The Russian Revolution was the defining event of modern Russian history. It occurred in 1917 during a period of immense turmoil in Russian history owing to the failure of Tsar Nicholas II’s government to prosecute the First World War effort against Germany effectively. A conservative revolution overthrew the Tsar in February 1917, but this was quickly followed by an insurrection led by the Soviet Bolsheviks in the autumn of 1917. The October Revolution brought to power the communists led by Vladimir Lenin. The Russian Civil War followed for five and a half years, during which many former constituent parts of the Russian Empire attempted to break away from Russian rule and foreign powers like Britain and France attempted to offer aid to the opponents of the Bolsheviks in order to reverse the Revolution. However, eventually the Bolsheviks emerged victorious and established the Soviet Union. The fighting was intense and spread across a vast region from the White Sea in northern Europe to the Pacific Ocean in the east. Accordingly, millions of people were displaced and the war changed the demography of many parts of the world.[1]
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Russian Revolution chronology of events
Ever since the emergence of the Russian state under rulers like Ivan III and Ivan IV in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Russia had been ruled as an autocratic state, one where there was little by way of parliamentary representation and the Tsar, nobles and church were all-powerful. This situation was increasingly resisted in the second half of the nineteenth century as groups like the Russian communists, who later split into the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and the Anarchists emerged. Reforms were attempted by some Tsars such as Alexander II, but when he was assassinated for his troubles in 1881, a backlash followed under Alexander III and Nicholas II. Discontent continued through the 1890s and 1900s, notably following a terrible famine in the early 1890s and after defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese war of the mid-1900s, but it was not until World War I that matters really unraveled. In 1916 the Russian positions on the Eastern Front against the Germans collapsed, leading to the February Revolution of 1917, wherein Russian conservatives who were opposed to the existing liberal centrists overthrew the government of Tsar Nicholas II.[2]
The Tsar’s overthrow was just the first episode in the wider Russian Revolution. It led to the leaders of the Bolshevik communists, many of whom such as Vladimir Lenin had been in exile elsewhere in Europe for years, to begin returning to Russia. In Saint Petersburg and neighboring Finland they planned a revolution of their own which they finally initiated in October 1917 (November under the Gregorian Calendar).[3] Through deft manipulation of workers soviets in several cities and other instruments they managed to seize power relatively quickly in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Nevertheless, a counter-revolution quickly emerged, as well as efforts by nationalists in regions such as Finland, Poland and Ukraine to form their own breakaway states after a hundred years or more of Russian domination. As such, the Russian Civil War which erupted from late 1917 onwards was a complicated and multi-pronged matter which involved factions within Russia itself, independence movements across Eastern Europe and interventions by foreign powers, with Britain in particular anxious to crush the communist revolution.[4]
The Russian Civil War lasted for five and a half years. The fighting was appalling and saw the Bolsheviks largely begin to succeed once they deployed ‘blocking units’, essentially machine guns posts set up behind their own front lines which gunned down any Russian conscripts who tried to retreat. By the time the war ended in June 1923 it is estimated that upwards of five million people had been killed with millions more severely wounded or made prisoners of war.[5] The communists managed to retain control of all of Russia and Ukraine, however the crisis had created an opportunity for nationalists in Finland, Poland and the Baltic States to break away from Russia and independent nations would be established in Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia by the early 1920s, though these (with the exception of Finland) only lasted until 1939 or 1940 when the outbreak of the Second World War provided an opportunity for the Soviet Union to annex these regions once again. The Revolution and Civil War also led to a huge displacement of people across a vast territory.[6]
Migration during and after the Russian Revolution
Historians place the number of individuals who were displaced by the Russian Civil War between one and two million. The bulk of these were what are called ‘White Russians’. The ‘Whites’ were a broad coalition of parties within the Civil War who were opposed to the communist ‘Reds’. They included supporters of the old Tsarist regime, elements amongst the Russian nobility and Cossacks, and supporters of the Eastern Orthodox Church whose positions were doomed if the atheistic communists retained control of Russia. They even included some Mensheviks, a splinter group of the Russian communist movement which had developed in opposition to the Bolsheviks. Between 1917 and 1920, as the fighting continued as the Bolsheviks secured control of ever greater parts of Russia, between one and two million ‘Whites’ fled from Russia.[7]
Demographic impact of the Russian Revolution
The vast majority of the Russian emigres who left their country in the late 1910s and early 1920s headed first for neighboring countries like Turkey or westwards to the Baltic Sea where they made passage for other countries such as Britain, France, and Germany. A good many ended up fighting for the Nazis during World War II as they saw an opportunity to overthrow the Bolshevik regime which they and their families had fled from twenty years earlier. Ultimately the Russian diaspora that followed from the Revolution was fairly vast. Tens of thousands ended up in the United States or South American countries such as Argentina, while after the Second World War, as the Soviet net began to stretch across Eastern Europe, some emigres who had settled in nations like Poland, eastern Germany or Hungary once again took flight, many heading for South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. Thus, the Russian Revolution ultimately led to the development of Russian communities all over the world.[8]
See also
Explore more about the Russian Revolution
- Russia, Cemetery Records record collection on MyHeritage
- Soviet Union, Soldier Memorials, 1915-1950 record collection on MyHeritage
- Zooming In on a Stunningly Hi-Res Photo from Imperial Russia at the MyHeritage blog
- Russians Immigrating to the United States record collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ Russian Revolution. History Channel
- ↑ Russia from 1801 to 1917. Encyclopedia Britannica
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin’s Return Journey to Russia Changed the World Forever. Smithsonian Magazine
- ↑ The Russian Revolution and Britain, 1917-1928. University of Warwick
- ↑ THE RED ARMY. Alpha History
- ↑ Soviet Union invades Poland. This Day In History. History Channel
- ↑ The Russian Refugee Crisis of the 1920s. British Library
- ↑ Russia, Ukraine and the forgotten exiles of the 1920s. The Spectator