[Russia from Revolution to Stalin]
Before class
* Read Palmer, 704-738, and review 674-675
* Key terms
Lenin Red Terror
Bolsheviks Central Committee
Nicholas II General Secretary
soviets Politburo
Duma New Economic Policy
March revolution Kulak
Provisional Government permanent revolution
Alexander Kerensky Five-Year Plan
November Revolution Sergei Kirov
Cheka purge trials
Red Army
Leon Trotsky
* Key questions
1. Describe Lenin's personality, background, contributions to Marxism, and conceptions of
a revolutionary party and of revolution.
2. What signs of dissatisfaction could be discerned in Russia at the opening of the twentieth
century? In what direction did Russia seem to be moving between 1905 and 1914?
3. "The war put the tsarist regime to a test it could not meet." Comment.
4. Explain the appeal of Lenin's program in contrast to the program of the Provisional
Government.
5. How do you explain the eventual triumph of the Bolsheviks in the civil war? What were
the results for Russia of the civil war and the Red Terror?
7. How did the Soviet regime deal with the problem of the non-Russian nationalities?
8. What link was there between party and government in the Soviet Union, i.e., what was
parallelism?
9. What roles did Trotsky and Stalin play in the struggle for power that took place in the
years immediately following Lenin's death?
10. Evaluate the effects of the Five-year Plans on Soviet agriculture, industry and society.
What were the benefits? What were the costs?
11. What was the net result of the purges and purge trials of the 1930s?
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