KEY PEOPLE

Russian revolution

Alexander I

The Russian tsar, or emperor, whose death in 1825 prompted a mild secession crisis that created an appearance of weakness in the Russian monarchy. A group of 3,000 soldiers who termed themselves Decembrists took advantage of the chaos to demand reforms, such as a written constitution for Russia. Later revolutionaries such as Lenin saw the Decembrists as heroes.

The Tsar who formally abolished serfdom in 1861, freeing Russia’s serfs from indentured servitude to their landowners. Though reformers hailed the move, it engendered a severe economic crisis, angered landowners, and prompted a number of revolutionary groups to agitate for a constitution. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by a member of one of these groups, prompting his successor, son Alexander III, to implement a harsh crackdown on public resistance.

Alexander II

Alexander III

The son of and successor to the assassinated Tsar Alexander II. Upon taking power in 1881, Alexander III cracked down severely on reform and revolutionary groups, prompting growing unrest. Alexander III’s son, Nicholas II, was the tsar in power during the Russian Revolution in 1917.

A Polish-born revolutionary who joined the Bolshevik Party after getting out of prison in 1917. Following the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky head of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force and an early forerunner of the KGB.

Felix Dzerzhinsky

A member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and an active participant in both the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet. At first, Kerensky acted as a liaison between the two governing bodies. Within the provisional government, he served as minister of justice, minister of war, and later as prime minister. After the October Revolution, Kerensky fled the country and eventually immigrated to the United States, where he taught Russian history at Stanford University.

Alexander Kerensky

(a.k.a. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov)The founder of the Bolshevik Party, organizer of the October Revolution, and the first leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin spent most of the early twentieth century living in exile in Europe (primarily Britain and Switzerland). He was a devout follower of Marxism and believed that once a Communist revolution took place in Russia, Communism would spread rapidly around the world. Though not involved in the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 and orchestrated the October Revolution that turned Russia into a Communist state.

Vladimir Lenin

The younger brother of and successor to Tsar Alexander I. This unorthodox succession from older to younger brother caused a small public scandal in 1825 and enabled the Decembrist Revolt to take place. Nicholas I was succeeded by his son, Alexander II.

Nicholas I

The last Russian tsar, who ruled from 1894 until 1917. Nicholas II, who assumed the throne with trepidation upon his father Alexander III’s death, was a clumsy and ineffective leader whose avoidance of direct involvement in government caused resentment among the Russian people and resulted in violence in 1905. Nicholas II abdicated on March 2, 1917, as a result of the February Revolution. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas along with his wife, Alexandra, and their children.

Nicholas II

A Russian peasant and self-proclaimed mystic who gained significant influence over Tsar Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra, in the years immediately prior to the revolutions of 1917. Rasputin’s sexual escapades in the Russian capital of Petrograd caused scandal, and the Russian people began to believe that the tsar himself was under Rasputin’s influence. Aware that Rasputin’s presence was damaging Nicholas II’s credibility, supporters of the tsar had Rasputin killed in late 1916.

Grigory Rasputin

(a.k.a. Joseph Dzhugashvili)A Bolshevik leader who became prominent only after Lenin’s return to Petrograd in April 1917. Although Stalin was very much a secondary figure during the October Revolution, he did gain Lenin’s attention as a useful ally, and following the October coup, Lenin gave him a position in the government as commissar of nationalities. As Stalin was a member of an ethnic minority—he was from the central Asian region of Georgia, not Russia proper—Lenin felt he would be an effective ambassador of sorts to the many ethnic minorities within the former Russian Empire. After the revolution, Stalin became increasingly powerful and eventually succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union upon Lenin’s death in 1924.

Joseph Stalin

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.

Petr Stolypin

A Bolshevik leader and one of the most prominent figures of the October Revolution. Trotsky, who was in exile abroad during the February Revolution, returned to Russia in May 1917, closely aligned himself with Lenin, and joined the Bolshevik Party during the summer. Trotsky headed the Revolutionary Military Committee, which provided the military muscle for the October Revolution. After the revolution, he was appointed commissar of foreign affairs and led Russia’s negotiations with Germany and Austria for the armistice and subsequent peace treaty that made possible Russia’s exit from World War I.

Leon Trotsky (a.k.a. Leon Bronstein)

(born Feb. 26, 1869, St. Petersburg, Russia — died Feb. 27, 1939, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian revolutionary, wife of Vladimir Ilich Lenin. A Marxist activist from the 1890s, she met Lenin c. 1894. Sentenced to three years in exile in 1898, she obtained permission to spend her term with Lenin in Siberia, where they were married. After 1901 she lived with Lenin in several European cities and helped found the Bolshevik party faction. She returned to Russia in 1917 to spread Bolshevik propaganda after the revolution began, and later she served in several posts in the educational bureaucracy. After Lenin's death (1924), she remained aloof from intraparty struggles.

Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya,

Alix of Hesse and by Rhine (later Alexandra Feodorovna ) (6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918), was Empress consort of Russia as spouse of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of the Russian Empire. Born a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was given the name Alexandra Feodorovna upon being received into the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonised her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer in 2000.

Alexandra is best remembered as the last Tsarina of Russia, as one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease, as well as for her support of autocratic control over the country. Her notorious friendship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin was also an important factor in her life.

Empress Alexandra

(1849-1919) From Getzler, Israel. Martove: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat. Cambridge: Melbourne University Press, 1967. Page facing 51.

Vera Zasulich came to prominence with her attempt to assassinate General Trepov, head of the St. Petersburg police, in 1878. Although acquitted, she fled to London, where she was one of the founders of the Russian Marxist school. Sharing lodgings with Trotskii and Martov, Zasulich collaborated on the paper Iskra. After the split in the RSDRP, Zasulich sided with the Mensheviks and died in relative obscurity after her return to Russia.

ZASULICH, VERA IVANOVNA

MOLOTOV, VIACHESLAV IVANOVICH (1890-1986) Molotov (from molot, or hammer) was the pseudonym of Viacheslav Skriabin, a shopkeeper's son who became involved in Bolshevik politics during the 1905 Revolution. In October 1917, he was one of the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet, beginning a long and successful career in the Soviet hierarchy, which included appointments as head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in the early 1920's, full membership in the Politburo in 1926, and Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1939 through 1949. It was in the latter capacity that Molotov signed a treaty of neutrality with Nazi Germany in 1939, which kept the Soviet Union out of World War II for two years. After the death of Stalin in 1953, Molotov's authority began to wane, and in 1957 was demoted to the post of Ambassador to Mongolia by Khrushchev. 

MARTOV, L.(1873-1923)One of the leaders of the Menshevik Party. One of the initiators of the Bund, Martov was first arrested and exiled for revolutionary activity at the age of 18. He soon renounced the idea of a separate Jewish socialist party and, along with Lenin, helped found the "Union for Struggle of the Liberation of the Working Class." At first he worked closely with Lenin, and was particularly active on the editorial board of Iskra, but the men parted ways in 1903, and Martov became a key figure in the rival Menshevik Party.  As the leader of the group which advocated a gradual transition to socialism, Martov often disagreed with Lenin's more impatient brand of revolutionary agitation. After October 1917, the two were very much at odds over the new Bolshevik government's use of force against dissenters. Nevertheless, Martov was permitted to be elected to the Moscow Soviet and continued to publish articles in the Menshevik press until his arrest by the Cheka in 1918. Two years later, he exiled himself to Germany, where he died in 1923.