Bolsheviks

- Socialist Democratic Labor Party split in 1903 between Bolsheviks (centralized party of active revolutionaries) and Mensheviks (gradual socialism/liberal revolution)

-supported by Lenin

-Lenin demanded Russian capitalism so socialist revolution could occur as well as an end to the war, better conditions for peasants, re-appropriation of bourgeoisie land = promise of “land, bread, and peace”

- 1917- October Revolution – Bolsheviks overthrows government

- peasant soldiers simply leave war, Bolsheviks redistribute land to peasants without compensation to former owners, nationalize banks, let workers control factories, took over food and housing provision

- abolition of titles and ranks, discrimination against nobility and clergy, confiscation of Church lands and end to religious education

- withdraw Russia from war – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

- Civil war between Red (Bolsheviks) and White, peasants, nationalists, foreign toops

- Bolsheviks win because of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and the Red Army, Cheka and the use of violence, war communism, and nationalism and Allied intervention.

-Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics between 1922-1924

- Formation of the Third, Communist International Comintern in Moscow (1919) to assist world revolution

-1st Comintern Congress in March 1919 with delegates from 34 organizations

-The Comintern as a tool of Soviet policy in the 1920s and 1930s

-NEP

Significance: The Russian Revolution also set the Allies back since Germany won the Eastern Front. Socialists were surprised to see a rather primitive country hold power and conservative governments feared a similar revolution. They had reason to be because in 1918 the monarchs of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire lost their thrones and from1918 to 1919 socialist revolutions took place in Germany, Austria and Hungary, while Bulgaria and Italy saw revolts