Russian Revolution and Civil War
Before February 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar which was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar that most of the Western world used; on 1 March 1900, the Julian calendar became 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. On this page, dates are labeled OS if they are Julian and NS if they are Gregorian. After 1918, all dates are provided in Gregorian style (NS).
| Emancipation Edict: Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom in Russia on 19 February 1861 (OS).
Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in March 1881 by the radical group known as Peoples Will. He is succeeded by Tsar Alexander III who repressed civil rights and freedom of the press with anti-terrorism measures. Tsar Alexander II's pogroms against the Jews result in a mass emigration of 2.5 million Jews to western Europe and the Americas between 1881 and 1914. The terror caused by anti-Semitic pogroms reached its peak in October 1905. Famine in Russia from 1891 to 1892 kills between 375,000-400,000 people and affects millions more. Tsar Alexander III, dies suddenly on 20 October 1894 (OS) and Nicholas II becomes Tsar Vladimir Lenin is arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years on 8 December 1895 (OS). Khodynka Tragedy: After Tsar Nicholas IIs coronation on 18 May 1896 (OS), the crowd thought there was a shortage of free souvenir gifts and rushed the stalls. 1,389 people were killed in the stampede. Each persons gift was a spice-bread, a piece of sausage, sweets and walnuts, a bread roll from the famous Moscow baker Filippov and a commemorative painted enamel mug, all wrapped in a headscarf. |
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The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (SDs, RSDLP aka the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party) forms in 1898 as a socialist political party to unify various revolutionary groups and to oppose the Narodniks revolutionary agrarian populism (later known as the Socialist Revolutionary Party or SRs). The RSDLP believes in the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and that Russias revolutionary strength will come from its industrial working class. Differences in political ideology split the ineffectual Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in November 1903. Younger Russians preferred the Bolsheviks because they were committed to a proletariat-based revolution and because they took a stronger stance against the bourgeoisie (the materialistic middle-class).1 2 1903: Grigori Rasputin arrives in Saint Petersburg and develops a reputation as a starets (holy man) with healing and prophetical powers. 1 2 1905 Revolution 1 2 After strikes and riots erupt throughout Russia in response to this massacre, Tsar Nicholas II from 25 miles south at his palace in Tsarskoye Selo, promised to work toward reform with the Duma (representative assemblies). June 1905, the Tsar ordered troops to quash riots in Odessa that began in response to the mutiny on the Potemkin battleship. July 1905: The Tsar and Tsarina meet Rasputin and are convinced that he can help their severely hemophiliac son, Tsarevich Alexei. October 1905: April 1906, Tsar Nicholas issued the Fundamental Laws of 1906, that re-established his total command over Russia and prevented the October Manifesto from limiting his Supreme Autocratic Power. In the Coup of June 1907 (aka Stolypins Coup), the Tsar dissolved the Second State Duma and changed Russian electoral law so fundamentally by decree that the conservatives would dominate the next Duma assembly. Many historians regard this as the end of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The new electoral law succeeded in transferring a larger proportion of electors from the peasants and other lower classes to the propertied classes, but it failed to preserve the Russian monarchy. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party permanently split into factions in 1912, because the Bolsheviks want the true proletariat (workers) to lead the revolution and the Mensheviks believed the bourgeoisie (business owners) should be in control. July Crisis of 1914 and outbreak of World War I - 28 June 1914 (NS): Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and the Black Hand secret society, assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo. The Black Hand wanted Austria-Hungarys southern Slav provinces to join together to create Yugoslavia.- Summer 1914: Rasputin tells Tsar Nicholas II in a letter that war with Germany will bring indescribable horror and suffering to Russia. - 6 July 1914 (NS): Germany announces its full support for Austria-Hungary if it attacks Serbia. - 9 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government begins to investigate whether or not the Serbian government was involved in a plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. - 13 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government discovers that the Serbian army was involved in Franz Ferdinands assassination. - 23 July 1914 (NS): Austro-Hungarian government makes 15 demands of the Serbian government, including that it arrest the Black Hand groupssleaders and send them to Vienna for trial. - 24 July 1914 (NS): Serbia appeals to Russia for support against Austria-Hungarys threatened attack. - 28 July 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary invades and declares war on Serbia. - 31 July 1914 (NS): Russia mobilizes its army to support Serbia and sends troops to its borders with Germany and Austria-Hungary. - 1-4 August 1914 (NS): Germany declares war on Russia, France and Belgium. - 4 August 1914 NS): Britain declares war in Germany. - 6 August 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia. - 10 August 1914 (NS): Austria-Hungary invades Russia. - 18 August 1914 (NS): Saint Petersburg is renamed Petrograd to make it sound less German. Food Shortages: In 1914, Russian officials grossly overestimated Russia's grain-growing potential and ability to sustain itself during a war effort. Within one year, towns and cities across the empire were suffering from shortages of food, kerosene and textiles. Production problems and diverting and transporting supplies to support war needs caused the shortages for cities and civilians. Food shortages caused discontent and riots throughout World War I, the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War. Cities often received much less than they required sometimes less than 10 to 20% of what they needed. Politically-motivated co-operatives fought high prices, supplied the armed forces with food, cared for soldiers families and set up credit partnerships in the countryside. The co-operatives grew without a bureaucratic apparatus of distribution from 208 in 1914 to 608 in 1917 and regularly provided goods to urban and rural populations.1 Food riots over high prices and food scarcity usually occurred at the markets and grew from about 20 in 1915 to 288 in 1916. In 1917, the riots became unstoppable when the police and soldiers joined the rioters. 1 See: Rasputin's influence during World War I: Even though Tsarina Alexandra was long-vilified by Russians for her German background, Nicholas left her in charge of domestic affairs when he took command of Russian forces on the front in 1915. Alexandra subsequently dismissed effective ministers and followed Rasputin's disastrous advice which: paralyzed Russias administration, plunged Russia into economic despair, led to the death of approximately 1,997,500 Russian soldiers in hopeless battles and made ordinary Russians and the upper classes hate and distrust the privileged Romanov regime. Rasputin was assassinated on 30 December 1916 (NS) by a group of conservative noblemen who resented his mysterious influence over Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. 1 2 27 January 1917 (OS), Alexander Protopopov, an Octobrist and Imperial Russias Minister of the Interior, orders the arrest of the leaders of the Central Workers Group (precursor to the Petrograd Soviet. They are imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. February Revolution 23 February - 3 March 1917 (OS): Demonstrators and striking workers many of them women, protest food shortages and the war in Petrograd/Saint Petersburg. Garrison forces side with the protesters who free the Central Workers Group leaders from the Peter and Paul Fortress. The strikes spread, Tsar Nicholas II orders the police to use force to put them down and about 1,300 people are killed and injured. Dual power: The Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet control Russia from February to October 1917, but they don't do it together. The former was created to govern until it organized the Constituent Assembly elections and the Assembly was able to govern. The Provisional Government was not popular because it continued Russian involvement in World War I and ruled with an iron fist. The Petrograd Soviets power came from the Russian people and it blamed the Provisional Government for delaying and then rigging the election. It promised to support the Assembly only if it acted quickly and decisively regarding land reform, getting Russia out of World War I, the nations wealth and protecting the working class from exploitation. Fearing that garrison soldiers who'd joined the protestors in Petrograd would become uncontrollable, the Provisional Government told them to return to their barracks and obey their officers. The Petrograd Soviet undermined this order by passing Order No. 1 which required soldiers to only follow orders that were approved by the Petrograd Soviet. It also gave elected soldier committees enough power to counter-balance the power of army officers. 2 March 1917 (OS): Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne of Russia on behalf of himself and his son, Tsarevich Alexei. Prince G. E. Lvov is made the first post-imperial prime minister of Russia (aka) Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the new>Provisional Government) by decree and he possesses absolute power from 2 March to 11 July 1917 (OS) when he resigns in favor of Alexander Kerensky. March 1917 (OS): The Provisional Government arrests Nicholas and Alexandra and imprisons them with the rest of the Romanovs at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. They are held captive in the Governors Mansion in Tobolsk from August 1917 to April 1918. 9-25 March 1917, State Committee on Food Supply establishes a state grain monopoly with fixed prices. State officials, merchants, and landowners oversaw the monopoly and imposed requisition levels on the peasantry because they assumed that currency values would remain stable. They were wrong. Currency values fell, peasants clashed with suppliers and food shortages became even worse. By October, there were food lines in most towns and cities. Desperate people who resorted to shoplifting and ransacking to feed their families were attacked by others who were furious that they didnt have the goods. Food shortages delegitimized the Provisional Government because it used the same food supply policies (rationing, monopolies and requisitions) as the tsar. 1 March 1917 (OS): Appeal to All the Peoples of the World by N.N. Sukhanov and the Petrograd Soviet, criticizes Russsia's continued participation in World War I and its ambition to expand. The letter clearly stated that the Provisional Government should focus on intra-national issues, such as inflation and very limited resources. Russia's lower classes subsequently began to agree more with Soviet ideals because the Provisional Government provided them no relief with these issues. 27 March 1917 (OS): Declaration of War Aims: The Provisional Government responds by renouncing expansionist war aims, annexations, and indemnities but asserts the need to observe treaty obligations. April 1917, April Theses: 20 April 1917 (NS): Milyukov Note Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov sent a note to the allies that reaffirmed the Provisional Government's commitment to winning the war and observing all treaties entered by Tsar Nicholas II. Demonstrations: In Petrograd, mass demonstrations and street fights forced the resignation of Milyukov and War Minister, Aleksandr Guchkov, the Soviet Executive Committee reservedly accepted an invitation from the Provisional Government to form a coalition government of socialists and non-socialists. 17 May 1917 (NS): Socialist-Revolutionary, Victor Chernov, and Mensheviks Irakli Tseretelli and
Mikhail Skobelev, join Kerensky in the Provisional Government and cause: Bolshevik popularity increased because they were the only party that was against Russian involvement in World War I. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, 16 June - 7 July 1917 (NS), was dominated by Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and other pro-government parties. It: rejected Bolshevik resolutions to transfer all power to the Soviets and end involvement in World War I, confirmed the supremacy of the Russian Provisional Government, and supported continuing the revolutionary war. |
Kerensky Offensive, 1917 (aka June, July or Galician Offensive): Russia, led by its Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, tried to turn the war in its favor by attacking Austria-Hungary on 1 July 1917 (NS). The Russian army was initially successful but it collapsed before the Austrian/German counter-offensive on July 6th. This offensive was very badly timed because: Russians had been calling for peace since the February Revolution, there was a widespread lack of discipline and exhaustion within the Russian army, and it further exacerbated suffering and shortages throughout Russia. July Days 16-20 July 1917 (NS): During July Days, soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers held spontaneous, armed demonstrations against the Russian Provisional Government that were more violent than the ones that began the February Revolution. The Provisional Government blamed the Bolsheviks for the increased violence, dispersed their party in a subsequent crackdown and arrested many of their leaders, including Leon Trotsky. Vladimir Lenin escaped to Finland. Aug-Sept 1917 (NS): Kornilov affair: General Kornilov, the most popular general in the Russian army in 1917, attempted to capture Petrograd, force out the Bolsheviks and establish a strictly disciplined right-wing dictatorship. He failed and the victory of the far-left became inevitable. 25-26 October 1917 (OS), Bolshevik Revolution 1 2 3 4 (aka the October Revolution, October Uprising, October Coup or Red October; 7-8 November (NS)): From October 25th to 26th (OS), Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik Red Guard in a nearly bloodless coup d'état against the Duma's ineffectual provisional government. The Bolsheviks took control of Petrograd's government buildings, railway stations, telegraph office and the Winter Palace which was the seat of the Provisional Government after the Tsars were overthrown. They took full control of the government and transferred all power to the Congress of Soviets. The Bolsheviks went on to become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Lenin laid the groundwork for the Soviet Union to become the world's first Communist country.The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies created the Council of Peoples Commissars (aka Sovnarkom) as its highest governmental body. The Council quickly issued: 7 November 1917: Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (aka known as Soviet Russia, Russian Federation or Russia) was created as an independent socialist state and it was one of the four original republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) when it was founded by treaty in December 1922. Ukraine, Belorussia (Belarus), and Transcaucasia (divided into Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in 1940) were the other three. With more than half of its population and three-quarters of its territory, Russia was and remained the largest republic in the SSR. 25 November - December 1917 (NS), Constituent Assembly Elections became the largest single election to that point in history when about 47 million (64%) Russians cast their secret ballots. The election results were surprising: Socialist Revolutionaries: 38% (peasantry & land reform supporters) Bolsheviks: 24% (industrial centers like Petrograd & Moscow; soldiers), Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries & allies: 12.6%, Kadets: 4.6% Mensheviks: 3%, Constitutional Democrats (2.4%). 1 2 Lenin and the Bolsheviks questioned the legitimacy of the election results and believed the Bolsheviks should retain power because the split in the SR party meant that it did not have a voting majority. The Bolsheviks arrested and replaced some of the Assemblys newly elected deputies. One of the replacements was Uritsky, a loyal Bolshevik and future leader of the Petrograd CHEKA. Lenin quickly passed a resolution through the Central Committee that demobilized the army and sought an armistice with Germany to get Russia out of World War I. December 1917: All Russians receive 1/4 pound of bread per day. Bread and flour are sold openly for extortionate prices. Early December 1917 (NS): The Sovnarkom creates the CHEKA (aka the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) to repress all political opposition of the Bolshevik government. The CHEKA was the first Soviet secret-police organization and it arrested, imprisoned, and executed without trial enemies of the people. These included the bourgeoisie, clergy, libertarians and socialists of Petrograd, anarchists and other leftists. 1 2 3 4 5 January 5 1918 (NS): In the Constituent Assembly's first meeting in Tauride Palace, they elected Viktor Chernov, a moderate SR leader and staunch opponent of Lenin, as chairman, and replaced the Soviet decrees on peace and land with SR policies. The Bolsheviks grew so frustrated that they walked out. When the SRs returned to Tauride Palace the next day, the Red Guard barricaded the entrances and said the Congress of Soviets had dissolved the assembly. Later that day, Lenin gave a speech and said that the Soviets had taken all the power and rights into their own hands. The Constituent Assembly is the highest expression of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which are no longer necessary in a socialist state. Few were surprised at this turn in events or that Russias first real attempt at a democratic government was quickly replaced by a Bolshevik dictatorship. Felix Dzerzhinsky ( 1 2 3), head of the CHEKA (1917-1922) and the GPU/OGPU (1922-1926). 18 January 1918: Constituent Assembly opens. 28 January 1918: After significant Bolshevik losses in combat, Leon Trotsky reorganizes the Red Guard into a larger and more effective army that the Sovnarkom names the Workers and Peasants Red Army by decree. 1/14 February 1918 (OS/NS): Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar. 3 March 1918, Brest-Litovsk Treaty Leon Trotsky successfully ends Russia's involvement in World War I but Russia must recognize the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; give up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and cede Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey. Lenin bitterly called the settlement that abyss of defeat, dismemberment, enslavement and humiliation. The Russian Civil War, 1918-1923 (1 2 3) began because many groups opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (Reds 1 23) and one-party rule. Opposing groups were collectively called the Whites ( 1 2). Their moderate to conservative leaders had different agendas and largely acted independently of each other. They were: - political monarchists, capitalists and social democrats, rival militant socialists and Makhnovia anarchists, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs), and non-ideological, armed peasant groups known as Green armies who fought to protect their land and communities from requisition or third-party reprisals by the Reds, the Whites or foreign interventionists. 8 March 1918: Russia became the first communist country in the world when the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the All-Russian Communist Party. In 1925, they changed their name to All-Union Communist Party and then to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the 19th Party Congress in 1952. 11 March 1918: Vladimir Lenin moved Russias capital further inland from Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to Moscow on 5 March 1917 and restored the Kremlin as the Soviet Unions political center. March 1918: Leon Trotsky is appointed Peoples Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. 10-13 April 1918: The first major battle between the Red and White Armies is fought at Yekaterinodar; the White Armys commander is killed in combat. 4-10 July 1918: The All-Russian Socialist Federated Soviets meet and adopt a Soviet Constitution that grants equal rights to men and women, . Mid-July 2018: Former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, their five children, and four attendants are executed in Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, a city on the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains, in the late night or early morning hours of 16/17 July 1918. Forensic investigation uncovered their remains in a forest near Yekaterinburg in 1991. 13 August 1918: The Red Army decisively wins the Battle of Sviyazhsk. 30 August 1918: An assassination attempt by Fanny Kaplan seriously injures Lenins face and shoulder on 5-10 September 1918: The Red Army defeats the White Army (Czechoslovak Legion and the People Army of Komuch), Battle of Kazan. Shortages in Russia during the Revolution & Civil WarThe distrust many felt initially was increased in 1918 by the steadily worsening economic conditions. The country had already been at war for four years and was entering a devastating period of civil war which would last another three. Even women who had taken part in Soviet projects now concentrated all their free time on the search for food and greeted Bolshevik organizers with demands that they produce the promised better life. Aleksandra Kollontai wrote of Moscow in 1918, "There was hunger here. Oh, what hunger! The people didnt remember anything like it. They didnt take into account the reasons for the hunger, they forgot that under the tsarist regime they had died from hunger.... They felt only that there wasnt any bread, and there wasn't. Who was guilty?"2 Many women believed that the Bolsheviks were. They were the government, they had promised food, and the people were starving. The fact that the party was struggling with a devastated economy in civil war was not a sufficient excuse. The red banners hung everywhere might proclaim (in strange foreign words like republic) the dawn of a new world, but the new world did not feed hungry children. Nor did the party's many declarations of its intention to establish decent dining rooms and nurseries and to raise wages after the war was won. The reality which the Bolsheviks could not change required that women work all day, then search for food in government stores or on the black market. They also had to scrounge for fuel with which to cook their food and heat their wretched rooms. They had to barter for clothing or find ways to mend what they had. They had to struggle to keep their children in school while hoping that they would not contract typhus, diphtheria, or cholera from other children. Like peasant women, working-class women also might suffer punishment from men or other women if they participated in politics. Given their burdens and the risks of political activity, it is hardly surprising that these tired and hungry women did not rush to join in Saturday work projects or volunteer to aid the war effort in other ways. Some charged that the only people who were living better since the revolution were the Bolsheviks themselves. Worn out, thousands, perhaps millions, of women finally abandoned the cities and returned to their native villages where food could still be found. 2 World War I Ends: On 11 November 1918, the Allies defeated Germany and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles annulled the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 1 2 Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was Russia's internationally recognized head of state from 18 November 1918 to 6 February 1920. He failed to unite the White Movement and boosted Bolshevik morale by refusing to consider autonomy for ethnic minorities or cooperate with non-Bolshevik leftists. When the White Movement fell apart he was detained by French general Maurice Janin and the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia. In January 1920, they turned him over to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and in February 1920, a CHEKA firing squad executed him in Irkutsk. December 1918-January 1919: France and other Allied nations send troops to Russia to support the White Movement. 1921: Kronstadt Rebellion The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks after the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. 1 December 1922: The Council of Peoples Commissars created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). It was governed by the Communist Party and modelled after the first Sovnarkom. Lenin vs Stalin: Their Showdown Over the Birth of the USSR September 1921-16 June 1923: The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks after the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1921. 1 Holodomor 1932-33 Ukrainian man-made famine under Joseph Stalin kills 3.9 million people. 1 2 3 4 5 The Trotsky Assassination on 21 August 1940 |