Apehrussianrevolutionnotes

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Czar Nicholas II ruled Russia. Russia was composed of major cities including Moscow, the capital, and St. Petersburg. The Russians, however, were mostly poor and uneducated. When industrialization finally reached Russia in the 1890s, there wasn’t enough agricultural advancements to support the industrialization. Workers conditions were also poor, the workers cramped in row houses or tenements. Reform groups in Russia pushed for revolutions hoping that the proletariat would seize power, most notably the Social Revolutionaries and the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. The most notable member of the R.S.D.W.P. was Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, who later changed his name to Vladimir Lenin. In 1887, when Lenin was seventeen years old, his eldest brother Alexander was arrested and executed for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander III. Lenin was exiled to Siberia and later escaped to Switzerland. Lenin wrote the pamphlet “What is to Be Done?” in which Lenin addressed his ideas for the R.S.D.W.P.. First and foremost, Lenin believed the secrecy was the most important element, he also advocated for a strict selection of party members who would be trained to become revolutionaries, rejected compromise, and traditional Marxism. Lenin believed in a pre-emptive Marxism, called Marxist Leninism or Leninist Marxism. In 1903, during a meeting of the R.S.D.W.P., Lenin presented his ideas, however many of the members didn’t agree with the elitist component of Lenin’s ideology. The members who walked out were called Mensheviks, which means minority, and the members who followed Lenin were called Bolsheviks, which means majority, however the majority being very slight. The Bolsheviks led a newspaper called Pravda, which means Truth in Russian. The Bolsheviks supported the use of terror and believed in the Central Committee, while the Mensheviks compromised to the Bolsheviks’ ideas however rejecting terror and the Central Committee. In 1905, due to an economic crisis and famine, which was blamed on the czar, the 1905 Revolution occurred. Thousands of people marched to the czar’s Winter Palace and refused to leave. The soldiers that were surrounding the palace fired into the crowd, killing three-hundred people and wounding one-thousand. This event in St. Petersburg is known as Bloody Sunday. After Bloody Sunday more demands and striking occurred. Nicholas granted reforms, such as allowing Poland and the Balkans to speak their language, and lifting restrictions put on the Jews. Also in 1905, Nicholas also issued the October Manifesto. The October Manifesto, among other things, granted freedom of press and the Duma, a Russian representative assembly. The Mensheviks set up new organizations called Soviets which were neighborhood councils. Since all the troops were back from the failed Russo-Japanese War, the Czar was able to carry out a counter-revolution. Orthodox priests also set up vigilante nationalist groups known as the Black Hundreds.