The Causes of the Russian Revolution 1917

Part I: March and Part II: November

Brief Background of Russia

• Russia was powerful in the 19th c.

• very slow to modernize

• absolutism: the rule of czars

• Russo-Japanese War 1904

• Revolution of 1905; false promises

March Revolution: Cause #1

• leadership of Czar Nicholas II

• feudalism

• World War I = 9,000,000 casualties

March Revolution: Cause #2

• World War I

• worst equipped army

• highest number of casualties

March Revolution: Cause #3

• Starvation and poverty

• lack of land for the masses

• foreign owned factories

• bread riots (March 1917)

• Czar abdicated his thrown!

Provisional Government Takes Power

• it slow to implement reforms

• fateful decision...

• division among revolutionaries: Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks

November Revolution

• Lenin: “Peace, Land and Bread”

• Marxist: communism now!

• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• not everyone is happy...

Russian Civil War 1918-1921

• “whites” vs “reds”

• Allies intervene

• Czar was executed (July 1918)

• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922)

Why should you care?• first communist revolution ever

• step on the path to becoming a super power

• seeds of animosity for the Cold War

• fear of Communism influences USFP

• fear of nuclear war 1949-1989