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The Decembrist Revolt
The Decembrists were primarily members of upper classes who had military backgrounds. Some participated in the Russian occupation of France after the Napoleonic Wars or served elsewhere in Wetern Europe. The Decembrists started an uprising to take out the Czar. -
Czar Alexander II Emancipates the Serfs
the system which tied the Russian peasants irrevocably to their landlords, was abolished at the Tsar’s imperial command. Four years later, slavery in the USA was similarly declared unlawful by presidential order. Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) shared with his father, Nicholas I, a conviction that American slavery was inhumane. This is not as hypocritical as it might first appear. The serfdom that had operated in Russia since the middle of the seventeenth century was technically not slavery. The lan -
Czar Nicholas II abdicates the Russian throne
Cwoned, Nicholas was neither trained nor inclined to rule, it doesn't help autocracy so he sought to preserve in an era desperate for change. Nicholas soon retracted most concessions thought by groups of people. He, his family and several servants were gunned down on the night of July 16. -
● The Social-Democratic Labor Party splits into two groups, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
57 delegates to the Second Congress of the minuscul, quarrelsome and apparently ineffectual Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party assembled in a flea-ridden flour warehouse in Brussels on July 30th, 1903. Georgi Plekhanov, the respected veteran Russian Marxist, was elected chairman, but the delegates felt uneasy in Belgium and moved to London, where the authorities could be relied on to ignore them. Their sessions were held in an angling club with fishing trophies on the walls and in -
the russo-japanese war
The negotiations took place in August in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and were brokered in part by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. The final agreement was signed in September of 1905, and it affirmed the Japanese presence in south Manchuria and Korea and ceded the southern half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan. -
Bloody Sunday
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 -
RUssian Revolution of 1905
uprising that was instrumental in convincing Tsar Nicholas II to attempt the transformation of the Russian government from an autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. For several years before 1905 and especially after the humiliating Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), diverse social groups demonstrated their discontent with the Russian social and political system. Their protests ranged from liberal rhetoric to strikes and included student riots and terrorist assassinations. These efforts, coordinate -
World War I (Russian Involvement)
Russia’s involvement in these early exchanges centred around their attack on Germany in what was East Prussia. The Russian first army marched straight into the heart of German territory while the country’s second army moved to head off Germany’s eighth army’s retreat. This was, initially a successful joint mission which led to plans to March on Berlin. -
Vladimir Lenin
Lenin wanted to lead his Bolsheviks to power by exploiting the war-weariness that affected Russian citizens and soldiers alike. Throughout the spring and summer he attempted to rally the crowds in the streets of St. Petersburg through rabble-rousing speeches that called for Russia’s immediate withdrawal from the war. However, his efforts to transform the enflamed passions of the people to a march on the headquarters of the Provisional Government at the former Czar’s Winter Palace failed.
