history

1. THE OUTBREAK OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION (dates in the new style)
• 1903: The Russian Social Democratic Party splits between
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
• 1905: Revolutionaries briefly seize power in most cities after
defeat by Japan; creation of the Duma.
• August 1914: The leaders of each socialist party support
their national war effort.
• March 15, 1917: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates.
• March-October 1917: DUAL SOVEREIGNTY (the Petrograd
Soviet vs. the Provisional Government)
• September 9-14, 1917: Attempted coup by General Kornilov
• November 6-7, 1917: The “Great October Revolution”
(Bolsheviks seize control of Petrograd and Moscow).

2. A Russian peasant village in 1910:
80% of the population were still peasants, mostly illiterate,
and rural poverty was spreading

3. The government responded
in 1906 by abolishing all
restrictions on foreign
investment and migration by
peasants to cities
(LEFT: An oil field near Baku
on the Caspian Sea)
Russian peasants newly
arrived in Moscow,
looking for work

4. Anti-war demonstrators before the Winter Palace,
Petrograd, January-February 1917

5. Funeral in
Petrograd in
March 1917 for
demonstrators
killed on orders of
Tsar Nicholas II

6. Revolutionary soldiers and workers in power: Both the “Petrograd
Soviet” and “Provisional Government” claimed authority

7. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, i.e., “Lenin” (1870-1924),
leader since 1903 of the “Bolshevik” faction of Russian socialism
LENIN’S APRIL THESES
1. Transform the Imperialist
War into Civil War!
2. All Power to the Soviets!
3. Land for the Village Poor!

8. War Minister
Alexander
Kerensky
addresses troops
about to leave for
the front in 1917;
he always sought
to honor Russia’s
treaty obligations
to France and
Great Britain

9. Machine gun fire disperses pro-Bolshevik demonstrators on
Nevsky Prospect in Petrograd, July 4, 1917

10. General L.G. Kornilov waves to the crowd in Moscow in
August 1917; he attempted a military coup in September

11. Climax of the “Great October Revolution”:
Painting of the Red Guards storming the Kremlin on November 2

12. Fraternization on the Eastern Front, November/December 1917

13. Kaiser Wilhelm II confers with the heads of the Supreme
Army Command, Hindenburg & Ludendorff, 1917
The popular
victors of
Tannenberg
insisted on
the
resumption
of
unrestricted
submarine
warfare.

14. Europe at the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March 1918

15. German troops moving through San Quentin to prepare
for the “Ludendorff Offensive” launched on March 21, 1918

16. The Ludendorff
Offensive,
March-July 1918

17. American troops disembark at Le Havre, July 12, 1918

18. German POWs captured in France, April 1918

19. The breach of the “Hindenburg Line” at St. Quentin, 2 Oct 1918
British troops line the banks
of the St. Quentin Canal
Their multitude of
German prisoners

20. In October 1918 Ludendorff told the Kaiser to appoint Prince
Max of Baden head of a “parliamentary” government, but
Max soon turned to Friedrich Ebert of the SPD

21. Social Democratic politicians address revolutionary sailors
at Kiel, November 5, 1918: Mutiny broke out when the
admirals ordered a desperate attack

22. Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann (SPD) proclaim the Republic
from the balcony of the Reichstag on 9 November 1918

23. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg founded the Spartacus
League in 1917 and the German Communist Party in
December 1918. They embraced Lenin’s slogan,
“All power to the Soviets!”

24. Communist insurgents in the newspaper district of Berlin,
January 1919

25. A Free Corps unit sworn to crush the Reds
Some Free Corps soldiers used the
swastika as a symbol of Aryan racial
purity; many later joined the Nazis
They killed
Luxemburg
and
Liebknecht
on January
15, 1919

26. “Workers, burghers, farmers, soldiers of every German tribe: Unite
in the National Assembly!” (The SPD joined with liberal and
Catholic democrats to write the Weimar constitution in 1919.)

27. The Big Four at Versailles: David Lloyd George,
Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, & Woodrow Wilson

28. ESTIMATED COMBAT FATALITIES IN THE GREAT WAR
Austria-Hungary 1,200,000
France 1,385,000
Germany 1,800,000
Great Britain 947,000
Italy 460,000
Ottoman Empire 325,000
Russia 1,700,000
Serbia 360,000
United States 115,000

29. RESULTS OF THE VERSAILLES
CONFERENCE
 National self-determination for Poles, “Czechoslovaks”,
“Yugoslavs”, Latvians, Lithuanians, & Estonians
 Formation of a “League of Nations” dedicated to
“collective security”
 Italy gains the southern Tirol but is forced to renounce
Dalmatia; the status of Fiume remains disputed
 Great Britain gains control of Germany’s African
colonies, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq as “League of
Nations Mandates;” France gains Syria and Lebanon
 The Allies award Asia Minor to Greece, but that country
suffers catastrophic defeat by Turkey in 1920/21

30. Postwar borders, 1921

31. The borders of the Weimar Republic (France occupied the
Rhineland until 1930, the Saarland until 1935)

32. The Russian Civil
War, 1918-21:
France intervened
from Odessa;
Britain & the USA,
from Murmansk &
Archangel;
the USA and Japan
from Vladivostok

33. “Long live the three-million-man Red Army!” (1919)

34. “Capitalists of the
World, Unite!”
(Soviet poster
from 1920,
echoing
Bukharin’s theory
of imperialism)

35. “Long Live the Third Communist International!”
(Soviet Poster, 1920)