Chapter 27 The Great War

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Principle of National Self-Determintaion

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The principle of self-determination, often seen as a moral and legal right, is that every nation is entitled to a sovereign territorial state, and that every specifically identifiable population should choose which state it belongs to (for instance by plebiscite). It is commonly used to justify the aspirations of an ethnic group that self-identifies as a nation toward forming an independent sovereign state.

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Army Order No. 1

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a radical order of the Petrograd soviet that stripped officers of their authority and placed power in the hands of elected committees of common soldiers.

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Petrograd Soviet

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a huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two thousand to three thousand workers, soldiers and socialist intellectuals, modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905.

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Constituent Assembly

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a freely elected assembly promised by the Bolsheviks, but permanently disbanded after one day under Lenins orders after the Bolsheviks won less than one forth of the elected delegates.

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Schlieffen Plan

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The Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory on the Western Front against France, and was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the Battle of the Marne, ended the German offensive and resulted in years of trench warfare. The Plan has been the subject of debate among historians and military scholars ever since.

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The Battles of the Somme and Verdun

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The Battle of the Somme, fought in the summer and autumn of 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. With more than one million casualties, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 25-mile (40 km) front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to draw German forces away from the Battle of Verdun; however, by its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun.

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The First Battle of the Marne

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The First Battle of the Marne (also known as the Miracle of the Marne) was a World War I battle fought from September 5 to September 12, 1914. It was a Franco-British victory against the German army under Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger.

By the end of August 1914, the whole Allied army on the Western Front had been forced into a general retreat back towards Paris. Meanwhile the two main German armies continued through France. It seemed that Paris would be taken as both the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force fell back towards the Marne River.

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The Battles of Tanneburg and the Masurian Lakes

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The Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 was a decisive engagement between the Russian Empire and the German Empire in the first days of The Great War, fought by the Russian First and Second Armies and the German Eighth Army between 17 August and 2 September 1914. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army. A series of follow-up battles kept the Russians off-balance until the spring of 1915. The battle is notable particularly for a number of rapid movements of complete corps by train, allowing the single German Army to present a single front to both Russian Armies.
The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes was a German offensive in the Eastern Front during the early stages of World War I. It pushed the Russian First Army back across its entire front, eventually ejecting them from Germany in disarray. Further progress was hampered by the arrival of the Russian Tenth Army on the German's left flank. Although not as devastating as the Battle of Tannenberg a week earlier, the battle nevertheless upset the Russian plans into the spring of 1915.

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Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918)

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The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) between the Russian SFSR and the Central Powers, marking Russia's exit from World War I.

While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year, it gave some relief to Bolsheviks waging the civil war in all directions and contributed to the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

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White Oppostion

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The White movement, whose military arm is known as the White Army or White Guard and whose members are known as Whites or White Russians comprised some of the Russian forces, both political and military, which opposed the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and fought against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. The officers who made up the core of the White Army mostly upheld monarchist ideals, and the White Army as a whole generally believed in a united multinational Russia.

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Vladimir Lenin

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was a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Soviet Union, and the primary theorist of Leninism, a variant of Marxism

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Alexander Kerensky

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was a Russian revolutionary leader who was instrumental in toppling the Russian monarchy. He served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin seized power following the October Revolution.

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Kiev Mutiny (1918)

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Kiev Arsenal January Uprising, sometimes called simply the January Uprising or the January Rebellion, was the Bolshevik organized worker's armed revolt that started on January 29, 1918 at the Kiev Arsenal factory.

Agitated by the Bolsheviks workers of the factory organized the uprising (some say "mutiny") against the Ukrainian Tsentral'na Rada to support the Red Army formation headed by Yuri Kotsyubynsky that was approaching the city at the time. Ukrainian troops loyal to the Rada besieged and shelled the compound. The uprising helped Bolshevik forces to storm the city and finally gain the control over it.

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Congress of Soviets

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The Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union in two periods, from 1917 to 1936 and from 1989 to 1991.

The Congress of Soviets was an assembly of representatives of local councils. All members were chosen by the local communist leaders, and then "approved" in single-party, single-candidate "elections". In theory, it was the supreme power of the Soviet State, an organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat. No bourgeois, no noble, no aristocrat, no priest could vote – only working people. Officially, the Congress of Soviets created laws and elected the Council of People's Commissars, which was the government. In reality, the Central Committee of the Communist Party had complete control

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Petrograd Bread Riots (1917)

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On February 22 the major plant of Petrograd, Putilov plant, announced a strike; the strikers were fired and some shops closed, which caused unrest at other plants. Some demonstrations were organized to demand bread, which were supported by the industrial working force, which found in them a reason for continuing the strikes. Although some clashes with the Tsar's forces happened, on the first day no one was injured. In the following days, the strikes generalized themselves in all of Petrograd and tension was rising. On February 23, a series of meetings and rallies were held on the occasion of the International Women's Day, which gradually turned into economic and political ones. Slogans, which had been until this time quite reserved, became more and more political: "End to the war!", "End to the autocracy!". This time, clashes with the police resulted in casualties on both sides. Demonstrators armed themselves by looting police headquarters. After three days of demonstrations, the Tsar sent a large battalion of soldiers to the city to quell the uprising on February 25. The soldiers resisted the first attempts at fraternization and killed many demonstrators. However, during the evenings, soldiers progressively deserted their officers and joined the revolt instead, permitting it to become more conventionally armed.

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Tsar Nicholas II

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Nicholas II of Russia was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917. Nicholas proved unable to manage a country in political turmoil and command its army in World War I. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which he and his family were executed by Bolsheviks. The government's inability to maintain constant supplies and an active economy over a prolonged period of warfare led to mounting national hardship. The army's initial failure to maintain the temporary military successes up to June 1916 led to renewed strikes and riots in the following winter. With Nicholas away at the front in 1915, authority appeared to collapse , and St. Petersburg was left in the hands of strikers and mutineering conscript soldiers.

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Leon Trostky

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Leon Trotsky, was a Ukrainian-born Jewish Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was an influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union, first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo.
Following the failed struggle of the Left Opposition (led by Trotsky) against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union in the Great Purge. At the head of the Fourth International, he continued in exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet agent. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a variation of Communist theory, which remains a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism and Maoism.