Russian Revolution 1917

End of Czarist Russia;Beginning of Communist Russia

Stages of the Russian Rev.• 1. First stage of revolution - Fall of Czardom (March

Revolution~Feb.)• Insurrection of the masses!

• 2. Second stage of revolution - Provisional Government formed

• 3. Third stage of revolution - Return of Lenin;Bolshevik coup (November Revolution~Oct.)/

March Revolution(1917)• spontaneous revolution initiated by the lower

classes. • came as a result of their deep-seated hatred

of the Czars who deprived them of political freedom, and brought them grave economic sufferings and military defeats.

• The First World War brought the discontent of the Russians to a head. The Russian masses made the revolution spontaneously without any leadership from the revolutionary parties.

• Workers riot in Petrograd(old St. Petersburg)• Czar Nicholas II abdicates(for his son as well)/

Lenin Returns• When the March Revolution broke out, the

prominent leaders of the Bolshevik Party were in exile.

• In March, Lenin returned to Russia (Switzerland) • Being a socialist, Lenin adopted an antiwar policy

during the First World War. He advocated that the First World War was a fight among the capitalistic government for influence and power. (The workers should not assist them.)

• demanded the Provisional Government to give 'All power to the Soviets’/

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the November, Bolshevik Revolution

Provisional Gov’t; Mar.-Nov. 1917• New gov’t would have been a democracy• Alexander Kerensky becomes president

• Gov’t unable to get Russia out of WWI• Lenin gains support for the Bolsheviks• “Peace, Land, Bread”-motto of Bolsheviks/

November Rev. 1917• A.k.a. Bolshevik Rev./ Communist Rev.• Bolsheviks led by Lenin defeat the provisional gov’t• Once in power the Bolsheviks change their name to

Communists

Russia of 1917• Through these 3 steps, Russia became a communist

country, ending Czarist Russia, forever.• U.S.S.R.Union of Soviet Socialist Republics• This will last until the collapse of the Soviet Union in

1991.

Murder of the Romanovs• As long as the Romanovs

were alive, they were seen as a threat to the new

Communists! • On July 16, 1918, Bolshevik

authorities, led by Yakov Yurovsky, shot Nicholas II, his immediate family, and four servant members in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Rasputin’s prophecy• Rasputin had made an eerie

prediction before he died.

• If I am killed by common assassins and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia.

• ...if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for two years. They will be killed by the Russian people...

• I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.

• Grigory

Death of the Romanovs

The Romanovs-Together in Life and Death • Eleven people in all lost

their lives on the night of July 16, 1918, at Ekateringburg in this--cellar. Below is the execution squad.

The Graves

• The pit where the skeletons lay.

Discovering the Romanovs• In 1979, the bodies of Czar

Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, three of their daughters, and those of four non-family members killed with them, were discovered near Yekaterinburg by amateur archaeologist Alexander Avdonin

• January 1998, the remains excavated from underneath the dirt road near Yekaterinburg were officially identified as those of Nicholas II and his family (excluding one of the sisters, and Alexei)

• July 2007, 46-year-old builder Sergei Pogorelov (part of a team from an amateur history group who spent free summer weekends looking for the lost Romanovs) said that after stumbling on a small burned area of ground covered with nettles near Yekaterinburg he had discovered bones that belonged to "a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of Nicholas’ 13-year-old hemophiliac son, Alexei, and a daughter whose remains also never have been found.”/

Diagram of the grave outside Ekaterinburg -- the pit during excavation

Final Procession and Burial• A ceremony of Christian Burial

was held in 1998, and the bodies were laid to rest with State honors in a special chapel in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg(in St. Catherine Chapel).

• Reburial

Current Discoveries• On 30 April 2008, DNA

tests performed by a U.S. laboratory proved that bone fragments exhumed in the Ural Mountains belonged to two Czarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria.

• 1 October 2008, Russia's Supreme Court ruled that Nicholas II and his family were victims of political repression

• In 1981, Nicholas and his immediate family were recognized as martyred saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia./

Finally…it is over!• Yekaterinburg's "Church on

the Blood," built on the spot where Nicholas II and his family were murdered in 1918.

• Russian Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg built in 2000-2003

• The church commemorates the Romanov sainthood./