Saturday, December 2nd, 2023

Russian Revolution and Civil War


Before February 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar which was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar that most of the Western world used; on 1 March 1900, the Julian calendar became 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. On this page, dates are labeled OS if they are Julian and NS if they are Gregorian. After 1918, all dates are provided in Gregorian style (NS).

Russia        Glossary



Emancipation Edict: Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom in Russia on 19 February 1861 (OS).

Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in March 1881 by the radical group known as People’s Will. He is succeeded by Tsar Alexander III who repressed civil rights and freedom of the press with anti-terrorism measures.

Tsar Alexander II’s pogroms against the Jews result in a mass emigration of 2.5 million Jews to western Europe and the Americas between 1881 and 1914. The terror caused by anti-Semitic pogroms reached its peak in October 1905.

Famine in Russia from 1891 to –1892 kills between 375,000-400,000 people and affects millions more.

Tsar Alexander III, dies suddenly on 20 October 1894 (OS) and Nicholas II becomes Tsar

Vladimir Lenin is arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years on 8 December 1895 (OS).

Khodynka Tragedy: After Tsar Nicholas II’s coronation on 18 May 1896 (OS), the crowd thought there was a shortage of free souvenir gifts and rushed the stalls. 1,389 people were killed in the stampede.

Each person’s gift was a spice-bread, a piece of sausage, sweets and walnuts, a bread roll from the famous Moscow baker Filippov and a commemorative painted enamel mug, all wrapped in a headscarf.

The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (SDs, RSDLP aka the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party) forms in 1898 as a socialist political party to unify various revolutionary groups and to oppose the Narodniks revolutionary agrarian populism (later known as the Socialist Revolutionary Party or SRs). The RSDLP believes in the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engelsand that Russia’s revolutionary strength will come from its industrial working class.

Differences in political ideology split the ineffectual Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in November 1903. Younger Russians preferred the Bolsheviks because they were committed to a proletariat-based revolution and because they took a stronger stance against the bourgeoisie (the “materialistic” middle-class).  1  2

1903: Grigori Rasputin arrives in Saint Petersburg and develops a reputation as a starets (holy man) with healing and prophetical powers.   1 2 

1905 Revolution  1  2
Bloody Sunday:Hundreds of people are killed and
   wounded on 9 January 1905 (OS) when
   Imperial forces open fire on unarmed demonstrators
   who attempt to present a petition of demands at the
   Tsar’s Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The Tsar
   was 25 miles south at his palace in Tsarskoye Selo.
   After strikes and riots erupt throughout Russia in
   response to this massacre, Tsar Nicholas II
   promises
to work toward reform with Dumas
   (representative assemblies).
The Tsar orders troops to quash riots in
   Odessa that began in response to the mutiny on
   the Potemkin battleship
in June 1905.
– The worst anti-Jewish pogrom in Odessa’s history
   happens in October 1905.
– The Tsar and Tsarina meet Rasputin in July 1905
   and eventually become convinced that he can help
   their severely hemophiliac son, Tsarevich Alexei.
Tsar Nicholas II reluctantly agrees to the October
   Manifesto
that turns Russia into a constitutional
   monarchy and grants civil liberties, i.e., freedom of
   speech and an elected parliament (the Duma). The
   general strike is called off and there is a sense
   that Russia will begin an era of Western
   constitutionalism and freedom.
– Tsar Nicholas issues the Fundamental Laws of 1906,
   a 124-point de facto constitution in April 1906 that
   re-establishes his total command over Russia and
   prevents the October Manifesto from limiting his
   “Supreme Autocratic Power.”
– In the Coup of June 1907 (aka Stolypin’s Coup),
   the Tsar dissolved the Second State Duma and
   changed Russian electoral law so fundamentally by
   decree that the conservatives would dominate
   the next Duma assembly. Many historians regard
   this as the end of the Russian Revolution of 1905
.
   The new electoral law succeeded in transferring a
   larger proportion of electors from the peasants and
   other lower classes to the propertied classes, but
   it failed to preserve the Russian monarchy.

The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party permanently split into factions in 1912,
because the Bolsheviks want the true proletariat (workers) to lead the revolution and the Mensheviks believed the bourgeoisie (business owners) should be in control.

July Crisis of 1914 and outbreak of World War I

  • 28 June 1914 (NS): Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and the Black Hand secret society, assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo. The Black Hand wanted Austria-Hungary’s southern Slav provinces to join together to create Yugoslavia.
  • Summer 1914: Rasputin tells Tsar Nicholas II in a letter that war with Germany will bring indescribable horror and suffering to Russia.
  • 6 July 1914 (NS): Germany announces its full support for Austria-Hungary if it attacks Serbia.
  • 9 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government begins to investigate whether or not the Serbian government was involved in a plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand
  • 13 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government discovers that the Serbian army was involved in Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.
  • 23 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government makes 15 demands of the Serbian government, including that it arrest the Black Hand groups’sleaders and send them to Vienna for trial.
  • 24 July 1914 (NS): Serbia appeals to Russia for support against Austria-Hungary’s threatened attack.
  • 28 July 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary invades and declares war on Serbia.
  • 31 July 1914 (NS): Russia mobilizes its army to support Serbia and sends troops to its borders with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
  • 1-4 August 1914 (NS): Germany declares war on Russia, France and Belgium.
  • 4 August 1914 NS): Britain declares war in Germany.
  • 6 August 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia.
  • 10 August 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary invades Russia.
  • 18 August 1914 (NS): Saint Petersburg is renamed Petrograd to make it sound less German.

Food Shortages: In 1914, Russian officials grossly overestimated Russia’s grain-growing potential and ability to sustain itself during a war effort. Within one year, towns and cities across the empire were suffering from shortages of food, kerosene and textiles. Production problems and diverting and transporting supplies to support war needs caused the shortages for cities and civilians. Food shortages caused discontent and riots throughout World War I, the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War. Cities often received much less than they required – sometimes less than 10 to 20% of what they needed.

Politically-motivated co-operatives fought high prices, supplied the armed forces with food, cared for soldiers’ families and set up credit partnerships in the countryside. The co-operatives grew without a bureaucratic apparatus of distribution from 208 in 1914 to 608 in 1917 and regularly provided goods to urban and rural populations.1

Food riots over high prices and food scarcity usually occurred at the markets and grew from about 20 in 1915 to 288 in 1916. In 1917, the riots became unstoppable when the police and soldiers joined the rioters. 1

See February Revolution, 9-25 March 1917, State Committee on Food Supply and Shortages in Russia during the Revolution & Civil War.

Rasputin’s influence during World War I: Even though Tsarina Alexandra was long-vilified by Russians for her German background, Nicholas left her in charge of domestic affairs when he took command of Russian forces on the front in 1915. Alexandra subsequently dismissed effective ministers and followed Rasputin’s disastrous advice which:
– paralyzed Russia’s administration,
– plunged Russia into economic despair,
– led to the death of approximately 1,997,500 Russian
   soldiers in hopeless battles and
– made ordinary Russians and the upper classes hate
   and distrust the privileged Romanov regime.

Rasputin was assassinated on 30 December 1916 (NS) by a group of conservative noblemen who resented his mysterious influence over Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. 1  2

27 January 1917 (OS), Alexander Protopopov, an Octobrist and Imperial Russia’s Minister of the Interior, orders the arrest of the leaders of the Central Workers’ Group (precursor to the Petrograd Soviet. They are imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

February Revolution 23 February – 3 March 1917 (OS):
– Demonstrators and striking workers – many of
   them women – protest food shortages and the
   war in Petrograd/Saint Petersburg. Garrison forces
   side with the protesters.
– The protesters free the Central Workers’ Group
   leaders from the Peter and Paul Fortress.
– The strikes spread, Tsar Nicholas II orders the
   police to use force to put them down and about
   1,300 people are killed and injured.
Dual power: The Provisional Government and the
   Petrograd Soviet control Russia from February to
   October 1917, but they don’t do it together. The
   former was created to govern until it organized
   the Constituent Assembly elections and the
   Assembly was able to govern. The Provisional
    Government was not popular because it continued
   Russian involvement in World War I and ruled with
   an iron fist.
– The Petrograd Soviet’s power came from the
   Russian people and it blamed the Provisional
   Government for delaying and then rigging the
   election. It promised to support the Assembly only if
   it acted quickly and decisively regarding land reform,
   getting Russia out of World War I, the nation’s wealth
   and protecting the working class from exploitation.
– Fearing that garrison soldiers who’d joined the
   protestors in Petrograd would become
   uncontrollable, the Provisional Government told
   them to return to their barracks and obey their
   officers.
– The Petrograd Soviet undermined this order
   by passing Order No. 1 which required soldiers to
   only follow orders that were approved by the
   Petrograd Soviet. It also gave elected soldier
   committees enough power to counter-balance the
   power of army officers.
2 March 1917 (OS): Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the
   throne of Russia
on behalf of himself and his son,
   Tsarevich Alexei. Prince G. E. Lvov is made the first
   post-imperial prime minister of Russia (aka
   Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the new
   Provisional Government) by decree and he possesses
   absolute power from 2 March to 11 July 1917 (OS)
   when he resigns in favor of Alexander Kerensky .
March 1917 (OS): The Provisional Government
   arrests Nicholas and Alexandra
and imprisons
   them with the rest of the Romanovs at the
   Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. They are
   held captive in the Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk
   from August 1917 to April 1918.

9-25 March 1917, State Committee on Food Supply establishes a state grain monopoly with fixed prices. State officials, merchants, and landowners oversaw the monopoly and imposed requisition levels on the peasantry because they assumed that currency values would remain stable. They were wrong. Currency values fell, peasants clashed with suppliers and food shortages became even worse. By October, there were food lines in most towns and cities. Desperate people who resorted to shoplifting and ransacking to feed their families were attacked by others who were furious that they didn’t have the goods. Food shortages delegitimized the Provisional Government because it used the same food supply policies (rationing, monopolies and requisitions) as the tsar.

April Crisis 1  2
1 March 1917 (OS): Appeal to All the Peoples of the
   World
by N.N. Sukhanov and the Petrograd Soviet,
   criticizes Russsia’s continued participation in
   World War I and its ambition to expand. The
   letter clearly stated that the Provisional
   Government should focus on intra-national
   issues, such as inflation and very limited
   resources. Russia’s lower classes subsequently
   began to agree more with Soviet ideals because
   the the Provisional Government provided them
    no relief with these issues.
27 March 1917 (OS): Declaration of War Aims: The
   Provisional Government responds by renouncing
   expansionist war aims, annexations, and
   indemnities but asserts the need to observe
   treaty obligations.
April 1917, April Theses: Lenin returns to Petrograd
   to condemn the Provisional Government and the
   Petrograd Soviet, demand that all power transfer
   to the socialist-dominated workers’ and soldiers’
   councils that were called “Soviets,” reject any
   cooperation with the Provisional Government or the
   Mensheviks, and end Russian involvement in the
   war.
– After his views were published in Pravda, Lenin
  faced opposition from other partyleaders for
  setting the Bolsheviks apart from the other
  socialist groups.
20 April 1917 (NS): Milyukov Note Foreign Minister
   Pavel Milyukov sent a note to the allies that
   reaffirmed the Provisional Government’s
   commitment to winning the war and observing
   all treaties entered by Tsar Nicholas II.
Demonstrations: In Petrograd, mass demonstrations
   and street fights forced the resignation of Milyukov
   and War Minister, Aleksandr Guchkov, the Soviet
   Executive Committee reservedly accepted an
   invitation from the Provisional Government to form a
   coalition government of socialists and
   non-socialists.
17 May 1917 (NS): Socialist-Revolutionary, Victor
   Chernov, and Mensheviks Irakli Tseretelli and
   Mikhail Skobelev, join Kerensky in the Provisional
   Government and cause:
   * continued involvement in World War I,
   * more blurring between the dual lines of power,
   * an inextricable linking between the Bolsheviks’
     socialist rivals and the Provisional Government’s
     policies, and
   * the refusal of far-left leaning Bolsheviks to
     participate in what they regard as a “bourgeois”
     coalition government.



Bolshevik popularity increased because they were the only party that was against Russian involvement in World War I.

The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (16 June – 7 July 1917; NS) was dominated by Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and other pro-government parties. It:
– rejected Bolshevik resolutions to transfer all power to
   the Soviets and end involvement in World War I,
– confirmed the supremacy of the Russian Provisional
   Government, and
– supported continuing the “revolutionary war.”

Kerensky Offensive, 1917 (aka June, July or Galician Offensive): Russia, led by its Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, tried to turn the war in its favor by attacking Austria-Hungary on 1 July 1917 (NS). The Russian army was initially successful but it collapsed before the Austrian/German counter-offensive on July 6th. This offensive was very badly timed because:
– Russians had been calling for peace since the
   February Revolution,
– there was a widespread lack of discipline and
   exhaustion within the Russian army, and
– it further exacerbated suffering and shortages
   throughout Russia.

16-20 July 1917 (NS), July Days: During July Days, soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers held spontaneous, armed demonstrations against the Russian Provisional Government that were more violent than the ones that began the February Revolution. The Provisional Government blamed the Bolsheviks for the increased violence, dispersed their party in a subsequent crackdown and arrested many of their leaders, including Leon Trotsky. Vladimir Lenin escaped to Finland.

Aug-Sept 1917 (NS): Kornilov affair: General Kornilov, the most popular general in the Russian army in 1917, attempted to capture Petrograd, force out the Bolsheviks and establish a strictly disciplined right-wing dictatorship. He failed and the victory of the far-left became inevitable.

25-26 October 1917 (OS), Bolshevik Revolution 1  2  3  4 (aka the October Revolution, October Uprising, October Coup or Red October; 7-8 November (NS)): From October 25th to 26th (OS), the Bolshevik Red Guard took control of Petrograd’s government buildings, railway stations and telegraph office. They took full control of the government and transferred all power to the Congress of Soviets.

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies created the Council of People’s Commissars (aka Sovnarkom) as its highest governmental body:
  – Chairman, Vladimir Lenin
  – Bonch-Bruyevich, Head of the Administration of the Council
  – Trotsky, People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs
  – Stalin, People’s Commissariat of Nationalities.

The Council quickly issued:
– a proclamation that explained the new soviet
   government and overthrew the Provisional    Government.
– the convocation of the Constituent Assembly,
Decree on Land proclaimed that “private ownership    of land shall be abolished forever” so land could
   “become the property of the whole people, and shall
   pass into the use of those who cultivate it.” This
   decree legitimized the new government in the eyes
   of the peasants.
Decree on Peace proposes an immediate withdrawal
   of Russia from World War I without conceding any
   lands, reparations or indemnities.
Decree on the Press abolishes the ‘bourgeois’ press.
– Abolished the death penalty.
Workers’ decrees outlined measures for an eight-
   hour work day, minimum wage and the running
   of factories.

7 November 1917: Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (aka known as Soviet Russia, Russian Federation or Russia) was created as an independent socialist state and it was one of the four original republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) when it was founded by treaty in December 1922. Ukraine, Belorussia (Belarus), and Transcaucasia (divided into Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in 1940) were the other three. With more than half of its population and three-quarters of its territory, Russia was and remained the largest republic in the
USSR.

25 November – 9 December 1917 (NS), Constituent Assembly Elections became the largest single election to that point in history when about 47 million (64%) Russians cast their secret ballots. The election results were surprising:
– Socialist Revolutionaries: 38% (peasantry & land
   reform supporters)
– Bolsheviks: 24% (industrial centers like Petrograd &
   Moscow; soldiers),
– Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries & allies: 12.6%,
– Kadets: 4.6%
– Mensheviks: 3%,
– Constitutional Democrats (2.4%).       1  2

Lenin and the Bolsheviks questioned the legitimacy of the election results and believed the Bolsheviks should retain power because the split in the SR party meant that it did not have a voting majority. The Bolsheviks arrested and replaced some of the Assembly’s newly elected deputies. One of the replacements was Uritsky, a loyal Bolshevik and future leader of the Petrograd CHEKA.

Lenin quickly passed a resolution through the Central Committee that demobilized the army and sought an armistice with Germany to get Russia out of World War I.

3 March 2018, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (NS) Russia signed a treaty with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria) to end its participation in World War I (1914-18).

December 1917: All Russians receive 1/4 pound of bread per day. Bread and flour are sold openly for extortionate prices.

Early December 1917 (NS): The Sovnarkom creates the CHEKA (aka the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) to repress all political opposition of the Bolshevik government. The CHEKA was the first Soviet secret-police organization and it arrested, imprisoned, and executed without trial “enemies of the people. These included the bourgeoisie, clergy, libertarians and socialists of Petrograd, anarchists and other leftists. 1 2 3 4

5 January 5 1918 (NS): In the Constituent Assembly’s first meeting in Tauride Palace, they elected Viktor Chernov, a moderate SR leader and staunch opponent of Lenin, as chairman, and replaced the Soviet decrees on peace and land with SR policies. The Bolsheviks grew so frustrated that they walked out. When the SRs returned to Tauride Palace the next day, the Red Guard barricaded the entrances and said the Congress of Soviets had dissolved the assembly.

Later that day, Lenin gave a speech and said that the Soviets had “taken all the power and rights into their own hands. The Constituent Assembly is the highest expression of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which are no longer necessary in a socialist state.”

Few were surprised at this turn in events or that Russia’s first real attempt at a democratic government was quickly replaced by a Bolshevik dictatorship.

Felix Dzerzhinsky (1 2 3), head of the CHEKA (1917-1922) and the GPU/OGPU (1922-1926).

18 January 1918: Constituent Assembly opens

28 January 1918: After significant Bolshevik losses in combat, Leon Trotsky reorganizes the Red Guard into a larger and more effective army that the Sovnarkom names the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army by decree.

1/14 February 1918 (OS/NS): Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar.

3 March 1918, Brest-Litovsk Treaty Leon Trotsky successfully ends Russia’s involvement in World War I but Russia must recognize the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; give up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and cede Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey. Lenin bitterly called the settlement “that abyss of defeat, dismemberment, enslavement and humiliation.” L

The Russian Civil War, 1918-1923 (1 2 3) began because many groups opposed Lenin’s Bolsheviks (Reds 1 2 3) and one-party rule. Opposing groups were collectively called the Whites (1 2). Their moderate to conservative leaders had different agendas and largely acted independently of each other. They were:
– political monarchists, capitalists and social
   democrats,
– rival militant socialists and Makhnovia anarchists,
– Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs), and
– non-ideological, armed peasant groups known as
   Green armies who fought to protect their land and
   communities from requisition or third-party
   reprisals by the Reds, the Whites or foreign
   interventionists
.

8 March 1918: Russia became the first communist country in the world when the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the All-Russian Communist Party. In 1925, they changed their name to All-Union Communist Party and then to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the 19th Party Congress in 1952.

11 March 1918: Vladimir Lenin moved Russia’s capital further inland from Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to Moscow on 5 March 1917 and restored the Kremlin as the Soviet Union’s political center.

March 1918: Leon Trotsky is appointed People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs.

10-13 April 1918: The first major battle between the Red and White Armies is fought at Yekaterinodar; the White Army’s commander is killed in combat.

4-10 July 1918: The All-Russian Socialist Federated Soviets meet and adopt a Soviet Constitution that grants equal rights to men and women, .

Mid-July 2018: Former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, their five children, and four attendants are executed in Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, a city on the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains, in the late night or early morning hours of 16/17 July 1918. Forensic investigation uncovered their remains in a forest near Yekaterinburg in 1991.

13 August 1918: The Red Army decisively wins the Battle of Sviyazhsk.

30 August 1918: An assassination attempt by Fanny Kaplan seriously injures Lenin’s face and shoulder on

5-10 September 1918: The Red Army defeats the White Army (Czechoslovak Legion and the People Army of Komuch), Battle of Kazan.

Shortages in Russia
during the Revolution & Civil War



      “The distrust many felt initially was increased in 1918 by the steadily worsening economic conditions. The country had already been at war for four years and was entering a devastating period of civil war which would last another three. Even women who had taken part in Soviet projects now concentrated all their free time on the search for food and greeted Bolshevik organizers with demands that they produce the promised better life. Aleksandra Kollontai wrote of Moscow in 1918, “There was hunger here. Oh, what hunger! The people didn’t remember anything like it. They didn’t take into account the reasons for the hunger, they forgot that under the tsarist regime they had died from hunger…. They felt only that there wasn’t any bread, and there wasn’t. Who was guilty?” Many women believed that the Bolsheviks were. They were the government, they had promised food, and the people were starving. The fact that the party was struggling with a devastated economy in civil war was not a sufficient excuse. The red banners hung everywhere might proclaim (in strange foreign words like “republic”) the dawn of a new world, but the new world did not feed hungry children. Nor did the party’s many declarations of its intention to establish decent dining rooms and nurseries and to raise wages after the war was won.
      The reality which the Bolsheviks could not change required that women work all day, then search for food in government stores or on the black market. They also had to scrounge for fuel with which to cook their food and heat their wretched rooms. They had to barter for clothing or find ways to mend what they had. They had to struggle to keep their children in school while hoping that they would not contract typhus, diphtheria, or cholera from other children. Like peasant women, working-class women also might suffer punishment from men or other women if they participated in politics. Given their burdens and the risks of political activity, it is hardly surprising that these tired and hungry women did not rush to join in Saturday work projects or volunteer to aid the war effort in other ways. Some charged that the only people who were living better since the revolution were the Bolsheviks themselves. Worn out, thousands, perhaps millions, of women finally abandoned the cities and returned to their native villages where food could still be found.” 2

World War I Ends: On 11 November 1918, the Allies defeated Germany and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles annulled the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.   1  2

Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was Russia’s internationally recognized head of state from 18 November 1918 to 6 February 1920. He failed to unite the White Movement and boosted Bolshevik morale by refusing to consider autonomy for ethnic minorities or cooperate with non-Bolshevik leftists. When the White Movement fell apart he was detained by French general Maurice Janin and the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia. In January 1920, they turned him over to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and in February 1920, a CHEKA firing squad executed him in Irkutsk.

December 1918-January 1919: France and other Allied nations send troops to Russia to support the White Movement.

1921: Kronstadt Rebellion The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks after the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. 1

December 1922: The Council of People’s Commissars created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). It was governed by the Communist Party and modelled after the first Sovnarkom.

Lenin vs Stalin: Their Showdown Over the Birth
   of the USSR

   October/Bolshevik Revolution, 1917
     Bolsheviks
     Mensheviks

September 1921 – 16 June 1923: Kronstadt Rebellion The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks after the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. 1

Holodomor: 1932-33 Ukrainian man-made famine under Joseph Stalin kills 3.9 million people. 1  2  3  4   5

The Trotsky Assassination on 21 August 1940







Articles

Russian Revolution

Russian Revolution Timeline

The Russian Revolution: A Brief Outline

Chronology of the Russian Revolution

Russia’s Year Zero: The true story behind the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 by Oleg Yegorov & Alexey Timofeychev on Russia Beyond The Headlines

Lenin and the Bolsheviks

V. I. Lenin: On Bolshevism – Marxists Internet Archive

Death of a dynasty: How the Romanovs met their end by Toby Saul at NationalGeographic.com

Why Czar Nicholas II and the Romanovs Were Murdered

1918 | Yekaterinburg | Between Method and Execution | Disposing of the Romanovs LaphamsQuarterly.org

Comparing the Tsarist Russian and Soviet Empires by Magdalena Noga for InquiriesJournal.com

Stalin’s Victory: The Soviet Union & World War II by Geoffrey Roberts, Professor of History and International Relations at University College Cork.

The Roles of Lenin and Stalin in the Russian Revolution

Joseph Stalin during the Russian Revolution, Civil War, and the Polish–Soviet War

Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution



2 Golubinov, Iaroslav. “Food and Nutrition (Russian Empire).” 1914-1918-online. International
           Encyclopedia of the First World War
, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2018-08-13.
           DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.11292.

2 Clements, Barbara Evans. “Working-Class and Peasant Women in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1923.” Signs, Vol. 8,
           No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 228-229.