RISE OF COMMUNISM AND

THE SOVIET UNION

9th Grade World History
STANDARDS
• SSWH18 Examine the major political and economic factors that shaped
world societies between World War I and World War II.
• 18a. Determine the causes and results of the Russian Revolution from
the rise of the Bolsheviks under Lenin to Stalin’s first Five Year Plan.
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
AUTOCRACY OF THE CZARS
• Alexander III & Nicholas II were suspicious of anyone of
questioned the czar’s authority, worshiped outside Russian
Orthodoxy, or spoke languages other than Russian.
• Censorship of published materials (even private letters)
• Secret police monitored schools (reports sent for all
students)
• Political prisoners sent to Siberia
• Minor languages (such as Polish) forbidden
• Organized persecution of Jews (pogroms)
CZAR ALEXANDER III CZAR NICHOLAS II
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
RUSSIA INDUSTRIALIZES
• Number of factories doubles between 1863 & 1900
• Higher taxes & foreign investors financed industrial growth
• Became world’s 4th-ranking steel producer by 1900
• Industrialization led to unhealthy working conditions, poor
wages, child labor
• These conditions caused workers to organize strikes
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
INDUSTRIALIZATION TO REVOLUTION
• Marxist Revolutionaries organized as a result of problems with
industrialization
• Marxists believed the proletariat (working class) would overthrow
the czar & form a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (communism)
• Two groups of Marxists: Mensheviks (moderate) & Bolsheviks
(radical)
• Bolsheviks led by Lenin who fled to western Europe to escape
arrest by czarist authorities
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
MORE PROBLEMS AT HOME & ABROAD
• Russia defeated by Japan in Russo-Japanese War
• Bloody Sunday (1/22/1905): workers approached czar’s winter
palace in St. Petersburg to ask for better working conditions,
elected legislature, & personal freedoms; Russian soldiers fired
into the crowd killing/wounding over 1,000
• Bloody Sunday led to more strikes & violence all over Russia
• Nicholas II agreed to create the Duma (legislature) but dissolved
after 10 weeks
BLOODY SUNDAY REVOLUTION-MARCH 1905
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
WORLD WAR I
• Joining war caused patriotism but Russia unprepared:
• Weak leadership (promotions on connections/social rank not
ability
• Outdated equipment
• Inadequate factory production
• Poor transportation system
• 4 million Russian soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner
within 1 year
• At home, citizens complained declining food & fuel supplies and
inflation
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
THE CZARINA & RASPUTIN
• Nicholas II took command of the military & left Alexandra to rule
• She allowed Rasputin (a self-proclaimed “holy man”) to help her
rule because he seemed to have power to make her ill son feel
better
• He was murdered by nobles who thought he had too much power
Czar Nicholas II & Family Grigory Rasputin
1917 REVOLUTIONS:
MARCH TO OCTOBER
• Citywide strike in Petrograd March 1917: rioting over food & fuel
shortages; protested czarist rule & the war; soldiers sided with
rioters; full scale revolution resulted
• Nicholas II abdicated & was executed a year later
• Provisional government of the Duma led by Kerensky; kept
Russia in war
• Peasants demanded land; local councils of socialist
revolutionaries (soviets) formed
• Lenin returns to Russia in April to lead Bolsheviks in October
Revolution
• He gives all farmland to peasants, gives factories to workers
• V.I. Lenin
CIVIL WAR
• Bolsheviks sign treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) to pull
Russia out of war
• Many Russians object to Bolshevik policies & murder of the
Royal Family leading to civil war
• White Army (czarists, proponents of democracy, anti-Lenin
socialists) vs. Red Army (Bolsheviks)
• 14 million Russians died from fighting, hunger, & flu epidemic but
the Bolsheviks maintained power
• Lenin reformed economy with his New Economic Policy (NEP)
allowing some private ownership, selling of crops, and foreign
investment.
POLITICAL REFORM
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was created in
1922 dividing Russia in to self-governing republics under the
central government
• The Communist Party was created to run state affairs & ensure
that state goals were met. It became a dictatorship of the
Communist party
STALIN’S TOTALITARIAN STATE
• Joseph Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party and
ruled Russia until 1953
• A totalitarian state: form of government in which the national
government takes control of all aspects of public & private life
• Police state-secret police used force, wire taps, read mail,
informers, execution of millions of “traitors”
• Great Purge: execution or imprisonment of anyone who threatened
Stalin’s power; possibly 8 to 13 million deaths
• Government control of all media
• Writers, composers, artists had to conform to state views (no
individual creativity)
• Government control of all education to train future Party members
• Communists worked to remove religion & the Russian Orthodox
Church
STALIN’S TOTALITARIAN STATE
Socialist Realism:
Joseph Stalin

Steel Workers
by V. Malagis
1950

Sabre Dance by
Aram
Khachaturian

Roses for Stalin by Boris

Vladimirski 1949
STALIN’S ECONOMIC PLANS
• Established a command economy (government control of all
economic decisions)
• Five Year Plans: set impossible goals for production of steel,
coal, oil, electricity
• However, consumer goods were limited so citizens faced
shortages of food, clothing, and shelter
• Government seized over 25 million private farms beginning in
1928; between 5 and 10 million were executed for protesting
government control; these farms became collective farms to
produce food for the state