Russian Revolution Research Paper

While most European revolutions formed republics/ democracies, Russia experienced an extreme shift of government towards the left wing. I would personally lean toward the theory that since Russia was so undeveloped and backward in comparison to the rest of Europe, the contrast led to the revolutionary movements that formed at the end of the 19th century. Under the Tsars, the burdened “common” people had virtually no rights. Unlike most other nations, Russia had no constitution, no elected representative assembly, no court of appeal to examine/ restrain the Tsars’ laws. As ineffective as they could be, the Tsars hardly inclined to support reforms, and were incapable of making concessions to agitations among workers in 1912. Because Russia was so behind, for lack of a better word, the Bolsheviks wanted to forcibly advance it decades, if not centuries. Stalin stated during the implementation of the Five Year Plans in the 1930s, "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this gap in ten years. Either we do it or they will crush us."

Russia didn't become communist right away; the

While the Bolsheviks were the only one to form a lasting government during this era, communist governments were briefly established in both post-war Bavaria and Hungary, and was a major threat to the early stability of Weimar Germany. It was also, I would argue, a reaction to the threat of communism, and socialism in general, that led to the prevalence of right-wing authoritarian governments throughout interwar Europe. In a more well-known but similar situation, the rise of Hitler was predicated as a move to oppose a threatened Communist/Social Democratic takeover of Germany. These factors were evidently present during the Russian Revolution and not entirely in the revolutions of other European countries, which led to the extreme shift of government for