Russian History Chapter 28. Young Revolutionaries & Social Change

Russian HistoryChapter 28

Young Revolutionaries & Social Change

Czar Resists Change– In 1881,

Alexander III succeeded his father, Alexander II, and halted all reforms in Russia.

– Alexander III clung to the principles of autocracy (absolute rule)

–He imposed strict censorship and had a secret police force watch liberal minds carefully

To establish a uniform Russian culture, Alexander III oppressed

other national groups within Russia. He made Russian the official

language of the empire and forbade the use of minority languages.

–The next Czar, Nicholas II is going to be equally resistant to change.

REVOLUTIONS in RUSSIA

a. Proletariat (workers)- organize under Karl Marx’s ideology.

b. The Marxist revolution-aries believed that the industrial class of workers would overthrow the czar.

Marx

C. In 1903, Russian Marxists split into two groups over revolutionary tactics

1.The Mensheviks 2.The Bolsheviks

• The more moderate Mensheviks wanted a broad base of popular support for the revolution.

• The more radical Bolsheviks supported a small number of committed revolutionaries willing to sacrifice everything for change.

Divisions

• The major leader of the Bolsheviks was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov A.K.A Lenin.

Russian Crisis Abroada. Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)b. Russia’s Bloody Sunday (1905)c. WWI- The Final Blow

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

• Russia loses the war to Japan – Loses eastern Asian territories like Korea

Russia’s Bloody Sunday (1905)• Jan. 22nd, 200,000 workers approach the Czar’s

palace in protest carrying a petition calling for increased workers rights and a more democratic government

Czars Palace

•The soldiers fire on the unarmed crowd killing several hundred and injuring over 1,000.

•This provokes waves of strikes and violence against government officials and soldiers.

The Creation of the Duma & a Constitution

•In October of 1905 Nicholas II gives in and approves the creation of the Duma (Russian Parliament)

•Nicholas foolishly dissolves the Duma after ten weeks because he was arrogant and did not want to share his power.

“It’s not a Duma”

WWI- The Final Blow• Nicholas II’s worst decision as Czar proved to be his

last – Entering into WWI• Russia was unprepared to handle the military and

economic costs of the War.

•Russia’s military had weak generals and poorly equipped troops.

•Within a year of fighting more than 4 million Russians had been killed, captured or wounded.

The Great War

• In 1915 Nicholas II moved his headquarters to the warfront to help boost moral. His wife Czarina Alexandra ran the government while he was away.

–She ignored the advice of nobles and fell under the influence of the mysterious Rasputin- a “Holy man” with “magical healing powers” who helped ease her son Alexis’ hemophilia disease.

Alexis

Rasputin

– In 1916, a group of nobles murder Rasputin, but its not that simple …

• On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once a friend of Rasputin's but now absolutely disgusted with his behavior and disrespectful talk about the royal family.

• Iliodor had appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin, and together they formed a survivors' support group.

• The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than his strange life.

Rasputin’s death

Rasputin’s death• Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen,

and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"

• After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. It was said of his survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His daughter, Maria, pointed out in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain.

Rasputin’s death• The murder of Rasputin has become legend,

some of it invented by the very men who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. It is, however, generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a far-too-dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the few Romanov family members to escape the annihilation of the family during the Red Terror), apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men.

Rasputin’s death• Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the

possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, and he finally met his end there—as had both his siblings before him.

• Three days later, the body of Rasputin, poisoned, shot four times and badly beaten, was recovered from the Neva River and autopsied. The cause of death was hypothermia. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him.

Rasputin’s death• Subsequently, the Empress Alexandra buried Rasputin's

body in the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, but, after the February Revolution, a group of workers from Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into a nearby wood and burnt them.

• As the body of Rasputin was being burned, he appeared to sit up in the fire. After being poisoned, shot, beaten, drowned, and officially verified as dead, he thoroughly horrified bystanders in his apparent attempts to move and get up. This legend is attributed to improper cremation. Since his body was in inexperienced hands, his tendons were probably not cut before burning. Consequently, when his body was heated, the tendons shrunk, forcing his legs to bend, and his body to bend at the waist, resulting in him sitting up.

• This final happenstance only poured fuel on the fire of legends and mysteries surrounding Rasputin, which would continue to live on, long after he had truly passed away.

Rasputin’s death• Mere weeks before he was assassinated, according to secretary

Simonovich, Rasputin wrote the following:• "I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that

I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. I go, and I feel in me the divine command to tell the Russian Tsar how he must live if I have disappeared. You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family. -Grigori"

Disco isn’t dead!

• Disco Rasputin

• Viking Metal Rasputin

• On the home front, food and fuel supplies were dwindling. Prices were wildly inflated. People from all classes were clamoring for change and an end to the war.

• What do you think happens next?

The March Revolution In March 1917, Women textile workers in

Petrograd lead a citywide strike, this explodes into an all out revolution forcing the Czar to step down. He and his family will eventually be murdered.

• Leaders of the Duma establish a provisional (temporary) government headed by Alexander Kerensky

• Kerensky makes the ill-fated decision to continue fighting in World War I – this causes him to lose support of soldiers and civilians

• Soviets (local councils made up of workers, peasants and soldiers) become increasing popular and influential

The Bolshevik Revolution-Lenin returns just in

time to lead the Bolshevik revolution

-Nov. 17th – Bolsheviks called “the Red Guard” storm the Winter Palace in Petrograd and take over power.

• The Bolsheviks redistribute farmland to the peasants, gave control of factories to the peasants, and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• (this treaty put an end to Russia’s involvement of WWI but at a high cost to Russia, as it surrendered large portions of its territories to Germany)

Reds vs. Whites(Russian Civil War)

• The Reds (The Bolsheviks army

was commanded expertly by Leon Trotsky

• The Whites ( a congregation of

groups of differing ideologies [people in favor of democracies, czarist rule etc.] who all desired the overthrow of the Bolsheviks)

– Around 14 million Russians died in the three-year struggle and in the famine that followed.

– The destruction and loss of life from fighting, hunger, and a worldwide flu epidemic left Russia in chaos.

• In the end, the Red Army crushed all opposition. The victory showed that the Bolsheviks were able both to seize power and to maintain it.

Lenin Restores Order

– The Russian economy was destroyeda. Lenin institutes the New Economic

Policy (a small scale version of capitalism)

b. The reforms under the NEP allowed peasants to sell their surplus crops instead of turning them over to the government. The government kept control of major industries, banks, and means of communication, but it let some small factories, businesses, and farms operate under private ownership. The government also encouraged foreign investment.

c. Political Reforms- to keep nationalism in check-Lenin organized Russia into several self-governing republics under the central government. (USSR is created – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)

Bolsheviks rename their Bolsheviks rename their party “the communist party “the communist party”party”

Lenin dies in 1924 and Joseph Stalin slowly takes over

Lenin’s funeral draws thousands of mourners

Stalina. Stalin was cold,

hard, and impersonal

b. By 1928, Stalin was in total command of the Communist Party. Trotsky, forced into exile in 1929, was no longer a threat. Stalin now stood poised to wield absolute power as a dictator.

• Stalin will rule through terror and brutality to eliminate dissent

The Great Purge• Purge:

1. a. To free from impurities; purify. b. To remove (impurities and other

elements) by or as if by cleansing.2. To rid of sin, guilt, or defilement.3. Law To clear (a person) of a charge or an imputation. Often used with respect to contempt of court.4. a. To rid (a nation or political party, for

example) of people considered undesirable.

b. To get rid of (people considered undesirable).

The Great Purge• In the 1930’s Stalin

had thousands of innocent people arrested and executed as he became paranoid that people were plotting against him

• Through the great purges he eliminated all opposition and created a totalitarian state

The Great Purge

• Totalitarian state = government regulation of nearly every aspect of public and private life

• DON’T WRITE! Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cults, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party states, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.

Totalitarianism

• One of Stalin's chief goals was to make the Soviet Union strong by turning it into a modern industrial power

• But Russia was way behind the west in terms of Modernization

•So Stalin launched the first of a series of Five Year Plans to build industry and increase farm output

Don’t Write!• Stalin made his

motivation in formulating the plan clear when he stated, in a speech to factory managers in February 1931, that Russia was "fifty to one hundred years behind" the industrial powers of the time, who were also capitalists, and that they must "catch up [in industrializing] in ten years or they [capitalists] will beat us."

•Despite progress in some industries, the majority of Russians remained poor

The Five Year Plan

• Stalin forced peasants to give up their small farms and live on state-owned farms called Collectives (large farms owned and operated by peasants as a group)

• Many peasants resisted collectivization

• Stalin was ruthless in his punishment – Peasants were executed or sent to prison labor camps where they often died from overwork

• Why would peasants resist?• The resistance resulted in mass starvation

CollectivizationCollectivization

In the end Stalin’s economic policies brought industrializ-ation and widespread starvation to Russia