manasecret
08-26-2008, 04:44 PM
A Trip to Russia, Part 3
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f294/barneyis666/a1738.jpg
To see Vladimir Lenin say, "No more czars!"
When last we left Russia (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18909), Catherine the Great had made her nation one of Europe's great powers. When she died in 1796, her son Paul took the throne--until he was murdered during a coup in 1801. Paul's son, Alexander I (who may have been involved in dear old dad's murder), took over and became . . .
The Savior of Europe
Catherine had groomed Alexander--rather than Paul--for the throne, and many hoped his rise would bring enlightened reforms to Russia's heartland, where serfdom was still the hard reality for most folk. As it turned out, Alexander didn't end serfdom, but he did defeat Napoleon.
Like his father before him, Alexander entered into an alliance against Napoleon with Britain and Austria. At first, things didn't go well for the Russians (or for anyone else who fought Napoleon). In 1807, Alexander was forced to sue for peace, and--officially at least--became Napoleon's ally.
By 1812, however, any pretense of friendship was dropped. Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 men--twice as many as Alexander had. Yet fierce Russian resistance, strained French supply lines, and the brutal Russian winter combined to crush Napoleon's army. Fewer than 30,000 French soldiers survived the long retreat to Paris. Alexander became known as the savior of Europe, and Russia became an even more central player in European politics.
The Seeds of Revolution
For the czar, that was the good news. The bad news was that some Russian officers returning from Paris brought back more than romantic memories. They brought revolutionary ideas about civil rights and representative government. When Alexander died in December 1825, some of those officers swore loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution, rather than to the new czar, Nicholas I.
Called "Decembrists," these Russian rebels did not go unheard. Nicholas, for one, heard them loud and clear. He created a secret police force, tightened government censorship, and pursued an explicit policy of "autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality." When a series of popular revolutions shook Europe in 1848, Nicholas and his army were quick to help suppress them.
Nicholas's successor, Alexander II, did finally abolish serfdom and relax censorship. But after an attempt on his life in 1866, the secret police began to clamp down again. After 1881, when a different group of assassins succeeded in killing Alexander II, Alexander III began rolling back his father's reforms. By the time the last czar, Nicholas II, took the throne in 1894, revolutionary political parties had blossomed, including the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party--led by Vladimir Lenin.
Pre-Revolution
In January 1905, the czar's troops opened fire on workers who were demonstrating peacefully in St. Petersburg, killing several hundred people. Dubbed "Bloody Sunday," the event sparked the Revolution of 1905. Terrorist attacks, armed uprisings, and army mutinies swept the empire. Hoping to quell the unrest, Nicholas issued the "October Manifesto," promising a constitution, limited representative government, and civil rights.
The army restored order, but Nicholas's troubles weren't over. In 1906, the people elected a duma (or parliament) that sought reforms that went too far for the czar and his handpicked prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin. They dissolved the duma and called new elections, which produced a duma as difficult to deal with as the first. Stolypin then dissolved the second duma and promulgated a new law that effectively disenfranchised many lower-class voters.
Future elections produced more compliant dumas, but they also confirmed a claim radicals had made all along--that the czar's constitutional monarchy was a sham. Russia's economy was starting to modernize. In fact, when World War I broke out in 1914, Russia produced as much steel as France or Austria-Hungary. Yet the political stress combined with the strains of the Great War would prove too much for the faltering empire to take.
Revolution
Allied with Britain and France against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans, Russia soon found itself cut off from foreign supplies and markets. As heavy casualties began to roll in--two million in 1915 alone--inflation took off, and food and fuel became scarce. By 1917, the railroads were failing, making the shortages more acute.
In early March, a bread riot in Petrograd (the once and future St. Petersburg, renamed to sound less German) got out of hand. The czar ordered his troops to restore order. This time, though, the troops didn't fire on the demonstrators. They joined the impromptu revolution instead. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty fell within days. Nicholas formally abdicated on March 15, 1917.
Two groups stepped in to fill the ensuing power vacuum. One was a provisional government organized by the duma. The other was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. (A "soviet" is a council.) The Petrograd Soviet soon began issuing a series of orders. One of these, "Order Number One," instructed soldiers not to obey their officers if their orders went against the Soviet's decrees. Still, the Petrograd Soviet wasn't radical enough for Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Re-Revolution
The provisional government, which mainly represented the propertied classes, basically proposed to make Russia into a bourgeois European democracy--after the war was over. The Bolsheviks wanted none of it. Seizing the revolutionary opportunity, Lenin raced to Petrograd in April 1917 and began calling for the transfer of "all power to the soviets" and "all land to the peasants." He also proposed to "stop the war now." Lenin suffered some setbacks over the summer, but by fall the provisional government's weakness was apparent.
On November 7, Bolsheviks under Lenin and his right-hand man, Leon Trotsky, seized most of the major government buildings in Petrograd and captured the provisional government's cabinet. They faced almost no resistance--Trotsky had already won over the local garrison. The Bolshevik revolution then swept the nation, and a Council of People's Commissars, chaired by Lenin, assumed control. The council quickly moved the capital away from imperial St. Petersburg--back east to Moscow.
For the sake of preserving his revolution, Lenin made peace with Germany on Germany's terms--and so surrendered most of Russia's holdings in Poland, Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic region. Still, peace with Germany didn't bring peace. Soon the communists, as they came to call themselves, would have to fight a civil war to preserve their own power--and bring the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to life.
--Steve Sampson
-----------------------------------------------
Tune in tomorrow for Part 4 in the series.
KnowledgeNews.net (http://knowledgenews.net/index.shtml)
If you missed it:
A Trip to Russia, Part 1 (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18902)
A Trip to Russia, Part 2 (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18909)
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f294/barneyis666/a1738.jpg
To see Vladimir Lenin say, "No more czars!"
When last we left Russia (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18909), Catherine the Great had made her nation one of Europe's great powers. When she died in 1796, her son Paul took the throne--until he was murdered during a coup in 1801. Paul's son, Alexander I (who may have been involved in dear old dad's murder), took over and became . . .
The Savior of Europe
Catherine had groomed Alexander--rather than Paul--for the throne, and many hoped his rise would bring enlightened reforms to Russia's heartland, where serfdom was still the hard reality for most folk. As it turned out, Alexander didn't end serfdom, but he did defeat Napoleon.
Like his father before him, Alexander entered into an alliance against Napoleon with Britain and Austria. At first, things didn't go well for the Russians (or for anyone else who fought Napoleon). In 1807, Alexander was forced to sue for peace, and--officially at least--became Napoleon's ally.
By 1812, however, any pretense of friendship was dropped. Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 men--twice as many as Alexander had. Yet fierce Russian resistance, strained French supply lines, and the brutal Russian winter combined to crush Napoleon's army. Fewer than 30,000 French soldiers survived the long retreat to Paris. Alexander became known as the savior of Europe, and Russia became an even more central player in European politics.
The Seeds of Revolution
For the czar, that was the good news. The bad news was that some Russian officers returning from Paris brought back more than romantic memories. They brought revolutionary ideas about civil rights and representative government. When Alexander died in December 1825, some of those officers swore loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution, rather than to the new czar, Nicholas I.
Called "Decembrists," these Russian rebels did not go unheard. Nicholas, for one, heard them loud and clear. He created a secret police force, tightened government censorship, and pursued an explicit policy of "autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality." When a series of popular revolutions shook Europe in 1848, Nicholas and his army were quick to help suppress them.
Nicholas's successor, Alexander II, did finally abolish serfdom and relax censorship. But after an attempt on his life in 1866, the secret police began to clamp down again. After 1881, when a different group of assassins succeeded in killing Alexander II, Alexander III began rolling back his father's reforms. By the time the last czar, Nicholas II, took the throne in 1894, revolutionary political parties had blossomed, including the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party--led by Vladimir Lenin.
Pre-Revolution
In January 1905, the czar's troops opened fire on workers who were demonstrating peacefully in St. Petersburg, killing several hundred people. Dubbed "Bloody Sunday," the event sparked the Revolution of 1905. Terrorist attacks, armed uprisings, and army mutinies swept the empire. Hoping to quell the unrest, Nicholas issued the "October Manifesto," promising a constitution, limited representative government, and civil rights.
The army restored order, but Nicholas's troubles weren't over. In 1906, the people elected a duma (or parliament) that sought reforms that went too far for the czar and his handpicked prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin. They dissolved the duma and called new elections, which produced a duma as difficult to deal with as the first. Stolypin then dissolved the second duma and promulgated a new law that effectively disenfranchised many lower-class voters.
Future elections produced more compliant dumas, but they also confirmed a claim radicals had made all along--that the czar's constitutional monarchy was a sham. Russia's economy was starting to modernize. In fact, when World War I broke out in 1914, Russia produced as much steel as France or Austria-Hungary. Yet the political stress combined with the strains of the Great War would prove too much for the faltering empire to take.
Revolution
Allied with Britain and France against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans, Russia soon found itself cut off from foreign supplies and markets. As heavy casualties began to roll in--two million in 1915 alone--inflation took off, and food and fuel became scarce. By 1917, the railroads were failing, making the shortages more acute.
In early March, a bread riot in Petrograd (the once and future St. Petersburg, renamed to sound less German) got out of hand. The czar ordered his troops to restore order. This time, though, the troops didn't fire on the demonstrators. They joined the impromptu revolution instead. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty fell within days. Nicholas formally abdicated on March 15, 1917.
Two groups stepped in to fill the ensuing power vacuum. One was a provisional government organized by the duma. The other was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. (A "soviet" is a council.) The Petrograd Soviet soon began issuing a series of orders. One of these, "Order Number One," instructed soldiers not to obey their officers if their orders went against the Soviet's decrees. Still, the Petrograd Soviet wasn't radical enough for Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Re-Revolution
The provisional government, which mainly represented the propertied classes, basically proposed to make Russia into a bourgeois European democracy--after the war was over. The Bolsheviks wanted none of it. Seizing the revolutionary opportunity, Lenin raced to Petrograd in April 1917 and began calling for the transfer of "all power to the soviets" and "all land to the peasants." He also proposed to "stop the war now." Lenin suffered some setbacks over the summer, but by fall the provisional government's weakness was apparent.
On November 7, Bolsheviks under Lenin and his right-hand man, Leon Trotsky, seized most of the major government buildings in Petrograd and captured the provisional government's cabinet. They faced almost no resistance--Trotsky had already won over the local garrison. The Bolshevik revolution then swept the nation, and a Council of People's Commissars, chaired by Lenin, assumed control. The council quickly moved the capital away from imperial St. Petersburg--back east to Moscow.
For the sake of preserving his revolution, Lenin made peace with Germany on Germany's terms--and so surrendered most of Russia's holdings in Poland, Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic region. Still, peace with Germany didn't bring peace. Soon the communists, as they came to call themselves, would have to fight a civil war to preserve their own power--and bring the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to life.
--Steve Sampson
-----------------------------------------------
Tune in tomorrow for Part 4 in the series.
KnowledgeNews.net (http://knowledgenews.net/index.shtml)
If you missed it:
A Trip to Russia, Part 1 (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18902)
A Trip to Russia, Part 2 (http://www.gametavern.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18909)