Post on 05-Jan-2016
Lack of Industry
• By 1913 still manufacturing mostly clothing
• Lack of industrialization makes Russia culturally different from the west
Lack of Industry
war losses• 1853 Crimean war• 1905 Russo
Japanese war• 1914-1917 WWI• Only recent wins were
NOT due to military prowess—Turkey 1877 and Napoleon 1812
Political Culture
• Large Multiethnic empire causes disunity
• Tradition of village communes with little imperial interference
• Czar seen as distant “father”
• 1900—1/4 of rural population was literate
Political culture
• Urban working class grew 4x in the 50 years after emancipation in 1861—alienated from peasants
• Elite noble class spoke predominantly in French—royal family often communicated in English
Political culture (Absolutism)
• Political Parties were repressed
• Duma (parliament) created in 1905 but Czar Nicholas II was unwilling to share power
• Czars had long tried to stop Russia from having a sense of Nationalism
Political Isolation
• Russia seen as enemies of the world due to expansion and anti western ideas in Russia
• Russia was 1/6 of worlds land and tried to grow in 19th century
• Powerful enemies—Germany and Austria
• Problems caused by having a land based and not overseas empire
Social Isolation
• Russia chose orthodoxy during the schism
• Cyrillic alphabet modeled after Greek
• Difference in language and religion from rest of Europe
The Family: The Czar
• Czar Nicholas II ruled 1894-1917
• Never wanted to be Czar— Seen as a weak leader
The Royal Family: Alexandra
• Married German Cousin Alexandra (a princess)
• Alexandra was a Catholic and a German—She never learned Russian but did convert to Orthodox Christianity
• Only son Alexei had hemophilia---hereditary disease passes through mother
World War I
• Battle of Tannenberg Aug 1914 Russia Loses 250,000 men in days
• 1915 Nicholas goes to the front leaving German wife to run the country
Rasputin
•Rasputin was a monk who promised he could heel hemophilia•While Nicholas was at the front took spiritual and political advise from Rasputin•The country assumes an affair is happening
Rasputin
• 1916---Friends of the Czar kill Rasputin to end the scandal
• Doesn’t work
• Rasputin's assassination
THE REVOLUTION MARCH
• Women march in Petrograd for bread
• Czar’s soldiers refuse to fire
• Military leaders convince Czar to resign
• Provisional government formed to write a constitution
KERENSKY—a fatal decision
• Kerensky was elected leader of the provisional government
• His choice—keep fighting WWI or not?
• He chooses to continue what he sees as Russia’s duty to allies
LENIN—A bullet from Germany
• Lenin’s older Brother had been exiled for attempting to kill Alexander III (1895)
• April 1917—Germans Put Lenin on a train from Germany to Russia hoping to cause a revolution
• Lenin arrives and promises “Peace Bread and Land”
NovemberLenin and Bolsheviks
• Lenin overthrows the provisional govt.
• Outlaws Private ownership
• 1918Treaty of Brest Litovsk ends the war
• Russian Royal Family killed
Civil War
Reds: The Communists
Vs.
Whites:
•People in Russia who didn’t like Communism (Royalists)
•Forces from Allies in WWI