Russian+Revolutions+(1905-1917)

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1905 - DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

The growing social turmoil caused by the effects of the modernisation programme found expression in the formation of three, illegal, political parties:
 * 1) The Social Revolutionaries (1901), who represented a new sort of populism, and had redistribution of the land to the peasants as their first priority;
 * 2) The Liberals (1903), whose main aim was to try to create a liberal democratic constitutional government which could match Russia's newly emerging society;
 * 3) The Social Democrats (1903), who voiced the growing frustration of the new urban proletariat through the language of Marxism.

Therefore most sectors of Russian society were in opposition to the state: only the noble bureaucrats, the state-dependent industrialists and the Army supported the regime. And even before the Russo-Japanese War broke out in January, 1904, the regime was in a very poor situation. When war resulted in abject defeat, Russia experienced a massive upheaval. (1)

the Kadets

October Manifesto

THE PERIOD OF THE DUMAS

Constitutional politics

Economic and social policy

1917 (I) - THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION AND THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

Kerensky Dual power

1917 (II) - THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND BOLSHEVIK POWER

The war entered in 1914 was the end towards which tsarist economic policy had prepared since the defeat of the Crimean War. At first it caused the nation to unite behind their Tsar. With the stalemate of 1914-16 came disenchantment with the regime, especially given the Rasputin scandal and the terrible financial and bureaucratic mismanagement, itself a result of the ramshackle, anarchic nature of a government apparatus which had never been fully rationalised. This caused overwhelming political pressure from all sides. Furthermore, the unsolved problem of Russian agriculture crippled the home front in 1917. Due to the chaos caused by war requisitioning and inflation (due to the lack of adequate revenues) and official grain prices, internal transport and trade collapsed and the peasants refused to sell on the black market. The effect of this was the starving masses of St.Petersburg in February, 1917. When the troops, themselves mostly peasants and demoralised by the mismanagement of the war, joined them, the attempt by the tsarist regime to force Russians to maintain its great power status in the new industrial era had come to a close.

Lenin, Trotsky

Historical interpretations on the October Revolution 1917

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(1) Weigall, D. & Murphy, M. //A Level European History. Study Guide.// Letts Educational, London, 1998. Chapter 7: "Russia, 1855-1917", pages 95 to 108.