The Russian Revolution

The Russian revolution had many popular revolutions in Russia. There was a huge social gulf between the peasants who were former serfs and the land owners. The peasants regarded anyone who did not work as a parasite. They had always regarded as all land belonging to them. To the peasants the land retained by the landowners at the time serfs were freed was stolen by them. Only force could prevent them taking the land. There where some causes about why the Russian revolution began one was in February 1917 when there were shortages of bread in Petrograd and prices were very high.A second cause was that Tsar Nicholas II was weak and did not keep his promises.The third cause was the effects of the First World War on the Russian army. In Russia there were big differences between rich and poor.The Russian Parliament (the Duma), which was set up in 1906, was not given any real power. The Tsar still ruled as an autocrat (like a dictator).

The leader of the Russian Communist Revolution was Vladmir Ilich Ulyanov, otherwise known as "Lenin."He was a communist politician, the principal leader of the October revolution, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.In 1998 he was named TIME magazine as one of the most 100 most influental peo0ple.The quote "peace, land abd bread" was Lenin had promised "Peace, Land, and Bread." After several false starts, the Bolsheviks successfully negotiated a separate peace with the Germans, the famous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Ratified in March, 1918, Lenin ceded the Baltic states, eastern Poland, and the Ukraine to the Germans. This amounted to surrendering over 25% of Russia's population. This removed the external threat to the Bolshevik regime; and since Lenin anticipated revolution in Europe and in any case planned to break the treaty after consolidating his regime, there was much sense in his claim that "To obtain an armistice now means to conquer the whole world." Lenin's Left SR allies objected so violently to Brest-Litovsk that they left the coalition government; but by this point, they had outlived their usefulness anyway. At the Seventh Party Congress the Bolsheviks also changed their official name to the Russian Communist Party, and it was as "Communists" that the world would henceforth know them and their adherents around the world.

Causes Of WW1

The first world war began in August 1914. It was directly triggered by the assassination of the Austrin Archduke,Franz Ferdinand and his wife, on June 28Th 1914 by Bosnian revolutionary,Gravilo Princip. This event was,however,simply pulled the trigger that set off declarations of war. The actual causes of the war are more complicated and are still debated by historians today.Nationalism means being a strong supporter of the rights and interests of one's country. The Congress of Vienna, held after Napoleon's exile to Elba, aimed to sort out problems in Europe. Delegates from Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia (the winning allies) decided upon a new Europe that left both Germany and Italy as divided states. Strong nationalist elements led to the re -unification of Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871. The settlement at the end of the Franco-Prussian war left France angry at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and keen to regain their lost territory. Large areas of both Austria-Hungary and Serbia were home to differing nationalist groups, all of whom wanted freedom from the states in which they lived.

Militarism means that the army and military forces are given a high profile by the government. The growing European divide had led to an arms race between the main countries. The armies of both France and Germany had more than doubled between 1870 and 1914 and there was fierce competition between Britain and Germany for mastery of the seas. The British had introduced the 'Dreadnought', an effective battleship, in 1906. The Germans soon followed suit introducing their own battleships. The German, Von Schlieffen also drew up a plan of action that involved attacking France through Belgium if Russia made an attack on Germany. The map below shows how the plan was to work.