The Bolshevik Revolution

The Russian Government had been ruled by Czars, or tsars, (pronounced “Zars”) who were the kings, or emperors, of Russia from 1721 to 1917, when the Russian people overthrew Nicholas II, the last of the Czars. This was known simply as the Russian Revolution of 1917. the Russians set up a provisional government to replace the czar system. However, this new government didn’t satisfy all of the Russians, with some forming their own political parties. The most prominent of these was the Bolsheviks, a socialist party. These people, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, managed to get elected into the provisional government and began spreading their message among the people, gaining a great amount of support from those who were left unsatisfied by the previous revolution.

The Bolshevik Revolution came to pass on October 25^th, 1917 according to the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians at the time, though the Gregorian calendar dates it to November 7^th, 1917, which is used today. It was startlingly bloodless, partly due to the fact that the Russian Revolution just ¾ of a year earlier was one of the most bloody in history, so anyone willing to die over the government had already been killed. The Bolsheviks simply stepped in and took control of all the government buildings, and were hailed as heroes by the people for freeing them from an oppressive government, and giving them freedom through communism. They would quickly realize that communism isn’t a “freeing” sort of government.

Lenin and Trotsky were communists, and derived their philosophy from Karl Marx, who wrote the famous “Communist Manifesto.” The driving idea behind communism was that by eliminating all property rights and dividing all resources among all people evenly, they would eliminate greed, making life better for all. While I’m not going to go into all the reasons communism doesn’t work, it is worth knowing, so I recommend researching it. For now, I’ll just say that instead of communism, every country that tried using it ended up with a dictatorship, and Russia was no exception. Lenin began killing off any opponent political parties, until there were only communists and pro-communists. If anyone spoke out against Lenin or the Bolsheviks, they were not heard from again. This was known as the Red Terror, and caused a third civil war to break out from 1917-1920, as the people realized the Bolsheviks were not saviors, but new masters. This time, the Bolsheviks won again, and Lenin renamed the government the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” also known as the USSR.

Lenin ruled until 1924, when he died of natural causes at age 53. He was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, who would take the power of the Dictatorship even further than Lenin had, entering Russia into the darkest time in it’s history.