The Russian Revolution comprises a series of rebellions against the Tsarist system, the more important of which took place in 1905 and 1917 (there were two in ’17).

Stalin’s twisted regime prior to WWII (1928-39), was responsible for killing between 4 and 10 million deaths (exact numbers are difficult to achieve for the Soviet Union).

Time Line

• 1825 Decembrists attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy in Russia. V.I. Lenin considers this the first attempt at revolution.
• 1905 Failed Revolution in Russian Empire, involving worker strikes, peasant rebellion, and soldier mutinies; Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, granting basic civil rights in Russia, including the right to est political parties and vote — all males over 25, though landowners votes were heavily weighted (45x that of an industrial worker) — and creating the Duma as a central legislative body.
• 1906 Sergei Witte, “late Imperial Russia’s most outstanding politician,” resigns and the Duma dissolved
• 1914 Russia (Triple Entente) declared war on Germany – changed capital name to Petrograd
• March 1917 ‘Feb Revolution’ forced the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II; a Provisional Govt est by Alexander Kerensky
• 16 April 1917 – Lenin returns to Russia, arriving at the Finland Station, Petrograd; he is greeted by workers w red flags and the playing of the Marseillaise; Lenin issues his April Theses calling for “all power to the soviets!”
• July 1917 the Kerensky Offensive launched against Germany and Austria in Galicia to prove that Russia was still a good ally; resulted in another military catastrophe for Russia
• July Days – Demonstrations and violence aimed at the Provisional Government; leading Bolsheviks and Lenin go underground
• Aug 1917 – in the wake of the Kornilov Affair, the Bolsheviks, now armed, become the de facto authority on the streets of Petrograd
• Nov 1917 – Bolsheviks seize the govt in the ‘October Revolution;’ Lenin holds democratic elections then dissolves the All Russian Constituent Assembly (it met for all of 13 hours)
• 3 Mar 1918 – The Soviet Govt signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, making good on Bolshevik promises to disengage from WWI [Russia suffered 3.5 million deaths, over 2% of its population.]
• 1918-20 – Reds defeats the Whites in the Russian Civil War; chalk up another 3 million casualties in Russia
• 1921 – Lenin replaced War Communism with his New Economic Policy (NEP) or “state capitalism”
• 1924 – Lenin’s death leads to power-struggle between Trotsky and Stalin
• 1928 – Stalin’s first Five Year Plan begins forced collectivization – leading to massive famine 1932-33 (3-8 million starve to death in Ukraine)
• 1937-38 – Stalinist purge of government officials in the USSR; 250,000 executed, 110,000 of them ethnic Poles (Russia’s equivalent of the Terror in Republican France 1793-94)
• Aug 1939 Germany and the USSR sing the Pact-of-Steel, a bizarre diplomatic about-face that dooms Poland to division and annihilation (again)

End of Tsarist Regime

World War One proved disastrous for Russia. Her backwards agriculture and underdeveloped industry, transportation and communication systems could not sustain a major war effort. Tsar Nicholas II considered it important that he take personal command of his forces and left the govt in the hands of his wife Alexandra, who was not only German by birth, but also under the influence of the religious charlatan Rasputin, ‘the Mad Monk.’ Distrust of this govt, war-weariness, food shortages, and increased demands made on Russia’s industrial workers lead to unrest across Russia, but particularly in Petrograd (Russia’s most industrialized urban center – and its capital). Socialist Revolutionaries (SR), lead by Alexandre Kerensky, played an active role in preserving a govt after the forced abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.

Lenin Addressing Moscow Crowd – Trotsky and Kamenev to the right of the podium

The Bolsheviks

The Bolsheviks (‘majority’) were a Marxist-Socialist political party that split from the Mensheviks (‘minority’) in 1903 and were led by V.I. Lenin since 1905. They advocated a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution, sparked by a committed revolutionary minority (themselves – the Vanguard Party made up of the more class-conscious), the overthrow of the Tsar by a workers’ revolution, and the relatively quick transition into communism (recall Trotsky’s ‘Law of Combined Development’). Their platform during WWI was ‘Peace, Bread, and Land!’ Lenin spent much of WWI in exile in Switzerland (where he wrote Imperialism: the Highest State of Capitalism, his interpretation of WWI as competition). The Germans exported Lenin, along with a handful of revolutionaries, in a sealed railway car to Sweden, where they found their way back to Russia, arriving at Petrograd’s Finland Station on 16 April 1917. The next day Lenin issued his April Theses, calling upon the Bolsheviks to disregard the Provisional Government of Kerensky and take power for themselves: ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS! During the summer of 1917, Kerensky denounced and arrested many of the Bolshevik leaders; Lenin was forced underground, where he and Trotsky planned for the violent overthrow of the Provisional Govt, which occurred in Nov (October according to the Julien Calendar still used in Russia).

By 1923, two men emerged as Lenin’s successor, Leon Trotsky (intellectual Marxist purist and creator of the Red Army), and Joseph Stalin (strong-man thug and General Secretary of the Communist Party). Stalin allied himself with Nickolai Bukharin (Politburo member and editor of Pravda) to edge out Trotsky from authority in the USSR. Where the two differed fundamentally with regard to ideology was on the issue of international socialism. Trotsky demanded universal revolution and had fought to the outskirts of Warsaw in 1920-21 to attempt to link Russian bolshevism with the Red Revolution in Germany following WWI. Stalin advocated ‘Socialism in One Country’ – dealing with domestic issues in the Soviet Union before intervening internationally. Trotsky, along with Zinoviev and Kamenev (the Triumvirate) fought unsuccessfully against Stalin’s position; they were ejected from the Central Committee of the Party in 1927. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in 1929 and eventually assassinated in 1940. Stalin, therefore, emerged as the single most powerful man in the Party and began the rapid industrialization of the USSR in 1928 (Five Year Plan) and the complete collectivisation of agriculture..