The Bolsheviks

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  • 1917 - February – April

    February: Revolution led by Workers
    March: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and is detained with his family
    Provisional Government (a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists) Decides on 3 points: food, land and war
    April: Lenin (leader of the Bolsheviks) returns from exile with the support of Germany. His slogans was: Peace, Land, Bread and all power to the soviets.

  • 1917 - May / September

    • Kerensky is appointed Minister of War, but fails to regain control.
    • Kornilov (Army chief) attempts a coup, Kerensky wins with the support of the Bolsheviks
    • The Bolsheviks get the support of the Petrograd Soviet, whose president was Leon Trotsky

  • 1917 - October

    • 24 / 25 the Bolsheviks remove the provisional government.

  • 1918 Civil War

    • March 1918 The Bolshevik party becomes the communist party
    • July 1918 The Tsar and his family are executed
    • Tsar supporters and counterrevolutionaries (The Whites) vs. The Bolsheviks (Red Army)
    • The war lasts three years, 1918 - 1921
    • Emergence of communism: industries in hands of the state

  • 1919 - Civil War

    • Lenin creates the Third International that groups the communist parties of different countries

  • 1920 - Civil War

    • White army is defeated in Crimea

  • 1921 - Civil War

    • The Red Army under Trosky defeats the White Army
      • The NEP (New Economic Policy) appears with the aim of rebuilding the economy
      • Between 1921 and 1922, the famine, coupled with a serious typhus epidemic, ends the lives of millions of Russian peasants

  • 1922

    • The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) is born
    • Stalin is appointed Secretary General of the Communist Party

  • 1923 Lenin vs Stalin

    • Lenin's letter to the central committee, known as the "Lenin's Testament".
    • Lenin confronts Stalin against the bureaucratic state
    • Breaking between Lenin and Stalin
    • Lenin suffer several strokes in 1922 and 1923 which leave him paralysed
    • Trostky writes the New Course

  • 1924 - Death of Lenin

    • The communist party condemns Trosky's letter
    • Lenin Dies on January 1924.
    • Stalin, Kámenev y Zinóviev take control of the party
    • Stalin removes power from Leon Trotsky whom he accused of "anti-Bolshevik revisionism" and a traitor to the popular and opportunist revolution
    • Trotsky is progressively separated from power, exiled in 1929 and then assassinated in Mexico in 1940 by order of Stalin.