War revealed the ineptitude and arrogance of the country’s aristocratic elite
 * Corrupt military leadership had contempt for ordinary Russian people
 * Average peasants had very little invested in the War
 * Ill-trained, ineffective officers, poorly equipped (Russia was not ready for ind. war) = mass desertions and 2 million casualties by 1915
 * Result: Chaos and Disintegration of the Russian Army

The Collapse of the Imperial Government

 * Nicholas left for the Front (September, 1915)
 * Alexandra and Rasputin threw the government into chaos
 * Complete mismanagement of the wartime economy
 * Industrial production plummeted
 * Inflation and starvation were rampant
 * Cities were overflowing with refugees
 * Alexandra and other high government officials accused of treason
 * Rasputin assassinated (December, 1916)
 * Cities became a hotbed for political activism
 * This was ignited by serious food shortages in March 1917, esp. in St. Petersburg

The March Revolution: March 12, 1917

 * Origins of the revolution
 * Food riots and strikes
 * Duma declared itself a Provisional Government (March 12)
 * Czar ordered soldiers to intervene
 * Instead they joined the rebellion
 * The Czar thus abdicated on March 17
 * Menshevik, Alexander Kerensky headed the Provisional Government, along with Prince Lvov
 * Very Popular Revolution
 * Kerensky favoured gradual socialist reform
 * He saw the war effort as a major priority

Kornilov Affair

 * General Lavr Kornilov attempted to overthrow Provisional Government with military takeover
 * Kerensky prevented this takeover by freeing many Bolshevik leaders from prison and supplied arms to many revolutionaries

The Petrograd Soviet

 * Leftists in St. Petersburg formed the Petrograd Soviet
 * Which they claimed to be their legitimate government
 * Germany was aware of the Russian situation and began to concentrate on the Western Front
 * Germany even granted Lenin "safe passage" in order to return Russia (April, 1917)
 * Allowing Lenin to create a revolution

Soviet Political Ideology

 * More radical and revolutionary than the Provisional Government
 * Most influenced by Marxist socialism
 * Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

Vladimir Lenin: Founder of Bolshevism

 * His Early Years
 * Exiled to Siberia (1897)
 * Devoted to Class Struggle and Revolution
 * Moved to London in 1902 and befriended Leon Trotsky
 * What is to be Done?
 * Stated that a vanguard party is required to lead a revolution
 * This divided the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party into two factions
 * Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

Lenin Steps into This Vacuum

 * Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd
 * A tremendously charismatic personality
 * Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks promised "Peace, Land, and Bread."
 * “All Power to the Soviets”
 * He preached that the war was a capitalist/imperialist war that offered no rewards for the peasants/workers; he also believed the war was over with the czar’s abdication
 * Bolshevik party membership exploded; their power was consolidated
 * Lenin formed the Military-Revolutionary Council and in May 1917 he urged the Pet. Soviet to pass Army Order #1
 * This gave control of the army to the common soldiers
 * Discipline thus collapsed, and Kerensky was undermined

The November Revolution: Nov. 6, 1917

 * This was the ideological aspect of the revolution
 * The coup itself planned by Leon Trotsky had gained the confidence of the army
 * All private property was abolished and divided among the peasantry
 * Largest industrial enterprises nationalized
 * Political Police organized called the CHEKA
 * Revolutionary army created with Trotsky in charge called the "Red Army”
 * Bolshevik Party renamed Communist Party of the Soviet Union (March 1918)
 * Lenin’s first task was to get Russia out of the war
 * To concentrate on economic reform
 * The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk negotiated with the Germans
 * Giving them much Russian territory, population, and resources
 * Civil War: 1917-1920
 * Complete breakdown of Russian economy and society

The Reasons for the Reds victory:

 * The Reds occupied the strategic center of the nation; the Whites were on the fringes.
 * The White opposition was ideologically fragmented, including reformists, Mensheviks, Czarists
 * This wartime coalition proved to be incompatible
 * Trotsky had increased the efficiency of the Red Army
 * Strict military discipline (e.g. deserters were shot)
 * Made use of czarist officers and their military experience
 * Lenin made use of Revolutionary Terror (Cheka – a secret police force)
 * Kept the citizens in line
 * They were responsible for killing the Czar and his family, including the youngest daughter, Anastasia (1918)
 * “War Communism”
 * Period of strict government and economic control
 * Foreign intervention (eight western nations, notably France, aided the Whites)
 * Promoted a sense of nationalism that aided the Reds.
 * Lenin used this as a propaganda device
 * The intervention of the western nations was based on ideological grounds
 * They feared communism

End of Civil War

 * Reds emerge victorious in 1921
 * Lenin renames country USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republic)
 * Lenin implements NEP (New Economic Policy)
 * “One step back to go two steps forward”
 * Small scale capitalism to jumpstart the stagnated Russian economy

The New Economic Policy

 * An attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry thru a free market system
 * Many dissidents were shipped off to the gulags
 * Lenin was presumably ready to return to Marxist principles when the NEP did work
 * But his health deteriorated after a 1922 stroke, and Lenin died in 1924
 * This created a power vacuum and a struggle between Trotsky and Stalin

Leon Trotsky

 * Opposed the NEP
 * Intellectual, head of the Red Army
 * Favored the doctrine of World Revolution
 * Felt that the USSR could not survive as the sole communist state
 * The USSR must therefore seek to export revolution to world

Josef Stalin

 * Supported the NEP
 * Favored “Socialism in One Country”
 * Believed the USSR should strengthen itself and lead the communist world by export
 * Became the Party’s General Secretary in 1922
 * Appointed many assistants crucial to Stalin’s rise
 * Power struggle lasted until 1928, when Stalin’s complex system of alliances and ability w/ realpolitik allowed him to succeed

Stalin Prevails

 * Trotsky was forced into exile and eventually murdered in Mexico City in 1940
 * Stalin went on to condemn all deviation from the party line
 * He also created a “Cult of Lenin” and worked to connect himself to the fallen leader