The Russian Revolution didn't have a direct effect on most Americans, but it did, especially after it progressed into the Bolshevik Revolution, contribute to a climate of fear after World War I. The twenty years or so before the war had witnessed a massive influx of "new" immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Russia) and many Americans associated these people with political radicalism and labor strife. The rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia provoked fears that...
The Russian Revolution didn't have a direct effect on most Americans, but it did, especially after it progressed into the Bolshevik Revolution, contribute to a climate of fear after World War I. The twenty years or so before the war had witnessed a massive influx of "new" immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Russia) and many Americans associated these people with political radicalism and labor strife. The rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia provoked fears that something similar might happen in the United States. The result was what has become known as the "Red Scare," a period of anti-radical hysteria. After a series of strikes in 1919 that many people attributed to "foreign" radicalism, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered a series of raids on suspected radicals who he alleged were conspiring against the federal government. These raids were followed by federal immigration laws (the Emergency Quota Act and later the National Origins Act) that explicitly discriminated against people from Eastern Europe and other suspected sources of political radicals. So the Russian Revolution was instrumental in stoking anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment in the United States.
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