World History Volume Digital Library and Knowledge Share

SPEAKING BEFORE the Congress of Soviets on November 8, the second day of the November revolution, Lenin had said, “We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order.” Constructing any kind of order in a vast country like Russia would not be easy. The Bolsheviks had won the support of the soviets, but could they win the support of all Russia? As a matter of fact, not all the people in the country known as Russia were Russians. The tsars had gathered in under their rule many territories. On these territories lived people of many different nationalities, each speaking a different language. Could the Bolsheviks mold them all into one socialistic state? A number of political observers believed that the Bolsheviks would be unable to hold the power they had gained. The test was the elections for the Constituent Assembly, which began in late November. Before the revolution, the Bolsheviks had demanded a Constituent Assembly. Even before they saw the results of the elections, however, they lost their enthusiasm for it. They had still less enthusiasm when the election returns were in. The Bolsheviks won only 175 out of 707 seats. The largest number of seats went to the Social Revolutionaries, who won 410. The Bolsheviks solved the problem by using soldiers to break up the Assembly when it met in January of 1918. Lenin later excused this action by saying that it was a time of crisis and that any government would have done the same to hold its power. Whether or not this was true, one thing was certain — there was no longer any democratic way to end the Bolsheviks’ power. On top of this, the Bolsheviks took control of the press and set up a secret police. One of the biggest problems now facing the Bolsheviks …

LENIN’S REAL name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov. Like most Russian revolutionaries, he had taken another name to protect himself from the Police. He looked like anything but a leader of men; someone once said he looked more like a small-town grocer. He was short, stocky, bald and wore a small heard. His clothes were shabby and his pants were usually too long. He was not a great orator but he had a gift for simplifying and explaining complicated questions, which made him an effective speaker before crowds. Lenin was born in 1870, the son of a schoolteacher who became an official in the school system. The family was fairly well off and no different from thousands of other Russian families. Then Lenin’s older brother, Alexander, went off to study in the Russian capital. Young Alexander became involved in a plot to assassinate the tsar and was hanged with four other students. Lenin was seventeen at the time and he too, became a revolutionist. He studied law, completing a four-year course in one year. He practiced law for a while, but soon became a full-time revolutionist. He was arrested‚ sent to prison for fourteen months and to Siberia for three years. After this, with his wife, Krupskaya, he spent most of his time in exile. They went from one European country to another and were often very poor. Wherever they were, Lenin never stopped studying, writing and working for the revolution. In 1917 he was in Switzerland, impatient to get back to Russia where so much was happening. He was in touch with the Bolsheviks there and sent them instructions, but that was not the same as being on the spot because of the war, however, it seemed impossible for him to travel across Europe. It was the German government that …

IT BEGAN in the Russian capital, in the city which had been called St. Petersburg and was now called Petrograd. Bread had been rationed and on March 8, 1917, crowds of women and boys formed into long lines at the bakeries to get their share. Russians were used to waiting in line and usually they were patient, but on this day they were hungry. Besides, they were tired of the war, tired of the tsar, tired of living without hope. When they learned that there was no bread to be had, they lost their patience. They suspected that the bread was being held back to force a rise in prices. The women and boys rioted and the police were called out. Workers who had been on strike joined the rioters. They swarmed into the streets, marching and chanting, “We want bread! We want bread! We want bread!” In the days that followed, more and more workers left their jobs and went on strike. There were more riots. The police lost control and mobs roamed the city, calling for bread, peace and freedom. They looted shops, tore down the emblems of the tsar from buildings, broke into police stations and let prisoners loose from the jails. Soldiers were ordered to stop the mobs and to shoot if necessary, but many of the soldiers were raw recruits who came from families of peasants or workers. They, too, wanted bread and peace and freedom. They refused to fire on the mobs; instead, they joined them in battling the police. Even the Cossacks, those fierce fighters who had never hesitated to beat down the people — even they mingled with the crowds. Scenes like this were repeated in city after city; all Russia wanted peace, bread and freedom. With comparatively little bloodshed — less …

THE TSARINA Alexandra was a religious woman. That was why she was immediately interested in Rasputin, when he was introduced to her in 1905. Rasputin was neither a priest nor a monk. He was a starets, or Holy Man. There were a number of such Holy Men in Russia at that time. They left their homes and families to wander about the country, living on charity and devoting themselves to religion. Often people came to them, hoping to hear words of wisdom and advice on how to conduct their lives. The tsarina, too, felt the need of someone to give her advice and words of wisdom. She was troubled by the problems of the tsar; she kept urging him not to give up any of his power and then there was her fifteen-month-old son. He was the tsarevitch, the prince who would someday be tsar — if he lived. For he suffered from hemophilia, a hereditary disease that prevented his blood from clotting properly. Even a slight wound might cause him to bleed to death. THE HOLY MAN Rasputin became a frequent visitor to the palace. It turned out that he had a strange ability to soothe and comfort the tsarevitch and make him forget his pain. Some people said that he hypnotized the boy. At any rate, Alexandra came to believe that her son’s life depended on Rasputin and her faith in him grew from day to day. With his long beard and his long hair that reached to his shoulders, Rasputin did indeed look like a Holy Man, but the life he led had little to do with holiness. He had an enormous appetite for food and drink. It was no secret around the palace that he spent many a night in wild, drunken parties, staggering home early …

SOME DAY there would be no tsars, but there was little sign of that during the last years of the nineteenth century. Alexander III still held Russia in a firm grip. When he died in 1894, his son Nicholas II came to the throne. Nicholas was twenty-six years old. He was a handsome young man and a few months after his father’s death he was married to a German princess. They were in love and it looked as though Nicholas would be a popular ruler. His reign began badly. In 1896, a great crowd gathered on a field in Moscow to celebrate his coronation as tsar. It was the custom to hand out little presents, such as handkerchiefs and cups, at these celebrations. Afraid that there might not be enough for everyone, the crowd surged forward. When mounted police tried to hold back the crowd, men, women and children were pushed into ditches and two thousand persons were killed. To make it even worse, that same night the tsar and the tsarina, his wife, danced at a ball held at the French embassy. People grumbled that the tsarina was a foreigner who had no feeling for Russians and the tsar was not much better. Nor did the people like the tsar’s reply to a message of congratulation from the officials of a town near Moscow. The officials said that they hoped “the rights of individuals and public institutions will be firmly safeguarded.” Nicholas answered that he would support the principle of absolute rule just as firmly “as it was preserved by my unforgettable great father.” It was plain that under Nicholas the Russians could expect no greater freedom than they had had under Alexander III. There would be no civil liberties, no better treatment of the peasants and of minority …

The ideas that attracted these Russians came mostly from a man named Karl Marx. Marx was born in Germany in 1818, the son of Jewish parents who had become converted to Christianity. He began the study of law, but soon dropped it to study philosophy. After receiving his degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Jena, he became the editor of a newspaper. When the German government ordered the paper to stop publication, Marx moved to Brussels. He returned to Germany to take part in the unsuccessful revolution of 1848, but by 1850 he had settled in London, where he would live until his death in 1883. Meanwhile, in 1844, Marx had met Friedrich Engels. The two men thought very much alike and from that time on they worked closely together, studying, discussing, writing, each helping the other. Engels, too, was a German. He came from a wealthy family and he carried on his father’s business, even though he hated business and had no use for businessmen. For many years he supported Marx, who had little money and few opportunities to earn any. Both men believed in socialism. They were not the first socialists, nor were they the only ones in Europe at that time. Other men were also looking to socialism as a way to solve the problems of the world. For a great change had taken place in Europe in the nineteenth century. Before, Europe had been agricultural; now, industry was growing at a furious rate. Before, work had been done by hand; now, many kinds of work were being done by machine. Before, Europe’s system of society had been feudalism; now, it was capitalism. People were flocking to the cities; machines were roaring; smoke was pouring out over the once green countryside. Kings and aristocrats …

IT WAS a Sunday in January of 1905 and snow lay on the ground and rooftops of St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia. Although winters were cold in this northern city and it seemed like a day to sit indoors before a warm fire, many people were hurrying through the streets. About 200,000 men, women and children gathered in huge crowds, their breath making puffs of vapour in the frosty air. Soon they formed processions and began marching across the hard-packed snow. As they tramped along in ragged lines, they sang the national anthem, “God Save the Tsar.” Many of them carried icons-religious paintings — or pictures of their ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, whom they called “the Little Father.” The processions started from various points of the city, but they all moved toward the same place — the tsar’s Winter Palace. Yet, this was no celebration, no festival, no holiday. The marchers were not parading for pleasure. The city’s metal workers had staged a four-day strike for better working conditions, such as the eight-hour day. To teach them a hard lesson, their employers had then shut down the shops, completely cutting off their pay. Now the workers were going to the palace to ask the help of the tsar. At the head of one of their processions walked Father Gapon, the priest who was their leader. He would present petitions to the Little Father. So the people marched under the heavy winter sky, singing their country’s song, holding up the icons of their saints and the pictures of their ruler, but the Little Father was suspicious of his children. Afraid that they might rise up against him, he had called out his soldiers and left St. Petersburg. As the processions drew closer to the centre of the city where the …

DURING THE war, three great empires — the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the German –had vanished forever. Then, by the Treaty of Sévres, a fourth empire, the Ottoman, was quietly put to death. Turkey was confined to Asia Minor and became a republic. Of its former possessions, the League of Nations assigned Syria and Lebanon to France and Palestine and Iraq to Great Britain. Trans-Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which had fought the Turks under an adventurous British colonel named T. E. Lawrence, became independent kingdoms. In Europe, there were seven new states: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The first six, with Rumania, formed a zone that blocked Russian communism from spreading westward. Rumania had grown larger at the expense of Hungary, Russia and Greece at the expense of Turkey. Hungary and Austria were made small independent states, with no link between their governments. The South Slavs, who had triggered the crisis that brought on the war, saw their dream come true in a free, united Yugoslavia, but some Yugoslavs were still dissatisfied, for the Allies, in line with their secret treaty of 1915, had given Italy the port of Trieste and some islands on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. Italy also received the Trentino and South Tyrol, former Austro-Hungarian lands. AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE Although the five treaties of the Peace of Paris changed the map of the world, it left more than one nation resentful and discontented. The Italians felt that the Allies had betrayed them by not giving them any of the German colonies. The Japanese felt cheated of their rightful gains in the Pacific and the Germans were particularly bitter, for they felt they had been unjustly treated in almost every way. When the peace conference began, they had expected that the Allies …

IN THE closing weeks of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire came apart. Its subject peoples proclaimed their independence, through “national councils” set up in Paris and London. On November 12, 1918, the last of the Hapsburg emperors, Charles I, abdicated and the next day Austria became a republic. Hungary became a republic a week later. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia also came into existence and Rumania helped itself to the slice of Hapsburg territory called Transylvania. Before any peace conference could meet, the empire’s former subjects had redrawn the map to suit themselves and the Allies formally recognized the new nations. THE KAISER ABDICATES Unlike its ally, the German Empire held firm almost to the end. Earlier in the war, the liberals, democrats and socialists in the Reichstag, Germany’s legislative body, had put off their demands for the sake of national unity. Power had become concentrated in the hands of the generals, led by General Ludendorff. On September 29, 1918, Ludendorff told the Kaiser that Germany must sue for peace. Furthermore, he urged the immediate formation of a new government along democratic lines, based on the important parties in the Reichstag. The kaiser was astonished, but he soon realized that the army must be in a desperate situation for Ludendorff to suggest such a step. He knew, too, that the proud military aristocrats who commanded the army could not bring themselves to surrender; the task must be left to civilians. Sadly the kaiser gave his consent and Prince Max of Baden, a liberal nobleman, agreed to head a cabinet that included the socialists. By October it had put through a number of reforms, but the socialists were not satisfied. They threatened to quit the government unless the kaiser abdicated. Meanwhile, as word spread of the disastrous military situation, the German people began …

FEW AMERICANS noticed the advertisement that appeared in the New York newspapers on May 1, 1915. Signed by the Imperial German Embassy in Washington, it reminded Americans that Germany was at war with Britain. It warned that British ships in the water near the British Isles were “liable to destruction,” and that “travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.” That same day, the British steamship Lusitania sailed from New York and among the 1,250 passengers were 188 Americans. On May 6, when the Lusitania was off the coast of Ireland, she was attacked without warning by a German submarine. She was struck by torpedoes and within fifteen minutes she had sunk. Of the 1,154 persons who died, 114 were citizens of the United States. Many Americans were horrified, but they agreed with Woodrow Wilson, who had been president since 1915, that the United States should not take sides in the war. Wilson was re-elected in 1916, after campaigning on the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” Since the beginning of the war, agents of both the Allies and Germany had been trying to influence Americans. Although Wilson faithfully carried out his policy of neutrality, he was personally sympathetic to the Allies. As a matter of fact, most Americans favoured the Allies. At the same time, American citizens of German descent had no wish to fight against their old “fatherland,” and Irish-Americans, who disliked British for its treatment of Ireland, felt that the England should be given no aid. Then the German submarine commanders asked their government to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. By that, they meant that once again they would be free to sink ships of all nations‚ including neutrals, in the waters around the British …