Russia was very backwards. There were two classes of society: the upper class and the serfs (more like slaves). The upper class was not allowed to shoot a serf, but you could beat a wayward serf to death!
Russian troops fought Napoleon at Waterloo. The young officers got out and saw the world and discovered they were backwards. They tried to pull little revolutions for more freedoms. How do you deal with lower class complaints? Solution #1 says you smack them every time they open their mouth (also known as basic oppression). Solution #2 is that you can get off their backs and try to help them. There was some industry in Russia. They had railroads to move troops.
The new czar was Nicholas II (emperor from 1894 to 1917). He was a nice man–gentle, religious, sweet, but not strong and not what Russia needed. He was controlled by his wife, Alexandra, who was controlled by a former monk and all around really evil dude named Rasputin (actually Rasputin is a nickname–it means "debauchee," which gives some idea of the man's character). The royal family had hemophilia (blood won't clot) which had been passed down from Queen Victoria of England and bred through close family intermarriage (it is a recessive gene–all of those intermarriages among European royalty!!). Rasputin could stop the bleeding of the young prince, Alexis, probably by hypnotizing him. Only males get hemophilia. Rasputin may have been applying pressure to certain points to stop the bleeding. Czarina Alexandra thinks Rasputin is a miracle worker. Rasputin is a really bad influence. A group of nobles try to kill him–poison cake, poison wine, shoot him 5 times, then finally drown him. He is a really hard guy to kill. Anyway, by his power to stop Prince Alexis's bleeding, Rasputin was thought to be controlling the government and not doing it very well! World War I clearly shows Russia's weakness. Rasputin is eventually killed by the drowning in December of 1916, but it is too late to save the monarchy.
Meanwhile, there were revolutionaries loose abroad. A man in Switzerland was plotting. Lenin criticized the czar. Lenin got his law degree by reading and passing his bar exam. He speaks against the government and is exiled to Siberia. His brother had been hung. Lenin goes to Switzerland and reads Marx. He plots against the czar. He led a group called the Bolsheviks (means "majority" but as with most revolutionary groups, it wasn't the majority!). There were lots of national groups included in Russia that didn't want to be. The Russians want to stamp out the different nationalities, especially the Jews (who are a handy scapegoat). Many Jews came to the United States in the 1890's to escape Russia. There were lots of spies, paid informants, secret police, etc. Terror and repressing tactics don't only belong to the Communists–they're part of the basic Russian system from way back. In 1900, Russia made a big discovery. They discovered the three-field system of agriculture. Whoopee!! (If you remember back in the first lectures, the three-field system was found by the rest of the world in the Middle Ages). In Petrograd (used to be St. Petersburg until World War I broke out and the Russians didn't want to sound so German. Upon Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. After the fall of the USSR, it became St. Petersburg again!! Anyway, Petrograd was the Russian capital from 1712 to 1918), there were demonstrations, riots, and strikes in 1916. The czar abdicated and Bolsheviks pull Russia out of World War I at the end of 1917.
After Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne, there was a new provisional government set up by a man named Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970). He looked like he would form a moderate government, but there is really no tradition for democracy or anything close to it in Russia, so it really isn't a huge loss for democracy when Kerensky was ousted. He outlawed Bolshevik activities. Lenin went into hiding in Finland. Other Bolsheviks were arrested. Germany is watching all of this and loving it. The Germans help slip Lenin back into Russia. Lenin was shipped into Russia in a sealed boxcar across Germany to Russia to break up the government. Lenin is a great speaker. He helped start a civil war between the Reds (Communists) and the Whites (Moderates). Kerensky fled to France then settled in the United States. The satellite states on the western border and North Baltic saw their chance and broke free from Russian control. The Brest Litovsk Treaty (March 3, 1918) was made with Germany to get Russia out of World War I. It was humiliating to Russians. They lost 62 million people and over 1 million miles of territory in this treaty, but Lenin was convinced it was necessary to end Russia's participation in World War I. Russia just couldn't continue in World War I.
The Western allies (including the United States by this time) were really mad that Russia was backing out of the war. They sent troops to Russia from 1917 to 1920 to try get rid of the Communists but failed. Nicholas II and his entire family were imprisoned after his abdication and killed in July of 1918.
Leon Trotsky built up the army so he could beat the czarist faction. The Red Army became much better. They moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow cuz the Western border was too close to Petrograd (they didn't feel as safe so close to the Western border).
The Bolsheviks won the civil war in 1921. There were three men running Russia: Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), and Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). They hold a lot of elections. Lenin is the top dog from the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922 til his death in 1924. Trotsky is the genius that makes it all work and molds the Russian army. Stalin is the youngest of the three. There are three centers of power–the Communist Party, the Secret Police (who murdered thousands of Russians on own authority), and the Army. The secret police was run separately. They liquidated people. The army was the power group. Gradually, Lenin got control of the army. Lenin had a stroke in 1922 and was planning for Trotsky to succeed him. However, Stalin started maneuvering for control. In 1922, they renamed Russia the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Lenin was a realist and said that would need capitalism because communism doesn't work. Lenin died in 1924 and Trotsky was eventually kicked out of the country and assassinated (on Stalin's orders) in Mexico in May 1940. Trotsky was just too sharp for his own good.
Stalin took over upon Lenin's death. Stalin is the ruler of the U.S.S.R. from 1924 til 1953 (when he died). He put out the propaganda that he had been "persecuted" in the Old Regime. He said that he was a truer believer in Marxism than Lenin had been. Lenin had allowed a small bit of capitalism in (you were allowed to own farms). Stalin confiscated everything! The peasants revolt and were shot down in groves. The farmers would shoot their cows and burn everything so nothing would be left for Stalin to take away. After over 5 million were dead (killed or starved to death), the peasants gave in. Stalin formed collectivized farmland but the farmers never worked as hard as when it had actually been their own farms ("we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us").
Stalin tried to build up industry, but the economy sucked. He purged the Communist party with midnight arrests, brainwashing, concentration camps, killings, etc. 800,000 people were killed between 1936 and 1938. Stalin was firmly in command. Everyone is scared to death of Stalin. In 1925, the city of Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad in Stalin's honor. It is now called Volgograd.