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Russian Studies Spring 2012 What Was DoneThe Russian Revolution of 1917
(The Dirty Commie Rats took over.)
I.
Interpretive
Introduction (Historiography)
Explanations for what happened in 1917 range across the political spectrum. What happened? Who dunnit? What shape or direction did the events take?a. Marxists i. Orthodox Marx’s prediction was that socialist revolutions would inevitably
take place in highly developed capitalist countries (like Germany, Britain or
France.) Russia was neither developed nor capitalist, but the process
of industrialization had begun by the 1890’s and was accelerating. As more
and more factories were built, an industrialized proletariat was growing that
would eventually be radicalized. It would be the proletariat which would lead
the revolution, not the ignorant, even reactionary peasantry. The proletariat
was better educated, urban, and ready to become active in politics. In 1903
the Russian Social Democratic Party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The
Mensheviks led by Georgi Plekhanov emerged as the
more orthodox Marxists. They sided with the liberals in seeking a
constitutional monarchy that would hasten the development of a capitalist
industrial economy in Russia and eventually bring about the creation of a
proletariat capable of leading a socialist revolution. ii. Revisionist Revisionist Marxists (like Eduord
Bernstein in Germany) emerged after Marx’s death. They argued that a
socialist society could be brought into being democratically and peacefully
through the legislative process and through the pressure of trade union
collective bargaining. (They believed that violence would pervert the
development of a socialist state. They believed that decisions should be made
democratically by all workers, not just by an elite leadership.) iii. Leninist Lenin argued that a world-wide revolution could be provoked by
revolution in Russia. This revolution would not be led by the workers
(who were too ready to compromise on collective bargaining agreements), nor
would it be led by the peasants (who were not educated well enough to
understand their best interests). A successful revolution could only take
place if it were spear-headed by a political elite,
a secret group of highly educated revolutionaries totally dedicated to
pulling down the system and replacing it with a highly centralized,
authoritarian government. These elite would implement its decisions through a
strictly disciplined party structure and lead the nation through an intensive
period of social transformation involving class conflict and rapid
industrialization. These historians argue that the October Revolution was a genuine
proletarian revolution, neither premature nor accidental. It had indeed been
governed by historical law. Its goal was to destroy the classes which
supported the Tsar’s regime: the nobility, the bourgeoisie, capitalists and
shopkeepers, even well-to-do peasants (kulaks). If you belonged to this
class, you could not avoid being a ‘class enemy’ and therefore should be
liquidated. Workers and peasants alone would inherit the land. Was the Bolshevik claim to represent the workers and peasants
justified? Did the revolution have popular support? Did the Bolsheviks betray
the working class? Or did they provide opportunities for workers to rise in
the new system? b. Liberals Liberals wonder why c. Modernizers Modernizers believe that To the Russian revolutionaries, modernization meant
industrialization, and industrialization was necessary to create modern
weaponry. Modernization meant finding the money to build the factories and
towns to construct aircraft, tanks, and artillery. Unless Russia modernized
quickly, she would be conquered by Germany, which had demonstrated its
superior firepower and organization in WWI.
In this interpretation of what happened, socialism is less important
than rapid industrialization. d. Conservatives i. Entropists In the tradition of Hobbes and Edmund Burke, conservatives argue
that all revolutions follow the same pattern: when authority is overthrown,
things fall apart. Too much freedom encourages social unrest and can lead to
the nightmare of civil war. (The Time of Troubles III) ii. Ideologues Americans portray Lenin and the Bolsheviks as Commie Rats who
created a rogue state which played havoc with our security for nearly eighty
years. The legitimate (liberal) government had been seized via a coup de’tat
by gangsters and terrorists. The Bolshevik’s secret weapon was party
organization and discipline. The state
they ruled was totalitarian. It
tyrannized its passive people through ideology, propaganda, and violence. The
Bolsheviks were no different than the Nazis. Anything that can be done should be done to avoid the creation of
another state which embraces an ideology in opposition to our fundamental
beliefs in natural rights. (life, liberty, property) We will support any
government which provides law and order and creates the conditions where
business can get done. iii. Accidentalists “Hey, shit happens.” The stars aligned in the perfect formation to
allow a tiny minority like the Bolsheviks to seize power. Pure Luck. It is a
stretch to attach a meaning to an essentially random act. II. 1905 Revolutiona. Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) Catastrophic military defeat in the Far
East whose consequences were national humiliation, the loss of territories,
and worst, the revelation that the vaunted Russian military could not even
compete with another “3rd World” power, much less the Germans or
the British.
b. Bloody Sunday Jan. 1905 slaughter outside the c. October Manifesto The tsar concedes. The autocracy ends, and a constitutional
monarchy is installed which promises real power to the Duma (legislative
assembly) and promises civil liberties. At long last, liberalism has come to d. The Duma
The Tsar sought to rig the election in order to ensure a pliant legislature. Every 2,000 landowners selected a representative. Every 30,000 peasants elected a representative. Every 90,000 workers select a representative. Every 4,000 urban citizens select a representative. Even with the system rigged to enable the tsar to retain power, in the first election almost all of the representatives came from the Cadets and Social Revolutionaries. The Tsar dissolved the Duma and rigged the vote again and then again to get a compliant Duma. And its usurpation Ministers
became answerable to tsar not the Duma. The army in the West was reinforced
by one million troops returning from the East, and martial law was declared
in peasant villages. The St. Petersburg and Moscow Soviets were repressed. Even so, the
effort to create a market economy over rode political concerns. A major
program of agrarian reforms was begun which sought the creation of small
independent farmers. Enormous loans from the West were negotiated, and major
investments were made in industry. Then WWI
intervened… III. The
February Revolution 1917 During February 1917, a spontaneous uprising against tsar
was sparked by desertions and mutinies in the army as the catastrophic losses
Russia suffered in WWI continued to mount. The Bolsheviks were not in
play. The crisis resulted in a tentative move, again, towards
liberalizing the Tsarist autocracy.
a. World War One The Russian army had suffered four million casualties and
counting; victory against the Austrians was followed by repeated defeats at
the hands of the better equipped and better led German Wehrmacht; economic
turmoil spread at home as the price of bread went up and up. The Tsar was at
the front, and the Tsarina and the mad priest Rasputin were in control at home. b. Abdication of the Tsar (March 15) Now, who would gain sovereignty? c. The Provisional Government (Control of army, capital, police and
ports was given to Georgi Lvov, the head of the Zemstvo League, as its first head until a Constituent Assembly
could draft a new constitution and elections could be held.) i. War Policy The liberals resolved to honor their treaty alliances with
the Brits and the French and fight on. Their goal was a negotiated victory
which would give them ii. Land Policy The new government restricted land seizures by peasants
until “after future elections” ie never. iii. Constituent Assembly A new constitutional convention was called. Founding
Fathers stuff. iv. Kerensky to Power A charismatic speaker, a Menshevik, was appointed to build
a bridge between the government and the Soviets, the shadow government being
organized among the workers, peasants and soldiers by the SR’s and the SD’s. v. Kerensky Offensive From mid-June to early July, the Russian Army went on the offensive against the
Germans in central Europe was turned back. It was a disastrous failure, and
resulted in more than
200,000 casualties, and
the patience of the soldiers snaps. Many deserted. vs. d. The Soviets Neighborhood, grass roots assemblies elect representatives to
councils of workers, peasants and soldiers. SR’s dominated but the Bolsheviks
and Mensheviks figured as a prominent minority. The i. Order #1 On March 1st, the Petrograd Soviet issued a call
for the democratization of the Army through the creation of elected soldiers’
committees. The Soldiers were exhorted
to disobey officers if they were not consulted in the decision making
process. Most importantly, the order asserted the authority of the Soviet on
all policy questions concerning the armed forces. Confrontation between the
enlisted men and the officer corps, loyal to the provisional government,
seemed certain. Lenin enters 1. “All power to the Soviets” Lenin immediately announced that the workers themselves were finally in a position where they could seize power. He called for the Soviets to take full control from the Provisional Government. (In essence, the slogan taunted those member of the Soviet not willing to assert power and too willing to compromise with the liberals.) 2. “Land, Peace and Bread” His slogan called for immediate land reform, an end to the war,
and the opening of the granaries to a famished populace. (Nice politics, but
it also called for civil war.) iii. July Days 1917 In July, after the catastrophe of the Kerensky offensive,
spontaneous uprisings took place in Petrograd. Workers and soldiers took to
the streets clamoring for the Soviets to take the government, but their
effort was disorganized and therefore quickly lost steam. Lenin was cautious,
seemingly caught off guard. He refused to commit to overthrowing the
Provisional Government, and the energy went out of the demonstrations. He had
preached insurrection but had not planned it. The Bolsheviks appeared too
timid to the rebels and too radical for the general public. The government
cracked down. It seemed like Lenin’s moment had passed. He fled the country
for Finland. To the rescue came a right wing general who tried to seize power
in late August to protect the country from a communist revolution and so
restore the tsar to power. In response, Kerensky armed the workers in Given a second opportunity, Lenin took full advantage of it. He
could claim that the workers, not the government, had saved the country from
the coup. His party was the only one not associated with the Provisional
Government and its failures. His party was the one most closely associated
with workers’ power and armed uprising. When the Bolsheviks seized power in
October, the coup was bloodless, and a sizeable chunk of the people supported
him. IV. The
October Revolution 1917 a.
The Seizure of Power Did the Bolsheviks want a
quasi-legal transfer of power based on a decision of the Congress of Soviets
that the Provisional Government no longer had a mandate to rule, or did they
want to seize power directly and prove that they had the courage to do so? Lenin called for the latter, but
he was out of the country, and the Central Committee was reluctant to take
such a gamble when things were so clearly moving their way. In October Lenin
returned to the country, and on October 24th, the Petrograd Soviet
did move to occupy key government institutions such as the telegraph offices
and railway stations. They created check points on the city’s bridges and
surrounded the Winter Palace where the Provisional Government was in session.
There was no violent resistance. In a meeting of the Congress of Soviets the
following day, the Bolsheviks, who were a minority, announced that Lenin
would be the head of the new government, the Council of People’s Commissars,
and Bolsheviks held every position on that committee. b. Council
of People’s Commissars ie.
Lenin and Trotsky i. Immediate Decrees Peace
initiative, land seizures, factory seizures, nobility abolished, Church
suppressed, alphabet reformed, calendar reformed, Cheka
created, national debt repudiated. ii. Suppression
of Constituent Assembly Vote in December: The SR’s won 40% of the vote, and the Bolsheviks
only got 25%. The Bolsheviks had dominated the vote in Petrograd and Moscow
and within the armed forces. The SR’s overall victory was the result of
winning the peasant vote in the villages. This was the last free election in
Russia for eighty years. When the Assembly met, they were unceremoniously
dispersed. The Bolsheviks reasoned that they did not represent the people as
a whole. They had taken power in the name of the workers. Lenin created a one
party system and had the Cheka arrest all
opposition. iii. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk March 1918 (map) Lenin pulls Russia out of the war and surrenders to the Germans.
He gives up 27% of the country, 1/3rd of its industry, ¾ of its
coal mines. Russian conservatives are outraged. The allies are outraged. The
Germans are happy. Lenin believed that this treaty would be torn up once the
workers’ revolution broke out in Germany. That did not happen, but the
Germans did wind up losing the war and were forced to return the territories
in the Baltic states and the Ukraine that they had taken from the Russians. V. The Civil War 1918-21 a. Reds (Trotsky) v. Whites, Allies and Poland (map) White (Anti-Bolshevik) forces formed in the South of Russia
supported by Czech troops, in the North supported by British and American
troops, and in the Southwest supported by French troops. b. War Communism To survive its baptism by fire, the Russian Bolsheviks used
violence and terror to consolidate their government’s power and win the civil
war. The Bolsheviks relegated all of their opponents as ‘class enemies’: the
Russian nobility, the Russian bourgeoisie, and the interventionist capitalist
armies. To win the war, policies like nationalization of industries and state
distribution of commodities were a necessity. The Bolsheviks justified these
policies ideologically as first moves towards communism. In 1918 there was
huge optimism that a new world would rise out of the
ashes of this conflict. During the Civil War the Red Army became the primary
bureaucratic organ of the Bolshevik government. Marxists argue that the
effort required to win the Civil War ‘militarized’ the Bolshevik party and
resulted in tendencies towards rule by fiat, centralized authority, and
summary justice. The Bolsheviks were the party of workers, soldiers and
sailors: people used to authoritarian rule. Liberal historians would argue
that it was Lenin’s insistence on central control of the party led to such
authoritarian measures. In reality the Red Army was composed primarily of peasant
conscripts, and most of the officers were holdovers from the old tsarist
army. To maintain control over the army, the Bolsheviks assigned political
commissars to each officer who had to countersign each order. The Cheka was established in
summer 1918 when Lenin was shot and nearly killed in an assassination
attempt. Both the Reds and the Whites resorted to terror. Lenin and Trotsky
both justified repressive policies to ensure the revolution’s survival. They
regarded their tough minded policies as Jacobin in nature, not Tsarist. Industry was nationalized; private enterprise and trade
were reduced; the peasants were allowed to keep land they had seized in 1917,
but the government resorted to grain requisitions (at gunpoint) to feed
workers and soldiers. By 1920 the economy had been devastated. Industrial and
agricultural production had come to a standstill. Trade that did exist came
only in the form of barter. No currency was recognized. The Soviet government survived because the Reds held a
strategic advantage via interior lines of supply and communication. The
Whites also failed to convince peasants to return to the old order, and they
refused to guarantee autonomy to national minorities. c. Comintern In March 1919 Lenin founded the Communist Internationale (Comintern), a
league of revolutionary socialist parties dominated by the Bolsheviks that
was dedicated to promoting world revolution. To distinguish his movement from
the other more moderate socialist parties in Europe, he renamed his party the
Russian Communist party. The revolution he had hoped for in
Germany, though, was crushed. (See the 1919
Spartacist Revolt) VI. The NEP 1921 a. One Step Backward Fifteen to twenty million people were killed, starved or
died of disease between 1914 and 1921. When the Civil War finally ended,
millions of Red Army vets had to be assimilated into the economy. Peasant
uprisings broke out in several regions. A major revolt erupted at the naval
base in Kronstadt which shook the new government.
These iron workers and sailors had previously been staunch supporters of the
revolution, but now they demanded civil rights. Trotsky put the revolt down
violently. In March 1921 Lenin announced his New Economic Policy: “one
step backwards, two steps forward.” The NEP de-nationalized most industry and
commerce (except for heavy metals) and freed the peasant to sell their grain
at market prices. Retail trade and the labor market were also freed. By
1924-25, the Soviet economy had recovered. Even though Lenin retreated on
economic policy, he locked in his control of the Communist party. Previously,
party members had felt free to engage in debate and even oppose Lenin’s
policies. No more. An iron rule against ‘factionalism’ was implemented. In
foreign policy, the Soviets adopted a doctrine of ‘peaceful co-existence’
with the capitalist West while its economy recovered. By 1925-26, the Bolsheviks felt more confident about
pursuing their original intention of turning Russia into a socialist state.
Displeasure with the cultural pluralism and social freedoms of the NEP period
brought new threats about ‘class enemies’. Workers were resentful of ‘bourgeois
experts’. b. Lenin’s Death 1924 Lenin suffered a stroke early in May 1922,
and before he could fully recover, he suffered another even more debilitating
stroke in the spring of 1923. He died in January 1924. VII. Stalin Revolution 1928-34 a. Power Struggle and “What is to be Done” redux When Lenin died, three
rivals in the upper echelons of the party vied for power: Trotsky, Bukharin
and Stalin. b. Bukharin v. Trotsky Trotsky, the Red Army
leader and promoter of international revolution; Bukharin, the moderate who
sought to continue NEP policies. c. Socialism in One Country Stalin, the Communist Party General Secretary, who promoted the policy of “Socialism in One Country” d. Five Year Plans Stalin set a crash course to
industrialize the economy. He argued that Russia could not survive the coming
clashes with the West unless it industrialized rapidly. To accomplish this
goal, all of the country’s resources needed to be focused on developing heavy
industry. e. Collectivization The only way to finance such a crash course would be through selling the country’s grain on the international market. That meant forcing the peasantry to work harder for less than ever. To force the peasants to go along, Stalin declared class war on kulaks (rich peasants) and forced all the peasants to join together in collective farms and divert their income to the government. f. Purges The first five years of
Stalin’s plan created chaos and actually reduced production. He starved over
a million peasants to death in the fertile lands of the Ukraine. He murdered
millions of peasants who resisted collectivization. By 1934, he moved to
prevent any possible political resistance to his rule by murdering anyone
powerful enough to oppose him. He purged the whole officer class in the armed
forces. He purged all the old Bolshevik leadership within the party. He sent
millions into the gulag. In all 20 million people died. |
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