The Russian Revolution
resulted in the establishment of the first communist
state in history and was the work of Vladimir
Lenin and Joseph Stalin, or, at least, that's the story
you've read in textbooks. But in truth, that's an
incredibly simplified version of the events that took
place between 1905 and 1925 in Russia. So today, we're
going to take a look at some fascinating
little-known facts about the Russian Revolution. But before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel. After that, leave
a comment, and let us know what other revolutions
you would like to hear about. OK, you say you
want a Revolution. Well, here we go. [MUSIC PLAYING] Technically, the
Russian Revolution was actually three events. There was an
uprising in 1905 that set the stage for
the two uprisings that occurred in 1917. The Revolution of 1905, also
called the First Russian Revolution, was the result
of widespread discontent among the peasantry
and workers in Russia directed against the tsarist
government of Nicholas II. The 1905 Revolution
included notable events like the Bloody Sunday
massacre, which, for the record, is not the same Bloody
Sunday as the U2 song. Apparently, Sunday is just a
popular day for state violence. On this Bloody Sunday,
hundreds of people were left injured and slain
after Russian troops crushed a demonstration by factory
workers in St. Petersburg. In response to the
Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto,
which reformed the government, established representative
bodies called Duma, and saw to the development
of a Constitution. But the Duma failed to get
any cohesive reforms passed, and the additional strain of
World War One led to even more upheaval in the country. By February of
1917, a Revolution broke out in Petrograd with
thousands of demonstrators protesting and rioting. As a result, Tsar Nicholas
abdicated and took his son out of the line of succession,
leaving his brother, Michael, as the next ruler. Michael ultimately refused
to take the throne-- probably a smart move-- and the
Russian Provisional Government was established. But this governing body
only lasted a few months. Never able to stabilize or
wield any effective power, the Russian
Provisional Government kept Russia in World
War One and was fairly hands off, which
led to continued shortages and violence. It was against this
government that Vladimir Lenin launched a coup
d'etat in October and established a
communist Russia-- or it might have been November
depending on your calendar. Yeah, about that. [MUSIC PLAYING] The events of 1917 and how
they shaped Russian history are a bit muddied by the fact
that the Soviet Union didn't adopt the Gregorian
calendar until 1918. The calendar, named
after Pope Gregory XIII, was slightly shorter
than the Julian calendar. In 1917, Russia still
used the Julian calendar, even though it had been
long since abandoned by much of the Western world. According to the
Julian calendar, the uprisings in
Russia took place on February 23, October
24, and October 25 of 1917. But on the Gregorian
calendar, those dates were March 17, November
6, and November 7. When Russia finally switched to
the Gregorian calendar in 1918, it eliminated 13 days
from its calendar, which now makes it
pretty confusing to identify the dates of
those historical events. And you thought daylight savings
time was a pain in the ass. During the Russian Civil
War, the United States sent roughly 5,000
troops to North Russia to fight at the request of
British and French troops in the region. The group landed in Arkhangelsk,
Russia in late 1918 just as World War One was
coming to an end. Largely comprising men from
Michigan and Wisconsin-- shout out to the Midwest-- the army expedition
force was tasked with keeping weapons out of
German and Bolshevik hands as well as assisting a group of
Czechoslovakian forces stranded in Russia. Through the winter
of 1918 and 1919, the Polar Bears, as
they became known, focused their efforts on
six specific locations throughout the province
as temperatures reached below -50 degrees Fahrenheit. Amid the cold, American forces
found that their weapons froze to the point of being unusable. According to Harry J. Costello--
one of the men who served-- the problem was eventually
solved by an American machine gunner who suggested putting
hot water in the jacket, wrapping the gun in
several heavy blankets, and changing the water
frequently when freezing was near. This method didn't work
everywhere, however. On fronts where it was next
to impossible to build a fire, the water-cooled machine
guns were useless. It's a shame there weren't any
hollowed out Tauntauns nearby. Born in what is now
Ukraine, Ossip Bernstein studied law in Germany and went
on to become a finance lawyer. During the Bolshevik Revolution,
he was arrested by the Cheka-- or Bolshevik secret police-- for counterrevolutionary crimes. After being taken into
custody, Bernstein received a death sentence
for working with banks in pre-Bolshevik Russia. On his execution
day, he was lined up in front of a firing squad
when one of the commanders asked what his name was. Upon hearing the man's
name, the commander realized Bernstein
wasn't just some lawyer, but he was also one of
the most talented chess players in Russia. It sounds like a twist
from a Hollywood movie, but the commanding
officer challenged him to a chess match. If Bernstein won, he
would be allowed to live. If he lost-- well, you know. Bernstein accepted
the challenge and won. He was spared, freed, and
later settled in France, where he presumably
told everyone his name all of the time. By late 1917, the provisional
government of Russia was failing. The Winter Palace and
Petrograd was the seat of government, which
made it a prime target of militant Bolsheviks. The head of the Russian
Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, naturally,
ordered its defense. Reportedly, 137 members of the
Women's Battalion of Death-- which kind of sounds
like an e-sports team-- stood alongside Cossack and
Russian troops to resist the Bolsheviks, but
it didn't go well. According to David Soskice's
firsthand account of the event, the palace was
pillaged and devastated from top to bottom by
the Bolshevik armed mob, as though by a
horde of barbarians. Among the palace's target areas
was an extensive wine cellar. When bottles were smashed
and crates of wine were thrown into holes
in the river ice, crazed people dove
in after and drowned. Reports also surfaced
that officials tried to pump wine
out into the streets, but crowds gathered to
drink it from the gutter. Hey, it was a good vintage. Still another reporter recalled
thinking she heard gunfire, but it was actually
the pop of corks by soldiers who lay
on the white snow-- not dead but merely drunk. It was not common
for revolutionaries to change their names, but
both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin gave their personal
monikers a bit of a punch up. They were nothing
if not PR-minded. In 1901, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
adopted the surname Lenin while in exile. The pseudonym was to
protect his true identity. But why did he choose
the name Lenin? After all, Beatlemania was still
a good 60 years in the future. Observers, including Lenin's
own niece, Olga Ulyanova, theorize it may have been in
reference to the Lena River. Other possibilities
include being an homage to a character in
Leo Tolstoy's novel, Kazaki. Or it may have belonged to
a dead man whose name Lenin simply usurped, sort
of like 50 Cent. The man the world knows as
Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. In 1912, however,
he changed his name to a Russian word
that essentially means "Man of Steel". This was 26 years before Action
Comics #1, which makes Stalin the original Man of Steel. Historian Vilyam Pokhlebkin
believes Stalin's name change was driven by the fact that
the surname was simple, devoid of all artistic pretense,
understood by any worker, and-- most importantly--
looked like a real last name. Also, Stalin sounds cool. You cannot underestimate the
importance of a cool-sounding name. Speaking of names, when
communists took over in 1917, the practice of
Octobering was established to unite the populace through
rituals and ceremonies. One way this manifested was
to give babies names inspired by the changing culture-- names like Elektrifikatsiya,
meaning electrification, Karem, meaning Red Army, and Ninel-- which is Lenin spelled
backwards-- became popular. Other October names
include Melor, an anagram derived from the words Marx,
Engels, Lenin, October, Revolution and
Comintern, a portmanteau of Communist International. At least Khaleesi
didn't make the list. More Game of Thrones references. Will it ever die? And it wasn't just personal
names that were affected. St. Petersburg was
named Petrograd in 1914 because it sounded too
German, though it was then changed to Leningrad in 1924
shortly after Lenin's passing. However in 1991,
a referendum was passed, changing the name of
the city back to St. Petersburg [MUSIC PLAYING] The war between Vladimir
Lenin's Bolshevik Red Army was composed of members
of the Red guard-- elite troops in imperial
Russia-- and personnel from the Imperial Army. The Red Army seemed to be at
a disadvantage with support sent to Russia by the US, Japan,
the UK, and other countries around the world. However, conscription,
recruitment, and mass mobilization allowed
the Bolsheviks to grow the Red Army's ranks
to overwhelming numbers-- too overwhelming, it
turns out, even for Lenin. Desertion, a lack of
supplies, and poor training resulted in Lenin
issuing a December 1919 memo that suggested it is 1,000
times more expedient to have no more than a million Red
Army men in all-- but well-fed, clothed, and shod
ones rather than 3 million half-starved,
half-naked, half-shod ones. And while we
understand his point, a Bolshevik army of shirtless
soldiers hopping around in one boot would have
been no less historic. [MUSIC PLAYING] After Tsar Nicholas II
abdicated in March of 1917, he, his wife Alexandra,
and their five children were kept in confinement
at Yekaterinburg in the URL Mountains. In July of 1918, when it looked
like there might be an effort to rescue the Romanovs, the
whole family was whacked. In addition to Nicholas
and his children, numerous members of the
extended Romanov family were done away with. According to Time
Magazine, all these people were taken to an abandoned
mine and thrown down a shaft. Hand grenades were then
dropped in after them to eliminate any uncertainty. Damn. How would you even
categorize that? Execution by action movie? [MUSIC PLAYING] Lenin was exiled
in 1895 and lived in Siberia for three years. Once that period ended,
he went to London, where he published a pamphlet
about making Russia a socialist country entitled,
"What is To Be Done?". He would not be the
last person to write the equivalent of an
indignant blog post after being thrown
out of a place. Lenin returned to
Russia in 1905. By that time, the Russian
order was restored, and the promises made by Tsar
Nicholas II's October Manifesto had come to fruition. Russia had a
Constitution, and there was a National Parliament. And so Lenin was once
again exiled in 1907. In April of 1917, Lenin
headed back to Russia With dozens of other exiles,
riding a train from Zurich through Germany then
up to the Baltic Sea. From there, the
group took a ferry and boarded another
train to Sweden. The landscape proved to
be challenging for Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries. They had to use
horse-drawn sleds to cross a frozen river into
Finland, but they made it, and Lenin took a train
to Petrograd soon after. Keeping Lenin out of
Russia was apparently like trying to ban Garfield
from the Olive Garden. They do have similar whiskers. So what do you think? Which of these facts
was the most surprising? Let us in the comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
