A ‘Short’ History of Russia

Ruled by Czars for hundreds of years – Czar = an absolutist monarch Examples?

Peter the Great and Catherine the Great

Lacking in resources/technology as compared to West

What revolutions had they “missed out” on?

Scientific Revolution; Renaissance; Enlightenment; Industrial Revolution

The Russian Tsars/Czars!

Important Russian Czars

P the G C the G

The Winter Palace…

Not too shabby, huh?

A Short History… Brief period of westernization led by CZ A2

and A3 CZ A2 - Modernized economy

Abolished feudalism and emancipated the serfs in 1863 Assassinated in 1881 by radicals

CZ A3 – Promoted Russian culture, language, and educational programs – persecuted minority Jews and Poles within the empire Knowns as policy of Russification Employed secret police, censored the press, and exiled

individuals to Siberia

By the beginning of the 1900s Russia had slowly started to industrialize and embrace

the modern world

1905 REVOLUTIONDisconnect between citizens and czar

Causes of the 1905 revolution

Lost to Japan in Russo-Japanese War – 1905

Revolts breaks out High prices, no fuel, and

bread Led by Father Gapon

Desire constitution, land reforms, & end to corruption

Troops fire on protesters - Bloody Sunday

Result?

CZ N2 reforms his gov’t in the October Manifesto Declared the ideas of

freedom of person, conscience, speech, assembly and union

First Russian parliament is created (Duma)

What do you think is going to happen? Parliament ignored and

then disbanded within a few months

No lasting change while revolutionary ideas continue to spread

Theory Reality

Not much has changed since 1905.Russia is still losing a war and suffering from multiple afflictions while royals live in the palaces

Fast Forward to 1917…

Causes of the March 1917 Revolution

Unrest and Discontent Poverty Food shortages Backwardness of

country Failures of WWI

Corrupt Government Rasputin

influence over Czar’s wife

March 1917 Revolution Failure of war

Battlefield disasters led by CZ N2 Russian soldiers mutiny

Food and fuel shortages in the countryside and cities Why does it always involve bread?

Riots led by worker groups (Soviets) start in Petrograd and spread to major cities throughout Russia in March Army supports them

CZ N2 abdicates the throne

Provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky and share power with worker councils/Soviets

Communists protestors not content with the Provisional Government (Food – Fuel – War)

Failure of war…

Still failing…

Lenin Speaking to CrowdI was just

shipped in from Switzerland!

November Revolution - 1917 Provisional Government continues unpopular war

The Bolsheviks (Lenin) lead revolution throughout the country

The Bs and Soviets (workers’ councils) seize power in cities • The workers control the factories and the mines

Lenin overthrows the provisional government in urban areas

Bloody civil war ensues and millions die in three year struggle Reds (Communists led by Trotsky) vs. Whites (collection

of Royalists, anti-Communists, and Allied-supported troops)

• Why was this slogan so successful?

“PEACE, LAND and BREAD”

I will give you peace, land, and

bread! Thank you, that is all.

November Revolution Continued

Lenin “defends” the revolution from all threats

Signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk End war/lose land & resources

Wins brutal civil war (White vs Red)

Executes royal family

Eliminates all threats Cheka creates prison

camps/executions

*fox myth

DISNEY MYTH*

Europe during WWI and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

What changes occur between 1914 and 1918?Why would Lenin have been willing to sign this Treaty?

A NEW GOVERNMENT FOR THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICSLenin, Stalin and the implementation of Communism

Lenin’s Ideas for New Government:

Follow Marx: history of world = history of class struggle Have vs. Have not

Changes Need professional

revolutionaries to create communism

Russia would advance as a agrarian, not industrial society

What is an appropriate title for this political cartoon?

FIRST ECONOMIC POLICY…What was it and why does it fail?

Lenin’s Policies: New Economic Policy (NEP) – March 1921.

Implemented toward the end of the civil war. Replaced War Communism MIXED ECONOMY

Small business re-open without state control Heavy industry, mines, and banking still

controlled by the government

Strong market and harvest end famine and hunger

The NEP saved SU from complete economic collapse

A poster of Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) ambitions.

Russia prospered economically until it reached the same economic level as Britain, France, Japan and the US

The NEP brought economic relief to Russia but it had many faults. It aimed to address the social imbalances within Russia but failed to do so and the political

elite consolidated wealth and power amongst themselves

What kind of an economy did Lenin create?

Capitalism

Communism

What was the name Lenin’s economic policy?

Capitalism

Communism

Lenin and Stalin’s Final Conversation

…

Figures of the Russian Revolution

What role did each individual play in the

Russian Revolutions?

The Rise of Stalin Lenin dies in 1924 - Struggle for power among

‘Politburo’

Trotsky V Stalin

Stalin drives all rivals from the ruling committee

Trotsky flees to Mexico – assassinated in 1940

Consolidate power through fear/murder

Five Year Plans – Command Economy Stalin begins an economic, social and political

change to the USSR in 1928

Sets economic goals for five-year periods

Purpose was to transform Russia from Agricultural to Heavy Industrial Economic Power

Oil, Steel, and Heavy Machinery production soared

Created state-run collective farms

Stalin’s Dictatorial State Opposition rooted out and

destroyed through a variety of ways NKVD – secret police Great Purges – eliminate all who

oppose Soviet rule (real or imagined)

Show Trials – public trials of famous individuals who had lost favor with Stalin

Gulag – prison network throughout Siberia

"We must make good distance in ten years. Either we do it or we shall be

crushed.“

- Joseph Stalin

What two areas of economic activity are these posters addressing?

Five Year Plan 1928-1933

No provisions made for workers

Living conditions were terrible – housing was almost non-existent

Created laws controlling where workers could live

Propaganda stressed sacrifice to create new communist state

6-7 millions died through execution and starvation

Created kolkhoz – collective state farming system

Individual farmers (kulaks) forced to give up land and move to the kolkhoz system

Massive resistance met with brutal responses Kulaks burned crops and destroyed

cattle Kulaks exiled to the gulag system

(prison complex)

Second Five Year Plan follows and prepares SU for war

Social Costs Farming and Famine

The result of Stalin’s agricultural component of the 5 Year plan

Collectivization in the Ukraine – 1932-1933

“Starvation quickly ensued throughout the Ukraine, with the most vulnerable, children and

the elderly, first feeling the effects of malnutrition. The once-smiling young faces of children vanished forever amid the constant pain of hunger and slowly starved to

death.

Mothers in the countryside sometimes tossed their emaciated children onto passing

railroad cars traveling toward cities such as Kiev in the hope someone there would take

pity. But in the cities, children and adults who had already flocked there from the Countryside were dropping dead in the streets, with their bodies carted away to be dumped in mass graves. Occasionally, people lying on the sidewalk who were

thought to be dead, but were actually still alive, were also carted away and buried.

While police and Communist Party officials remained quite well fed, desperate Ukrainians ate leaves off bushes and trees, killed dogs, cats, frogs, mice and birds

then cooked them. Others, gone mad with hunger, resorted to cannibalism, with parents sometimes even eating their own children.”

“Meanwhile, nearby Soviet-controlled granaries were said to be bursting at the seams from

huge stocks of 'reserve' grain, which had not yet been shipped out of the Ukraine. In some

locations, grain and potatoes were piled in the open, protected by barbed wire and armed GPU

guards who shot down anyone attempting to take the food. Farm animals, considered necessary

for production, were allowed to be fed, while the people living among them had absolutely

nothing to eat.”“By the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated 25,000 persons died every

day. Entire villages were perishing. In Europe, America and Canada, persons of Ukrainian descent

and Others responded to news reports of the famine by sending in food supplies. But Soviet

authorities halted all food shipments at the border. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to

deny the existence of a famine…Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested For using the

word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation' in a sentence.”

50 plus camps…400 plus labor colonies…

Kulaks Gulag

Click icon to add picture

“Among the prisoners there are some so ragged and lice ridden that they pose a sanitary danger to the rest. These prisoners have deteriorated to the point of losing any resemblance to human beings. Lacking food . . . they collect orts [refuse] and, according to some prisoners, eat rats and dogs”

- Memorandum to NKVD Chief Yezhov 1938“It was these Siberian camps, devoted either to gold-mining or timber harvesting, that inflicted the greatest toll in the Gulag system. Such camps “can only be described as extermination centres,”…The camp network that came to symbolize the horrors of the Gulag was centered on the Kolyma gold-fields, where “outside work for prisoners was compulsory until the temperature reached −50C and the death rate among miners in the goldfields was estimated at about 30 per cent ”