3/20/13
Pd. 3 – WH2
The Russian Revolution – 16.3 * Background to Revolution * Russia had no competent military leaders: Czar Nicholas II insisted on taking charge of the armed forces despite his lack of training * Also, Russian industry was unable to produce the weapons needed for the army * Between 1914 and 1916, two million soldiers were killed, and another four to six million wounded or captures. By 1917 the Russians will to fight was gone * Beginnings of Upheaval * Czar Nicholas II was an autocratic ruler who relied on the army and bureaucracy to hold up his regime. He was also cut off from events by his German-born wife Alexandra * She had fallen under the influence of Grigori Rasputin * Rasputin had stopped the bleeding of her son Alexis, who had hemophilia * The conservative monarchy assassinated Rasputin in December 1916. They shot him three times and then tied him up and threw him in the Neva river * The March Revolution * At the beginning of March 1917, a series of strikes led by working-class women broke out In the capital city of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) * On March 8, about 10,000 women marched through the city of Petrograd demanding “Peace and Bread” and “Down with Autocracy” * This strike shut down all the factories in the city by March 10 * On March 12, the Duma or legislative body that Czar Nicholas II had tried to dissolve, met and established a provisional government, which mainly consisted of middle-class Duma representatives; it was headed by Alexander Kerensky * On march 15, Czar Nicholas II stepped down because he no longer had control of the military and the aristocrats, and it ended the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty * The government was also faced with a challenge in its authority: the soviets. The Soviets were councils composed of representatives from the workers and