Russian Rulers History Podcast · Mark Schauss

The Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on the Russian People

·24 min·1 clip

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk cost Russia 64% of pig iron, 40% of coal, and 34% of its population.

It opens by saying the usual story puts too much weight on the revolution itself and misses what it did to Russian lives. It then steps back to the fall of Nicholas II and the reasons often given for his abdication. It also pushes back on the idea that his rule was uniquely authoritarian. The episode keeps a clear chronological pace as it moves through the break with the old order. It then jumps ahead to Stalin's consolidation of power in 1928, when Trotsky and Zinoviev were removed from the Central Committee. It notes that the five-year plans replaced the earlier political struggle. It describes collectivization as being forced on the Soviet Union from above. It treats the first plan, the Great Turn, as an attempt to change the Soviet Union at its core. It also says that change came with severe human cost. The Great Famine of 1930 to 1933 is placed at the center of that cost, and the episode identifies that famine with the Holodomor in Ukraine. It also discusses the destruction of the kulaks. At the same time, it calls forced industrialization genuinely necessary. It argues that Stalin feared war with Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, and uses that fear to explain why industrial output mattered so much to Soviet survival. The episode then turns to Sergei Kirov's murder and the purge that followed. It describes the show trials and the Great Purge, also called the Great Terror, as a widening attack on supposed enemies of the state. It ends by saying communism and its remnants still reverberate through Russian society today.

As heard by us

A blunt survey of the revolution's aftermath, from abdication to terror.

The episode stays with what the Bolshevik Revolution meant for Russian people after the takeover. It starts with Nicholas II's overthrow and the reasons given for his abdication, then moves through Stalin's consolidation of power, the five year plans, collectivization, the Great…

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Why you'd press play

You want the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, not just the buildup to it.

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