HIST 1031 Lecture Notes - Leon Trotsky
Document Summary
At the beginning of the 19th century, russia was a huge country with many natural resources but failed to modernize. They were ruled by an autocratic czar, alexander iii. 1905 russia-japanese war is an embarrassing defeat for the russians and leads to the 1905 revolutions of russian workers against alexander iii. The revolution did not succeed and the tsar still held power. The tsarina at the time was under the influence of the power of a mystic named rasputin. As the tsarina was running things under rasputin, more strikes continued to break out. Russians were upset that the czar was not listening to them but was listening to rasputin. Elites decided to assassinate rasputin and push the czar out of power, and succeeded. March 1917 the revolution succeeds and the czar is pushed out of power. A temporary government is decided in st. petersburg. The provisional government is not effective and the duma that helped to form it is divided.