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Name__________________________________________

Part III

DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION

Part B

Essay

Directions: Write a well-organized essay that includes an introduction, several paragraphs, and a

conclusion. Use evidence from at least six documents in the body of the essay. Support your

response with relevant facts, examples, and details. Include additional outside information.

Historical Context:

Russia’s history has been dominated by strong leaders and a rural population of peasants living in poverty. These rulers have acted in ways that have both benefited and harmed the people, while contributing to cause the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Revolution produced both positive and negative effects on Russia, which changed its name to the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) in 1917.

Task: Using information from the documents and your knowledge of Global History, write an essay in which you:

Document 3a

From Decree on Serfs (1767) passed by Catherine the Great

From A Source Book for Russian History, G. Vernadsky, trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), Vol. 2, pp. 453-454.

Document 3b

-Excerpt from The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow

Document 3c

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4) Based on these documents, how was knouting used to control the Russian people?

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Document 4 – From The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engles (1848)

1) According to Karl Marx and Frederich Engles, how should working men react to their oppression?

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Document 5

1) Based on this document, how did Russian people react to the policies of Czar Nicholas II?

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Document 6a

Document 6b

Source: Vladimir I. Lenin “The Proletariat and the Peasantry” 1917

1) According to these documents, what changes did the Bolsheviks want for Russia?

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Document 7

1) How did Lenin’s New Economic Policy use nationalism to improve the Soviet Union?

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2) How did the NEP use communist ideas to improve the Soviet Union’s Economy?

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3) How did the NEP use capitalist ideas to improve the Soviet Union?

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Document 8

1a What was Stalin’s economic policy toward industry?

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b What was Stalin’s economic policy toward agriculture?

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Document 9

In 1929, Stalin’s policy of all-out collectivization had disastrous effects on agricultural productivity. He increased the amount of grain to be exported from Ukraine. This action resulted in famine among the Ukrainian peasants and resistance among the landowners.

Source: Soviet Archives Exhibit, Library of Congress (adapted)

1) According to this document, what was one action the Soviet government proposed to enforce its policies of collectivization and grain quotas?

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• Describe the social, political, and economic causes of the Russian Revolution

• Describe the positive and negative effects of the Russian Revolution on the Soviet Union.

…all serfs and peasants who disobey their landlords shall be arrested and taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished as disturbers of the public, according to the laws and without leniency [kindness]. And if any serfs and peasants should continue to be disobedient to their landlord, then they shall be punished by the knout and forthwith deported to Nerchinsk to penal servitude for life

Knouting was the primary means of punishment for capital offenses in Czarist Russia until the latter part of the 19th century. It was applied exclusively to serfs. Before the entire community assembled in an open field, the serf designated for this punishment was stripped of his shirt and bound to a wooden block by his arms and neck and knees. The knout was a leather thronged whip which, in the hands of a stout executioner, tore away flesh down to the bone. Sir Robert Porter, in Traveling Sketches in Sweden and Russia (London, 1809), witnesses the knouting of a serf coachman accused of killing his master. Speaks of the “bloody splash of the knout” on the senseless body of the victim. In this case, over 200 strokes were applied…The entire system of serfdom turned on the principle of savage corporal punishment, especially after the peasant uprising of 1774 during Catherine’s reign.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. Workers labor everywhere for the nation and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians [workers] have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!

Even though Great Britain led the Industrial Revolution beginning in the 1700s, by the mid-1800s, France, Germany, and Italy had caught up, and by the mid 1800s, French, German, and Italian factories were competing with Great Britain. But Russia was still dominated by feudal economy until Alexander II ended serfdom in 1861. This allowed millions of serfs to move to cities, which made factories possible. But these factories made many Russians motivated to join together in protest when they felt they were being treated unfairly.

In 1905, an event known as “Bloody Sunday” began on 22 January 1905 when a peaceful demonstration of 200,000 men, women and children in front of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg calling for reform was ended by the police and troops guarding the palace. They opened fire and over 1000 people were killed or wounded. The Czar refused to listen to demands for political change and in October, a general strike occurred as workers in the railways, industry and the banks stopped working. Soviets [groups that represented the people] were formed in the major cities. The most famous was in the capital St Petersburg. These councils were made up of educated workers.

By World War I, Russia still had the lowest industrial output of any major European power. During World War I, Russia’s inferior military technology and a shortage of arms and ammunition caused over 3 millions Russian deaths. By 1917, The Czar’s decision to go to war seemed like suicide for Russia.

Bolshevik Revolution of 1917

By 1917, World War I was causing the Russian military to doubt their government. Many soldiers simply left the battlefields of Europe and went home to their families. What they found were millions of factory workers and farm peasants starving while receiving no help from Czar Nicholas II. Economically, industrial workers had a better quality of life than peasants, but they still worked from 10-16 hours a day in dangerous factories.

On 23rd February 1917 the International Women's Day Festival in St. Petersburg turned into a city-wide demonstration, as women workers left factories to protest against food shortages. Men soon joined them, and on the following day almost every industry, shop and business had stopped functioning - the entire populace went on strike. Nicholas ordered the police and military to intervene, however the military was no longer loyal to the Tsar and many soldiers joined protesters or killed their commanding officers. Fights broke out and the whole city was in chaos. By the end of 1917, a political party called the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took control of the government and imprisoned the Czar and his family.

The time has now come when the peasantry is coming forward as a conscious maker of a new way of life in Russia. And the course and outcome of the great Russian revolution depend in tremendous measure on the growth of the peasants’ political consciousness.

What does the peasantry expect of the revolution? What can the revolution give the peasantry? The peasantry wants land and freedom. There can be no two opinions on this score. All workers are fighting for the peasantry to receive all the land and full freedom. “All the land” means not putting up with any partial concessions and hand-outs; it means reckoning, not on a compromise between the peasantry and the landlords, but on abolition of landed estates. And the party of the class-conscious proletariat, the Bolsheviks, have most vigorously pro claimed this view. This resolution clearly shows that the Bolsheviks support the peasants’ demand for all the land.

Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy (1921-24)

 

National Freedoms

a. Lenin allowed freedom to national and Muslim cultures.  

b. In the Ukraine, although the Bolsheviks were in power, the Ukrainian language was used in government and business, and children were taught it in schools.  

c. In the Muslim areas of central Asia (such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) bazaars [Muslim markets] were allowed to reopen, mosques were freed from Soviet control, the Koran was allowed, and native languages were encouraged.

  

Experts

Coal, iron, steel and railways stayed nationalized [controlled by the government], but the Bolsheviks brought in experts, earning high wages, to increase production.

  

Private businesses

a. Small factories were given back to their owners.

b. New traders (called 'nepmen') were allowed to set up small private businesses.  

c. At the same time - where War Communism had forced the peasants to hand over ALL their surplus grain - Lenin let them sell their surplus, and pay a tax instead.   Some hard-working peasants became wealthy (the ‘Kulaks’).

Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, adopted by the party in 1928, called for rapid industrialization of the economy, with an emphasis on heavy industry. It set goals that were unrealistic—a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy industry alone. All industry and services were nationalized [owned by the government], managers were given predetermined output quotas by central planners, and trade unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker productivity.

. . . the Socialist way . . . is to set up collective farms and state farms which leads to the joining together of the small peasant farms into large collective farms, technically and scientifically equipped, and to the squeezing out of the capitalist elements from agriculture. . . .

Addendum to the minutes of [December 6, 1932] Politburo [meeting] No. 93.

The Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee resolve:

To place the following villages on the black list for overt disruption of the grain collection plan and for malicious sabotage, organized by kulak [wealthy Ukrainian farmers] and counterrevolutionary elements:

The following measures should be undertaken with respect to these villages:

1. Immediate cessation [stoppage] of delivery of goods, complete suspension of cooperative and state trade in the villages, and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores. ...

The Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee call upon all collective and private farmers who are honest and dedicated to Soviet rule to organize all their efforts for a merciless struggle against kulaks and their accomplices in order to: defeat in their villages the kulak sabotage of grain collection; fulfill honestly and conscientiously their grain collection obligations to the Soviet authorities; and strengthen collective farms.

CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS OF THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC — V. CHUBAR.

SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIK) OF UKRAINE — S. KOSIOR.

6 December 1932.

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