1. Professor Chee,
Lecture: The Great Depression &
the Russian Revolutions
How did the depression change regimes
in the U.S., Germany and the Soviet
Union?

2. The Great Depression
An Age of Anxiety
2

3. Age of Anxiety
Writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) said to
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961),
“You are all a lost generation.”

4. European Origins of the Great Depression
o Austria/Germany
borrow money from
USA to pay war debts
to France and England
o France, England pay
debts owed to USA for
WWI
o System dependent on
flow of cash from USA
o Investors begin to pull
out in 1928
4

5. New Technologies & the Great Depression
• Single-export countries devastated by
declines due to new technology
– Reclaimed rubber destroys rubber-based
economies of Dutch East
Indies, Malaysia, Ceylon
5

6. Black Thursday (24 October 1929)
o market lost 11% of its value
o Stock purchases on margin (3%)
o Hints of slowdown in Europe
o investors begin to sell
o Snowball effect
o Life savings lost
o Black Thursday
o 11 Suicides
o Black Monday, 13% loss, October
28th,
o Black Tuesday, October 29th, 11%
loss in the stock market
6

7. US Economic Collapse
o Inventory surplus leads to
layoffs
o Layoffs lead to decreased
demand, businesses fail
o 1932 industrial production ½
of 1929 levels
o 44% of US banks out of
business
o Deposits lost
7

8. Stock Market Begins to Crash:
Black Thursday (24 October 1929)
o Stock purchases on
margin (3%)
o Hints of slowdown in
Europe
o investors begin to sell
o Life savings lost
o 11 Suicides
8

9. Agricultural Surpluses & the Great Depression
o Overproduction in 1920s
o Strongest harvests in
1925, 1929
o Wheat lowest price in 400
years
o Farm income drops
o less demand for
manufactured goods
o inventory surpluses
o The Dust Bowl, mid-late
30s, mid American prairies
9

10. Unemployed move out west to California
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

11. World Economic Collapse
o Hardest hit: countries dependent on
export of manufactured goods for
essentials
o Japan
o Single-export countries
o South America
11

12. New US Strategies
o Laissez-faire, “planned scarcity”
approaches fail
o John Maynard Keynes, economist
o Stimulate economy by lowering interest rates
o encouraging investment, employment
o The New Deal of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt
o WWII Spending
12

13. Franklin Delano Roosevelt & the New Deal
13

14. Social Security,
FDR Program

17. Fascism in Italy
o Mussolini, former
newspaper editor, electoral
successes in 1921
o March on Rome October,
King Emmanuel III offers
him prime ministership
o 1926 seizes power as Il
Duce, “the leader”
Benito Mussolini
17

18. Fascism
Originates with Benito
Mussolini
From “fasces,” Roman symbol of
authority - Axe surrounded by
wooden rods
1. Primacy of state over
individual
2. Distrust of democracy: the
Führerprinzip
3. Hostility to Communism
4. Chauvinism
5. Militarism
18

19. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) & the Nazis
o 1921 becomes Chair of the
National Socialist German
Workers’ Party (Nazis)
o Attempts to overthrow
government in 1923
– Writes autobiography
Mein Kampf in
jail, massively popular
19

20. Race-based nationalism
•
•
Policies of eugenics
– Compulsory sterilization
of 30,000 Germans
– Abortions illegal for
healthy Germans,
mandatory for “hereditary
ill” and “racial aliens”
– “Euthanasia” program
kills 200,000 people with
physical or mental
handicaps between 19391945
Precursors to massacres of
Jews, gypsies

21. Consolidation of Power
• Nazis become single largest party in
parliament, 1930-1932
• Weak president Paul von Hindenburg
(1847-1934) appoints Hitler as
Chancellor
• Suppresses opposition, abrogates
constitutional and civil rights
– Makes the Nazis the sole legal
party
– Destroys train unions
– Purges judiciary, civil service of
perceived enemies
21

22. Anti-Semitism
•
•
•
Influence of 19th-century racism
1935 Nuremburg laws define
Jew on racial basis
– Prohibits marriages between
Jews and non-Jews
– Removal of Jews from civil
service, schools
– Liquidation of Jewishowned businesses or
purchase by non-Jews
Kristallnacht: major countrywide pogrom on Jews,
November 9-10, 1938
– “night of broken glass”
22

23. Russian Revolution:
The Bolshevik Revolutions

24. WWI Devastating for Russia:
Other European nations survived crises except
for Russia: Revolutions
1914-16 – first 2 years of
the war, 2 mil soldiers
killed/161 mil population
1917 - German-imposed
WWI treaty, as bad as the
Treaty of
Versailles, Russia gave up
eastern Poland, the
Ukraine, Finland & the
Baltic Provinces
1917 – Brought on the
Bolshevik Revolution
1918-20 Russian Civil War
24

25. The Russian empire, 1801-1914
o Multilingual empire,
o ½ spoke Russian
o Serfs emancipated in
1861, but still an angry
proletariat
o Difficult
industrialization
o Revolutions met with
violence,
o Bloody Sunday, 1905 –
Starts Soviet
worker/soldier
Councils
25

26. Russians Weakened with the Crimean
War, 1853-1856
•
•
•
•
•
•
Russian attempts at expansion into
Caucasus to take control over
weakening Ottoman empire territory
Threatens to upset balance of power,
British & French also other Europeans
become involved
Russia driven back from Crimea
(Ukraine) in humiliating defeat
Demonstration of Russian weakness
in the face of western technology,
strategy
The humiliating loss for the Russians
in the Crimean War (1853-1856)
They could hold their own against the
Ottomans, and the Qing Empire, but
not western Europe – great Britain
and France. Humiliating defeat for
them, that led them to start
industrialization and to emancipate
the serfs.
26

27. Russian Reform: Serfs Emancipated in 1861, but
Poverty, Land Huger Persisted
o Serfdom source of rural instability
and peasant revolt
o Tsar Alexander II emancipates
serfs in 1861, without alleviating
poverty, land hunger
o Serfs were forced to pay for lands
they had farmed for generations
o Limited attempts to reform
administration, small-scale
representative government
o Network of elected district
assemblies called zemstvos
27

28. Petrograd (built after Versailles) 1714

29. Industrialization in Russia Brings Development
& Massive Discontent
o Count Sergei Witte, minister of
finance 1892-1903
o Massive railroad construction
o Trans-Siberian railroad
o But massive industrial
discontent
– Peasants uprooted from
rural lifestyle to work for
low wages, long hours
29

30. Radicalization: Revolution of 1905
o Russo-Japanese War of 1905 humiliating defeat for Russia
o Japan annexes Korea
beginning in 1910, and starts
its militarization
o Russian social discontent boils
over in Revolution of 1905worker march to the winter
palace in St.
Petersburg, petitioning for an
elected assembly, 130 shot
o 1905 – created its first
parliament, the Duma, &
soviets – worker/soldier
councils
30

31. Russia was unprepared for WWI
Russia – conscripted millions – but
could arm only ¼of the military they went to battle regardless &
picked up rifles from dead soldiers
oarmy ill-led & ill-armed
o¼ of the soldiers only had arms
– ¾ picked up rifles of dead
soldiers
o1914-16 – first 2 years of the
war, 2 mil soldiers killed, 161
mil Russian population

32. WWI Devastation Spurred 1917 February &
October Revolutions
o Bread rationing begins in March
1917, women march
o 1917 February - “Peace, Bread”
o Duma establishes a provisional
government
o Monarch Nicholas II to abdicate

33. The Bolshevik Revolution –
October Revolution of 1917
10 days that shook the world!
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks
o Leads a bloodless coup with promises
of peace
o 1917 October - “Peace, land and
Bread”
“All Power to the Soviets!”
o Treaty with Germany, Treaty of Brest
Litovsk, worse than Versailles, Russia
gives up Poland, the Ukraine, Finland
& the Baltic provinces
33

34. Russian Civil War 1918-20
o Whites (Monarchists
& others) supported
by the Allies –
Britain, France, Japan
& the U.S.
o Reds (Bolsheviks)
Russian Communist
Party, led by Trotsky
10 million+ died, not
including those to
disease & starvation

35. Demands of the Civil War led to
War Communism
“dictatorship of the proletariat” State appropriation or state
controlled ownership of banks,
businesses, churches & monasteries
o Industrial production dropped
90%
o Lenin backtracks and implements
free market reforms, New
Economic Policy (NEP) 1921,
returning small business and
small farmer ownership back.
o 1922 – Lenin & Communists
created a new state – USSR –
Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics
o Lenin dies in 1924
35

36. Stalin and the Second
Revolution, Industrialization
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
Time Man of the Year, 1939 &
1942
Stalin, “man of Steel,”
Georgian
o Leads Soviet Union by 1928
the “Great Leap Forward” or
the Great Leap Backwards
o Five Year Plan - Massive
collectivization of agriculture
o 3 million farmers starved
o 1934 – Great Purge – 3 million
Soviets died either directly or
indirectly from the
purge, another 8 million in
36
labor camps

37. Grace Chee
2013
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