Until fairly recently this topic has tended to be obscured by politics. Marxist historians tended to see the events in Russia up to and including 1917 in a very different light to non-Marxist historians. Soviet historians had a different view altogether! Since the end of the Soviet Union, and the opening up of Russian archives to Western historians it has become possible to look at the topic more objectively. I’m sure many major revelations will emerge.

Make sure you know the start points and end points of your particular specification - some include 1905, some don’t; some continue to 1921, others stop at 1917. Find out which topics are regarded as central, and likely to figure in an exam, and which are regarded as background supporting knowledge. You will need to be able to put the topic clearly into context to do well in an exam. What will you be asked to do in the exam? Are you expected to recall factual knowledge, analyse sources or interpret historians’ views? This will influence how you prepare.

a. Why was there so much unrest in Russia? Romanovs had ruled Russia for 300 years - why were they now faced with such unrest? What were the fundamental reasons for demands for change? Who wanted change? Who supported the Tsar?

b. The Revolution of 1905. Immediate causes, and longer-term causes? Why was the Tsar able to reassert control in 1906? Was it a revolution? What changed? What stayed the same?

c. The impact of the First World War. Economic and political dislocation. Why did Russia fail so badly in the War? How did this affect morale of the troops and at home? Why was there growing discontent?

d. Short-term causes of the February Revolution. The Tsarina and Rasputin. The hard winter of 1916. Food and fuel shortages. Strikes in Petrograd and Moscow. Why did the political élite abandon the Tsar?

e. The failures of the Provisional Government. Who was in the Provisional Government? What did the Provisional Government have to offer? Why did support fade so rapidly during 1917?

f. The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. The July Days, Kornilov and Kerensky. Why did support for the Bolsheviks increase so much between the two revolutions? The Soviets. What part was played by Lenin and Trotsky? The Constituent Assembly elections.

g. How the Bolsheviks kept power. Popular support, or lack of an alternative? Brest-Litovsk. How ruthless were the Bolsheviks in their desire to keep power? Did Lenin deliberately provoke the Civil War to keep power?

a. Was the Tsar responsible for the Revolution? Was he a weak man who was determined to maintain the autocracy? Could other policies have prevented revolution? Or was the Tsar a good leader who managed to hold together a diverse Empire for so long?

b. Could the reforms of Witte and Stolypin have saved the Romanov dynasty? Economic and social reforms made great progress between 1907 and 1914 - can you have such reforms and maintain the political status quo? Or was it a case of ‘much too little, too late’?

c. Did the war cause the Revolution? Some historians argue the reforms were working, that the regime was on the way to ‘safety’, when war came and it so disrupted society it caused revolution. Others argue the war delayed revolution. The economy seemed to cope quite well initially, it was the infrastructure that failed. Certainly it was the conviction that the war could not be won with the Tsar as leader that led to his removal.

d. Could the Provisional Government have survived? Initially well supported, was it only hatred of Tsarism that kept everyone together? What mandate did it have? What mistakes were made? Why did it keep delaying elections? Why did it lose support?

e. How important was the role of Lenin? After February most Bolsheviks were co-operating with Mensheviks and SRs. How important was the ‘April Theses’ in establishing a clear policy? How did Lenin manage to drive through the Revolution against the wishes of many party members?

f. Coup d’état or popular revolution? How much support did the Bolsheviks have in October? Was it a popular revolution as Bolshevik propaganda maintained, or a coup - one minority government replacing another? How far was the ‘storming of the Winter Palace’ myth and how much fact? Who supported the Bolsheviks? Was it a change for a socialist government or a desire for stability after the recent months’ chaos?

g. Just how important was the role of revolutionaries in the Russian Revolution? Again, here it is sometimes difficult to separate propaganda from fact. There was undoubtedly a great demand for change, and all revolutionary parties grew in size during 1917. But just how influential revolutionary parties were is a matter of great debate.