Russian Revolution: The Russian Marxist Party splits (1903) when Lenin proposes

the creation of a revolutionary elite over open democracy and the minority of the
actual part becomes the Bolsheviks (majority) and the opposing party Mensheviks
(minority- it was compromised of the majority of the original party)

-Bloody Sunday (1905): tens of thousands of workers (& their families) led by Father
Gapon fired upon by troops: leads to the October Manifesto (promise for reform w/
provisions for constitution, civil liberties, a legislature (Duma) … these were all
demands from the Zemstov (the provincial council)

- 1917: October Revolution: Lenin returns to Petrograd w/ his slogan “Peace, Land,
Bread” and takes over the Winter Palace (headquarters of Kerensky’s provisional
gov’t –it was in place after the tsar’s abdication) and institute the Leninist doctrine
the following year (doctrine called for industries to be nationalized, the church lands
to be seized, Russia to drop out of WWI and surrender Poland and many other
places to Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk)

1918-1922: Russian Civil War fought between communists and the others (including
tsarists, peasants, kulaks etc) with the Communists claiming victory and in 1922 the
USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was formed; 1924: The Constitution
under USSR

1927: Stalin comes to power

Trotsky vs. Stalin: Trotsky was a Jew and pushed for worldwide Revolution; Stalin
was already a secretary of the Communist party and thus had a lot of power (could
appoint important offices) and he wanted to industrialize Russia (and thus
strengthen it) before trying to spread Communism further; sent pro assassin to
murder Trotsky in 1940 in Mexico

1930’s: farm collectivization leads to building of communes and the destruction of

5-12 million people (the Kulaks) and the purge trials (Stalin’s attempts at
strengthening his hold); Also, Russia’s the only Nation (well the one that counts,
anyway) in the West whose economy doesn’t suffer and instead it goes on to
become a leading industrial power as opposed to the Great Depression and stuff
that was going on elsewhere

*Tsar Nich. II is weak and incompetent and listens to his wife (who’s under Mad
Rasputin’s influence); Provisional gov’t = moderates; Russia in trouble as shown
during Russo-Jap War; Sergei Witte (financial Minister, 1892): led Russia into
Industrial Age; All the economic problems lead to radical ideas (anarchy as shown
by Bakunin etc)

England (1920s):

Chamberlain: gave Hitler Czechoslovakia (appeasement) and became infamous for

that
David Lloyd George (Liberal Party) gives rise to the Labour Party

Irish Question: eventual independence to Southern Ireland; Egypt gains

independence (from Britain); gives Canada and Australia equal rights
(Commonwealth of Nations)

France (1920s):

Poincare, the French PM, sends troops to occupy the Ruhr Valley when Germany
fails to pay all of the years (1922) reparation; the Dawes Plan (lowers the overall
German debt and persuades private investors to buy bonds etc –basically invest- in
German Economy) a bit successful; However, France’s economy still in trouble and
German Reparation still can’t help it and their foreign policy is the same (they can’t
really enforce anything when it comes to Germany)

US (1920s):

The Dawes Plan is named after the American who came up with it in hopes of
diffusing tension (and most of the investors were American bankers); refuse
membership in the League of Nations (which is a fail anyways), they also try to stop
further wars by asking Nations to scrap their warships and weapons etc through
treaties (for ex. The Five Power Treaty which was aimed more at stopping Japanese
Expansion in the Pacific)

VERSAILLES TREATY: (1919) -- > ended World War I

-- President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points"
-- territorial
-- Germany surrendered Alsace-Lorraine to France.
-- Germany gave over the Saar Valley to League of Nations authority
and Saar coal mines to
France control with the provision that, after 15 years, the Saar
inhabitants would decide their
own political fate by a plebiscite.
-- Germany gave up minor border regions to Denmark and Belgium.
-- Polish Corridor created.
-- the port of Danzig on the Baltic Sea placed under League of Nations
control and open for
Polish use.
-- Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland a future problem),
Yugoslavia, Poland emerge
as new nations.
-- colonial
-- Germany ceded all its colonies to the Allies to be held as League of
Nations mandates.
-- secret arrangements made during the war and incorporated in
League of Nations mandates
 in the Middle East (Sykes-Picot Agreement, Balfour Declaration,
Hussein-McMahon Letters).
-- disarmament (prevent Germany from ever waging war again)
-- German army was limited to 100,000 volunteers.
-- conscription was forbidden.
-- the Rhineland was demilitarized.
-- German navy reduced to a few small ships.
-- submarines, military aircraft, and war industries were prohibited.
-- war guilt clause (Germany was held solely responsible for starting World War
I).
-- Germany must pay reparations (she made a few payments until 1931 and
afterwards Hitler ignored this
obligation).
-- League of Nations created.

*1929: Italy – Lateran pact?: Vatican City autonomous

Russia – collectivization of agriculture

US – fall of stock market (so bad that people jump out of windows etc) and start of
Great Depression

* Syndicalism/Corporatism: Reflections on Violence by George Sorel (introduces

syndicalism) influence Mussolini (who later imposes corporatism and is the Head of
11 of the 22 different branches)

*Habsburg (Austrian), Hohenzollern (Prussian) and Romanov (Russian) dynasties

disappear by the end of WWII

*Germany strongest nation on the continent even at the end of WWI