Russian Revolution

Failure of Nicholas II

• Nicholas II reigned during a time in which there was a small middle class and working class who were exploited and had few rights.
• Bloody Sunday was an event in which the government's army fired on peaceful demonstrators in Petrograd.
• This caused strikes across the country, causing political activists to return to Russia.
• The strikes made Nicholas II to give into creating a legislature, but he rigged it so nothing would happen in the legislature without his seal of approval.

WWI Problems

• The middle class protesters could not band together again to make further demands of the Czar.
• The son of the Czar had hemophilia, so Rasputin assumed power.
• The Russian economy could not keep up with the war. Supplies could not be delivered and huge numbers of casualties made support for the war to go away.
• The government became extremely out of touch with the people, and they came to distrust it completely.

February Revolution

• A demonstration lasting three days ended with the Russian army turning on the government.
• This gave the Duma, the Russian legislature, the chance to create a true government.
• Peasants deserted the army, seized land formerly owned by the government, and freed the political activists imprisoned by the Russian police force.
• Two sides emerged with conflicting political ideals: the moderate Provisional Government wanted to continue the war effort in hopes of regaining the land lost in WWI and the Marxist Soviets who eventually split again into the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

October Revolution

• Lenin returns to Russia and joins the Bolsheviks with his plan to take over the Provisional Government and end the war, import food back to Russia, and cure it land issues.
• The Bolsheviks organized a coup and exiled Kerensky, beginning the radical phase of Russian government.
• However, the war with Germany fell apart, and Russia lost territory in the West including Ukraine and Western Russia.

Russian Civil War

• Russia then had to defend against half-hearted attacks by the US, British, and Japanese.
• The Bolsheviks maintained their control, and the foreign powers went back to their home countries unsuccessful.
• Lenin created a one-party dictatorship and installed the New Economic Policy that, although it contradicted his party's beliefs, kick-started his economy.
• When Lenin died, Stalin defeated Trotsky, exiled him, and assumed his position as the head of a weak but united one-party empire.