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 Outline on the  Russian Revolution
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  Since the mid-1500's, Russia had been ruled by leaders called czars
 
  Under the czars, the country remained far behind the industrial progress made in Western Europe & thus most of the people were poor, uneducated peasants
 
  Russian Peasants farmed the land with the same kinds of simple hand tools their ancestors had used
 
  Through the years, revolts against the harsh rule of the czars had occasionally broken out, but these revolts were not successful
 
  In the late 1890's, discontented Russians formed several political orgs
 
  One group, the Marxists, followed the socialist teachings of Karl Marx, a German social philosopher
 
  At the time of the Russian Rev, the Bolsheviks (later called Communists) made up a group within the Marxists & their leader was Vladimir I. Ulyanov, who used the name V. I. Lenin
 
  After an economic depression began in Russia in 1900, a number of student protests, peasant revolts, & worker strikes broke out
 
  In 1905, two uprisings were crushed by govt troops, but the rev mvmt in Russia continued to gain strength underground
 
  The uprisings forced the czar to establish a fully elected lawmaking body, the Duma
 
  World War I began in 1914 & Germany declared war on Russia in August of that year
 
  During World War I, Russia had enormous losses, and the people suffered severe shortages of food, fuel, & housing
 
  Russia's role in the WW I was hampered by poor generals & a struggle for power btwn Czar Nicholas, Rasputin the Monk, & Czarina Alexandra & was influenced by Rasputin's mysterious ability to alleviate the hemophilia of the royal family's child, Alexis  
  Untrained Russian troops behind the fighting lines feared being sent to the front, where they might be killed
 
  Early in March 1917, the people revolted & riots and strikes over shortages of bread and coal grew more violent in the capital, Petrograd  
  Troops were called in to halt the uprising in Petrograd, but they joined it instead  
 
 The people of Petrograd turned to the Duma for leadership which Czar Nicholas II then ordered to be dissolved, but the parliament ignored his command
 
 
 The Duma established a provisional (temporary) government & because Nicholas had lost all political support, he gave up the throne on March 15
 
  Nicholas and his family were then imprisoned, their eventual fate becoming one of history's great mysteries, but it is believed that Bolshevik revolutionaries killed them in July 1918  
  A Soviet of Workers' & Soldiers' Deputies was also formed in Petrograd in March which was a rival of the provisional govt  
  In April, Lenin demanded "all power to the soviets," which were small regional, provisional govts, and, in July, armed workers and soldiers tried to seize power in Petrograd, but failed  
  Lenin fled to Finland, some of his followers escaped or were jailed, others were driven underground & later that month, Alexander F. Kerensky, a socialist, became premier  
  The October Revolution  
  General Lavr Kornilov, the army commander in chief, planned to seize power from Kerensky, but the local soviets throughout Russia, & the Bolsheviks rallied behind Kerensky  
  The general advanced on Petrograd in September 1917, but his group broke up before reaching the city  
  After this episode, the soviets became more radical.  Many army units supported the Bolsheviks  
  Lenin returned from Finland in October and convinced the Bolsheviks that they should try to seize power  
  He hoped a revolution would set off other socialist revolts in Western countries  
  Lenin's most capable assistant, Leon Trotsky, helped him plan the take-over  
  On November 7 (October 25 in the old Russian calendar), 1917, the armed workers took over important points in Petrograd.  
  After a bloody struggle in Moscow, the Bolsheviks controlled that city by November 15  
  In 1917, the Bolsheviks formed a new Russian government, headed by Lenin  
  They changed Russia's name to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)  
  The peasants had already seized much farmland from Russian nobles and the czarist state & for a time, Lenin endorsed these land seizures  
  After a civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks and their opponents, the government tightened control and forced the peasants to give the government most of their products  
  The government also took over Russian industries and set up central management bureaus to control them & the Cheka, a secret police force, was established  
  After the Bolsheviks seized the government, Russia withdrew from World War I and began peace talks with Germany  
  In March 1918, Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.  Under the treaty, Russia gave up large areas, including the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and Ukraine  
  After the war, Armenia and Georgia set up independent republics  
  In 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the Russian capital back to Moscow, which had been the center of government until Czar Peter I made St. Petersburg the capital in 1712  
  Post-Rev Civil War  
  From 1918 to 1920, Russia was torn by war between the Communists and the anti-Communists, called Whites  
  The peasants believed they would lose their lands to their old landlords if the Whites won, and so they generally supported the Reds  
  The Whites were aided by troops from Britain, France, Japan, the United States, and other countries that opposed the Communist government  
  But these nations helped little because they were unwilling to fight another war after World War I  
  After the civil war, the Red Army invaded Georgia, Ukraine, and eastern Armenia, and helped put down nationalist independence movements in Belarus (then called Byelorussia) and central Asia where Communist rule was gradually established  
  In 1920, Poland invaded Ukraine in an attempt to expel the Communists but the Red Army drove the invaders out and nearly reached Warsaw, Poland's capital  
  the Polish troops, with help from France, finally defeated the Red Army & a treaty signed in 1921 gave Poland the western parts of Byelorussia and Ukraine  
  In 1922, the RSFSR and three other republics formed a new nation called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union (SU)  
  Lenin became seriously ill in 1922.  A struggle for power developed among members of the Politburo  
  Leon Trotsky ranked after Lenin in power, but the next two most important members of the Politburo, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, joined forces to oppose Trotsky  
 
 Kamenev & Zinoviev chose Joseph Stalin to be their partner, greatly strengthening his position as general secretary of the party
 
  As general secretary, he had the support of the local party secretaries, whose careers were dependent on his approval  
  Stalin defeated his rivals one by one, first Trotsky lost power in 1925 then Stalin expelled from the party his own former partners, Kamenev and Zinoviev  
  By 1929, Stalin had become dictator of the Soviet Union  
  In Stalin's SU, a crisis in grain deliveries to the cities threatened to sink the First Five-Year Plan  
  Stalin forced the peasants into collective farms called kolkhozy, where they had to give most of their products to the government at low prices  
  The peasants opposed being forced to join collective farms, and destroyed much of their livestock and crops in protest  
  As punishment, Stalin had millions of peasants killed or exiled to prison labor camps in Siberia and the Aral-Caspian Lowland during the early 1930's  
  In 1932 and 1933, a famine killed 5 million to 7 million people in Ukraine and in the Volga and Kuban regions of western Russia which resulted from a government policy that forcibly took food from the farmers to supply urban, industrial workers  
  Many Soviet citizens opposed Stalin's policies during the mid-1930's  
  In order to crush opposition, Stalin began a program of terror that was called the Great Purge wherein the secret police, the forerunners of the KGB, arrested millions of people  
  Stalin eliminated all real or suspected threats to his power by having the prisoners shot or sent to labor camps  
  WW II & Hitler's aggression allowed Stalin to further consolidate power  
  The Cold War gripped the SU after WW II, allowing the Communists to justify continued oppression  
 
 The U.S.S.R. broke apart in 1991, and Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine invited the other republics to join a federation called the Commonwealth of Independent States. 
 
  Analysis of the Russian Rev of 1917:  
  The Russian Rev is seen as historically important for the people of Russia & people around the world because it was a "socialist rev" which embraced a historically new model for society that challenged the model of the major western, capitalist nations  
  The Russian Rev is historically important because the founding of a major socialist nation estb the relationships of int'l conflict for the next 70 yrs as seen in the Cold War  
  The Russian Rev validates many of Farley's necessary conditions for rev in that  
  -  the  was dissatisfied because of high taxes, poverty, oppression by the military, the waste & opulence of Czar Nicholas, the Czarina, Rasputin the Monk & others  
  -  while communications were difficult in the 20th century Russia, it was still possible given the mail, newspapers, etc. & since much of the rev occurred in the cities, the people were close to each other  
  -  the people & rev leaders had survived several attempts at repression by the Czar, though many also died  
  -  while the people feared the Czar & the Russian Monarchy because it was so powerful, they had their beliefs in socialism & equality to inspire them  
  -  the Russian peasants & city poor had barely adequate resources, but were never supported by any other nation or class, all whom feared a socialist rev  
  The Russian Rev validates many of Marx's factors affecting rev in that  
  -  the Russian peasants experienced several contradictions among the old system of monarchical feudalism of & "democratic" capitalism, & the promise of freedom under socialism  
  -  the Russian peasants had class consciousness in that they understood the contradiction because the Marx, Lenin & others had spread ideals of socialism, freedom, etc. to the general populace  
  -  the historical circumstances of the weakness of the Russian Monarchy, the rise of the bourgeoisie class, & the loss of wars by the  all contributed to the success of the Russian Rev  
  -  the Russian peasants had various strong political org in the form of the "soviets" which were regional, provisional govts  
  -  there was a high level of class conflict btwn the clergy, the monarchy, the bourgeoisie, & the peasants, & while the clergy, the monarchy & the bourgeoisie banded together against the peasants, the former three were often fighting among themselves to try to grab power, & to save Russia from defeat in WW 1 & the oft present threat of rev  
  The Russian Rev validates Johnson's theory in that 20th century Russia was in disequilibrium because of the contradictions btwn feudalism, capitalism, & socialism all of which had competing value systems which promised particular lifestyles, but which in Russia, were not delivering  
  Johnson notes that loss in a war sets the old regime up for rev, & in the case of the Russian Rev, they had lost power in WW 1 which weakened the power of the Czarist Monarchy & killed tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who were often from the peasant & urban poor classes  

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