chapter 21 and documents

Russia: Revolution in a single year
The communists in Russia , communists came to power back o the revolutionary upheaval that took place within a single year in 1917. The immense pressures of the world war 1 which was going very badly for the Russians, represented the catalyst for that the revolution as the accumulated tensions of Russian society exploded. Much exploited and suffering from wartime shortage, workers men and women alike took to the stets to express their outrage at the incompetence and privileges of the elites. In St. Petersburg, some of 100,000 wives of soldiers demonstrated for bread and peace. Activists from various parties many of them socialist recruited members organized demonstrations, published newspapers and plotted revolutions. By February in 1917 Tsar Nicholas II had lost almost support and was forced to abdicate the throne thus ending the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for more than three centuries.
This was the social revolution and it quickly demonstrated the inadequacy of the provisional government which had come to power after the tsar abdicated. Consisting of middle class politicians and some moderate socialist leaders that government was divided and ineffectual unable or unwilling to meet the demands of Russia's revolutionary masses. Now it was willing to take Russia out of the war as many were now demanding. Impatience and outrage against the provisional government provided an opening for more radical groups. The most effective were the Bolsheviks a small socialist party with a determined and charismatic leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin. He had long believed that Russia despite its industrial backwardness was nonetheless ready for a socials revolution that would he expect spark further revolutions in the more developed countries of Europe.
During the civil war 1918-1921 the Bolshevik harshly regimented the economy seized grain from angry peasants suppressed nationalist rebellions and perpetrated bloody atrocities as did their enemies as well. But they also integrated many lower class men into the Red Army, as Bolshevik military forces were known and into new local government providing them a fresh avenue of social mobility. By battling foreign troops, the Bolsheviks claimed to be defending Russia from imperialist and protecting the downtrodden masses from their exploiters.
Living through collectivization-
For Russian peasants and the of other nationalities as well the chief experience of Stalinism was collectivization, the enforce brining together of many small scale family farms into a much bigger larger collective farms called kolkhozy. Thus the private ownership of land was largely ended, except for some small plots which peasants could till individually. That process generally began with arrival of outside agitators or community party officials who sought to persuade or necessary to force the villages to enter the kolhoz. They divided peasants into class categories rich peasants were to be excluded from the collective farms as incipient capitalist poor and middle peasants were expected to join.