Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Intro- Causes of the Russian Revolution - Coggle Diagram
Intro- Causes of the Russian Revolution
WW1 was an important catalyst for the revolution
Failures of Tsar Nicholas II in WW1
When Russia entered World War I in 1914, the vast demand for factories to produce war supplies triggered even more labour riots and strikes.
Already largely opposed to the war, the Russian people supported the workers.
Suffering from a lack of equipment and supplies, the Russian soldiers themselves finally turned against the Tsar.
As the war progressed, many of the military officers who remained loyal to the Tsar were killed and replaced by discontented draftees with little loyalty to the Tsar.
Food and fuel shortages plagued Russia as inflation mounted. The already weak economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
The provisional government had been assembled by a group of leaders from Russia’s bourgeois capitalist class. However, Lenin called for a Soviet government that would be ruled directly by councils of soldiers, peasants and workers.
The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in Petrograd, and soon formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Lenin became the dictator of the world’s first communist state.
On July 16, 1918, the Bolsheviks executed the Romanovs. The Russian Civil War ended in 1923 with Lenin’s Red Army (who fought for Lenin's Bolshevik army) claiming victory and establishing the Soviet Union.
Lenin secretly organized factory workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors into Red Guards—a volunteer paramilitary force. The Red Guards captured Provisional Government buildings in a bloodless coup d'état
Unpopular Government
Even before World War I, many sections of Russia had become dissatisfied with the autocratic Russian government under Czar Nicholas II
Blinded by his visions of the Romanov monarchy that has ruled Russia since 1613, Nicholas II remained unaware of the declining state of his country.
This belief made him unwilling to allow social and political reforms that could have relieved the suffering of the Russian people resulting from his incompetent management of the war effort.
Believing his power had been granted by Divine Right, Nicholas assumed that the people would show him unquestioning loyalty.
Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government, thus precipitating the overthrow of the House of Romanov shortly after his assassination.
Changes in the Working Class
rural agrarian peasants resented being forced to pay the government back for their minimal allotments of land and continued to press for communal ownership of the land they worked..
Under the elementary theory of property, Russian peasants believed that land should belong to those who farmed it.
Russian peasants believed that land should belong to those who farmed it.
inadequate railway system combined with the diversion of resources, production, and transport to war needs caused widespread famine, droves of remaining workers fled the cities seeking food.