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Alexander III
Alexander III was the second son of Alexander II and of Maria Aleksandrovna. In 1881, his father was assassinated, by the dissatisfied population, annoyed with his political changes. Consequently, he was set to the throne.
He followed his grandfather´s (Nicholas I) ways of ruling, or principles of autocracy and took very strict measures due to his excessive power. In 1894, he died and his son Nicholas II became the king. Unfortunately, he continued using autocracy as a way of "good ruling". -
Abolishment of Serdom
The feudal system had been abandoned in western Europe as it moved into the commercial and industrial age, but in Russia there was no such transition.In 1816, 1817, and 1819 serfdom was abolished in Estland, Courland, and Livonia respectively. In 1861 serfdom, the system which tied the Russian peasants irrevocably to their landlords, was abolished at the Tsar’s imperial command, after military failure under Alexander II ruling. However,all the land stayed in noble hands and labor rent until 1868 -
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Nicholas II
He was the last tsar of Russia under Romanov rule. He became king after his father´s (Alexander III) death in 1894. Although he believed in autocracy, he was eventually forced to create an elected legislature. His poor handling of Bloody Sunday and Russia’s role in World War I led to his abdication and execution in 1918. -
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Lenin
Lenin´s speechVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state. It is said that he becamed a revolutionary when they hanged his brother due to his planning to kill the czars.
In 1900, he planned to overcome the czars as his brother did.He was the first leader of the USSR and the Communist government that took over Russia in 1917, and people started to call him "The father of the revolution". -
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Stalin
Stalin´s powerJoseph Stalin was a dictator, whcih ruled the Soviet Union for two decades, and also he was trying to modernize Russia and helping to defeat nazism. When Lenin suffered an stroke in 1922, he could not be in charge of the power, so there where two men, Stalin and Leon Trosky, who wanted his place. Stalin was cold, hard and impersonal, that is why he was called the "Man of Steel". From 1922 to1927, he took friends into power as supporters and in 1928, he took total control over the Communist Party -
Alexander III
In his principles of autocracy, all the authority was laid over a single person without any juristic regulation beyond their power. Moreover, he adopted programs, based on the concepts of Orthodoxy, that included the Russification of national minorities in the Russian Empire.As a result, the ones who questioned their authority and where outside the Orthodox Church, were considered "dangerous". He took measures such as ceansuring private writings, the use of Polish language and they killed Jews. -
Transsiberian
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Transsiberian
The Trans-Siberian Railway was done under the ruling of Nicholas II. In 1890s, he decided to rise the economy by financing industries with a rise of taxes and looking for foreign investors. Moreover, in 1891, with the economical help of Britain and France, they started to build up the longest continuos rail line, with a length of 9,289 km: the Transsiberian. It connected from west to east Russia. By 1900, Russia had grown in industry, and had become the fourth world´s ranking producer of steel. -
Nicholas II
Between the years 1863 and 1900, during Nicholas rule, the creation of factories rose sharply, but Russia was still behind industrial nations in Europe. Because of this, in 1890, Nicholas decided to rise taxes and he looked for investors. In 1891, they started building the Trans-Siberian railway, crossing Russia from West to East.In 1900, the country had become the forth worlds producer of steel. However, there were several problems with working conditions of workers, and strikes "borned". -
Division of Marxists into two groups
In 1903, the Marxists split into two different groups: Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Menshevisks, ruled by Julius Martov, wanted a wide base of support of the population and Bolsheviks, as the radical group, were dare to sacrifice everything for a change. This last one, was ruled by Vladimir Lenin, who fled to Western Europe in 1900 to escape from czarist arrest.After a first failure, in 1903, the party held a second congress, where Lenin asked having only professional revolutionaries. -
Russo Japanese War
From 1904 and 1917, there was a big crisis, which revolutionaries took as an advantage for rising the revolution. Meanwhile, there was a confront between Russia and Japan that came from the late 1800s, which were compiting for the territories of Manchuria and Korea. They made several agreements but Russia broke them. In revenge, Japan attacked at Port Arthur in February 1904, causing a revolt. The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. -
Bloody Sunday
Bloody SundayIn January of 1905, 200,000 workers and families went to the czar´s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, demanding better working conditions, more freedom, and an elected national legislature. They were fired and this caused lots of casualties. With this Bloody event, strikes were carried out again, filling up the streets with brutal violence. From that day on, Nicholas II insured more freedom,and created the Duma( first parliament) in May 1905 for a constitutional monarchy,soon later eliminated. -
WW1
In 1914, Nicholas II decided to enter to the war, although he knew that they were military and economically unprepared. Due to this, in the fisrt year of war, there were 4 million of casualties among the Russian soldiers. In 1915, they moved their headquarters to the war front. Meanwhile, Nichola´s wife was in charge of the power. She was greatly influenced by Rasputin, which "magicaly" cured her ill son. The war brought inflated prices and few supplies, so people wanted the end of the war. -
Murder of Rasputin
Rasputin was known as the mad monk, who had a role as a mystical adviser in the court of Czar Nicholas II. Nicholas´s wife ,Alejandra, allowed him to carry political decisions in exchange of curing her son.On December 29, 1916, a group of conspirators, including the czar's first cousin, Duke Pavlovich, and Prince Yusupov, invited Rasputin to their palace, as they feared him to get too powerful. He was first poisoned with wine, then shot and finally thrown into the Neva River. -
Lenin
He was a good organizer and was said to be heartless.He agreed with Karl Marx´s views, wishing to create a dictatorship of proletariat to win the power over czars.That is why he created his own movement,adapted for the Soviet Union:"Leninism"In December 1895, he was sent to prison in Siberia for dealing with Marxist activities. After three years in exile, he returned and stepped up in the revolution. He was regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader and thinker since Marx. -
March (February) revolution
In March 1917, women textile workers in Petrograd made an strike, which in the next days caused several riots. More than 200,000 workers demanded a 50% higher wage for food. Also, they wanted the end of the autocracy and of the war. Fortunately, soldiers decided to join the workers in the strike. Consequently, this forced Nicholas II to abdicate. Later, the royal family was executed by the revolutionaries, giving an end to the czar´s rule.This brought a provisional government, ruled by Kerensky. -
Provisional government
In July days,the Russians continued to do badly in the war, food remained scarce and was too expensive for many. Moreover, food was usually denied for most of the population. When Lenin returned to Russia in April, he was blamed by the government for starting the riots, although he was not even related with it. -
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Provisional Government
When the revolutionaries executed the royal family, the czars were over. For that reason, they set a provisional government, ruled by Alexander Kerensky. He decided to continue the war, which got worse the conditions of Russia. The angry peasants wanted land and city workers used violence in many ways. Afterwards, the socialist revolutionaries formed the Soviets, which were ,indeed,local councils (workers and soldiers). Meanwhile, Lenin returned from exile in April, arriving in Petrogral. -
October Revolution
In November, armed factory workers attacked the Winter Palace. The "Bolshevik Red Guards",as the Bolsheviks were called, arrested the leaders of the provisional government, and finished,nearly as fast as with the czarist regime. As the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
When Bolsheviks where in power, Lenin gave farmland to peasants and gave control of factories to the workers and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This consisted in an agreement between Germany and Russia. This last ones gave part of their territory, such as the Baltic States, to Germany. Many citizens disagreed with the decisions of signing the treaty like agreeing to pay six billion German gold mark in reparations. As a result, a civil war broke in Russia. -
Civil war in Russia
After the civil war, a huge famine and an epidemic flu followed, killing more Russian population. The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded, and machines damaged. The industrial production value descended to one seventh of the value of 1913, and agriculture to one third. War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. -
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Civil war in Russia
Beginning of Civil WarWhen the civil war broke in Russia, Bolsheviks had more than just one problem. They had to take out their enimies from their path. The White army was created. It was made up of different groups: one supporting czars back, other asking for a democratic government and other made up of socialists against Lenin´s socialism. Anyway, all of them had a common objective, that was destroying the Bolsheviks. EEUU tried to help them but it was´t useful. Nearly 14 millions of people died, and famine follow -
NEP
For Lenin and his followers, the NEP was intended as aprovisional measure. However, it proved highly unpopular with the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik party because of its compromise with some capitalistic elements and the denial of state control, believing it would have a negative long-term economic effect. Lenin's successor, Stalin, introduced full central planning, re-nationalized much of the economy, and from the late 1920s,he introduced a policy of rapid industrialization, ending the NEP. -
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NEP
The New Economic Policy was created after the destruction of the Russian economy, a standstill trade and a drop in industrial production.Temporarily, Lenin decided to aside state-controlled economy, and instead, he created a type of capitalist policy: the NEC.It allowed peasants to sell the surplus of their crops, and governments were in charge of indurstries and banks. After the WWI, by 1928, farms and factories produced in the same way as they did before the war. -
USSR
In 1922, the country was called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in honor of the councils which helped in Bolsheviks Revolution. The communist party wanted a classless society, from the idea of Karl Marx, which was indeed a dictatorship of proletariat. In 1924, they made a constitution with socialist and democratical ideals. -
Stalin
Before the death of Lenin, Vladimir wrote that he was not sure that Stalin could take the power in a conscious way, as he was a very dangerous man. When J. Stalin took control of the Communist Party,in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin reversed the Bolshevik agrarian policy by taking land given earlier to the peasants and organizing collective farms.Stalin's health began to deteriorate in the early 1950s. After an assassination plot was uncovered, he died (March 5 1953) -
Trotsky into exile
Trotsky wanted a continuing world revolution that would result in eliminating the Soviet state. Furthemore,he criticized the new regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for failing to develop adequate economic planning. In response, Stalin and his supporters threw a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. He began his exile in Alma-Ata and in January 1929, was expelled from the Soviet Union.
