APWH
Compare and Contrast Essay on the Mexican and Russian Revolutions In the early 20th century, both Russian and Mexican peoples were both verily dissatisfied with their respective governments. Archaic standards and unjust politics led to unrest and the stirring of the winds of rebellion. With similar political and economic motives, these geographically distanced and different groups of nearly uniform peasantry both stood against their leaders in dynamic revolutions that would eventually end in vastly different sociopolitical positions in their newly claimed nations. The similarities of these two revolutionary bodies were most prominently in their inceptions. To begin with, both the groups of rebellious citizens were of similar social status and under similar influence. The proletarian and bourgeois workers with flagrant desires to gain more equal measure with the patriciate were the revolutionaries in both cases, and both countries’ factions were headed mainly by one key individual. Francisco Madero was the leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, while V.I. Lenin headed the Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917. Also, the people of both nations were motivated to rebel because of the looming and restricting absolute, autocratic governments that were in power. Porfirio Díaz was the respective Mexican leader who voraciously continued to illegally get himself seemingly, “re-elected” into power, while the last autocratic Russian Tsar Nicholas II led Russia into great loss and failure in WWI, which made the Russian people in general make him abdicate his throne, and thereafter led to the Bolshevik takeover of the provisional government which replaced him (the Bolsheviks ended up killing the Tsar and his family later on, as well). Finally, and perhaps most significantly, economic instability and monetary deficiency of the proletariat and bourgeoisie caused them to desperately want reform. In Mexico, over 85% of the