Page 314 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

revolution—russia 1615

global community between Communist countries and class; the dominance of Russians over the empire’s many
the capitalist democracies of the West. other peoples; the absolute authority of the czar over all
other groups in society.
The Collapse of Perhaps more important were the reforms that Rus-
Czarist Russia sia’s nineteenth-century czars made as they attempted to
The first phase of the Russian Revolution occurred in modernize their country and catch up with the indus-
February 1917, when the last czar, Nicholas II, abdicated trializing West. They ended serfdom in 1861, but the
the throne, marking the end of the Romanov dynasty that lives of most peasants did not improve dramatically.
had governed Russia for almost three centuries. What They promoted rapid industrial growth but did not
had brought czarist Russia to this revolutionary turning anticipate the political demands of a growing middle
point? Factors surely included the ancient inequalities, class or the rising wave of protests by exploited urban
conflicts, and divisions of Russian society—the great gulf workers. Despite modest political reforms and elec-
between a small land-owning nobility and a vast peasant tions to a national parliament (the Duma), the czar’s

Russians lie dead and wounded in the street after being shot with a machine gun manned by
Bolshevik forces on a building roof.