1917-1922 - Russian Collapse
After the Great War, the changes in Russian territory as relates to political divisions and government were even more striking than those of Germany or Austria-Hungary. While the various groups of Russian political agitators attempted one by one to include all of the former Russian territory in their proposed governments, they were opposed by various groups of people in the different sections of that great area, who desired to establish themselves respectively as new and independent states composed of distinct ethnic groups.
The abdication of the Emperor Nicholas II in March 1917 was followed by a provisional government which continued until 16 May 1917, when it was reorganized with Alexander Kerensky as the head of the new Cabinet, but this was in turn reorganized in October 1917, maintaining itself until 7 November 1917, when the Military Revolutionary Committee seized the government authority and handed it over to the All-Russian Congress of the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. A Constituent Assembly was created and a form of government established controlled by the Executive Committee of the Congress of the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. On 31 January 1918, a decree was issued establishing the permanent character of the Workmen's and Peasants' (Bolshevik) government. On 14 March, 1918, the People's Commissioners left Petrograd for Moscow, which thus became the center of the new government. The title of the government thus established is the "Russian Federated Republic"; its flag was red with the legend, "Federal Republic of the Soviets."
Its control over Russian territory could be definitely stated, however, as to the area in which it exercises jurisdiction and administered government or the number of people under its immediate control or administration. In every part of the area formerly known as Russia groups of people had established themselves by proclamation and organization as independent governments, in nearly all cases republics.
As a result of the conclusion on March 3, 1918 Russia of the peace treaty (Brest peace) with Germany and its allies (Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) in the city of Brest-Litovsk Germany annexed Poland, the Baltic States, part of Belarus; Turkey ceded part of Transcaucasia (the districts of Ardagan, Kars and Batum). Under the terms of the treaty, the RSFSR recognized the independence of Finland and Ukraine.
By 1917, there were many "white spots" on the map of Russia, especially in Eastern Siberia, Central Asia and the Arctic. In addition, the development of the country's productive forces required a detailed study and mapping of natural conditions and resources. Therefore, expeditions to the little-explored regions of the country were organized already in the first years of Soviet power.
Comprehensive studies of the nature of a number of remote regions of the country, aimed at creating new mineral resource bases, were carried out by expeditions organized by the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia, created back in 1915 on the initiative of V.I. .) Council for the study of the productive forces of the country. They led to the discovery of new deposits - copper and iron ores in the Urals, potassium salts in the Urals, apatites on the Kola Peninsula, new gold-bearing regions in Siberia, the Volga-Ural oil and gas region. Research in the mountains of the northeast of the USSR and other regions of the country significantly changed the previous ideas about the relief and hydrographic network of the country.
One of the largest and earliest of the groups establishing themselves as independent governments was the republic of Ukrainia, occupying the southwestern section of Russia and fronting upon the Black Sea with Odessa as its principal port. It declared its independence in November 1917 under the title of the "Ukraine Peoples Republic," but its boundaries were somewhat in dispute, especially with the neighboring republic of Poland, which was formed in part from Russian and in part from German and Austrian territory. The Ukrainian Republic had, so far as can be determined, an area of about 215,000 square miles and a population of approximately 30,000,000. It had a large part of the area known as the "Black Soil District" and its agricultural and mineral possibilites are important.
Immediately north of the Ukrainian Republic was a group of people known as the White Russians who established themselves in May 1919 as the Republic of White Russia, with an area estimated at 140,000 square miles and a population of approximately 5,000,000.
Immediately west of the Republic of White Russia and extending to the Baltic, another new republic was established in April 1918 under the title of the Republic of Lithuania, with an area of approximately 90,000 square miles and a population estimated at about 10,000,000. Immediately north of Lithuania and also fronting upon the Baltic, the little Republic of Courland with an area of 10,000 square miles and a population of 800,000 was declared an independent government in April 1918. Next north of Courland and fronting upon the Gulf of Riga, a part of the Baltic, the Republic of Livonia was declared in April 1918, with an area of about 17,000 square miles and a population of approximately 1,600,000. The Lettish population occupying the peninsula between the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic established themselves as a republic under the title of Letvia (also sometimes written Latvia). The territory immediately north of Livonia declared itself in April 1918 as the independent Republic of Esthonia. It fronted not only upon the Baltic but on the Gulf of Finland, the entrance to the harbor of Petrograd. Its area was stated at about 7,300 square miles and its population at 1,750,000.
Still further north, the people of the area long known as Finland declared themselves in December 1917 an independent republic, with a population of about 3,500,000 and an area of 125,000 square miles, extending northward to within a short distance of the Arctic Ocean,
The Arctic frontage of Russia lying immediately east of the northern part of Finland was established as a military district by the Allied Powers on 7 July 1918 with a military government, and has an area of approximately 35,000 square miles and a population estimated at about 100,000. Further east on the Arctic frontage the greater part of the former Russian Province of Archangel was established under the title of the Republic of North Russia with Nicholas Tchaikovsky as its head and its existence as a separate government recognized by certain of the powers, especially Great Britain. Its area was estimated at 275,000 square miles and its population at about 400,000. The populations of both North Russia and the Murman Region were composed largely of Lapps, Finns and Samoyedes.
Immediately south of the White Sea and on the eastern border of Finland, the Republic of Eastern Karelia was established in May 1919 and authorized to create a Constituent Assembly to determine whether the area shall form an alliance with Finland or Russia. The area of republic was about 68,000 square miles and the population approximately 250,000.
In the southeastern section of Russia with its considerable sprinkling of Tatar peoples intermingled with Slavs, a half dozen small republics sprang into existence; the Tauride Republic, including the Crimean Peninsula, with an area of approximately 23,000 square miles and a population of 1,800,000, declared itself independent of Russia in March 1918. The Kuban Republic just east of the Sea of Azov, with an area of 36,000 square miles and a population of 3,000,000, declared itself independent in November 1919. The Terek Republic at the southeast of Kuban and extending north across to the Caspian Sea, with an area of 28,000 square miles and a population of 1,300,000, declared itself independent in September 1918.
The Republic of Georgia, at the extreme eastern end of the Black Sea, with an area of 40,000 square miles and a population of 2,500,000, was declared an independent state in January 1918. The Don Republic lying at the northeast of the Sea of Azov and fronting upon that sea, with an area of 63,000 square miles and a population of 4,000,000, declared itself independent in January 1918.
East of the Caspian, the Turkestan area, consisting of about 400,000 square miles and with a population of 6,500,000, was in January 1918 established as an independent government under military control. North of the Caspian, the Tatar-Bashkir Republic was established in October 1918, its area being estimated at 175,000 square miles and its population at 9,000,000; the government was under military control.
Passing across the Urals into Siberia, the independent Republic of Siberia was proclaimed in December 1917, with its capital at Tomsk, and a Siberian Duma of 30 members was opened. Later, however, it was decided for the time being to concentrate all power in the hands of single individual, Admiral Kolchak. No statement is made as to the actual area claimed by the Republic of Siberia, though presumably it would include a large part of the area of Siberia stated at 4,832,000 square miles and a population of 10,378,000. At the extreme northeast of the Siberian area, a separate government designated as the Yakutsk Republic was established in May 1918 with a military government and an area estimated at about 1,000,000 square miles and a population of 400,000.
These 20 or so new political divisions created from Russian territory and chiefly of Slavic stock were in many cases shadowy in the matter of boundary lines and details of governmental operations. Some of them were established for military reasons and others through a sincere desire on the part of the people to establish in. dependent governments which will group closely their respective ethnic groups.
New states were formed on the territory of the former western outskirts of Russia, the borders with which were soon fixed by peace treaties of the RSFSR with Estonia (February 2, 1920), Lithuania (July 12, 1920), Latvia (August 11, 1920), Finland ( October 14, 1920), Poland (March 18, 1921). The position of the border of the RSFSR with Romania remained unsettled, since Russia did not recognize the forcible seizure of Bessarabia by Romania in 1918.
On April 22, 1918, the Transcaucasian Democratic Republic was proclaimed. However, under the influence of domestic and foreign policy factors, it soon broke up into the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian bourgeois republics. In 1920-1921. on their territories, respectively, the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian SSRs were created. In Central Asia, the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (Khorezm NSR) (April 26, 1920) and the Bukhara NSR (October 8, 1920) were created.
There have also been changes in the east of Russia. After the Japanese landing in the city of Aleksandrovsk on April 22, 1920, the northern part of Sakhalin Island was occupied, where power passed into the hands of the Japanese military administration. The Uryankhai Territory departed from Russia, on the territory of which the People's Republic of Tannu-Tuva was proclaimed. On April 6, 1920, the Far Eastern Republic was formed in Transbaikalia and the Far East.
As a result of the changes that had taken place, by the beginning of 1922, most of the territory of the former Russian Empire was occupied by the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR). Formally independent were the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Armenian SSR, the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Khorezm NSR, the Bukhara NSR and the Far Eastern Republic. On March 12, 1922, the Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian SSRs united into the federal Union of the Socialist Soviet Republics of Transcaucasia, which on December 13, 1922 was transformed into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. On November 15, 1922, the Far Eastern Republic merged with the RSFSR.
On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR proclaimed the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as part of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (Ukrainian SSR), the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic (BSSR) and the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (ZSFSR). - Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia). The largest in area of the RSFSR included, in addition to the European part of the RSFSR, Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, except for the Bukhara and Khorezm NSR.
When the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, it was supposed to spread to the whole world, as the Red project assumed a world revolution and the victory of Communism on a global scale. Stopping only at Russia means losing, curtailing and being crushed by the capitalist encirclement. Permanent revolutions in the countries of Europe, prepared by the Comintern, assumed the creation of Soviet republics in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Bolsheviks raved about the world revolution, striving without fail to make all mankind happy. The Karelian-Finnish SSR, which briefly emerged 20 years later, is an unsuccessful project of a large Soviet Finland. The creation in 1940 of the Lithuanian SSR, the Latvian SSR and the Estonian SSR assumed the natural further creation of the Polish SSR, the Czechoslovak SSR, the German SSR, the French SSR and further down the list up to the Mexican, Argentine, Australian. The whole world was to become the USSR! The Communists never hid this. One of the options for the original name of the USSR was proposed as the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia."
That was Trotskyism-Leninism of pure water, these were messianic ideas - to force all of humanity to be equally communist. But remember that this has already happened: a strong idea (adventurous as well) involves spreading to the whole world: the Roman Empire (Pax Romana), the empires of Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler also sought to reach the “limits of the Earth”. The red project exhausted itself and crumbled, the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia" did not happen, and there was no single great Soviet humanity.
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