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Period: to
Russia
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The Great Northern War
Peter the Great simply wanted a foothold in the Baltic as a move towards greatness in the region.The invasion of Russia started in 1707. Charles had planned for a two-pronged attack. Charles XII, himself, invaded Russia via Smolensk while Count Lewenhaupt invaded Russia via Riga. -
Decemberist Revolt
A revolt put on by military officals against the czar. They felt threatened by the czars power and he did not deserve the throne. The czar was trying to talk peace to the revolting 3,000 people. Finally the czar gave the order to fire upon the revolters. -
Czar Alexander Emanicipates the serfs
In March 1861, on the same day that Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office, Alexander issued his Emancipation Manifesto. In charge of the program of emancipation was the adjutant-general, Count Panin, who had owned 20,000 serfs. Serfs were to pay for their freedom not as individuals but collectively. Except in the Ukraine and a few other areas, lands were distributed to communities of former serfs, communities communes. -
Assanination of Alexander II
Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, is killed in the streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary "People's Will" group. The People's Will, organized in 1879, employed terrorism and assassination in their attempt to overthrow Russia's czarist autocracy. They murdered officials and made several attempts on the czar's life before finally assassinating him on March 13, 1881 -
Bloody Sunday
On January 22, 1905, a group of workers led by the radical priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands. Imperial forces opened fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Strikes and riots broke out throughout the country in outraged response to the massacre, to which Nicholas responded by promising the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform. -
Russo- Japanese War
Saint Petersburg forced the Chinese into leasing Port Arthur to Russia, together with the Liaotung Peninsula on which it stood. For Russia this meant the acquisition of an ice-free naval base in the Far East to supplement Vladivostok. For Japan it was a case of adding insult to injury. Japan was heavily engaged in Korea, successfully increasing her influence in that country. Russia also had interest in Korea, and although at first Russians and Japanese managed to peacefully coexist. -
Revolution of 1905
The massacre caused revolt throughout the nation. Worker strikes, agricultural struggles, terrorism, and army mutiny were among the problems now facing the tsar. Political groups such as the Soviet, a workers council, and the Constitutional Democratic Party, commonly referred to as the Kadets, were formed. The tsar left the country and headed to America, where he spent the next few months at a peace conference working to put a complete end to the Russo- Japanese War. -
March Revolution
The March revolution forced the Czar to abdicate, established freedom of the press, and granted a blanket amnesty to political prisoners in Siberia - including terrorists. After the Czar's abdication, power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as "soviets." -
Czar Nicholas II abdicates the Russian throne
The disaster of the Russo-japanese war led to the Russian revolution of 1905. In 1914 the Czar led the country into another costly war. In March 1917 the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. -
WWI Russia
The food shortages in the major urban centres brought about civil unrest, which escalated into the February Revolution that forced Tsar to abdicate. The large war casualties also created disaffection and mutinous attitudes in the army.
