HIST 1084 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Petrograd Soviet, Mensheviks, Autocracy
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Module 4
The Russian Revolution 1917
• Promised political and economic equality
• Marxist cartoon of Russia’s social pyramid depicting the tsar, nobility, clergy, military,
bourgeoisie, and workers
• Bourgeosie only .5% of population of 110 million
• 6.6 million square miles of territory (80000 square miles)
Political Players
• Tsar Nicholas II: “uphold the principle of autocracy as firmly and unflinchingly as my late
unforgettable father”
• Kadets - liberal, bourgeois class
• Social revolutionaries: Bolsheviks (Lenin’s Party) and Mensheviks (orthodox)
• Soviets
1905: A New Hope
• Russia lost war to Japan
• Domestic protests
• Pressure to change
• Tsar concedes new parliament (Duma)
• Powerless body
The Empire Strikes Back
• Bolshevik Revolution 1905-1914
• Lenin flees Tsar’s secret police crackdown on Bolsheviks
• Radical fringe minority
• yet, by 1917, control russia
World War I
• Tsar ignores people’s suffering
• Food shortages and urban unrest
• Military disaster
• Bolsheviks call for war in end
First Act: February Revolution 1917
• Strikes
• Rise of Soviets
• Army factions join protest
• abdication
Dual Power
• Provisional committee has legal authority
• Petrograd Soviet has street power
• Uneasy alliance
APRIL 1917: Return of the Red Eye
• Returns to Russia overnight from Switzerland via Germany
• Arrives april 16, 1917 and issues April Theses to Bolsheviks
• Reject provisional government
• Create Republic of Soviet Workers
• Abolish army, police
Rise of Bolsheviks
• Benefit from April Thesis
• Frustrated workers and peasants more accepting of Bolshevik leadership
• Hatred of war
• 20000 members grow to 200000 by October 1917
• Dozens of newspapers
• Armed media - Red Guard
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