1

Russian Revolutions and end of WWI

Tsarist autocracyWWI & home frontMarch RevolutionNovember RevolutionCivil War

Note: Julian Calendar vs Gregorian Calendar

March Revolution (Feb. 1917)November Revolution (Oct. 1917)

2

Tsarist autocracy

Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917 reign)

3

WWI and March Revolution

Army problemsSupplies & recruitmentHome issuesTsarina & RasputinMarch Revolution: abdication & liberal government

4

Provisional Government March-November 1917

Power rivals:

1. Duma (liberals)

2. Petrograd Soviet (Bolsheviks) (St. Petersburg 1914)

Alexander Kerensky

Russian Marxist split 1903:

Bolsheviks (“majority”)Mensheviks (“minority”)

5

Bolshevik Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870-1924)

Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) (1879-1940)

Joesph Dzhugashvili (Stalin) (1870-1953)

Bolshevism

1903 split: Mensheviks & Bolsheviks

1917: Lenin's opportunity

November 1917: Bolshevik Revolution

Lenin in 1895

Lenin in 1920

Lenin in disguise: Finland, 1917

Lenin

Tsarist police file on Stalin

New York Times: called Bolsheviks:

“political children, without the slightest understanding of the vast forces they are playing with”.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918)

Russia out of the war

Russia lost: Finland, Poland, Baltic provinces, Ukraine

Huge war indemnity

Humiliation

“Article I. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, for the one part, and Russia, for the other part, declare that the state of war between them has ceased. They are resolved to live henceforth in peace and amity with one another.”

White Army propaganda: Trotsky as (Jewish) red devil

Red Army propaganda: Trotsky as St. George slaying the dragon [top hats associated with capitalists]

Russian Civil War 1918-21

Wilson and moral war

“Make the world safe for democracy”

Fourteen Points

12

War EndsRussia

Revolution (1917)Peace (1918)

USA (1917)Ottoman Empire (1918)Germany

Offensive Spring 1918 (Western Front)

9 November 1918: Wilhelm11 November 1918