4º ESO - Russian Revolution. Glossary

Bloody Sunday: a day in 1905 when Russia police killed and injured many peaceful demonstrators in Petrograd.

Bolsheviks: members of the more radical faction resulting from the split in the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1912.

Collectivisation: taking into public or state ownership.

Council of People's Commisars: the government of the USSR as created by the 1924 constitution.

Dictatorship of the proletariat: government where all the power is in the hands of the working people.

February Revolution: the riots and strikes of February 1917 which resulted  in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the proclamation of a republic.

Moscow Trials: a series of trials in the 1930s designed to eliminate all opposition to Stalin.

October Revolution: the revolution in 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power in a coup led by Lenin.

Personality cult: official propaganda to make people admire and love a leader.

Pressidium: a committee which functioned as a legislative authority under the Russian constitution of 1924.

Provisional government: the government in power after the February Revolution of 1917.

Red Army: the Bolshevik army which won the civil war in 1921.

State-managed economy: where the production of goods and the money supply is controlled by the government.

Supreme Soviet: the highest authority (legislative power) under the Russian constitution of 1924.

War communism: centralised state control of industry, trade, agriculture and the railways in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921.