Chapter 1 Flashcards
Tsar Nicholas II
he had never wanted to be Tsar and although he was determined to hold up his divine right of ruling, he found solace in his family and wife Alexandra. Defeat in a war against Japan in 1904 and 1905 brought strikes. This led to a revolution especially on Bloody Sunday, he was forced to establish a State Duma but he restricted its powers and continued to use his Okhrana. WW1 led to demonstrations which forced the Tsar to abdicate in 1917, before he was executed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks.
Aleksandr Kerensky
a lawyer who became involved in radical politics. In 1905 he served 4 months in gaol for publishing a socialist newspaper. In 1912, he was elected to the State Duma and in February 1917 he joined the social revolutionaries. He became part of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional government. He became minister of war in May and prime minister in July 1917. He was deposed by the Bolsheviks in October and fled to France he moved to the USA where he wrote extensively about the Russian Revolution.
Tsarina Alexandra
she had a German father and her mother was the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria of England. She abandoned to protestant faith and joined the Russian Orthodox Church after she married Nicholas. She proved great comfort for Nicholas, but her lack of political knowledge and devotion to Rasputin weakened Nicholas’ position. She was devastated by Rasputin’s murder in 1916 but urged Nicholas to continue fighting the revolutionaries. She was shot with her family in 1918.
Prince Lvov
was a wealthy aristocratic landowner who began his career as a lawyer and in 1905 joined the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) and won election to the first Duma. He became chairman of the Union of Zemstva in 1914 and leader of the Zemgor in 1915. He became the head of the provisional government in Russia after the Tsar’s abdication from March to July 1917.he was later arrested by Bolsheviks but he escaped and lived in Paris.
Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov
an academic historian who founded the constitutional democrat (Kadet) in 1905. He became foreign minister in the in the 1917 provisional government but along with Guchkov was forced out in May over his support of war until victory. He also supported the Whites in the Civil war and immigrated to Paris when they were defeated.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov
a wealthy Moscow business man who became leader of the Octobrist party. He became minister of war and of the navy in the provisional government of 1917 but resigned when his policy of continuing war until victory was rejected by soviet in May. He supported Whites in the Civil War and immigrated to Berlin in 1921.
