On this page, you will find NCERT Class 9 History Chapter 2 Notes Pdf free download. CBSE Class 9 Social Science Notes History Chapter 2 SST Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution will seemingly, help them to revise the important concepts in less time.
Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution Class 9 Notes Social Science History Chapter 2
CBSE Class 9 History Chapter 2 Notes Understanding the Lesson
1. The powerful ideas of freedom and equality circulated in Europe after the French Revolution. In many parts of the world including Europe and Asia, new ideas about individual rights and who controlled social power began to be discussed.
2. Not everyone in Europe wanted a complete transformation of society. Responses varied from those who accepted that some change was necessary but wished for a gradual shift, to those who wanted to reconstruct society radically. Some were conservatives, others were liberals or radicals. Conservatives were opposed to radicals and liberals. After the French Revolution, however, even conservatives had opened their minds to the need for change.
3. Liberals and radicals opposed to the privileges the old aristocracy had by birth because they firmly believed in aristocracy had by birth because they firmly believed in the value of individual effort, labour and enterprise. So, many working men and women rallied around liberal and radical groups and parties in the early nineteenth century.
4. By the mid-nineteenth century in Europe, socialism attracted widespread attention. Socialist were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social evils of the time. They wanted that attention should be part to collective social interest.
5. Karl Marx was against capitalism. He believed that to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled. This would be a communist society.
6. Socialists took over the government in Russia in 1917 by a eliminating monarchy there. But this came about after a long struggle.
7. In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia and its empire. At that time, the vast majority of Russia’s people were agriculturists. Industries were few and were controlled by industrialists.
8. Russia was an autocracy. Unlike other European rulers, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Tsar was not subject to parliament. Liberals in Russia campaigned to end this system. The year 1904 was bad for Russian workers. Prices of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 percent. Hence, the workers in St. Petersburg went on strike demanding an increase in wages.
9. When the procession of workers reached the Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks. Hundreds of workers were killed and many were wounded. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that came to be known as the 1905 Revolution.
10. During the 1905 Revolution, the Tsar allowed the creation of an elected consultative Parliament or Duma. But he dismissed the first Duma within 75 days and re-elected second Duma within three months. He did not want any reduction in his power. He changed the voting laws and packed the third Duma with conservative politicians.
11. In 1914, the first world war was broke out. In Russia, the war was initially popular and people rallied around the Tsar. But soon the number of his supporters went down, because he did not pay any heed to the soldier’s welfare.
12. The Russians Revolution of 1917 revolves around two primary events—the February Revolution and the October Revolution. The February Revolution brought down the monarchy in Russia through violent demonstrations and riots on the street of Petrograd.
13. But the February Revolution failed to express the wishes of the majority of the Russian population, as the event was primarily limited to the city of Petrograd.
14. However, most of those who took power after the February Revolution, in the Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar, and in the Petrograd Soviet generally favoured rule that was at least partially democratic.
15. The October Revolution, also called the Bolshevik Revolution, overturned the interim Provisional Government and established the Soviet Union.
16. After October, the Bolsheviks realised that they could not maintain power in an election-based system without sharing power with other parties and compromising their principles. As a result, they formally abandoned the democratic process in January 1918 and declared themselves the representatives of a dictatorship of the proletariat. In response, the Russian civil war broke out which lasted till 1920.
17. During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalized. They permitted the peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialized. They also introduced centralized planning which led to economic growth.
18. The Bolsheviks encouraged colonial peoples to follow their experiment. Many non-Russians participated in the conference of the peoples of the East and the Bolshevik founded Comintern. By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had given socialism a global face but afterwards it began losing its popularity.
Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution Class 9 CBSE Notes Important Terms
Conservative: A person who favours free enterprise, private ownership, and holds traditional values.
Radical: A person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform.
Liberal: A person who is open to new ideas.
Suffragette movement: A movement to give women the right to vote.
Autocracy: A system of government by one person with absolute power.
Jadidists: Muslim reformers within the Russian Empire.
Read wage: Reflects the quantities of goods which the wages will actually buy.
Deported: Forcibly removed from one’s own country.
Exiled: Forced to live away from one’s own country.
Collectivization: Consolidation of individual landholdings and labor into collective farms.
Socialism: A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Kulaks: The name for well-to-do peasants in Russia.
Notes of History Class 9 Chapter 2 Time Period
1850s-1880s: Debates over socialism in Russia.
1898: Formation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party.
1905: The Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of 1905.
1917: 2nd March- Abdication of the Tsar.
24th October- Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd.
1918-20: The Civil war in Russia.
1919: Formation of Comintern.
1929: Beginning of Collectivisation.