Russia Controlled AssessmentThe Crisis Months of 1917

L.O. To understand how Kerensky lost the upper hand during the Summer and Autumn months of 1917

Starter:

Get out the table you were completing for homework

Compare with a partner and be ready to feedback to the class

Urgent Decision What did the Provisional Government do?

How did the people react?

How did the Bolsheviks take advantage of this?

Continue the war or make peace?

Para 1 p.111 Para 5 p.111, sources 34 and 35 p.112

Para 4 p.111

Distribute land to the peasants (who had already started taking it) or ask them to wait until elections had been held?

Para 1 p.111 Para 5 p.111 Para 4 p.111, source 33 p.111

How best to get food to the starving workers in the cities?

Para 2 p.113, source 39 p.113

Timeline of Events

Use the handout and p.112-3 in your textbook to plot the following events on a timeline (use a double page):

•April 4th – April Theses (handout)

•July Days (handout)

•Autumn 1917 – Kornilov Affair (handout)

•Position in Sept/Oct 1917 (p.113 paras 2 and 3)

For each event explain what happened and its significance

The July Days – almost a disaster for the Bolsheviks!

• Unrest was increasing throughout Russia – this discontent was focused on the Provisional Government.

• The July Days Rising (3-6 July):- widespread demonstrations- confused and disorderly- supported by the Bolsheviks (?)- easily crushed by Government troops

The July Days

• Even though the Bolsheviks didn’t claim responsibility for the July Days fiasco, the Provisional Government saw it as a Bolshevik challenge to its authority and had many Bolsheviks arrested. Lenin fled Petrograd. The failure of the July Days severely hurt the reputation of the Bolshevik party as a serious revolutionary prospect

The July Days

• Government announcement 19th July 1917:

• ‘19 July the Government announced yesterday evening that it is going to have Lenin and the ring leaders arrested and accused of treason. It claims to have proof that they received money from Germany.’

The Kornilov Affair – a right wing coup?

• Kornilov was an army officer who hated Lenin and the Soviets and had not fully accepted the February Revolution

• Kornilov made the decision to move troops to Petrograd to protect it against advancing German soldiers and growing unrest in the city itself

The Kornilov Affair

• Appeal to the Russians 11th Sept:

• ‘The Provisional Government under the pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets is acting in total harmony with German General Staff. At the same time, with the expected landing of enemy troops near Riga, the government is killing the army and killing the country…I call upon all Russians to save their dying land.’

• Kerensky publicly condemned Kornilov’s action saying that he was bringing the troops to overthrow the government

• Kerensky asked the people of Petrograd to fight against Kornilov – he gave weapons to ‘loyal’ people and released many Bolsheviks from prison so they could fight

• No fighting occurred in the end because Kornilov’s train was stopped on its way to Petrograd and he was arrested

• Bolsheviks claimed that they had ‘saved’ the revolution and that the Provisional Government and been shown to be vulnerable.

The Bolsheviks were now in a powerful and popular position. The Provisional Government had been weakened and the time was ripe for a change!

• Bolshevik support grew in Russian soviets due to growing demoralisation of the army

• From defending the revolution from the Kornilov revolt• They were not tainted by association from the hopeless

Prov. Govt.• Controlled the most powerful of Soviets in Petrograd and

Moscow by September• People trusted Trotsky and he became Chairman of the

Petrograd Soviet

The fortunes of the Provisional Government

Plot the changing fortunes of the Provisional Government after each event. Join the points to make a line graph