Causes of the Russian Revolution

1. The Causes of the Russian Revolution 1917
Part I: March and Part II: November

2. Brief Background of Russia
•Russia was powerful in the 19th c.
•very slow to modernize
•absolutism: the rule of czars
•Russo-Japanese War 1904
•Revolution of 1905; false promises

3. March Revolution: Cause #1
•leadership of Czar Nicholas II
•feudalism
•World War I = 9,000,000 casualties

4. March Revolution: Cause #2
•World War I
•worst equipped army
•highest number of casualties

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•Starvation and poverty
•lack of land for the masses
•foreign owned factories
•bread riots (March 1917)
•Czar abdicated his thrown!

6. Provisional Government Takes Power
•it slow to implement reforms
•fateful decision...
•division among revolutionaries: Bolsheviks
versus Mensheviks

7. November Revolution
•Lenin: “Peace, Land and Bread”
•Marxist: communism now!
•Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
•not everyone is happy...

8. Russian Civil War 1918-1921
•“whites” vs “reds”
•Allies intervene
•Czar was executed (July 1918)
•Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922)

9. Why should you care?
•first communist revolution ever
•step on the path to becoming a super power
•seeds of animosity for the Cold War
•fear of Communism influences USFP
•fear of nuclear war 1949-1989