Russia in 1917, multiethnic empire, the prison house of nations, conservative, suppressive, overwhelmingly agricultural economy

Czar Alexander I 1777-1825

Czar Nicholas I 1796-1855

populists, anarchists, socialists, Marxists

Socialist Revolutionary Party

Russia Social Democratic Labor Party

Bolsheviks, Mensheviks

Constitutional Democrats

Czar Alexander II 1818-1881

Czar Alexander III 1845-1894

Russification

Czar Nicholas II 1868-1917

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin 1872-1916

Incompetent Nicholas II:

War between Japan and Russia

bloody Sunday

Duma

Soviets

Abdication of Nicholas II

provisional government

Vladimir Lenin 1870-1924

Leon Trotsky 1879-1940

The February Revolution

The October Revolution

CHEKA (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage), NKVD, KGB

Lenin's War Communism

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918