symptoms of illness in the russian body politic russia mobilized 11 million soldiers in 1914/15 but...

SYMPTOMS OF ILLNESS IN THE RUSSIAN BODY POLITIC

Russia mobilized 11 million soldiers in 1914/15 but could not train competent officers to replace those killed at the front.Most promotions to major commands were based on connections at court, not performance.Russia produced a major food surplus, but the system to distribute food often broke down.By the end of 1916, almost 2 million soldiers were Absent Without Leave.By the end of 1916, the cost of living was 4X higher than in 1913.By the end of 1916, 1.7 million workers had participated in strikes.

Anti-war demonstrators before the Winter Palace, Petrograd, January-February 1917

Petrograd under the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, March 1917

A British Labourite delegation visits Petrograd after theFebruary Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, i.e., “Lenin” (1870-1924), leader since 1903 of the “Bolshevik” faction of Russian

socialism

LENIN’S APRIL THESES

1.Transform the Imperialist War into Civil War!

2.All Power to the Soviets!

3.Land for the Village Poor!

(Compare Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy, 1916)

War Minister Alexander Kerensky addresses troops about to leave for the front

in 1917

“War until Victory!”(an attempt to arouse “Jacobin nationalism”)

General L.G. Kornilov waves to the crowd in Moscow in August 1917, shortly before he

attempted a military coup

Climax of the “Great October Revolution”:Red Guards storm the Kremlin in Moscow

Fraternization on the Eastern Front, November/December 1917

Europe at the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March 1918

German troops moving through San Quentin to preparefor the “Ludendorff Offensive” launched on March 21, 1918

The Ludendorff Offensive,

March-July 1918

American troops disembark at Le Havre, July 12, 1918

The breach of the “Hindenburg Line” at St. Quentin, 2 Oct 1918

British troops line the banks of the St. Quentin

Canal

Their multitude of German prisoners

Mutiny broke out in the German fleet on November 4(SPD politicians address sailors in Kiel)

Prince Max of Baden opened an exchange of telegrams with Woodrow Wilson on October 5, 1918,

and turned over the German chancellorship on November 9 to Friedrich Ebert

Social Democrats proclaim the German Republic from the balcony of the Reichstag on November 9, 1918

ESTIMATED COMBAT DEAD IN THE GREAT WAR

Austria-Hungary 1,200,000

France 1,385,000

Germany 1,800,000

Great Britain 947,000

Italy 460,000

Ottoman Empire 325,000

Russia 1,700,000

Serbia 360,000

United States 115,000

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) and his two predecessors,

William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt.In November 1918 the Republicans won a 45-seat majority in the House and 2-seat majority in the

Senate.

VERSAILLES CONFERENCE TIMELINE

• December 14, 1918: Wilson arrives in Paris but soon leaves to tour England and Italy

• January 10-20, 1919: Foch & Clemenceau propose independent Rhenish buffer state

• January 25: Conference agrees unanimously to establish a League of Nations

• January 30: Wilson promises Orlando to accept Italian annexation of Trentino & Trieste

• February 14-March 4: Wilson returns to USA but cannot persuade Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge to support Covenant

• March 24: Big Four begin talks over German borders • April 28: Big Four adopt Rhineland compromise• June 28: Signing of the Treaty of Versailles

The Big Four argued about German borders from March 24 to April 28

France and Britain had promised Italy the Trentino, with 230,000 German-speakers, the mostly Italian

port of Trieste, and Istria & Dalmatia, with 1.3 million South Slavs.

Wilson and Orlando quarreled over Fiume….

Austrian ethnographic map from 1910

Ochre= Italians

Lt. green= Croats

Dk. green,Slovenes

See Nicolson, pp. 159-65

The impact of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany (France occupied the Rhineland until 1930, the

Saarland until 1935)

Sir William Orpen, “The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors,

Versailles, 28 June 1919”

Delegation of French wounded at the signing ceremony for the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919

KEY DECISIONS AT VERSAILLES IN 1919

National self-determination for Poles, “Czechoslovaks”, “Yugoslavs”, Romanians, Latvians, Lithuanians, & Estonians

Formation of a “League of Nations” dedicated to “collective security” (but key votes must be unanimous)

Italy gains the south Tirol but must renounce Dalmatia; the status of Fiume remains disputed

Great Britain gains control of Germany’s African colonies, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq as “League of Nations Mandates”; France gains Syria, Lebanon, and Cameroon

Germany must pay war reparations equal to the entire cost of the war and reduce its army to 100,000 men

European language

groups, 1910

Postwar borders, 1921

“Can It Survive?” (Literary Digest, July 1919)

On March 3, 1919, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge had published an open letter rejecting any treaty that included the Covenant

The Russian Civil War, 1918/19:

In January 1919, Marshall Foch

advocated massive

intervention from Odessa,

Murmansk, Archangel,

Vladivostok, Poland and

Romania. Wilson and Lloyd George

refused to authorize

anything more than arms

shipments to the White Russians.

“One Year of the Proletarian

Dictatorship”Leon Trotsky, War Commissar, 1918

THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA IN ASIA, ca. 1900:(with new rail links across Manchuria to Vladivostok & Port

Arthur

Red Army train arrives in Kagan, Uzbekistan, in 1918

“Long live the three-million-man Red Army!” (USSR, 1919)

“Capitalists of the World,

Unite!”A Soviet poster from 1920 to denounce the Imperialists

Soviet leaders hoped for world revolution:“Long Live the Third Communist International!”

(1920)

THE CONCEPT OF IMPERIALIST PLOTS

LEGITIMIZED STALIN’S REGIME

LATER:“Imperialists cannot stop the triumphal march of the Five-

Year Plan”(USSR, 1930)