Russia 1914 to 1941: the impact of the First World War on Tsarism, the 1917 revolutions, the Bolshevik consolidation and Civil War, and Stalin's transformation of the USSR through industrialisation, collectivisation and terror.

What this dot point is asking

You need to explain how the First World War destroyed Tsarism, how the Bolsheviks seized and held power between 1917 and 1921, and how Stalin transformed the USSR through industrialisation, collectivisation and terror up to 1941. The AS 1 paper rewards causal analysis and a judgement; be aware of the interpretive split between the older "totalitarian" school (Robert Conquest) and the "revisionist" social historians (Sheila Fitzpatrick) over how the regime worked.

War and the fall of Tsarism

Longer-term weaknesses (the failure to deliver real reform after the 1905 Revolution, the limits of the Dumas, peasant land hunger and urban worker discontent) made the regime fragile, and the war turned that fragility into collapse within three years.

1917 and the Bolshevik seizure of power

The Provisional Government fatally continued the war and delayed land reform, while the Petrograd Soviet, through Soviet Order Number 1, held real authority over the army and the railways, a situation of dual power. Lenin's April Theses promised "Peace, Bread, Land" and "All power to the Soviets". After the failed Kornilov coup discredited the government and armed the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution (a focused seizure of key points in Petrograd, organised by Trotsky's Military Revolutionary Committee) overthrew the Provisional Government.

Consolidation and Civil War

The Bolsheviks won the Civil War (1918 to 1921) against the disunited Whites through the Red Army built by Trotsky, control of the central railways and industrial core, and Cheka terror (the "Red Terror"). The hardship and resistance produced by War Communism, the Tambov revolt and the Kronstadt mutiny (1921), then forced Lenin's strategic retreat to the New Economic Policy (1921), which restored limited private trade and a market in grain.

Stalin's transformation

• Power struggle. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin used his post as General Secretary and the doctrine of "Socialism in One Country" to outmanoeuvre Trotsky and then his erstwhile allies, becoming dominant by 1929.
• Industrialisation. The Five-Year Plans (from 1928) drove rapid heavy-industrial growth, with new centres such as Magnitogorsk, at great human cost but creating a war-capable base by 1941.
• Collectivisation. Forced collective farming from 1929 crushed the peasantry (the "liquidation of the kulaks") and caused mass famine, including the Ukrainian famine (the Holodomor) of 1932 to 1933, in which around four to five million died.
• Terror. The Great Terror and the purges of 1936 to 1938, with the Moscow show trials, the destruction of the Red Army officer corps and the Gulag labour-camp system, eliminated real and imagined enemies.

Examples in context

A model AS paragraph on October 1917 might read: "The October Revolution succeeded less because of mass enthusiasm for Bolshevism than because of the Provisional Government's loss of legitimacy. By continuing the war and postponing land reform until a Constituent Assembly that never effectively met, the government forfeited the support of soldiers and peasants alike, the two groups whose loyalty it most needed. The Petrograd Soviet's control of the army and railways under dual power meant the government could not even rely on force. When Lenin's slogan 'Peace, Bread, Land' offered exactly what the government withheld, and when the Kornilov affair discredited the government and armed the Bolshevik Red Guards, the seizure of key buildings in October met little resistance. The decisive factor, therefore, was not Bolshevik strength but the collapse of the alternative, a point on which the revisionist historians, who stress popular disillusionment, and the older totalitarian school, who stress Bolshevik organisation, can be weighed against each other." This integrates evidence, causation and historiography.

Try this

Q1. What was the slogan associated with Lenin in 1917? [1 mark]

• Cue. "Peace, Bread, Land" (with "All power to the Soviets").

Q2. Explain why the Bolsheviks won the Civil War of 1918 to 1921. [6 marks]

• Cue. Trotsky's Red Army, control of the central railways and industry, Cheka terror, and the disunity and unpopularity of the White forces.

Q3. To what extent was terror essential to Stalin's control of the USSR by 1941? [20 marks]

• Cue. Weigh the Great Terror, show trials and Gulag against propaganda, the Stalin cult, industrial achievement and genuine support. Reach a substantiated judgement.