After the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, their leader Vladimir Lenin moved quickly to consolidate their victory. In 1918 the new Soviet government was finally enshrined in the law and, in July, they passed the Constitution of what now became the Russian Federated Socialist Republic…
By autumn, the so-called White Guards movement had finally taken shape aiming to build up the Russian army, destroy Bolshevism and make Russia united and indivisible again. Shortly after the country was plunged into the Civil war with Generals Kornilov and Denikin and Admiral Kolchak spearheading the anti-Bolshevik drive. The Socialist Revolutionaries joined forces with the monarchists. In July they started a revolt set off by their July 9th assassination of the German Ambassador, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff. The government struck back in force and, a few days later, the mutiny was crushed. The disjointed acts of terror continued for some time longer, though, and on August 30th, a Socialist Revolutionary woman, Fanny Kaplan, shot and severely wounded Lenin. The authorities replied by proclaiming a campaign of Red Terror including shooting of hostages and giving increased powers to the Cheka secret police of summary arrest, trial and execution of suspects. The night from July 16th to 17th was, without exaggeration, a catastrophe which put a bloody and enduring stain on the then Bolshevik government. On that tragic night Emperor Nicholas the Second, his consort, their five children and their servants all died at the hands of a Bolshevik firing squad. The bodies were than incinerated and dumped into a swamp. 80 years and numerous forensic studies on the exhumed remains were finally put to rest at the Romanovs' family sepulchre in St.Petersburg. For some strange reason, Nicholas's cousins, the German Emperor Wilhelm the Second and the British King George the Fifth, did nothing to save their Russian relatives…
Early in the year, a large-scale German offensive in the east forced the Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest Litovsk by which Russia lost all the Baltic provinces, Lithuania, Poland and part of Byelorussia. Buoyed by their gains, the German military command was contemplating a major offensive on the Western front, but, after some initial success, their drive ran out of steam. The German commander in chief, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg advised his Emperor to start negotiating peace with the Central Powers. By the fall, Germany's allies were already opting out of the war, one by one. Before long, a revolution broke out in Germany sending the Emperor scurrying across the border into The Netherlands, taking along with him 50 rail carloads of property which ensured him a comfortable living there. On November 11th, 1918 the Armistice was signed in Marchal Fredinand Foch's railroad car in the forest of Compiegne, just outside Paris. World War One was finally over…
The year 1918 also ushered in a major humanitarian catastrophe when a particularly virulent strain of the influenza virus claimed the lives of an estimated 20 million people across the world…
Two great musicians were born in the United States in 1918. One of them, a composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein is still touted as the best-known American musician of the 20th century. His Westside Story musical and The Mass dedicated to the memory of the slain President John Fitzgerald Kennedy won him worldwide popularity.
The other was one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, Ella Fitzgerald whose voice was so one of a kind that she was equally good at singing solo and with big bands songs written by George Gershwin and Cole Porter.
In Russia, the year 1918 saw the birth of the Nobel prizewinning author Alexander Solzhenytsin who spent 12 years laboring in the GULAG for criticizing Josef Stalin's policies. Forced into emigration in the United States, he made a triumphant comeback five years ago.
In the same year of 1918, the great German physicist Max Planck was awarded the Nobel prize for his introduction of the quantum theory. Basing on that theory, he determined the law of energy emission that was later given his name .

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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