The Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 and saw Russia pulled out of the First World War. The monarchy was replaced by a communist government run by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks differed from the Mensheviks in that they favored an immediate and artificial revolution.

The Russian legislature was called the Duma. It was created by the Tsar to give in to calls for democracy, but in reality, it had limited powers to effect legislation.

Rasputin was a religious mystic who held great influence over the Russian royal family. Much of his influence was derived from his ability to keep one of the royal children alive. (The boy was a hemophiliac.) When Nicholas II was away leading troops at the front, his wife ruled the government, and the fact that she was considered under the control of a mystic led to much public outcry.

Kulaks were wealthy Russian peasants who emerged as significant landowners in the first decade of the twentieth century. They were branded as enemies of the state and of the communist ideal by Lenin and Stalin and persecuted in the years following the First World War.

During World War One the Russians, like many European nations, suffered catastrophic and unprecedented losses of military personnel. Millions of Russians died on the frontline and millions more starved in the interior of the country itself. This provided the impetus for the Russian Revolution when the tsarist monarchy was overthrown and replaced with Communism led by the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin. Lenin withdrew Russia from the First World War.

For much of the nineteenth century, the Russians had shown a distinct interest in the Balkan region. Russia wanted a port city to directly access the Mediterranean, but the Russians also saw themselves as the same, or similar, nationality as the Serbian people living in the Balkan region. The Serbs at the time were under the dominion of the Austria-Hungary Empire, and Russia sought to help free the Serbs.