Sequencing Russia, 1904 to 1924

The idea

Twenty years, and the order carries the argument. Nineteen oh-four: war with Japan. Nineteen oh-five: Bloody Sunday in January, defeat by September, the October Manifesto and a Duma. Nineteen fourteen: war with Germany; nineteen fifteen the tsar to the front; nineteen sixteen Rasputin murdered. Nineteen seventeen: February's bread protests and abdication, April's Theses, October's seizure. Nineteen eighteen: the Constituent Assembly dispersed in January, Brest-Litovsk in March, the tsar's family shot in July, civil war. Nineteen twenty-one: the NEP. Nineteen twenty-two: the USSR founded, Lenin's first stroke. Nineteen twenty-four: Lenin dies. The pattern: each war produced a revolution within a year, the first survived by concession, the second not; and the party that won the second did so by promising the war's end. Practice by naming the year for each event before checking.