March 22, 2013
Current Social Studies Class: A.P Modern European History
Grade in the class: B Plus
Compare the French Revolution of 1789 with either the American Revolution or the Russian Revolution of 1917. The French and Russian Revolutions were both very similar in the sense that the economic change and the population growth affected them both. A series of economic and political vulnerabilities helped to begin the French Revolution. In Russia their pre-world war one economy played a major factor in the Revolution of 1917. The causes of the Russian Revolution were that Russia’s people pre-world war one had a lot of pressure being put on it from agriculture and industrialization. The Russian people were also experiencing social changes that only added to the stress that the people where feeling. Russia was building a lot of factories and between 1905 and 1914 Russia’s production increased one hundred percent. This put a lot of stress on the working class of Russia. Another additional factor was the Tsar of Russia. He believed that it was the Tsar’s divine right to rule over the people of Russia. So naturally his government was that of an autocracy where the Tsar had absolute and unquestioned control. This only added to the frustration of the people because they had no say in the government and the combination of all of these factors made for a very unstable situation between the people and the Tsar.
In Russia the form of government that existed pre-revolution was a tsarist autocracy. It led to the creation of the SFSR. The Tsar which is like the emperor of Russia was forced to abdicate the throne of Russia. He was replaced by a very short term government that only lasted from February 1917 through October 1917. During the second revolution in the same year as the first one, the provisional government was substituted in favor of the Bolshevik government. The Bolshevik government was a communist government in every sense of the word. It