1. To 1918: The Canadian Experience!
The Americans Arrive! The Russians Are Out!
August 1918.
2. 1918: The Centre Cannot Hold
• Chronology for 1918:
• Jan. 8 Wilson proposes his Fourteen Points as a basis for peace
• March 3 Russia signs Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
• March 21 Germany launches spring offensive
• May-Oct. Allied forces intervene in Russian Civil War
• July18-Nov. 10 Allied counteroffensive against Germany
• October 3-4 Germany offers to make peace based on Fourteen Points
• October 28 German sailors mutiny at Kiel
• Early Nov Revolutionary unrest in Germany
• November 3 Austria-Hungary sues for peace with allies
• November 9 Abdication of Kaiser William II of Germany
• November 11 Armistice is signed on the Western Front
3. Lessons of February Revolution 1917
Home fronts and Battle fronts radicalized by war
War no longer unified but destabilized
Class tensions; protests
Polarization
Food Shortages (Blockade), Political Rights Rescinded,
Exhaustion. Apathy
What Russians want many others also desire:
Democracy; Peace (no war); Social Justice; Dignity;
Workers’ Control.
War revealed their miserable lives and incompetence of
rulers.
5. Lenin aka Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
(1870-1924)
Lenin’s “April Theses”
▪WWI imperialist war and
last stage of capitalism
▪All power to the soviets
▪End to PG and slogan of
“Peace, land, power to the
soviets”
and Lenin hammers and
Hammers this message.
And becomes the message.
6. Towards October: War Radicalized Revolution
Monthly Crises
• April: War aims (Miliukov wants Dardanelles)
• June: Failed Kerensky Offensive in Galicia
• June 3 First All Russian Congress of Soviets (285 SRs,
245 Mensheviks, 105 Bolsheviks). More time needed!
• July Days (July 3-5): Workers ahead of the
revolutionary parties
• August: Kornilov’s failed right-wing coup
• September: Bolsheviks gain majority in Petrograd
soviet, week later gain majority in Moscow soviet
• Bolsheviks untainted by association with PG
July Days
“Everything for the War! –
Subscribe to the 5 1/2% War Loan.”
7. Militarization of Society:
Red Guards and Bolsheviks
• By Sept. 25,000 Red Guards, 240,000 Bolsheviks; by
Oct. 400,000 Bolsheviks (≥ 25% of population)
• Capitalists worst fear?
• Armed workers (see right)
• War turning into class war
• Capitalists v. Communists
• “Jewish Bolsheviks” (Trotsky)
Red Guards at Vulcan Factory, 1917
8. “October”
• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)“It makes the head
spin.” His blueprint for insurrection
• Oct 25-26 (Nov. 7-8) Relatively bloodless coup
created new all-Bolshevik regime
• Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom)
with Lenin as Chairman, Trotsky as Commissar
of Foreign Affairs (became War Commissar
1918-1925 and created Red Army), and Stalin
as Commissar of Nationalities Trotsky speaks from Armored Train,
Russian Civil War, 1920
9. The Day After the Revolution or Holding on to
Power—the real test
• Lenin’s Decree on Land (October 26, 1917): Private
ownership abolished w/o compensation and land
place at disposal of Land Committees and Peasant
soviets.
• Lenin’s Decree on Peace (October 26, 1917):
General peace. A thorny issue: Trotsky: “no war, no
peace”; Bukharin: revolutionary war?; Lenin:
“breathing space”
Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev
at Brest-Litovsk negotiations
10. The New York Times
headline from 9 November 1917. British Conservative
Party poster from 1909
11. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March 1918.
Officers from the staff of Field Marshall von Hindenburg meet the
delegation of Soviet Russia
12. Europe and the Middle East after the Peace Settlements of 1919–1920
13. Lenin and “breathing space”
If Bolsheviks to hold power,
must have peace.
A devastated society.
Lost more men than any other
society.
14.
15.
16. New Party-State Created
• State: Party became government
• Party over state organs became permanent
feature of soviet state.
• Irony: An anti-state revolutionary party
became state. Politburo and Central Executive
Committee
• Improvising? Intentional? Bureaucratic
solution easier than democracy.
The Moscow Kremlin,
Lenin moved into in 1918
17. Long Live the Three-million Man Red Army!, 1919. Russian State Library, Moscow.
Heritage Images/Getty Images / Getty Images
18. Snapshot of Civil War
• Allied Intervention
• Whites v. Reds v. Greens
• Red Army (Jan. 1918, Trotsky): 5.5 million strong
• Czech troops head east and cause trouble May 1918
• Romanovs executed July 1918
• Fanny Kaplan’s failed assassination attempt on Lenin
August 1918
• Authoritarian v. authoritarian rule
• Red Terror, White Terror
• socialists v. socialists
• Bolsheviks win
Red Army detachment during civil war
20. White Army propaganda poster (1919): Trotsky as Satan
wearing a Pentagram/Red Star, with Bolsheviks' Chinese
supporters as mass murderers. Caption reads, "Peace and
Liberty in Sovdepiya".
Polish poster depicts Trotsky on a pile of skulls
and holding bloody knife,
Polish-Soviet War of 1920
21. Poster depicting Leon Trotsky as Red Devil with Death
“The Bolsheviks promised: We'll give you peace We'll give you
freedom We'll give you land Work and bread Despicably they
cheated They started a war With Poland Instead of freedom
they brought The fist Instead of land -confiscation Instead of
work – misery Instead of bread – famine.”
22. How to create a socialist society
during a time of civil war?
Civil War seen as Class War on all sides.
Victims of famine in Volga region
23. Czech Legion Stirs Things Up
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918): Russian separate peace with
Germany
• 40,000 Czech and Slovak soldiers along with Imperial Gold
Reserve (will be “lost”) travel by 65 trains to Vladivostok to get
to western front to continue to fight in WWI
• Recipe for disaster
• Train stations as new fronts
Czechoslovaks with armored train, Russia
24. Czech legion embarks across Siberia in the
hope of getting home -- by sea. Civil War
travels east on the railroad tracks.
25. Last of the Legionnaires?
• September 1920: Last of Czech Legions left Vladivostok
• Total # of persons evacuated with Czech Legion:
• 67,739; including 56,455 soldiers, 3,004 officers, 6,714
civilians, 1,716 wives, 717 children, 1,935 foreigners and 198
others.
28. Intervention a Bad Idea
• John Stephan: US policy promoted by image “of beleaguered Czechs
valiantly striving to free themselves from the evils of Kaiser-Bolshevik
collusion in the depth of Siberia.” (p.129)
• Vladivostok a “kaleidoscopic array of military forces”-- a total of 11
foreign expeditionary forces
American troops in Vladivostok (1918):
Parading before the building occupied
by Czecho-Slovaks staff; Japanese marines
stand to attention as they march by.
29. Positions of Allied expeditionary forces and
of the White Armies in European Russia, 1919
30. August 19, 1918. American troops took part in the common
parade at Svetlana street in the honor of landing in Vladivostok
33. "The landing of the Japanese army - Welcomed by every nation
at Vladivostok" (sic) - A 1919 Japanese propaganda poster
depicting the occupation of Vladivostok by Japan.
41. CEF “British born” (Quebec opposed); 628,000 enlist, 365,000
overseas.
Vimy Ridge (April 1917) as the Canadian “Gallipoli Moment.”
6-inch gun of the Royal Garrison Artillery firing
over Vimy Ridge behind Canadian lines at night
42. 'French Canadians, enlist! England, the
bulwark of our freedoms, is being threatened.
Will we remain aloof? Will we prefer Prussian
militarism to the regime that has preserved
our faith, our language, our institutions and
our laws? France’s heart is bleeding. The voice
of blood speaks.'
43.
44.
45.
46. Flagg’s 1917 poster, based on
the original British Lord Kitchener poster.
The United States at War:
The meaning of being a
(better) citizen
47. Pancho Villa (1878 – 1923): General and rebel
raids against US border towns.
12,000 US troops go 300 miles in to Mexico.
Mexican Invasion? Wilson preparing request to occupy N. Mexico,
But abandoned plans—didn’t want forces tied up.
(Zimmerman Telegram links Germany to Mexico)
Jan. 1917 Germany resumed unconditional u-boat warfare
Enough Sinking ships.
Wilson keeps pitching for peace until US declared war on
Germany 6 April 1917 and on A-H next day.
American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 1917:
19 months of participation
“Pancho” Villa in 1916:
49. Aftermath of the Black Tom explosion. German sabotage on
American ammunition supplies!
July 30, 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey.
German Agents Real!
50. The US at War:
“coercive voluntarism” and State Power:
Selective Service Act (May 1917): “volunteer in mass” (ahem)
Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917, 1918): Criminalized anti-war
speech (Red Scares and Buford)
War Industries Board: Control Economy
Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration: Regulate Food and Fuel
National War Labor Board: Control/Protect Workers’ Rights
Committee on Public Information: Propaganda and
Buy Liberty Bonds
U.S. propaganda poster
51.
52. Pershing’s Army
• Orders: Go to France and come home
• Tremendous latitude
• No trench knowledge, not prepared
• Pershing favored “open warfare”—large infantry divisions
• French and British not amused
• One “genuine” war hero: Sergeant Alvin York
53. The so-called Spanish Flu
Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, ill with Spanish influenza at a
hospital ward at Camp Funston.
54. Send the Flu Over There!
AEF victims of the flu pandemic at U.S. Army Camp Hospital no.
45 in Aix-les-Bains, France, in 1918
500 million infected
worldwide
55.
56. Resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five
percent of the world's population)
