Aspirant Academy

History

Russian Revolution (1917)

American War of Independence, French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Russian Revolution

Paper I · Unit 1 Section 5 of 9 0 PYQs 30 min
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Russian Revolution (1917)

4.1 Background and Causes

Tsarist Russia on the Eve of Revolution

By 1914, Russia was an enormous but internally fragile empire — the Romanov dynasty had ruled since 1613. Key structural problems included:

  • Autocracy: Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) believed in divine right of kings; refused meaningful constitutional reform
  • Peasant poverty: 80% of Russia's population were peasants; emancipation from serfdom (1861) left them with small plots and high redemption payments
  • Industrial workers: Rapid industrialisation (1890s–1910s) created a small but militant urban proletariat in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev — exposed to Marxist ideas
  • Defeat in Russo-Japanese War (1905): Exposed military incompetence; triggered the 1905 Revolution — Bloody Sunday (9 January 1905) saw troops fire on peaceful demonstrators, killing ~200; Tsar issued the October Manifesto promising a Duma (parliament)

World War I as Catalyst

Russia entered WWI in August 1914. By 1916, the toll was staggering: 1.7 million dead, 5 million wounded, 2 million POW. The Army was ill-equipped and ill-led. Food shortages became severe, and inflation eroded wages. The Tsar commanded the armies from the front from 1915 onward — making himself personally responsible for military failures.

Rasputin Scandal

Grigori Rasputin — a Siberian mystic who apparently helped the hemophiliac heir Alexei — controlled Tsarina Alexandra's confidence and influenced appointments and policy. This discredited the court widely.

Key Political Parties

  • Bolsheviks: Majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924); believed in a disciplined "vanguard party" leading the proletariat; advocated immediate socialist revolution
  • Mensheviks: Minority faction; believed revolution must pass through a bourgeois-democratic phase first
  • Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs): Represented peasant interests; largest party in the Constituent Assembly
  • Cadets (Constitutional Democrats): Liberal bourgeois party; wanted parliamentary democracy

4.2 The February Revolution (March 1917 in New Style Calendar)

International Women's Day protests in Petrograd (8 March 1917 NS) began with women bread rioters joined by textile workers. Within days, 200,000 workers were on strike in Petrograd. When the Tsar ordered troops to fire, they defected and joined the protesters. The Petrograd Soviet (council of workers' and soldiers' deputies) was formed.

Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March 1917, ending 304 years of Romanov rule. A Provisional Government was formed (initially under Prince Lvov, later Kerensky), representing liberal and socialist parties.

Dual Power emerged: the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet operated in parallel, with the Soviet controlling the military through Order No. 1 (soldiers to obey the Soviet, not officers).

4.3 Lenin's Return — April Theses

Lenin had been in exile in Switzerland. The German government, hoping to destabilise Russia, transported him in a "sealed train" to Petrograd (April 1917). On arrival, he issued his April Theses:

  1. No support for the Provisional Government
  2. End the imperialist war immediately
  3. All power to the Soviets
  4. Land to the peasants (confiscate landlord estates)

Slogan: "Peace, Land, Bread" (Mir, Zemlya, Khleb)

4.4 The October Revolution (November 1917 NS)

Kerensky's July offensive failed disastrously, alienating both the army and the people. The Provisional Government delayed Constituent Assembly elections and continued the war — rapidly losing legitimacy.

On the night of 25–26 October (7 November NS):

  • Leon Trotsky organised the Red Guards and the Military Revolutionary Committee
  • Bolshevik forces seized the Winter Palace, railway stations, post offices, telegraph, and bridges — virtually bloodlessly
  • The All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified the Bolshevik seizure
  • Decrees on Peace (armistice with Germany) and Decrees on Land (redistribution to peasants) were immediately issued

4.5 Consolidation of Bolshevik Power

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918)

Russia ceded Poland, Finland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Belarus to Germany. It was a humiliating peace, but Lenin argued it was necessary to save the revolution.

Russian Civil War (1918–21)

  • Red Army (Bolsheviks, commanded by Trotsky) vs. White Army (ex-Tsarist officers, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Western-backed interventionists)
  • Allied intervention: Britain, France, USA, Japan sent troops to assist the Whites
  • Red Terror: Bolsheviks executed political opponents, including Tsar Nicholas II and family at Yekaterinburg (17 July 1918)
  • Red Army victory (1921): Bolsheviks consolidated control of Russia

Soviet State Building

  • New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921): Partial return to market economics; peasants allowed to sell surplus; stabilised the economy after War Communism
  • USSR constituted (30 December 1922): Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — 4 original republics (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Transcaucasia)
  • Lenin dies (January 1924): Stalin gradually consolidated power, defeating Trotsky and others; became unchallenged leader by 1929

4.6 Global Impact of the Russian Revolution

  1. First communist state: Inspired communist parties worldwide; the Communist International (Comintern, 1919) organised global revolutionary activity
  2. Cold War foundations: The Soviet state became the main ideological and geopolitical rival to the capitalist West — directly leading to the Cold War after WWII
  3. Colonial world: Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916) analysed imperialism as necessary for capitalist survival — providing an ideological framework for anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa; Indian nationalists (Nehru, Bose) were influenced
  4. Welfare state: Fear of communist revolution pushed Western governments to introduce social reforms — unemployment insurance, pensions, universal suffrage — to pre-empt working-class radicalism
  5. Women's rights: The Bolsheviks were the first government to legalise divorce, abortion, and grant women full political equality (1917) — decades before most Western democracies