| As the world anxiously waited to learn of developments
along the fronts of World War I, Russia stirred internally with unrest.
The Romanov dynasty of Russia ended when Czar Nicholas II stepped down
and a provisional government was put in power. Seizing the opportunity
that the instability offered, the Bolsheviks under V. I. Lenin overthrew
the provisional government. By 1921, the Communists were in total command
of Russia.
Background to Revolution
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Worker unrest and the Russian czar’s failures in the war
led to revolution in March 1917.
After its defeat by Japan in 1905, and the Revolution of
1905, Russia was unprepared both militarily and technologically for the
total war of World War I. Russia had no competent military leaders. Even
worse, Czar Nicholas II insisted on taking personal charge of the armed
forces in spite of his obvious lack of ability and training.
In addition, Russian industry was unable to produce the
weapons needed for the army. Supplies and munitions were rarely at the
places where they needed to be. Many soldiers trained using broomsticks.
Others were sent to the front without rifles and told to pick one up from
a dead comrade.
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that the
Russian army suffered incredible losses. Between 1914 and 1916, 2 million
soldiers were killed, and another 4 to 6 million were wounded or captured.
By 1917, the Russian will to fight had vanished.
Beginnings of Upheaval
An autocratic ruler, Czar Nicholas II relied
on the army and bureaucracy to hold up his regime. He was further cut off
from events when a man named Grigory Rasputin (ra•SPYOO•tuhn)
began to influence the czar’s wife, Alexandra.
Rasputin gained Alexandra’s confidence through her son,
Alexis, who had hemophilia (a deficiency in the ability of the blood to
clot). Alexandra believed that Rasputin had extraordinary powers, for he
alone seemed to be able to stop her son’s bleeding. With the czar at the
battlefront, Alexandra made all of the important decisions after consulting
Rasputin. His influence made him an important power behind the throne.
Rasputin often interfered in government affairs.
As the leadership at the top stumbled its way through
a series of military and economic disasters, the Russian people grew more
and more upset with the czarist regime. Even conservative aristocrats who
supported the monarchy felt the need to do something to save the situation.
First, they assassinated Rasputin in December 1916. It was not easy to
kill Rasputin. They shot him three times and then tied him up and threw
him into the Neva River. Rasputin drowned but not before he had managed
to untie the knots underwater. The killing of Rasputin occurred too late,
however, to save the monarchy.
The March Revolution
At the beginning of March 1917, working-class women led
a series of strikes in the capital city of Petrograd (formerly
St. Petersburg). A few weeks earlier, the government had started bread
rationing in Petrograd after the price of bread had skyrocketed.
Many of the women who stood in the lines waiting for bread
were also factory workers who worked 12-hour days. Exhausted and distraught
over their half-starving and sick children, the women finally revolted.
On March 8, about 10,000 women marched through the city
of Petrograd demanding “Peace and Bread” and “Down with Autocracy.” Other
workers joined them, and together they called for a general strike. The
strike shut down all the factories in the city on March 10.
Alexandra wrote her husband Nicholas II at the battlefront:
“This is a hooligan movement. If the weather were very cold they would
all probably stay at home.” Nicholas ordered troops to break up the crowds
by shooting them if necessary. Soon, however, large numbers of the soldiers
joined the demonstrators and refused to fire on the crowds.
The Duma, or legislative body, which the czar had tried
to dissolve, met anyway. On March 12, it established the provisional government,
which mainly consisted of middle-class Duma representatives. This government
urged the czar to step down. Because he no longer had the support of the
army or even the aristocrats, Nicholas II reluctantly agreed and stepped
down on March 15, ending the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty.
Provisional Government
The provisional government, headed by Aleksandr
Kerensky (keh•REHN•skee), now decided to carry on the war to preserve
Russia’s honor. This decision to remain in World War I was a major blunder.
It satisfied neither the workers nor the peasants, who were tired and angry
from years of suffering and wanted above all an end to the war.
The government was also faced with a challenge to its
authority—the soviets. The soviets were councils composed
of representatives from the workers and soldiers. The soviet of Petrograd
had been formed in March 1917. At the same time, soviets sprang up in army
units, factory towns, and rural areas. The soviets, largely made up of
socialists, represented the more radical interests of the lower classes.
One group—the Bolsheviks—came to play a crucial role.
Develop a sequence of events
leading to the March Revolution.
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NOW
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From Czars to Communists
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Lenin and the Bolsheviks gained control and quickly overthrew
the provisional government.
The Bolsheviks began as a small faction of
a Marxist party called the Russian Social Democrats. The Bolsheviks came
under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (ool•YAH•nuhf), known to
the world as V. I. Lenin.
Under Lenin’s direction, the Bolsheviks became a party
dedicated to violent revolution. Lenin believed that only violent revolution
could destroy the capitalist system. A “vanguard” (forefront) of activists,
he said, must form a small party of well-disciplined, professional revolutionaries
to accomplish the task.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
Between 1900 and 1917, Lenin spent most of his time abroad.
When the provisional government was formed in March 1917, he saw an opportunity
for the Bolsheviks to seize power. In April 1917, German military leaders,
hoping to create disorder in Russia, shipped Lenin to Russia. Lenin and
his associates were in a sealed train to prevent their ideas from infecting
Germany.
Lenin’s arrival in Russia opened a new stage of the Russian
Revolution. Lenin maintained that the soviets of soldiers, workers, and
peasants were ready-made instruments of power. He believed that the Bolsheviks
should work toward gaining control of these groups and then use them to
overthrow the provisional government.
At the same time, the Bolsheviks reflected the discontent
of the people. They promised an end to the war. They also promised to redistribute
all land to the peasants, to transfer factories and industries from capitalists
to committees of workers, and to transfer government power from the provisional
government to the soviets.
Three simple slogans summed up the Bolshevik program:
“Peace, Land, Bread,”
“Worker Control of Production,”
and “All Power to the Soviets.”
The Bolsheviks Seize Power
By the end of October, Bolsheviks made up a slight majority
in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. The number of party members had grown
from 50,000 to 240,000. With Leon Trotsky, a dedicated revolutionary, as
head of the Petrograd soviet, the Bolsheviks were in a position to claim
power in the name of the soviets. During the night of November 6, Bolshevik
forces seized the Winter Palace, the seat of the provisional government.
The government quickly collapsed with little bloodshed.
This overthrow coincided with a meeting of the all-Russian
Congress of Soviets, which represented local soviets countrywide. Outwardly,
Lenin turned over the power of the provisional government to the Congress
of Soviets. The real power, however, passed to a council headed by Lenin.
The Bolsheviks, who renamed themselves the Communists,
still had a long way to go. Lenin had promised peace; and that, he realized,
would not be an easy task.
It would mean the humiliating loss of much Russian territory.
There was no real choice, however.
On March 3, 1918, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
with Germany and gave up eastern Poland, Ukraine, Finland,
and the Baltic provinces. To his critics, Lenin argued that it made no
difference. The spread of the socialist revolution throughout Europe would
make the treaty largely irrelevant. In any case, he had promised peace
to the Russian people. Real peace did not come, however, because the country
soon sank into civil war.
Civil War in Russia
Many people were opposed to the new Bolshevik, or Communist,
government. These people included not only groups loyal to the czar but
also liberal and antiLeninist socialists. Liberals often supported a constitutional
monarchy, while a number of socialists supported gradual reform. These
socialists expected to work for a socialist state under more democratic
leaders than Lenin. They were joined by the Allies, who were extremely
concerned about the Communist takeover.
The Allies sent thousands of troops to various parts of
Russia in the hope of bringing Russia back into the war. The Allied forces
rarely fought on Russian soil, but they gave material aid to anti-Communist
forces. Between 1918 and 1921, the Communist or Red Army fought on many
fronts against these opponents.
The first serious threat to the Communists came from Siberia.
An anti-Communist, or White, force attacked and advanced almost to the
Volga River before being stopped. Attacks also came from the Ukrainians
and from the Baltic regions. In mid-1919, White forces swept through Ukraine
and advanced almost to Moscow before being pushed back.
By 1920, however, the major White forces had been defeated
and Ukraine retaken. The next year, the Communist regime regained control
over the independent nationalist governments in Georgia, Russian Armenia,
and Azerbaijan (a•zuhr•by•JAHN).
The royal family was another victim of the civil war.
After the czar abdicated, he, his wife, and their five children had been
held as prisoners. In April 1918, they were moved to Yekaterinburg, a mining
town in the Urals.
On the night of July 16, members of the local soviet murdered
the czar and his family and burned their bodies in a nearby mine shaft.
Triumph of the Communists
How had Lenin and the Communists triumphed in the civil
war over such overwhelming forces? One reason was that the Red Army was
a well-disciplined fighting force. This was largely due to the organizational
genius of Leon Trotsky. As commissar of war, Trotsky reinstated
the draft and insisted on rigid discipline. Soldiers who deserted or refused
to obey orders were executed on the spot.
Furthermore, the disunity of the anti-Communist forces
weakened their efforts. Political differences created distrust among the
Whites. Some Whites insisted on restoring the czarist regime. Others wanted
a more liberal and democratic program. The Whites, then, had no common
goal.
The Communists, in contrast, had a single-minded sense
of purpose. Inspired by their vision of a new socialist order, the Communists
had both revolutionary zeal and strong convictions. They were also able
to translate their revolutionary faith into practical instruments of power.
A policy of war communism, for example, was used to ensure
regular supplies for the Red Army. The government controlled the banks
and most industries, seized grain from peasants, and centralized state
administration under Communist control.
Another instrument was Communist revolutionary terror.
A new Red secret police—known as the Cheka—began a Red Terror. Aimed at
destroying all those who opposed the new regime (much like the Reign of
Terror in the French Revolution), the Red Terror added an element of fear
to the Communist regime.
Finally, foreign armies on Russian soil enabled the Communists
to appeal to the powerful force of Russian patriotism. At one point, over
100,000 foreign troops—mostly Japanese, British, American, and French—were
stationed in Russia in support of anti-Communist forces. Their presence
made it easy for the Communist government to call on patriotic Russians
to fight foreign attempts to control the country.
By 1921, the Communists were in total command of Russia.
The Communist regime had transformed Russia into a centralized state dominated
by a single party. The state was also largely hostile to the Allied Powers,
because the Allies had tried to help the Communists’ enemies in the civil
war.
Why did the Red Army prevail
over the White forces?
REVIEW & DO
NOW
Answer the following questions in your spiral notebooks: |
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