Objective: To examine the Russian Revolutions and the impact they had on World War I.

Vladimir Lenin, 1917

Russian revolutionary leader Maxim Gorky

On April 12, 1906 the daily New York World newspaper carried an editorial cartoon of the U. S. Statue of Liberty lighting Gorky's torch.

Russian Revolutions

February 1917 – Riots protesting the shortage of food forced Russia’s Czar Nicholas II from power

First Russian Revolution

(“February Revolution”)

“Cost of Revolution” – February 1, 1917

• President Wilson believed that the Allies would be stronger now that Czar Nicholas II was gone.

• Wilson asked Congress to declare war shortly thereafter.

News of the World, April 18, 1917

October 1917 – The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in Russia and began the communist revolution.

Communist / Bolshevik Revolution(“October Revolution”)

· Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and dropped out of the war.

· Germany then sent their troops on the Eastern Front to the Western Front.

Russian Czar Nicholas II, left, and his son Prince Alexei are shown sawing wood to heat the dwelling in Siberia, where they were held during the Russian Revolution. The entire royal family was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Communism – a theory that supports the elimination of private property and the equal distribution of goods

Facts:

· Created by the German philosopher Karl Marx.

Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Communism – a theory that supports the elimination of private property and the equal distribution of goods

Facts:

· Supports the violent revolution of the working class against the “bourgeois” ruling class.

This 1920 Soviet poster depicts a bourgeois hanging onto a globe by his fingertips as a dogged Red Army soldier tries to stab him with a bayonet.

Communism – a theory that supports the elimination of private property and the equal distribution of goods

Facts:

· Led by a single, authoritarian political party.

Communist symbol located on the flag of the former U.S.S. R.

A mourning poster conveys the message that Lenin’s death has united workers and peasants.

Communism: Development and Duration