1. The Causes of the Russian Revolution 1917
Part I: March and Part II: November

2. Brief Background of Russia
• Russia was powerful in the 19th c.
• very slow to modernize
• absolutism: the rule of czars
• Russo-Japanese War 1904
• Revolution of 1905; false promises

3. March Revolution: Cause #1
• leadership of Czar Nicholas II
• feudalism
• World War I = 9,000,000 casualties

4. March Revolution: Cause #2
• World War I
• worst equipped army
• highest number of casualties

5. March Revolution: Cause #3
• Starvation and poverty
• lack of land for the masses
• foreign owned factories
• bread riots (March 1917)
• Czar abdicated his thrown!

6. Provisional Government Takes Power
• it slow to implement reforms
• fateful decision...
• division among revolutionaries: Bolsheviks
versus Mensheviks

7. November Revolution
• Lenin: “Peace, Land and Bread”
• Marxist: communism now!
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
• not everyone is happy...

8. Russian Civil War 1918-1921
• “whites” vs “reds”
• Allies intervene
• Czar was executed (July 1918)
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922)

9. Why should you care?
• first communist revolution ever
• step on the path to becoming a super power
• seeds of animosity for the Cold War
• fear of Communism influences USFP
• fear of nuclear war 1949-1989