Russian Revolution (Overview) Video Lecture | History for Class 9

alright let's talk about the Russian
Revolution it's really one of the most
influential events in the 20th century
it transforms Russia obviously and
eventually Eastern Europe it resets the
balance of power and the diplomatic and
military situation in Europe after the
first world war and sets up the Second
World War it also sets up of course the
Cold War the defining geopolitical
struggle in the second half of the 20th
century and also in the second half of
the 20th century it really profoundly
affects the dynamic of the whole
decolonization movement that Africa and
Asia go through following the Second
World War with some of these countries
as they're getting independence turning
to the Soviet Union as their model and
for military and economic support and
obviously this defines a number of
conflicts during the Cold War between
the west and the Soviet dominated world
what I'd like to focus on in this
discussion here is the way the Russian
Revolution follows the pattern very
similar to the French Revolution follows
as laid out in of course crane Britain's
famous work anatomy of a revolution so
let's take a look at the origins of the
revolution and the patterns that it
follows and maybe discuss a little bit
some of the effects of the Revolution
the immediate effects so before we get
into the specific causes for the
revolution the long-term and short-term
causes let's just take a quick look at
the revolution itself put it in time and
space here so the revolution takes place
in 1917 during World War one takes place
in Russia obviously as Russia is
collapsing during that war and it starts
out as kind of a spontaneous event but
quickly the Communists the Bolsheviks
take control and turn the revolution in
a certain pathway and drive it in a
certain direction so as with all major
events this doesn't spring out of
nothing it doesn't spring out of thin
air
here there are long-term causes of the
Russian Revolution there are things that
have been going on for quite some time
that paved the way for this major
revolution and one of these is a
so-called land hunger of the peasants
Russia in the early 20th century is
still pretty medieval with the nobles
controlling the land and the peasants
although they've been emancipated in the
late mid 19th century they still don't
have most of them the land that they
desire and the land they have is poorer
equality they don't really have the
independence they want so you have this
peasant class that's just desperate for
change you also have of course the
inherent problems with an autocracy
which is sooner or later you're going to
get a weak ruler and Nicholas a second
like Charles the first of England like
louis xvi in france he's a weak ruler
and he just can't hold it together when
a crisis comes russia also has a long
history of rebellion in the 17th century
stephen resines rebellion in the 18th
century Pugachev's rebellion in the 19th
century you have the Decembrist revolt
and you have the anarchist movement and
so there is a strong tendency towards
violent revolution in russia and finally
there's a lack of any kind of safety
valve there's no way for people to
express their will or appeal to the
government and this causes tensions to
just build up to the point where they
eventually explode now there was an
earlier crisis that nicholas ii had
managed to avoid there was a revolution
in 1905 following the russian defeat in
the russo-japanese war and nicholas ii
had avoided serious problems by
promising some reforms but unfortunately
he immediately goes back on his word and
he is really surrounded by people that
are unpopular on the image on the lower
right is a cartoon making fun of his
advisor Rasputin this mystic kind of
crazy man that was despised by everyone
the church the nobles the peasants but
he really had to kind of hold over the
Tsar and the Tsar's wife because he
supposedly had the ability to heal their
sickly son but he's very unpopular when
he's assassinated his assassins are
celebrated and the real crisis comes of
course during the First World War which
is a complete disaster for the Russians
they're unprepared they're overwhelmed
militarily
they can't supply their troops they
can't supply people back home with food
they have terrible generals the troops
are poorly trained and huge numbers of
them are killed or surrender or desert
and so the crisis comes when czar
nicholas ii personally takes command of
the troops and he blows it he really
can't do it and so in the capital city
of Petrograd formerly known as st.
Petersburg there are bread riots that
break out and the Tsar is away from the
capital city and the people that are in
charge really don't know what to do and
so when the troops on the front line
hear about this they are completely
discouraged by what's happening on the
front and what's happening back home and
the Russian army just kind of melts away
and the government falls apart the
police in the army are unable to put
down the growing rebellion and nicholas
ii is forced to step down he tries to
get one of his relatives to take his
throne the throne but I guess too smart
for it he refuses and so the Tsar has to
step down and so we then enter a
moderate phase just as in the early
parts of the French Revolution you have
moderates who want to make some slight
changes they don't want to get rid of
the monarchy they want a constitutional
monarchy and this is led by the guy you
see on the right here Alexander Kerensky
he's an intelligent man he's trained as
a lawyer he's a pretty good politician
but he makes a disastrous decision to
continue the war and he hopes that the
soldiers now fighting for a cause
they'll believe in will do much better
he launches an offensive which is a
complete and awful disaster and the
party he leads the group called the
Mensheviks become quite unpopular
they're moderate socialists and the sit
the stage is now set for a much more
radical phase of the revolution with the
failure of this moderate phase so the
initial revolution in March of 1917 had
taken everyone by surprise
even the the so-called professional
revolutionaries the the Bolsheviks the
more radical communist led by
vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov pictured here in
the top left more popularly known as
Lenin he was in exile at the time and
the Germans very helpfully managed to
smuggle him back into Russia to stir up
trouble hoping to see an opportunity in
the the unrest in Russia and so Lenin
and his comrades the Bolsheviks quickly
organized themselves into units and
develop a plan to seize power from the
moderates and take advantage of the
incredibly unpopular decision that
they've made to continue with the war so
in October / November of 1917 depending
on which calendar you use the Russians
still stuck with the older form of the
calendar so to them it was October to
everybody else it was November so in
October November of 1917 the Bolsheviks
moved they quickly seized communication
centers transportation centers
government buildings and they take power
from the Mensheviks and they begin to
implement a much more radical policy now
a number of people are unhappy about
this and so once the radicals take power
they start pushing it just as in the
French Revolution they started pushing
it too far making some rules that people
didn't like and so there's a pushback
there are people that try to seize power
back from the radicals and so this leads
to really horrible civil war one of the
most terrible events of the 20th century
now the Communists know that they're
going to have to fight against these
whites these people who are resisting
their rule and so they negotiate this
treaty with Germany the Treaty of
brest-litovsk which is just abject
surrender but they focus on the war and
although it seems like the whites should
have a lot of advantages because most of
the professional generals are on the
side of the whites and they really
outnumber the Reds the Bolsheviks the
Bolsheviks are better organized and they
have internal lines of communication and
the more unified they do they have just
one agenda whereas the whites have a
number of different agendas so you have
these two sides facing off and the
Western Allies try and help
lights in fact the United States invades
Eastern Russia the city of Vladivostok
but the Reds as I say they're pretty
organized and under the leadership of
Trotsky their military is fairly
effective they also have the dreaded
Cheka the secret police who rule through
fear and this is a very brutal war and
both the lights and the Reds carry out
atrocities against their opponents now
during the Civil War the Communists
instituted something they called war
communism basically they said everything
belongs to us all the food all the
equipment and even the labor of all the
people and so they could draft people
into their military and take supplies
and such and this is of course very
unpopular and so Lenin comes up with a
clever scheme to try and win over the
people and and win this civil war he
comes up with a simple three word slogan
land peace and bread and he also comes
up with a policy called the new economic
policy which allows small-scale farmers
and small businesses to own relatively
modest amounts of property and so this
is enough to win people over to his side
so that they can help win this war now
we'll never know if Lenin intended for
this policy to be permanent or not
because he soon after suffers a series
of strokes and dies there's a power
struggle to see who comes out on top and
this guy Josef Jew gosh billy better
known as stalin comes out on top and he
Institute's a policy of confiscating
land from these peasants who managed to
scrape together these small holdings and
this is what's known as collectivization
to have the agriculture run by the
central government and this is resisted
by many of the small farmers and so
Stalin murders millions of them through
a policy of mass starvation in areas
that resist his will he also puts
control of all industry under the state
the so-called five-year plans where he
plans out what the factories will get
for resources and what they should
produce in exchange and he wants to
focus on building up the Soviet Union as
kind of an arsenal of communism this
idea of socialism in one country that
the Soviet Union will represent the
strength of communism and from there
other communism revolutions will
bread with the Soviet Union as their
supporter and with Stalin as the leader
this is the so-called cult of
personality where Stalin doesn't
tolerate any rivals he carries out these
purges where he eliminates anyone that
he thinks might rival him and no one's
supposed to question him at all they're
supposed to have pictures of him in
their homes and they're supposed to not
question anything he has to say
he's a brutal dictator and people under
the Soviet flag have no political or
economic freedom or intellectual freedom
at all he does succeed in building up
the Soviet Union's
industrial capacity so when World War
two breaks out the Soviet Union is able
to resist the German invasion but this
comes at a tremendous cost to people
within the Soviet Union and within
countries that the Soviet Union comes to
dominate all right thanks for listening