History Department      

History 309 – Contemporary Europe – September 12, 2005  

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION  

Note:   The RUSSIAN REVOLUTION was one of the DECISIVE events of modern times.  Today we try to understand what the Revolution was, where it came from, and how it affected the world.  

I.                    EMPIRICAL DATA.  Be sure you can define the following:

From W & H:

  1. 1917
  2. Sacred Union/ Burgfrieden
  3. Revolution of 1905
  4. Social Revolutionaries
  5. Social Democrats
  6. Bolsheviks/ Mensheviks
  7. Russo-Japanese War
  8. Rasputin
  9. “March” (February) Revolution
  10. November (October) Revolution
  11. Russian Civil War
  12. Brest-Litovsk
  13. Tsarists/ “Whites”
  14. Trotsky
  15. Cheka
  16. Mass Terror
  17. War Communism
  18. New Economic Policy (NEP)
  19. “retreat from socialism”
  20. Nationalities problem
  21. Third International (“Comintern”)
  22. Belá Kun
  23. The German Revolution
  24. Twenty-One Conditions

From Perry:

1.  Witte

2.  Pollock

3.  Lenin (“What is to be done?”)

4.  Sukhanov

5.  Lenin (“Call to Power”)

6.  “Proclamation of the Kronstadt Rebels”  

 

II.                 CRITICAL THINKING.   

  1. First: get your chronology straight.  List and define the key 4-5 EVENTS that marked the Russian Revolution (from, say, 1914 – 1918).  WHY do you think these events were so important? 
  1. In 1917, the entire Russian social-economic-political system collapsed.  This is an analysis: look at least one of these categories – “society,” “economics,” and “politics” and explain what happened – and why. 
  1. The collapse of the Russian Empire was one thing – the emergence of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was something else entirely.  Who were Lenin and the Bolsheviks?  Where did they come from?  Why were they able to take power?  This is a kind of “logical description question” – how would YOU define the term “Bolshevik” (or “Lenin”)?   
  2. W & H talk about a "retreat from socialism" (94), and the "changed character of communism" (96).  They seem to think that what Russia ended up with -- Stalin's dictatorship -- was NOT really "socialism" and for that matter was a kind of twisted form of "communism."  But -- others might argue that what Russia ended up with was the inevitable result of "socialism" and "communism," namely a terrorist and tyrannical state.  What do you think?

      E.  Look carefully at W & H’s introduction to Chapter 3.  How, do they think, did World War I start?  What was it NOT, at the beginning.  What

        did  it develop into? 

 

 

 

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