Revolutions in Mexico, Russia and China, 1910–1928

Three countries, one decade of upheaval

Between 1910 and 1922, revolutions overturned the old order in three huge countries on three continents: Mexico, Russia and China. All three had old regimes that seemed unable to change, peasant majorities who wanted land, and educated elites who wanted modern, independent nations. Each revolution became a model, or a warning, for people around the world for the rest of the century.

Mexico: land and liberty (1910–1920)

Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico for most of the years from 1876 to 1911. Railways, mines and oil fields grew, often owned by foreign investors, but most rural Mexicans, many of them Indigenous, had lost their land to large estates (haciendas).

• In 1910 the reformer Francisco Madero called for revolt against Díaz's rigged re-election. Díaz resigned in 1911.
• Madero was overthrown and killed in 1913 by General Victoriano Huerta, and civil war spread.
• Emiliano Zapata led peasants in Morelos in the south, demanding the return of village lands (his Plan of Ayala, 1911). Pancho Villa led a powerful army in the north.
• Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalists won control. The Constitution of 1917 was one of the most socially radical of its time: Article 27 made land and underground resources the property of the nation and allowed land reform; Article 123 guaranteed labour rights such as the eight-hour day; Article 3 made public education secular.

Hundreds of thousands of people died. Zapata was assassinated in 1919. Land reform moved slowly until President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) redistributed large amounts of land to communal farms (ejidos) and in 1938 nationalized foreign oil companies. A single party, later called the PRI, ruled Mexico until 2000.

Russia: from tsar to Soviet state (1917–1922)

• The 1905 Revolution forced Tsar Nicholas II to allow an elected assembly (the Duma), but he kept most power.
• The First World War brought huge losses, food shortages and anger. In February 1917 (March by the Western calendar) strikes and army mutinies in Petrograd forced the tsar to abdicate. A Provisional Government took over, but it kept fighting the war. Workers' and soldiers' councils, called soviets, competed for power.
• Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, returned from exile and promised "Peace, Land and Bread". In the October Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd.
• The Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk (1918), gave up huge territories, and closed the elected Constituent Assembly after they failed to win a majority in it.
• A brutal civil war (1918–1921) followed between the Reds and the Whites. Foreign troops, including Canadians in Siberia, intervened against the Bolsheviks. The Red Army, organized by Leon Trotsky, won. The Bolsheviks used terror against opponents; the tsar and his family were killed in 1918.
• In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created: a one-party communist state. Lenin died in 1924, and Joseph Stalin rose to power.

China: the end of 2000 years of emperors (1911–1928)

• The Qing dynasty had been weakened by foreign wars, unequal treaties and the Boxer defeat. An army uprising at Wuchang on October 10, 1911 spread across the south.
• Sun Yat-sen became provisional president of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912. The last emperor, the child Puyi, abdicated in 1912. Sun's Three Principles of the People were nationalism, democracy and the people's livelihood.
• Power soon passed to the general Yuan Shikai, and after his death in 1916 China split among regional warlords.
• The May Fourth Movement of 1919 called for science, democracy and national strength. In 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in Shanghai.
• Sun's Guomindang (Nationalist Party) allied with the CCP. After Sun's death, Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition (1926–1928) to reunify China and in 1927 turned violently on the communists. The struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, led later by Mao Zedong, ended only in 1949; you will meet it again in The Cold War Begins.

Is there a pattern?

In The Anatomy of Revolution (1938), the American historian Crane Brinton argued that revolutions often follow a pattern: an old regime in crisis, a moderate first stage, a radical stage with terror, and finally a return to order under a strong ruler. Historians use models like this as tools for comparison, then test them against the evidence. Russia fits closely (Provisional Government, Bolsheviks, civil war, Stalin). Mexico fits partly (Madero, the radical constitution, then single-party rule). China's revolution of 1911 never had a single radical stage: it fragmented into warlordism.