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Period: to
Timespan
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Bolshevik Revolution
key players: Lenin, Trotsky, Soviets The Bolsheviks gained control of Petrograd on Oct.13 and took Moscow on Oct.23rd.
Together with Trotsky and the Soviets on Nov.7th, the Bolsheviks arrested the Provisional Government and seized powers.
There was a limited resistance. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
key players: Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Bolsheviks The Soviets established a new government under the Council of the People's Commissars. (These were all Bolsheviks who granted themselves supreme power.) Lenin, Leon Trostky, and Joseph Stalin were the main leaders. Lenin was against the opposition of everyone and he opened peace negotiations with Germany. He was willing to give up huge parcels of land in exchange for peace. (This was done in the Treaty of Bresk-Litovsk) -
War Communism
key players: the state, peasants The key features of War Communism include the nationalization of industry, compulsory labour was introduced and private trade was suppressed. The state appropriated the mining, electrical, timber, tobacco, local utilities and private railways together with a few minor industries. Eventually private industries disappeared completely. Private trade was suppressed to be replaced with rationing and government distrubition. -
New Government
key players: Lenin, Bolsheviks, Peasants The first two initiatives of Lenon's government were: the war should be ended immediately and the peasants should seize the land. The peasants had already been doing this but it was now formalized. When it came to ownership, the peasants thought in terms of private plots of land, while the Bolsheviks considered laand in collective terms. -
Civil War
till 1922
key players: Bolsheviks (Reds), Whites In the West, they went under the guise of preventing Germans from seizing war materials. The Reds ended up taking over Moscow largely due to the military genius, Leon Trotsky(leader of Red Army.) The significance of this intervention is that it set the new communist regime against the capitalist West from the very beginning. -
New Economic Policy
key players: Lenin, USSR, peasants, workers The New Economic Party was launched in March 1921. In it, some private trade was permitted. Peasants were allowed to sell surplus (they were going to benefit the most from the NEP.) Workers in small factories were allowed to "purchase" their factory under a co-operative arrangement and return it to a form of private ownership. Lenin temporarily sacrificed some of the ideals on Marxism for the seeming necessity of capitalist production. -
Treaty of Rapallo
key players: USSR, Germany After 1921, the Bolsheviks soon entered agreements wih western countries in order to rebuild their industrial base. The Treaty of Rapallo was such an agreement. In the treaty, they agreed that the USSR would manufacture illegal war material for Germany which ws forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. The USSR would also receive steel manufacturing technology from Germany. During this time, two signigcant name changes took place. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
Key players: the authors= Frank B Kellogg from the US, and Aristide Briand of France. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement to outlaw war signed on August 27, 1928. The pact was one of many international efforts to prevent another World War, however it had little effect in stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II from happening. -
Five year Plans
Till 1934
Key Players: Joseph Stalin The five year plans were Stalins' methods in modernising the industry of Russia. They concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine-tools, electric power and transport. Stalin demanded a 110% increase in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in electric power. He justified these demands by claiming that if rapid industrialization did not take place, the Soviet Union would not be able to defend itself. -
Normalization/Raproachment
Till 1935
Key Players: USSR=Stalin, Western nations
The USSR wanted to recover from WWI by providing a strong military, they considered quantitly better than quality. the USSR began to participate in the affairs of the Western countries whenever she saw an oppertunity to encourage collective security. -
The leagus of nations
Key Players: USSR, The League of Nations This is the year that the USSR joined the League of nations. Not a single vote was against the inclusion of the Soviet Union in the Council of the League. However representatives of ten countries abstained from the vote. -
The purges
Till 1941
Key Players: Stalin(USSR)
"hero's" of the revolution were charged with treason, "tried" and convicted. One out of every five Red Army Officers were "tried." This was one of Stalins' biggest mistakes as these show trials would be used in later wars. <-- Come visit the pyramids of the USSR -
Nazi-Soviet Pact
Key players: USSR, Germany
In April 1939 Russia, Britain, and France met to form an alliance to defend Poland, but on August 23 1939 Russia traded sides when negotiations dragged on, and made a pact with Nazi-Germany to not go to war with eachother, and secretly to take over Poland.
The negotiations dragged on because:
1) Chamberlain did not like communist Russia.
2) Poland would not let Russian troops go into Poland.
3) Stalin did not trust that France and Britain would resist Germany.
