Russian Revolution 1

1. Vladimir Lenin was born in 1870 and developed a grudge against imperial Russia after his older brother was executed for plotting to kill the tsar in 1887. He began a follower of Marxism, but was exiled to Siberia for three years because of socialist beliefs. Next, he moved to western Europe and spent seventeen years developing his own socialist beliefs. He was inspired by The Communist Manifesto and its belief that capitalism could only be destroyed by violent revolution. He believed that it was possible to skip capitalism and go right to socialism. He believed that human leadership was at times more powerful than historical laws, causing him to desire a highly disciplined workers’ party that would stop at nothing but power. At the Russian Social Democratic Labor party in 1903, Lenin’s demands for a small, disciplined, elitist party were unmatched by his opponents’ demands for a more democratic party with mass membership, splitting the Party into Lenin’s Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Lenin lost his majority, but kept the name.

2. After observing World War I from Switzerland, Lenin wanted to return to Russia after the March revolution. The German government believed that he and his followers would add to the social strife and divide the country more, so they provided them with safe passage across Germany in April 1917. On April 3, Lenin rejected all cooperation with the bourgeois provisional government of the liberals and moderate socialists. An attempted Bolshevik revolution in July failed, but intrigue between Kerensky and his commander in chief, Gener-al Lavr Kornilov, resulted in Kornilov leading a weak attack against the provisional govern-ment and Kerensky losing all credit with the army. The Bolsheviks appealed greatly to the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, increasing the party’s membership from 50,000 to 240,000 and giving them a small majority in the Petrograd Soviet in October. Leon Trotsky was born in 1879 and supported Lenin in 1917. Trotsky convinced the Petrograd Soviet to form a special military-revolutionary committee in October and make him its leader after making up German and counter-revolutionary plots. He also insisted that the Bolshevik rule represented all popular and democratic soviets. On November 6, members of Trotsky’s committee and Bolshevik soldiers seized government buildings and attacked members of the provisional government. When there was a Bolshevik majority, 390 of 650 delegates in favor, Lenin declared himself head of the new government. The Bolsheviks came to power for three reasons: first, by late 1917, anarchy had replaced democracy. Second, Lenin and Trotsky were a determined and superior team. Third, in 1917, the Bolsheviks appealed to many soldiers and urban workers, who were exhausted by war and eager for socialism.

3. Since summer of 1917, a peasant revolution had been sweeping across Russia, as the pea-sants invaded and divided among themselves the estates of the landlords and the church. Lenin acknowledged that Russia had lost the war with Germany, that the Russian army did not exist anymore, and that peace was the only realistic goal. Germany demanded in De-cember 1917 that the Soviet government cede all its western territories, or a third of its population. The Bolsheviks did not accept this, but after German armies resumed their march into Russia in February 1918, Lenin agreed and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918. This allowed him to stop war and pursue his goal of absolute political power for the Bolsheviks.

4. The Bolsheviks had agreed to free election at the end of 1917, but after the Constituent As-sembly revealed on January 18, 1918, that the Socialist Revolutionaries, the peasants’ party, had more support, they permanently disbanded the assembly by force, making the Com-munist Party the only party. This caused people who had rise up for self-rule against the provisional government to rise up again against the Bolsheviks in the White opposition against the Red Bolsheviks. By the summer of 1918, eighteen self-proclaimed regional gov-ernment were competing with the Bolsheviks. By the end of 1918, White armies were at-tacking and appeared triumphant in October 1919. However, the Bolsheviks repulsed them and had almost completely defeated the Whites and retaken Belorussia and Ukraine by the spring of 1920. The next year they took the independent nationalist governments of the Caucasus. They won for several reasons: first, they controlled the center, while the Whites were always on the outside and disunited. The Whites’ poorly defined political program was somewhat conservative and did not unify all the enemies of the Bolsheviks under a progres-sivism and democracy. The Communists developed a better army under Trotsky’s leader-ship, as he reestablished the draft and strict discipline for the Red Army. He kept former tsarist army officers and gave them great disciplinary powers. The Bolsheviks established war communism and seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work. The old tsarist secret police was rees-tablished as the Cheka, hunting down and executed real or supposed foes and those who had minor nonpolitical failures. The terror was used to silence opposition. Foreign military intervention in the civil war actually helped the Communists. Western governments sup-ported White armies inadequately and unenthusiastically. The Communists were able to appeal to the patriotic nationalism of ethnic Russians.

5. Rosa Luxemburg turned to Marxism promise of liberation for all oppressed groups and an end to ethnic hatreds, being Jewish and Polish. She denounced all revisions of Marxism, scorned any compromise with capitalism, and stressed the absolute necessity of revolution. She went to Germany to radicalize Germany’s socialists and overstepped senior party and trade-union leaders. Her life was a success because she contributed to spreading Marxism and dying for it. However, she had no real results to account for herself.

1. After Russia surrendered, German general Ludendorff and his company attacked France in the great spring offensive of 1918, coming within 35 miles of Paris. They were decisively stopped in July at the second Battle of the Marne, as the 140,000 fresh American soldiers drove them back. By September, British, French, and American armies were advancing on all fronts, causing General Ludendorff to realize that Germany had lost the war. On October 4, the emperor formed a new, more liberal German government to sue for peace. Negotia-tions over an armistice dragged on, resulting in angry and frustrated sailors in Kiel to mutiny on November 3. Revolutionary councils were started in northern Germany, and that same day, Austria-Hungary surrendered and broke apart. Large amounts of workers demonstrated for peace in Berlin. The army discipline collapsed, and the emperor abdicated and fled to Holland. Socialist leaders in Berlin proclaimed a German republic on November 9 and agreed to tough Allied terms of surrender that were finally effected on November 11. The German Revolution of November 1918 resembled the Russian Revolution of March 1917 by that a popular uprising had toppled an authoritarian monarchy and brought the establishment of a liberal provisional republic. Also, liberals and moderate socialists took control of the central government, while workers’ and soldiers’ councils formed a counter-government. The moderate socialists and their liberal allies won in Germany because German Social Democrats wanted to establish real political democracy and civil liberties and the gradual elimination of capitalism. German nationalists did not like civil war and revolutionary terror, there was less popular support among workers and soldiers for communism, and the German peasantry did not provide the driving force. The German Social Democrats accepted defeat and ended the war the day they took power, ending the decline in morale among soldiers and prevented the regular army from disintegrating. The Allies, who were already occupying western Germany, would have marched to Berlin and ruled Germany directly.

2. United States president Woodrow Wilson actively sponsored the creation of the League of Nations to protect member states from aggression and averting future wars. France signed a former defensive alliance with the United States and Great Britain in case of a German at-tack. Germany’s colonies were given to France, Britain, and Japan. Alsace-Lorraine was re-turned to France, parts of Germany inhabited primarily by Poles were ceded to the new Polish state. German Danzig was turned into a self-governing city under League of Nations protection. Germany had to limit its army to 100,000 men and agree to build no military fortifications in the Rhineland. Germany was deemed responsible for the war and therefore had to pay reparations for all civilian damages. The German government protested vigo-rously but gave in and signed the treaty on June 28, 1919. Treaties were signed with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey that ratified the existing situation. Hungary lost greatly as its captive nationalities were ceded to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Italy received some Austrian territory, the Turkish empire was broken up, France received Leba-non and Syria, Britain received Iraq and Palestine, a Jewish national home was to be estab-lished, and Japan received Germany’s holdings in China.

3. Allied leaders worked with speed in case they needed to check the Bolshevik Revolution from spreading. They saw their best answer to Lenin’s calls for worldwide upheaval as peace and tranquility. Two great interrelated obstacles to peace were Germany and the United States. Germany was plagued by communist uprisings, reactionary plots, and popular disillusionment over losing the war at the end. Germany’s moderate socialists needed time and luck to establish peace and a democratic republic. The U.S. Senate and the American people rejected Wilson’s ideas, as the League of Nations’ power was more apparent than real. Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republican senators believed this requirement gave away Congress’s constitutional right to declare war. Wilson was not willing to accept com-promise and instructed loyal Democratic senators to vote against the Treaty of Versailles. He ensured that the United States would not ratify the treaty and never join the League of Nations. The Senate also refused to ratify Wilson’s treaties forming a defensive alliance with France and Great Britain. Great Britain then refused to ratify its defensive alliance with France.