POL SCI 140L Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Tsarist Autocracy
9 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Revolution: overturning of social and political order (not just a rebellion) The great revolutions : french, russian, chinese and iranian. Violent vs non-violent: soviet union, east europe, 1989-91. Causality : long term historical processes short-term historical catalyst/spark. Visible loss of unity of the elite. Revolution must be viewed as desirable, necessary and feasible. Combination of bottom-up and top-down because when masses perceive that the elite is weak they have more will to rebel. Ww1 probably made the overthrow of tsarism inevitable proximate historical cause, just needed a catalyst. The war undercut the ability to control disaffection because it highlighted the regime"s failure compared to gmy and britain. War also meant food, fuel and shelter became scarce unhappy people. Started to be strikes because of labor unrest. There was a lot of polarization in the 8 months between the revolution and bolsheviks taking power! Largely the result of having stayed in the war.
