The Last Czar and the Rise of the Soviet Union

Doomed From the Start? Coronation Party… Russia in turmoil – few extremely wealthy, most extremely poor World War I would expose weaknesses… Autocrat …. People hated his wife….

Duma

Another Love Story Alexandra… Children: Olga Tatiana Marie Anastasia

Alexsi

Family Life Czar was one of the richest men in the world…. Kids never… Kids always… Few outside … Very close family.

Alexsi Hemophilia…

Grigory Rasputin Very strange… His eyes… Never took… Somehow he was able to calm Alexsi

Russian nobles … His death… His letter…

Petrograd – March 8,1917 – “Peace and Bread”

Nicholas II is forced to Abdicate

Provisional Government Aleksandr Kerensky Soviets

October Revolution Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov V.I. LENIN Bolsheviks A “gift” from Germany… “Peace, Land, Bread” “All Power to the Soviets”

Russian Civil War: Reds vs. Whites

Within a year of Rasputin’s Letter

Bodies of Anastasia and Alexsi were missing... Until 2008

Russian Civil War 1918-1921 War Communism- Cheka

Leon Trotsky Commissar of War Organizational Genius Rigid Discipline Political Differences among Whites “Foreign Intrusion”

U.S.S.R. - 1922

NEP 1924…

Politburo

Joseph Djugashvili (STALIN) Man of Steel?

TOTALITARIANISM

Soviet Gulags

Five Year Plans

“We are Dizzy with Success”

Collectivization … Kulaks…

Purges

“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” Stalin