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Czar Alexander II is assassinated by the terrorist group ‘People’s Will’
The assassination of Alexander II took place in the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia. A bomb was thrown at him by a member of the revolutionary “People's Will” group. The group employed terrorism and assassination to overthrow Russia’s czarist autocracy. The assassins of the group were arrested and hanged, and the People’s Will was thoroughly suppressed. -
Nicholas II crowned czar of Russia
Nicholas II the czar of Russia from 1894 to 1917, was a staunch defender of autocracy. The son of Alexander III, Nicholas was born on May 6, 1868. So, he could have been in his thirties or late twenties when he was crowned czar of Russia. On 26 May 1896 for Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, was going to be the final Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia. -
Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg begins the 1905 Russian Revolution
Well on its way to losing a war against Japan in the Far East, czarist Russia is wracked with internal discontent that finally explodes into violence in St. Petersburg in what will become known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre. A group of workers led by the radical priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands. -
World War I begins
The trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, by Gavrilo Princip, who has ties to the Serbian terrorist-type group the Black Hand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, September 12, 1914. the first battle of the Aisne in France, begins, marking the beginning of trench warfare and the big war. -
The February Revolution begins with strikes, demonstrations, and mutinies in Petrograd
The strikes begin when women factory workers were mad over the food shortages, protested having to stand in a line to have some bread. The women then called men nearby to join them on the strike. Within days, nearly all workers in Petrograd were on strike.
Troops called out to end the demonstrations refused to do so. -
Czar Nicholas II abdicates (gives up power)
Nicholas II approved the Russian mobilization on 30 July 1914 which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas II abdicated on behalf of himself and his son. He and his family were imprisoned and transferred to Tobolsk in late summer 1917. -
Lenin returns from exile and arrives in Petrograd via a sealed train
He studied law and took up practice in Petrograd, where he moved in revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895, he helped organize Marxist groups in the capital into the “Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class,” Then on April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. After he returned, he took back his power. -
Bolshevik uprising fails in Petrograd
July Days was a period in the Russian Revolution during which workers and soldiers of Petrograd staged armed demonstrations against the Provisional Government that resulted in a temporary decline of Bolshevik influence.
The government produced evidence that the Bolshevik leader Lenin had close political and financial ties with the German government. A public reaction set in against the Bolsheviks; they were beaten and arrested, their property destroyed, their leaders persecuted. -
The October Revolution - the Bolsheviks take over Petrograd
In September 1917, Kornilov ordered his troops to march on Petrograd. He wanted to take control of the Provisional Government and destroy the Petrograd Soviet. The leaders of the Provisional Government had to ask the Bolsheviks' Red Guards to help them defend Petrograd.
When the Bolsheviks workers and soldiers took the streets of Petrograd in July 1917, the Petrograd Soviet refused to support them. The government sent many troops to seize the Petrograd Soviet. -
Russia withdraws from World War I
Russia starts to withdraw from World War I soon after the October Revolution of 1917, and then the country turned in on itself with a bloody civil war between the Bolsheviks and the conservative White Guard.
A group of Communists led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks, overthrew the government in November 1917 and created a Communist government. Lenin wanted to concentrate on building up a communist state and wanted to pull Russia out of the war. -
The capital of Russia is changed from St. Petersburg to Moscow
Moscow was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Russia from 1547 to 1712, when the capital moved to St Petersburg. Vladimir Lenin, fearing possible foreign invasion, moved the capital from Saint Petersburg back to Moscow on March 5, 1918. The Kremlin once again became the seat of power and the political centre of the new state. -
The Bolshevik Party changes its name to the Communist Party
Shortly after seizing power in 1918 the party changed its name to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and was generally known as the Communist Party after that point, however, it was not until 1952 that the party formally dropped the word "Bolshevik" from its name and the Bolsheviks goal was to overthrow the Provisional Government and set up a government for the proletariat. -
Russian civil war begins
The Russian Civil war begins in 1918. After November 1917, many revolutionary groups had formed that opposed Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks had many enemies, like the Social Revolutionaries. They were angry because Lenin had closed the National Assembly. They were afraid because the Bolsheviks set up six self governing communist revolutionary groups around the world. -
Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed
Crowned in 1896, Nicholas was neither trained nor inclined to rule, which did not help the autocracy he sought to preserve among a people desperate for change.
Then late on the night of July 16, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children and four servants were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. (Continued in doc) -
Russian civil war ends
The Russian Civil War was to tear Russia apart for three years – between 1918 and 1921. The civil war occurred because after November 1917, many groups had formed that opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks won the Civil War in Russia and the war ends on October 25, 1922. But the causes of the war was that their was failure of provisional government of Kerensky, also the growing power of soviets. -
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) established
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created in December 30, 1922. Known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism. In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world’s most powerful and influential states and eventually encompassed 15 republics. -
Lenin dies
Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54, in January 21, 1924.
Lenin’s government nationalized industry and distributed land, and on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established. Upon Lenin’s death in early 1924, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin.
