So, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov becomes Lenin!

The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

Lenin decides Marx is wrong, and understands that there doesn’t have to be collective class consciousness, because the workers are easy to buy off. You need a vanguard—a small group of dedicated revolutionaries.

Under the principles of a dialectic, a group disagrees with this, and that becomes the Mensheviks—they want a large party that works under the current structure to find common ground with the SRs and Cadets. They want capitalism first.

There is an attempt to unify the two groups in 1903, in Brussels, Belgium. Completely fails.

Pre-War Russia

War → inflation → Bloody Sunday. Workers go on strike, peasants start to take land, so the czar agrees to have a Duma. The Mensheviks create a worker’s union known as a Soviet, and the St. Petersburg Soviet announces a general strike. The October Manifesto and Fundamental Laws are published, but the czar dissolves the Duma in July.

Peter Stolypin reforms Russia by implementing conservative policies—he first breaks up the mirs, ending peasant debts, then wipes out most anti-czar movements.

By 1914, World War I begins. Nicholas II’s son Alexei has hemophilia, and mystic/hypnotist Grigori Rasputin comes along. He hypnotizes Alexei and needles his way into government, becoming the leading minister of Russia.

Economic and Social Crisis

• Production and transportation undependable

• War refugees fill roads, workers’ incomes plummet

• Inflation soars

• Food shortages increase (no one could get bread while the czar lived in luxury)

• Pavel Milyukov, leader of the liberal Cadets, attacks the government

• Alexander Kerensky, an SR, is another central figure

• December: Rasputin dies

• St. Petersburg becomes Petrograd

Revolution of 1917

February 23: Bread riots in the streets. Police join in, deputies form a provisional government. March revolutions overthrow the czar, giving way to the Mensheviks. In November, the Bolsheviks take over.

By March, the Duma assumes power. Elections for a constituent assembly take place, headed by Alexander Kerensky, who assumes the title of President in July. Lenin takes advantage: Germans allow him to travel back to Russia, expecting to incite revolution. Lenin publishes the April Theses, calling for peace, land, bread, and “all power to the Soviets.”

The Petrograd Soviet issues Order No. 1, giving the military total democracy and undermining the Duma. By July 1917, Lenin doesn’t think Russia is ready, but the Bolsheviks attempt a bid for power. They are crushed; Lenin escapes to Finland.

August: General Kornilov attempts a coup. The Mensheviks release Bolsheviks from jail to help defeat Kornilov. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks then take over in November, seizing key buildings with 6,000 supporters. Elections are held, but they don’t win. In January 1918, the assembly meets, and Lenin abolishes all parties besides the Bolsheviks.

Bolsheviks → Communist Party
Russia → USSR (Soviets)

Red-White Civil War (1918-1921)

• Essentially, Leon Trotsky versus everyone else. Reds win because:

  • Control of main cities/ports

  • Gives away White land at Brest-Litovsk to Germans

• Trotsky is a brilliant Marxist (almost like an Oliver Cromwell) but he’s NOT a Bolshevik. He initially opposes Lenin.

War Communism

• People take over unused land but must give crops to the government

• Red Terror: about one million peasants killed

• Cheka (secret police) established

• Bolshevik victory in Crimea ends the war

By 1921: Industry at 20% pre-war level, agriculture production halved.
NEP (New Economic Policy) allows private ownership, creating a new class of Kulaks (rich peasants). By 1923, Russia begins recovery.

Politburo

• Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) – Leader

• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) – War & Foreign Minister

• Gregory Zinoviev (1883-1936) – Head of International Bureau & Comintern

• Lev Kamanev (1883-1936) – Deputy Chief of Staff

• Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1953) – Press, propaganda, NEP proponent

• Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) – Underdog; bureaucrat; as General Secretary controls appointments

By December 1922, things look good. BUT THEN! Lenin has a stroke!

March 1923: second stroke → January 1924: Lenin dies. Eerily similar to the French Revolution…

Historical Parallels

• Bolsheviks/Mensheviks = Jacobins/Girondins

• Temporary dictatorship

• Nicholas II = Louis XVI

• Huge civil war with Reign of Terror

• Committee of Public Safety = Politburo

• Kornilov coup = Thermidorian Reaction

• Napoleon = Trotsky

• Classic “pendulum” of history

After Lenin: Ideological Disputes

• Cult of Personality: Lenin elevated; statues erected; Petrograd → Leningrad; body displayed against wishes

• Collectivization vs. NEP: Trotsky wants Marxist communes; Bukharin supports NEP

• Permanent Revolution vs. Socialism in One Country: Trotsky vs. Stalin

• 1925: Trotsky resigns, later expelled from Politburo

• 1926: Expelled from Communist Party

• 1927: Exiled from country, face removed from photos

• 1989: Russian history teacher in Greeley unaware of Trotsky

Stalin’s Rise

• Blames Zinoviev & Kamanev → purged

• Turns on Bukharin (1928), steals Trotsky’s ideas, city named Stalingrad

• Series of Five-Year Plans: collectivization → famine kills ~10 million

• Industrialization: high turnover, low output/quality

• Nation mobilized: education, family, propaganda

1930s – Purge Trials

• Zinoviev, Kamanev, Bukharin confess → executed

• Trotsky flees Europe; assassinated in Mexico City (1940)

ITALIAN FASCISM

Although the least developed of the major powers, Italy had started to industrialize. Racked by inflation, unemployment, and talk of revolution, social conflicts that were previously ignored were brought to the surface in the country.

Fascism

Fascism comes from the Latin word fascio, or bundle—the idea is that a stick is individually weak but strong in unity. The Italian fascism movement centers around Benito Mussolini. It employs propaganda, symbols, and activism. Fascists had little electoral success at first but slowly gained seats in the Chamber as the aging prime minister, Giolitti, started to fall. Mussolini forms the Black Shirt army, which planted bombs, beat up opponents, and disrupted meetings.

• Stages a March on Rome in October and moves on the capital

• King Victor Emmanuel III invites him to form a cabinet; he becomes prime minister of a coalition government. By 1924, the Fascists hold a clear majority.

Mussolini gradually isolates the Socialist and Popular party, expelling opponents and killing so-called enemies of the state. Mussolini, or Il Duce, was the total leader.

• “The Duce is always right” … “Believe, obey, fight.”

Domestic policies include autarchy, a self-sufficient national economy emphasizing industrialization and technology. The value of the lira is set equal to the French franc, which ultimately hurts Italian exports and leads to currency devaluation.

• 1926: Battle for Grain, doubling grain production at great cost in efficiency

• Institute for Industrial Reconstruction established subsidies for weak industries

• Suppressed mafia groups in Sicily and drained malaria-infested marshes near Rome

• Family bonuses provided poor families fiscal security

• New railroads and superhighways built

Mussolini arranged the Lateran Agreements of 1929, ending sixty years of conflict between church and state. It recognized Vatican City as an independent state and promised to restrict Protestant activities.

Twentieth Century Culture

Thanks to Freud, some artists and authors (like the Surrealists) used dreamlike canvases to explore the subconscious.

• Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past—study of upper-class Parisian life; interior monologue

• Franz Kafka: wrote in German (The Trial), wanted manuscripts burned

• James Joyce: Ulysses (1922)

• Virginia Woolf: political activist/feminist, wrote A Room of One’s Own (1929)

Art Movements

• Dada: noisy nonsense, absurd juxtapositions to anger bourgeoisie

• Futurists: new art for technological age

• Cubists & Expressionists: twelve-tone scale, dissonance

Main Schools of Art

• Impressionism: overlapping color, blurred lines, wide brush

  • Edouard Manet: Luncheon on the Grass, The Bar at the Folies-Bergère

  • Claude Monet: Sunrise, water lilies

  • Auguste Renoir: Madame Charpentier and Children

  • Edgar Degas: ballerina paintings, asymmetry

• Post-Impressionists:

  • Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night, abstract self-portraits

• Pointillism: George Seurat, using dots to create shaded images

• Abstract Expressionism:

  • Henry Matisse: flattened canvases, Fauve school

• Cubism:

  • Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Three Musicians

  • Marcel Duchamp: Nudes Descending the Staircase

  • Georges Braque: Woman with Guitar

• Surrealists:

  • Salvador Dali: The Persistence of Memory, time as dimension, Freud + Einstein fusion

Science of the Twentieth Century

• Advances in physics and chemistry: Niels Bohr, J.J. Thompson, Ernest Rutherford, Marie & Pierre Curie

• Albert A. Michelson & Edward W. Morley: speed of light same in all directions; challenged ether theory → Einstein’s relativity

• Space & time measured relative to observer → space-time continuum

• Time is dependent on velocity; at speed of light, time stops

• Matter transforms into energy: E=mc²

• Max Planck (1902): energy released/absorbed in discrete units (quanta)

• Ernest Rutherford: gold foil experiment → atom mostly empty space

• Werner Heisenberg: uncertainty principle, probability in atomic behavior

• Alexander Fleming & Howard Florey: penicillin

Economics of the Twentieth Century

• Top economists: Karl Marx, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes

• Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace: invisible hand fails in depression → government must intervene

  • Regulation & low interest

  • “Prime the pump”: government spending

  • Deficit spending (New Deal style)

European Integration

• 1950: Germany & France form Coal/Steel Authority; Italy & Benelux join 1951

• 1957: Treaty of Rome → European Economic Community (EEC)

• 1973: Britain, Ireland, Denmark join

• 1979: Citizens elect EEC parliament

• 1981: Greece joins

• 1986: Spain & Portugal join → single market

• 1992: Maastricht Treaty → European Union & common currency (Euro)

• 2004: Czech Republic, Poland, Baltic states, Hungary, Slovakia join

• 2007: Romania & Bulgaria join

Religion

• 1965: Vatican II council

  • Mass in vernacular

  • Apology to Jews/exoneration for Jesus’ death

  • Ecumenism: non-Catholics can marry Catholics, go to heaven

• Pope John Paul II: apologized to Martin Luther & Galileo, Jubilee year for Church sins

The Retreat from Democracy

• By 1929, authoritarian regimes suppressed liberty across Hungary, Spain, Albania, Portugal, Lithuania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Italy

• Hungary: Admiral Miklos Horthy → anti-Semitic gov eradicates democracy

• Romania: King Carol II strips Jews of land/citizenship

• Yugoslavia: King Alexander I tries to tame nationalism

• Poland: 1926 → Marshall Jozef Pilsudski assumes power

• Fascism drew attention to social problems, criticized liberalism/capitalism, leveraged parliamentary ineffectiveness

• Great Depression (Oct 24, 1929): industrial production cut by third, unemployment rises, tariffs & quotas → political extremism

Hitler: Rise to Power, Nazi Germany, and Pure Terror

• Adolf Hitler: Austrian, born 1889, abusive father, mother, rejected by Vienna Art Academy, served in WWI

• Middle school dropout, no initial anti-Semitism

• Becomes Nazi leader (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)

• 1923: jailed after Munich Putsch → writes Mein Kampf

• Loyal followers: Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Ernst Röhm (SA)

• Legal seizure of power; eliminates opposition, becomes Führer

• Gleichschaltung: federal states lose autonomy, administrative Gaue led by Gauleiter

• Unemployment drops, currency stabilized (Hjalmar Schacht)

• Strikes outlawed, worker mobility regulated

• Propaganda: “Strength through Joy”, anti-modern art, anti-nightlife, anti-homosexuality, strict gender roles

• Nuremberg Laws (1935): banned marriage between Aryan, Jews, gypsies, etc.

Who Can We Blame?

• People: Kurt von Schleicher, Franz von Papen, Paul von Hindenburg, nationalists/centrists, communists, ordinary citizens, Stalin

• Events: WWI, Treaty of Versailles (too harsh, poorly enforced), Great Depression, militarism/nationalism, weakness of Weimar Republic, inexperience with democracy

World War II: Global Terror

1934

• Non-Aggression Pact with Poland (January): 10-year guarantee of friendship between Germany and Poland.

• Germany drops out of the League of Nations.

• Vienna Putsch (July): demonstrates that treaties are only as effective as their enforcement, as Hitler repeatedly violates the Treaty of Versailles.

1935

• Rearmament in March during a public speech (“Saturday Night Special”), signaling Germany’s military ambitions.

• Leads to the German-British Naval Agreement (July): Germany can expand its navy to 35% of Britain’s—nullifying Versailles.

• Britain accepts immediately, beginning the policy of appeasement.

• France fortifies its borders (Maginot Line).

• U.S. Neutrality Act passed; Italy invades Ethiopia.

1936

• Remilitarization of the Rhineland (March), angering Stalin, who seeks alliances with democratic nations.

• Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): Hitler supports Francisco Franco; Stalin backs the democratic republic.

• Axis alliance of Rome and Berlin formed.

• France does nothing when Hitler intervenes in Spain.

• Another U.S. neutrality act ensures they stay out of European conflicts.

1937

• Hossbach Minutes (November) reveals Hitler’s war ambitions.

• Alliances with Japan and Italy formalized.

1938

• Anschluss: Hitler threatens Austria unless Nazi Party restrictions are lifted; Arthur Seyss-Inquart installed as Interior Minister.

• Sudetenland Crisis in Czechoslovakia: Hitler demands German-majority regions, threatening war by October 1.

• Munich Conference (September 29): Hitler takes the Sudetenland; Chamberlain declares “peace for our time.”

• Czechoslovakia divided into Czech and Slovak regions; USSR and Czechoslovakia not invited.

1939

• Germany invades the rest of Czechoslovakia; Britain pledges to defend Poland.

• Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed to avoid a two-front war; Stalin gains parts of Poland and Baltic territories.

• September: Germany attacks Poland with blitzkrieg; Soviet Union invades Finland.

1940

• Germany invades Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

• France falls after German forces bypass the Maginot Line; Paris captured mid-June.

• Miracle of Dunkirk: 340,000 British troops evacuated.

• Britain remains alone; Battle of Britain fought in the air, Churchill emerges as hero.

1941

• Germany invades the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) late June; delayed timing leads to massive losses at Stalingrad and failure to capture Moscow.

• December: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; U.S. declares war; Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S.

1942

• Battle of Stalingrad begins.

• Nazis implement the Holocaust; Final Solution planned (January 1942).

• By 1945, six million Jews and millions of others killed in concentration and death camps.

1943

• Axis powers pushed out of Africa; Allies invade North Africa and Sicily.

• Mussolini arrested; Marshal Pietro Badoglio becomes Italian Prime Minister.

• Tehran Conference (November): Soviets accept Polish borders; question of post-war government left open.

1944

• Allies seize Naples (May) and Rome (June).

• D-Day (June 6): 150,000 men land in Normandy; Paris liberated by August.

• Last German offensive: Battle of the Bulge.

1945

• Yalta Conference: United Nations formed; Germany divided into occupation zones; free elections promised in Soviet-occupied countries.

• Berlin captured by Soviets; Hitler commits suicide.

• Americans advance in Asia: Guam, Philippines, Iwo Jima.

• Firebombing of Tokyo kills 200,000; atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).

• Soviet Union declares war on Japan (August 8); Japan surrenders September 2.

The Road to Recovery

• Total casualties: 50 million worldwide; Germany and Soviet Union hardest hit.

• UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) created in 1943.

• Nuremberg Trials prosecute Nazi war crimes.

• NATO (1949) and Warsaw Pact established.

• Konrad Adenauer leads German recovery; European integration advances with France and Italy.

The Cold War

• Traditional view: USSR violated Yalta agreements; iron curtain divides Europe.

• Truman Doctrine: U.S. supports countries resisting communism ($400 million to Greece and Turkey).

• Marshall Plan: $12 billion grants to rebuild Europe.

• Berlin Blockade (1948–1949): USSR fails; Allies airlift supplies.

The Shocks of ’49

• USSR tests nuclear weapons; China becomes communist under Mao Zedong.

• Red Scare in the U.S.; nuclear arms race escalates.

• 1953: Stalin dies; U.S. and USSR both have H-bombs.

• 1956: Khrushchev denounces Stalin, favors peaceful coexistence; Hungary uprising crushed.

Berlin-Cuba Crises

• East Germans flee West; Berlin Wall built in 1961.

• Bay of Pigs invasion fails; Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) resolved diplomatically.

• Détente established; hotline between U.S. and USSR created.

1968–1985

• Czechoslovakia: Dubcek’s “socialism with a human face” crushed by Brezhnev.

• Vietnam and Afghanistan wars dominate U.S. and USSR focus.

• 1985: Gorbachev introduces Glasnost (openness), Perestroika (restructuring), and Demokratizatsiya (democratization).

• Cold War ends; START Treaty (1991) reduces nuclear weapons by 80%.

Collapse of the Soviet Union

• 1989: Revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

• November 1989: Berlin Wall falls; East and West Germany reunite.

• 1990: Baltic states declare independence; Gorbachev allows secession.

• 1991: Gorbachev loses power; Yeltsin becomes president; USSR dissolved.

Post-Cold War Quick Facts

• European Union (EU) forms from ECSC and EEC; Maastricht Treaty (1993) establishes euro.

• Helsinki Accords (1975) ratify post-WWII boundaries and monitor human rights.