Russian Revolution

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of revolutionary change: elation and hope, fear and discouragement, and ultimately the prolonged agony of bloodshed and privation, both from war and repression, and the "bony hand of Tsar Hunger," who strangled tens of thousands and, in the end, brought the revolutionary period to a close after the civil war by forcing the Bolsheviks to abandon the radical measures of War Communism in favor of a New Economic Policy (NEP).
Throughout, the events in Russia were of worldwide importance. Western nations saw "immutable" values and institutions successfully challenged, COMMUNISM emerged as a viable social and political system, and Third World peoples saw the power of organized workers' and peasants' movements as a means of "liberating" themselves from "bourgeois" exploitation. As such, the Revolutions of 1917 ushered in the great social, political, and ideological divisions of the contemporary world.
Historians differ over whether the Revolutions of 1917 were inevitable, but all ...

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later it divided into two factions: the Mensheviks, who favored a decentralized, mass party; and the Bolsheviks of Vladimir Ilich LENIN, who wanted a tightly organized, hierarchical party (see BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS). Middle-class liberals formed the Constitutional Democratic party (Cadets) in 1905. Russian losses in the RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR precipitated the OF 1905. The massive urban strikes, rural rioting, and almost total liberal disaffection from the tsarist regime in 1905 have been called a "dress rehearsal" for 1917. Reluctantly, Nicholas II granted a range of civil liberties, established limited parliamentary government through a DUMA, abolished peasant redemption payments, and ...

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