The collapse of Tsarism, the 1917 revolutions, the Bolshevik consolidation of power, and the transformation of the USSR under Stalin

What this dot point is asking

SCSA wants you to explain how Russia was transformed from the Tsarist autocracy of 1914 into the Stalinist dictatorship of 1945. You need to understand why Tsarism collapsed, the two revolutions of 1917, how the Bolsheviks held and consolidated power through civil war and economic experiment, and how Stalin reshaped Soviet society through collectivisation, industrialisation and terror. The option is tested through source analysis and essays in the external examination.

By 1914 the Romanov autocracy was already strained. The 1905 Revolution had forced Nicholas II to grant the Duma, but he reverted to autocratic habits and the underlying problems of peasant land hunger, an emerging industrial working class, and an unrepresentative political system remained. World War I was catastrophic for Russia: millions of casualties, military defeats, food and fuel shortages, and inflation. Nicholas took personal command of the army in 1915, linking himself to the defeats, while at home the influence of Rasputin over the Tsarina Alexandra discredited the monarchy further.

The February Revolution of 1917 (March in the Western calendar) began with strikes and bread protests in Petrograd. When the garrison mutinied rather than fire on crowds, the regime lost its coercive power, and Nicholas abdicated on 2 March (15 March) 1917, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. Power passed to a Provisional Government, but it shared authority with the Petrograd Soviet in a situation Lenin called Dual Power. The Provisional Government made the fatal decision to continue the war and delayed land reform, alienating soldiers and peasants. Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 with the April Theses, demanding peace, land and bread and all power to the soviets.

The failed Kornilov affair of August 1917 discredited the army command and let the Bolsheviks arm themselves as defenders of Petrograd. On the night of 25 to 26 October (7 to 8 November) 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards seized key points and arrested the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace. The new government issued the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. When the Constituent Assembly elections in late 1917 gave the Socialist Revolutionaries a majority, Lenin dissolved the Assembly in January 1918, confirming a one-party direction. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 ended the war with Germany at the cost of huge territory.

The Civil War of 1918 to 1921 pitted the Bolshevik Reds against the loyalist and anti-Bolshevik Whites, with foreign intervention. Trotsky built the Red Army; the Cheka under Felix Dzerzhinsky waged the Red Terror; and War Communism requisitioned grain to feed the cities and army. The Reds won through central control, interior lines and White disunity, but at the cost of famine and economic collapse. The Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 and economic ruin pushed Lenin to adopt the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, restoring limited private trade while the party kept political control.

Lenin's death in January 1924 triggered a succession struggle. Stalin, as General Secretary controlling appointments, outmanoeuvred Trotsky and then his own former allies, isolating opponents on the left and right by 1929. From 1928 Stalin launched the "revolution from above". The first Five-Year Plan (1928 to 1932) drove rapid heavy industrialisation, creating cities such as Magnitogorsk. Collectivisation forced peasants into collective farms, destroyed the kulaks as a class, and triggered a man-made famine, including the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932 to 1933, in which millions died.

Political control hardened into terror. The Great Terror of 1936 to 1938 used show trials of Old Bolsheviks, purges of the party and Red Army officer corps, and mass arrests by the NKVD, sending millions to the Gulag labour camps. A pervasive cult of personality presented Stalin as the infallible leader. In foreign policy, the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 bought time, but Germany invaded in June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). The USSR absorbed enormous losses, held at Stalingrad in 1942 to 1943, and pushed to Berlin by 1945, emerging as a victorious superpower at the cost of around 27 million Soviet dead.

Historiographically, the "totalitarian" school (Robert Conquest) stresses Stalin's personal agency and the scale of terror, while "revisionists" (Sheila Fitzpatrick) examine social support and the chaotic, sometimes locally driven nature of Soviet repression. On 1917, the "liberal" view sees the Bolsheviks as opportunist usurpers, while "Soviet" and some social historians emphasise genuine popular radicalisation behind the slogans of peace, bread and land.