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Russia experienced great changes in the latter half of the 1800's and in the early 1900's.
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The serfs were freed in 1861.
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The Marxists formed the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1903, it split into two groups. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as V. I. Lenin, argued that party membership should be limited to a small number of professional revolutionaries. His opponents supported fewer limitations on party membership. Lenin named his faction the Bolsheviks and his opponents the Mensheviks
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Russia’s economy slowed, the country waged an unsuccessful war with Japan, and social unrest grew.
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On Jan. 22, 1905, thousands of men, women, and children peacefully marched to Czar Nicholas's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the capital. Their intention was to deliver a petition asking for better working conditions and a democratically elected assembly. The czar's soldiers fired on the demonstrators, killing or wounding hundreds of them.
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In December 1905, the army crushed an uprising in Moscow and police arrested the members of the St. Petersburg Soviet, including revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.
Nicholas and his officials refused to give up much power, and the Duma did not work in the way the liberals had hoped. -
Czar Nicholas had taken command of armies in the field in the fall of 1915.
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In December 1916, a group of Russian nobles loyal to the czar murdered Rasputin.
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On March 8, 1917, strikes and riots over food and coal shortages broke out in Petrograd. This uprising became known as the February Revolution. Troops sent to stop the uprising joined the demonstrators instead.In response, some moderate and liberal members of the Duma set up a provisional government.
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On March 15, 1917, the government forced Czar Nicholas to abdicate. Nicholas and his family were later taken into custody. The Bolsheviks killed them at Yekaterinburg in 1918.
Also in March 1917, leaders of several workers’ groups, left-leaning members of the Duma.
