RR Key Figures

Question 1

Vladimir Lenin (a.k.a. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov)

Answer 1

was the Bolshevik leader, the instigator of the October Revolution and, until his death, the dominant figure in the new society.

Question 2

Alexander Kerensky

Answer 2

Member of Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet. Provisional Government’s Minister of War and later Prime Minister

Question 3

Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein)

Answer 3

Russian Revolutionary. Helped to organise October Revolution with Lenin, created Red Army and Milrevcom. Commissar of Foreign Affairs under new Soviet Government.

Question 4

Josef Stalin (a.k.a. Josef Dzhugashvili)

Answer 4

Commissar of Nationalities in the new soviet government: The Council of People’s Commissars. Succeeds Lenin as leader

Question 5

Tsar Nicholas II

Answer 5

last tsar of Russia

Question 6

Alexandra

Answer 6

last Tsarina of Russia

Question 7

Mikhail Rodzianko

Answer 7

Chairman of the fourth State Duma and one of the leaders of the February Revolution of 1917, during which headed the Provisional Committee of the State Duma.

Question 8

Prince Georgy Lvov

Answer 8

the first post-imperial prime minister of Russia, from 15 March to 21 July 1917.

Question 9

General Lavr Kornilov

Answer 9

General in the imperial Russian Army (Kornilov Affair)

Question 10

Grigori Rasputin

Answer 10

a Russian peasant, mystic and private adviser to the Romanovs, who became an influential figure in the later years of tsar Nicholas. Assassinated on December 29th 1916.

Question 11

Sergei Witte

Answer 11

A highly influential policy-maker who presided over extensive industrialization within the Russian Empire. Finance Minister under Alexander III and Nicholas II, made Prime minister in 1915. Author of October Manifesto

Question 12

Pyotr Stolypin

Answer 12

The prime minister under Nicholas II. Stolypin was renowned for his heavy crackdown on revolutionaries and dissidents, in which thousands of suspects were given quick martial trials and promptly executed. A hangman’s noose was often referred to at the time as a “Stolypin necktie.” Stolypin himself was assassinated in 1911 by a revolutionary activist.

Question 13

Julius Martov

Answer 13

Leader of the Mensheviks

Question 14

Alexander Antonov

Answer 14

(1888-1922) was the main leader of the peasant uprising that broke out in the Tambov in the early 1920s. Antonov was an industrial worker who joined the Socialist-Revolutionary party during the rising political unrest in 1904. He is best known for leading the Tambov militia, or ‘Blue Army’, during its 1920-22 resistance to Bolshevik rule. He was eventually located and killed by the CHEKA.

Question 15

Sergei Alexandrovich

Answer 15

(1857-1905) was a Romanov grand duke and an uncle and brother-in-law of Tsar Nicholas II. In 1891 Alexandrovich was appointed governor-general of Moscow, which he ruled with a mix of oppression, charitable works and urban improvements. In February 1905, weeks after ‘Bloody Sunday’, Alexandrovich was assassinated by radical SRs, literally blown to pieces when a bomb was tossed on this lap.

Question 16

Inessa Armand

Answer 16

(1874-1920) was a French socialist who provided support to Lenin during his exile in Paris. She returned to Russia with him in April 1917 and became active in the new Soviet government, heading up the Zhenotdel women’s department. Letters between Armand and Lenin suggest a close personal relationship; some historians have speculated that the two were lovers and that Lenin, his wife Krupskaya and Armand lived in a virtual menage a troi. Armand’s death from cholera in 1920 deeply affected Lenin.

Question 17

Anton Denikin

Answer 17

(1872-1947) was a general in the tsarist Imperial Army and, later, an important White commander during the Civil War. In 1919 he led a failed attempt to recapture Moscow from the Bolsheviks – as well as instigating anti-Semitic pogroms and campaigns of ‘White Terror’ that claimed thousands of lives. He fled Russia in 1920 and spent the rest of his life in France and the United States.

Question 18

Felix Dzerzhinsky

Answer 18

By July 1917 Dzerzhinsky was a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee; and he later contributed to the planning of the October Revolution. But it is chief of the fearsome CHEKA that Dzerzhinsky is best known. Dzerzhinsky headed the CHEKA for more than four years, until its dissolution and replacement by the GPU in 1922.

Question 19

Georgy Gapon

Answer 19

(1870-1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest and political agitator who contributed to political unrest in 1904-5. In January 1905 he drafted a petition of workers’ demands for presentation to the tsar; this petition was being carried by protestors when they were gunned down by imperial troops on ‘Bloody Sunday’. Gapon later condemned the tsar’s response to this violence and openly called for revolution. He was hanged by SR agents in 1906 after they discovered his contacts with the Okhrana.

Question 20

Karl Marx

Answer 20

(1818-1883) was a German political philosopher whose writings provided the ideological impetus for a revolution in Russia.

Question 21

Nicholas Nikolaevich

Answer 21

(1856-1929) was a grand duke of the Russian nobility, a first cousin to Tsar Nicholas II and, until 1915, commander-in-chief of the Russian army.

Question 22

Alexei Romanov

Answer 22

(1904-1918) was the only son of Nicholas II and Alexandra and the tsarevich (heir apparent) to the Russian throne. Alexei, a shy and humble boy, suffered from haemophilia, a genetic blood disorder he inherited from his mother. His painful bleeding episodes prompted prompted his mother to seek the counsel of Rasputin. Alexei was shot by Bolshevik agents in Ekaterinburg, three weeks before his 14th birthday.