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What were the problems before WWI?

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1905 REVOLUTION & DUMA - Why was the Duma ineffective? 

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1905 REVOLUTION & DUMA - Why was the Duma ineffective? 

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ANS
emma
Initiated as a result of the 1905 revolution, the Duma was established by Tsar Nicholas ll in his October Manifesto (Oct. 30, 1905), which promised that it would be a representative assembly and that its approval would be necessary for the enactment of legislation. But the Fundamental Laws that was, issued in April 1906, before the First Duma met (May 1906), deprived it of control over state ministers and portions of the state budget and limited its ability to initiate legislation effectively.

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By Robert Wilde

The Duma ("Assembly" in Russian) was an elected semi-representative body in Russia from 1906 to 1917. It was created by the leader of the ruling Tsarist regime Tsar Nicholas II in 1905 when the government was desperate to divide the opposition during an uprising. The creation of the assembly was very much against his will, but he had promised to create an elected, national, legislative assembly.

After the announcement, hopes were high that the Duma would bring democracy, but it was soon revealed that the Duma would have two chambers, only one of which was elected by the Russian people. The Tsar appointed the other, and that house held a veto over any actions of the other. Also, the Tsar retained ‘Supreme Autocratic Power.’ In effect, the Duma was neutered right from the start, and people knew it.

There were four Dumas during the institution’s lifetime: 1906, 1907, 1907–12 and 1912–17; each had several hundred members made up of a mix of peasants and ruling classes, professional men and workers alike.

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What were the political, economic & social effects of the war?

Tania-
<Social: Loss of many lives, Food shortage
Economic: Loss of Jobs, Very little money>

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Campaigns and crises: 1914-1916

In 1914, Russia was hardly prepared for war. Just nine years earlier she had been defeated in a war with tiny Japan. The Revolution of 1905, when revolts and uprisings had forced the Tsar to concede civil rights and a parliament to the Russian people, had also shaken the empire.

The subsequent reforms and rebuilding were far from complete, but as workers and land-hungry peasants rallied to the Russian flag and marched off to fight against the Central Powers, the initial auguries for both war and national unity were not bad.

National unity, however, could only be built on victory and, in that regard, Russia's hopes were dashed early in the Great War. At Tannenberg and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, in 1914, Russia lost two entire armies (over 250,000 men).

This failed Russian advance into East Prussia did disrupt Germany's Schlieffen Plan and thus probably prevented the fall of Paris, but it also signalled the beginning of an unrelenting Russian retreat on the northern sector of the Eastern Front. By the middle of 1915 all of Russian Poland and Lithuania, and most of Latvia, were overrun by the German army.

Fortunately for the Russians, they did better in 1916. The supply of rifles and artillery shells to the Eastern Front was vastly improved, and in the Brusilov Offensive of June 1916, Russia achieved significant victories over the Austrians - capturing Galicia and the Bukovina - and she was also more than holding her own in Transcaucasia, against Turkey.

However, the country's political and economic problems were greatly exacerbated by the war. Many factors - including the militarisation of industry and crises in food supply - threatened disaster on the home front.

Added to this cocktail were rumours that the tsarina, Alexandra, and her favourite, the infamous Rasputin, were German spies. The rumours were unfounded, but by November 1916 influential critics of the regime were asking whether Russia's misfortunes - including 1,700,000 military dead and 5,000,000 wounded - were a consequence of 'stupidity or treason'.

This was a rabble-rousing exaggeration, but certainly the outdated strategies of Russia's General Staff had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, while the regime seemed careless of such appalling losses.

1917: From February to October

Food riots, demonstrations and a mutiny at the Petrograd Garrison in February 1917 forced Nicholas II to abdicate as war still continued. A Provisional Government led by liberals and moderate socialists was proclaimed, and its leaders hoped now to pursue the war more effectively.

Real power in Russia after the February Revolution, however, lay with the socialist leaders of the Petrograd (later All-Russian) Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, who were elected by popular mandate (unlike the ministers of the Provisional Government).

The Soviet leaders rather half-heartedly supported a defensive war, but were more committed to an unrealistic programme of ending the conflict, through a general peace 'without annexations or indemnities' - a formula that neither the Allies nor Germany would ever accept.

Against this background, the war minister (later Prime Minister) Kerensky of the Provisional Government hoped to strengthen Russia's hand with a new Russian offensive on the Eastern Front in June. But by then the ability of Russia's officers to induce their men to obey had been entirely negated by the hopes of social transformation and an end to the war that the February Revolution had unleashed in the trenches - leading to what historian Alan Wildman has termed 'trench bolshevism'.

Anarchist and Bolshevik agitators played their own part in destroying the Russian Army's ability to fight. Many anti-war radicals, along with the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, were ferried home from exile in Switzerland in April 1917, courtesy of the German General Staff (which had spent roughly 30 million marks trying to foment disorder in Russia by the end of 1917).

The summer offensive was a disaster. Peasant soldiers deserted en masse to join the revolution, and fraternisation with the enemy became common. Meanwhile, in an attempt to restore order and resist the German counter-offensive, most of the generals and forces of the political right threw their weight behind a plan for a military coup, under the Russian Army's commander-in-chief, General Kornilov.

The coup failed, but had two important consequences: on the one hand, the generals and the conservatives who had backed Kornilov felt betrayed by Kerensky (who arrested Kornilov after having appeared to have been in agreement with him) and would no longer defend the government; on the other, Kerensky's reputation with the moderate left and with the population at large plummeted when it became clear that he had initially supported Kornilov's plans for the restoration of the death penalty and for the dissolution of soldiers' revolutionary committees.

The only winners were the Bolsheviks, with Lenin at their head, who were able to topple Kerensky and take power in the October Revolution of 1917- without significant resistance from either the government or the army.

Brest-Litovsk and its consequences

After taking power, the Bolsheviks promised to deliver 'Peace, Bread and Land' to the beleaguered people of Russia. With regard to the first of these, a 'Decree on Peace' (26 October 1917) was dashed off by Lenin, calling upon all belligerents to end the slaughter of World War One.

Not that Lenin was a pacifist: rather, his hope was to transform the world war into an international civil war, when the 'imperialist' powers refused to cease fighting and thereby revealed their rapacious ambitions.

However, the Central Powers responded to the Bolsheviks' appeal by agreeing to an armistice on the Eastern Front, and Lenin's lieutenant, Trotsky, found himself in the uncomfortable position, during the winter of 1917-18, of negotiating a separate peace treaty with Imperial Germany and her allies at the Polish town of Brest-Litovsk.

Trotsky tried to delay matters and to inculcate revolution in central Europe by refusing the harsh terms presented to him. When Germany, however, merely resumed its invasion of Russia on the Eastern Front, pushing further east in five days of February 1918 than it had in the previous three years (the German soldiers, to Trotsky's consternation, continued to obey their officers), the Bolsheviks were forced to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918.

This punitive treaty effectively handed over Finland, Poland, the Baltic provinces, Ukraine and Transcaucasia to the Central Powers, together with one-third of the old empire's population, one-third of its agricultural land and three-quarters of its industries.

Outraged by this, the anti-Bolshevik Russians who had remained loyal to the Allies now took up arms in earnest against the Bolsheviks. They were actively assisted by Allied forces in Russia, who hoped to rebuild the Eastern Front. Notable in this regard was the Czechoslovak Legion, a 40,000-strong army made up of former POWs, who in 1918 seized the entire Trans-Siberian Railway, from the Volga to Vladivostok.

Civil War: Whites v Reds

During the civil war thus unleashed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks (Reds), who controlled Petrograd, Moscow and the central Russian heartland, soon found themselves surrounded by hostile forces (Whites) - made up of the more conservative elements in Russia - who launched a series of campaigns in 1919 that threatened to crush the revolution.

During these campaigns Admiral Kolchak, the 'Supreme Ruler' of the Whites, attacked across the Urals from Siberia; General Denikin advanced on a broad front up the Volga, into Ukraine and to the town of Orel (within 250 miles of Moscow); and General Iudenich's North West Russian Army, based in Estonia, twice reached the outskirts of Petrograd.

The Reds, however, rebuffed these attacks, and survived, and by late 1920 had driven the Whites back into the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Pacific - causing hundreds of thousands of White soldiers and civilians to emigrate.

The Reds were able to take advantage of internal lines of communication and could utilise the railways, arsenals and the economy of the most populous provinces of the former empire. In this way they managed to arm, man and manoeuvre an army that by 1921 had grown to almost five million soldiers.

The Whites, in contrast, never commanded forces totalling more than 250,000 men at one time, were separated from each other by huge distances, and were based around the less developed peripheries of Russia. Also, crucially, the Whites underestimated the Bolsheviks' capacity to resist.

It still seems surprising that Trotsky was able to fashion a Red Army more effective than that of the experienced White generals ranged against him. He, however, enjoyed the material advantages mentioned, and he also introduced some revolutionary innovations: notably the network of Political Commissars - devout Bolsheviks who offered political guidance to the Red Army and who watched over the loyalty of the 50,000 imperial army officers the Reds employed to help command their forces. He also used terror most ruthlessly.

The White armies, in contrast, exhibited only brutality, venality, disorder and a lack of political and military direction. Even their most effective fighters, the Cossacks, were more interested in booty and in securing their own regional autonomy than in driving Lenin from the Kremlin.

Allied intervention

Despite their strength in Russia itself, the Reds were internationally isolated, but neither did the Whites enjoy unlimited Allied support. The liberal British leader Lloyd George, the socialist French prime minister Clemenceau and the American Democratic president Woodrow Wilson were no friends of Lenin - but neither were they particularly enamoured of the White generals, whom they suspected of reactionary aims.

In fact, although anti-Bolshevik sentiments were not altogether absent from Allied leaders' minds when they made the decision to intervene in Russia in 1918, their main interest was in the Great War, not the Russian civil war, and their desire was to try and reconstitute the Eastern Front, to ease the pressure on the Western Front. That motivation disappeared on 11 November 1918.

Moreover, none of the western powers had any great interest in helping to build a united Russia - they preferred to keep that huge country weak - and in any case, they had enough on their plates in 1919. With domestic war weariness, the Paris Peace Conference, the division of the German and Ottoman Empires, and the economic crises of central Europe to contend with, they had no wish to sink further into the Russian quagmire. The only power with the capacity to intervene effectively in Russia was Japan, but with memories of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 still fresh, her intervention was unlikely to be welcomed by the Russians.

Consequently, although the matériel the Allies sent to Russia was crucial in allowing the Whites to mount the campaigns they did in 1919 (the British alone sent one hundred million pounds-worth of equipment to Kolchak and Denikin), only a few thousand British, French and American troops ever set foot in Russia, and few of them saw action. And after the armistice, most Allied efforts were directed towards finding an honourable way out of Russia, rather than a means of more forcefully intervening.

Nevertheless, the Red Army's victory over what became characterised under Stalin as 'The Three Campaigns of the Entente' (a loaded reference to the efforts of Kolchak, Denikin and Iudenich, who were portrayed as being 'puppets' of western capitalism), in a civil war that cost perhaps ten million lives, assumed a hallowed place in Soviet and Russian history.

It was this victory that helped forge post-tsarist Russia's self-image as a strong country that had stood up to the bullying of the west, and that lay at the root of the Cold War. Even Gorbachev, often seen as a friend of the west, was prone to mentioning it; and it cannot be far from President Putin's mind as events unfold in the Middle East.

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War and Revolution in Russia 1914 - 1921

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In 1914, Russia was hardly prepared for war. Just nine years earlier she had been defeated in a war with tiny Japan. The Revolution of 1905, when revolts and uprisings had forced the Tsar to concede civil rights and a parliament to the Russian people, had also shaken the empire.

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Why were the peasants & workers unhappy?
GIMME MY BREADD
(Tania) The people of Russia faced a food shortage which led to riots by the workers and the people.

The people heard that the government was rationing the bread on purpose even at the time where there was a food shortage. This led to unrest where many housewives went to the factory to bargain. In the end, it turned out to b a “riot” to take down the TSAR.

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Weaknesses of the Provisional Government

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Weaknesses of the Provisional Government

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Write about continuation of WWI, July Days & Kornilov revolt

(Tania) Some of the actions they took were not to the citizens’ content and the government were of upper class men who were unelected. People don’t like

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Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in October 1917?
THEY GAVE ME BREAD
emma
Lenin led the Bolsheviks to seize power. Lenin's April Theses also contributed to the people's support of them as he promised them bread, peace and land which appealed to all the people .

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1 thing I have I have learnt
BREAD IS THE KEY TO DESTRUCTION AND DOWNFALL OF KINGDOMS IT IS *THE* SUPERIOR FOOD ON THE PLANET NOW GIVE ME MY BREAD

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How did the Bolsheviks consolidate power

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Brest-Litovsk Treaty The Cheka were brutal and merciless in their killing for example 800 people were arrested in the spring of 1918 in Petrograd and shot without having been put on trial. When an attempted assassination attempt failed on Lenin the Cheka began the “Red Terror” it

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Lenin (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924). Russian communist leader. His real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, he was born in Simbirsk, his family is full of intellectuals. His father, during his life, was devoted to popular education, shared the ideas of the revolutionary democrats of the time. On the other hand, his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a woman of extensive culture, a follower of music and supported the school activities of her children. She was always very aware of Lenin, her fourth son, affectionately called Volodia. When he was young his family went through a tragic moment. His older brother, Alexander, was executed for being a participant in the preparations to attempt against Tsar Alexander III. His animosity against the tsarist regime was exacerbated by this painful event.

After having completed with honors his studies of a bachelor. In 1887 Lenin entered the University of Kazan to study law, during his studies he had a revolutionary attitude and exercised his anti-establishment activities. He was arrested on one occasion for suspicion against him, this also led to the expulsion by the University.

His desire to study did not vanish, so he entered the University of St. Petersburg. It was linked to Marxist circles and the nascent proletarian movement of this city, his contribution to the growth of proletarian groups was strong. He published in 1894 an essay that elucidated the struggle of the people against the Social Democrats, an argumentative criticism of the populists. His reformist spirit never ceased, was linked in the newly founded Union for the emancipation of the working class, again stopped him.

"The truth is always revolutionary." Lenin

His activism against the Tsarist autocracy led him to meet the revolutionary Russian leader, Georgy Plekhanov. Under his influence and support, he helped to found in Saint Petersburg the Combat League for the Liberation of the Working Class, the embryo of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party headed by Plekhanov.

The Russian government persecuted Lenin incessantly, was arrested and deported to Siberia, this episode was taken by him in his favor, he devoted himself to the systematic study of the works of Karl Marx and Engels and drafted his first work which was an inquiry into the application of Marxist thought to the Russian country. After his liberation he founded the Iskra newspaper in Geneva with the faithful help of Plekhanov; in this, he spread the ideal to make a socialist revolution triumph in Russia led by professional revolutionaries decided and organized as an army.

In 1905 Lenin returned to St. Petersburg to participate in the revolution that had broken out in Russia as a result of the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War; Although the tsarist regime overcame the crisis, Lenin considered that movement as a good start of the socialist revolution. The fiasco of that revolution forced him to exile again in 1907.

The outbreak of the First World War was the culminating and decisive moment to put his postulates on the table, in this case: it defined the dispute as fruit of the contradictions of the capitalist and imperialist system, in the name of proletarian internationalism, invited the socialist movement world to use the World War to produce a generalized civil war, but this did not have great impact.

In February 1917 the revolution broke out and the government of Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown, Kerensky seized power, Lenin hurried back to Russia with the help of the German army. In the first days of November of 1917, Trotsky commanded the coup d'etat and finally, the October Revolution triumphed. Lenin left his refuge in Finland and returned immediately to preside over the Council of People's Commissaries.

He became the undisputed leader of the Communist Party, undertook the construction of the first socialist state in history. He fulfilled his initial promises of the expropriation of large estates to landlords to move to divide them among the peasants. He took a radical attitude, repudiated the democratic tradition of Western socialism and welcomed a violent one-party dictatorship, using repressive methods, an example of which was the creation of a police force to persecute the dissidents. However, to fulfill these purposes he had the help of Trotsky in regard to the organization of the Red Army, with which he managed to resist the attack of the white armies and foreign intervention during the Civil War.

"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem, act!" Lenin

Lenin was a man of insatiable and ambitious spirit, following his clear ideological convictions, he imputed a policy of socialist cut to the economy, nationalizing the main means of production and submitting the economic activities to an arduous central intervention. These drastic changes in the life of a country caused the cataclysm of production and a general disorganization of the Russian economy.

His last moments of life he spent suffering from a serious illness, which made him withdraw from the political leadership little by little. At that moment there was a quarrel between Trotsky and Stalin for power. In short, the emotional concerns were physical, he frequently expressed his concern about the progressive bureaucratization of the Party and the State, and he was not very convinced of the role of Stalin if he became the leader of the Party. It was indeed Stalin who succeeded him after his death.

The communist movement, founded on the Marxist-Leninist ideology, spread throughout the world, inspired revolutions and political regimes as important as those instituted in Central and Eastern Europe, China, Cuba or Vietnam. The figure of Lenin was the object of a sacred or mythical cult under the Soviet regime. Such was that his body was embalmed and exposed in a mausoleum on the Red Square in Moscow; in his honor, his city of origin was renamed Ulyanovsk and the capital where he developed his political struggle changed his name to Leningrad.

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Lenin (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924). Russian communist leader. His real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, he was born in Simbirsk, his family is full of intellectuals. His father, during his life, was devoted to popular education, shared the ideas of the revolutionary democrats of the time.

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What were the political, economic & social effects of the war?

TRIGGERS FOR THE 1917 FEB REVOLUTION

Why were the peasants & workers unhappy?
BREAD
Weaknesses of the Provisional Government
NO BREAD
Write about continuation of WWI, July Days & Kornilov revolt

Lenin & the Bolsheviks seizure of power

Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in October 1917?

BOLSHEVIK'S CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

1 thing I have I have learnt

FOR READING: LENIN-HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY

COMPLETED ALL THE QNS? GOOD JOB!
CAN I HAVE MY BREAD NOW

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None of the western powers had any great interest in helping to build a united Russia - they preferred to keep that huge country weak - and in any case, they had enough on their plates in 1919.

Cefina