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8/2/2019 The Bolshevik Revolution
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THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
Russia had witnessed a revolution in 1917, which for the first time witnessed the
establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This revolution was accomplished
in two stages: the first stage was the February Revolution, which saw the overthrow
of the Tsarist Autocracy and the second was the Great October Revolution of 1917which brought the Bolsheviks to power under V.I. Lenin. In addition to these
revolutions, the Revolution of 1905 is extremely important in the understanding of
the 1917 revolution as it acted as a stepping stone for the events of 1917.
There is a great deal of debate regarding the factors that led to the outbreak of this
revolution of 1917 and it would not be possible to understand its origins by focusing
only on factor. The reasons for the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy and the rise of
the Bolsheviks were deeply rooted in the history of Russia and in the problems that it
encountered in the economic, political and social spheres.
As far as the economic origins of the Revolution are concerned, one needs to look atthe grievances of the peasantry and the newly risen working class. The Russian
peasant had long been suffering under conditions of serfdom, which by the 18th
century had reduced them virtually to status of slaves.
The reign of Alexander II had witnessed a number of reforms, one of them being the
Emancipation of Serfs in 1861 by which the peasants were freed and became an
independent holder of his allotment of land. However, it didn't bring about any
significant change in the condition of the peasants as it had been cautiously framed
to minimize the change and spread it over time. The amount of land made available
to them was, on average, less than that which they had tilled for their own
subsistence under serfdom. Moreover, the allocation of land also led to the problem ofcut-off land as the landlords kept the best lands for themselves. The burden on the
peasants had increased as they were required to compensate the landlords for the
dues and services which they no longer received. The state provided this
compensation to the landlords, while the peasantry had to repay the government in
annual redemption dues spread over a period of 49 years. This was the cost of
emancipation, which the peasants themselves had to pay. Since these dues also
carried an interest liability, it increased the burden on the peasant, along with the
taxes which he still had to pay to the state such as poll tax or indirect taxes on items
like vodka, sugar, tea, tobacco etc. The peasants also lost the right to use of
commons, like forests, pasture lands etc.
The peasant also did not achieve any real personal freedom. This was because the
land was held not by them but by the village Commune (miror obshchina), which was
based on the notion of collective identity and was further re-enforced by this act.
Moreover, periodic land repartition was carried out, based on the size and capacity of
the household to cultivate. As a result of this periodic redistribution of land, it was
divided into smaller and smaller strips of land making the modernization of
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agriculture extremely difficult and prevented the peasants from expanding or
improving their strips of land. Also, the peasant was not allowed to leave his village
without the authority of the community, and all the households of the village were
jointly liable for taxes and redemption dues. This essentially meant that the peasant
was still bound to the village by the debt and thus, the act was designed to prevent a
mass exodus of the peasantry to the towns. Thus, the peasant sense of justice wasoffended, and a sense of moral outrage prevailed. Moreover, increasing population
increased the pressure on land, making subsistence difficult. This further reduced the
per capita availability of land for the peasants. In fact by 1900, 52% of the peasants
were unable to support themselves.
Thus, the Act of 1861 far from providing relief to the peasantry had increased their
burden, given them false hopes and deprived them of their natural, legitimate rights.
Rural unrest grew and the incidence of rent and labour strikes and land seizures form
private landowners rose in the 1890s-1900s. It played a major part in the revolution
of 1905. Another basic cause for the pathetic condition of the peasantry was the local
productivity of the cultivable land. The small strips of land, primitive tools of
cultivation, prevalence of the three-field system and an inferior rotation system had
contributed to low yields and recurrent harvest failures. The failure of the government
to deal with it gave rise to voluntary organizations that began to provide relief. They
proved the culpability and incompetence of the Tsarist regime, increasing public
mistrust of the government. In fact, the 1891 famine crisis resulted in the whole of
the society becoming politicized and radicalized. A public sphere and a civic society in
opposition to the Tsar emerged. The conflict between the population and the regime
had begun.
The Stylopin reforms were also introduced after the 1905 revolution to prevent such
future events by ameliorating the peasants. The redemption dues were abolished,
additional credit was provided to peasants to enable them to buy land and
resettlement was facilitated on the vacant land in Siberia. The peasants were also
encouraged to leave the village commune and establish separate holdings by helping
them set up private farms. These reforms had both economic and political motives.
The former was geared towards the development of commercial farming with more
progressive methods, while, politically, these reforms aimed at the creation of a rich,
prosperous and loyal group of peasants, who would support the tsar and thereby
weaken the revolutionary fervor among the peasantry. However, the reforms wereshort-lived and in fact did not redistribute the assets of the landlords or the Church.
So the grievances of the peasants as a whole continued. Also the poorer peasants
received little benefit from the reforms. Instead, the number of landless peasants
increased, increasing their migration to towns. On the whole, these reforms failed to
achieve their objectives and further antagonized the peasantry.
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Thus, the agrarian movement that had died down towards the end of 1907 was
partially revived in 1908 and grew stronger during the following years. The struggle in
the village was transferred to a considerable degree within the Commune. In fact,
there was a great degree of solidarity among the peasants as a group, as is reflected
in the major peasant movements of the time. Thus, the Commune survived and
reasserted its power. When the revolution of 1917 reached the countryside, it playedan important role in land seizures and violence against landlords.
Russia had witnessed the beginning of industrialization by the 2nd half of the 19th
century through massive state intervention. In fact, from the 1880s, the state itself
sponsored an upsurge in heavy industry. This was evident in case of the development
of railways that connected far-flung parts of the country, certain industries like coal
and mines and encouragement to foreign investment. However, the rapid
development came with the horrors of early capitalism. There was a rise in the worker
population as a result of which the few major cities of Russia like St. Petersburg and
Moscow swelled with overcrowding. The shortage of accommodation pushed up the
rents; the absence of labour laws resulted in poor working and living conditions that
were characterized by lack of a proper water supply, sewage system of hygienic
quarters. This was in addition to the low wages, long working hours, child labour and
excessive exploitation of the workers by the employers. Moreover, since most the
industries were run by foreigners or foreign capital, who had no concern for the
workers and were only interested in making profits. The lack of state protection to the
workers had given rise to a great deal of discontent among the workers.
An important aspect of the working class during this period was its overwhelming
peasant character. According to Sheila Fitz Patrick, the numbers of urban workers
were quite small as compared to the number of peasants, who left their villages for
non-agricultural seasonal work each year. Hence, despite the Marxist view point that
only an advanced modern working class under conditions of advanced industrial
capitalism is likely to be revolutionary, the Russian working class between the periods
from 1890 to 1914 was highly militant and revolutionary. According to Patrick, it was
the peasant involvement in the working class movement that seems to have made it
more revolutionary as the Russian peasantry had a strong tradition of violent and
anarchic rebellion against landlords and officials, which was further intensified by the
failure of the Act of 1861. Moreover, most of the peasants, who had migrated to the
towns were young and moved by the emergent radical ideas of the time could not
take to the discipline that comes with factory life.
A trade union movement had started as early as the 1870s. Urban centers saw
considerable labor unrest from the early 1890s onwards. A succession of citywide St.
Petersburg strikes in 1896-97 rocked the aloof stability of the royal family and the
autocratic establishment with their size, scope, organization, leftist rhetoric, and
considerable effect on Russian industry. Large-scale strikes were frequent and the
workers showed considerable solidarity against management and state authority. For
instance, in 1914 the Workers Strike movement in St. Petersburg assumed such
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threatening dimensions that some observers believed that the government could not
take the risk of declaring general mobilization for war. Patrick has once again argued
that these strikes saw demands that were both economic as well as political as it
became evident during the 1905 revolution.
In reaction to the strikes, reforms again came grudgingly from above. But the effortsfailed to please the enraged workers. The tsarist government was reluctant to
improve the conditions of the workers through factory legislation. This resulted in the
build-up of a large and discontented working class in the cities, which became one of
the principal causes of the Tsars downfall. When this working class came into contact
with revolutionary ideas and political parties it became one of the core elements of
the movement that ultimately led to the establishment of the new regime. Thus, it
can be seen that the economic conditions in Russia since the last quarter of 19th
century that had led to a progressive deterioration in the lives of the peasants and
the workers had given rise to a strong tradition of political unrest and protests, which
had been constantly pecking at the existing autocratic regime.
The role of the workers and peasants in bringing about the Revolution of 1917 and in
creating a revolutionary consciousness in Russia was undermined by a number of
scholars, in particular the Soviet scholars. This was probably done to overemphasise
the role played by Lenin and his Bolsheviks and to give currency to Lenins belief that
the workers could not bring about a revolution on their own nor could they develop a
revolutionary consciousness by themselves.
However, recent historiography has tended to question this earlier view point.
Scholars like Laura Engelstein, Diane Koenker, and Steven Smith etc have tried
to highlight that the Russia workers were not merely irrational, poorly educated and
incapable of independent participation in the political process. Engelstein has arguedthat the workers were not simply malleable i.e. manipulable and manipulated by the
radical intelligentsia and were in fact guiding their own course and destiny. Smith
suggests that it was the struggles of the workers in the world of work, and the
activities of work-based organizations, such as the factory committees and trade
unions, which were of central importance in promoting revolutionary consciousness in
1917. However, the crisis in the countryside and the problems created by the First
World War also played a part, along with agitation, in articulating revolutionary
consciousness. It did not grow in a purely spontaneous fashion. Martin Malia has
stated the workers cannot be seen as the social base of the Bolshevik Party but
were its indispensible springboard to power.
Similar revisions have also been made regarding our understanding of the role played
by the peasantry. Figes has argued that the peasantry far from being simply
immured in the idiocy of rural life had the ability to organize themselves, within the
confines of a revitalized village commune, and on its own initiative and with its own
goal in mind, to revolutionise the countryside. Allan Wildman has also spoken about
the peasants in uniform and stressed that the peasants were not simply pawns
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manipulated at will by the Bolsheviks but active agents with their own vision of land
and peace and their own collective power to attain such results. Teddy Uldricks had
argued that popular mobilization was a key process in a revolution that was
confirmed by Russia in 1917. But instead of the elite mobilizing the masses, it was the
masses that had actually mobilized the elitist parties.
It was the grievances of the workers that had led to the Revolution of 1905. On
January 9, 1905, 150,000 striking workers organized a mass march on the Winter
Palace of the Tsar, under the guidance of a popular priest Gapon, holding a petition
for the Tsar to ask him to improve the conditions of the workers. Nicholas, however,
wasnt there and his troops fired upon the peacefully marching unarmed crowd
including women and children. Over one hundred were killed and nearly five times as
many were wounded. This day became known as Bloody Sunday. The massacre
dramatically turned public opinion against the Tsar and his government, and primed
the country for revolutionary action. There were strikes and protests in over 30-odd
cities and urban workers also formed strike committees, which in September 1905
coordinated a nationwide general strike, originating with the Moscow printers. The
strike led to the formation of the St. Petersburg soviet (council) in October, with other
cities and towns following the model. It was to be an instrument to achieve power.
After the revolution, soviets of workers, soldiers and even peasants were set up.
These were representative to a certain extent, and came to dominate the lives of the
workers in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. They led the worker movements
there and played the leading role in the February Revolution. In fact, the Petrograd
Soviet created a situation of Dual Power after the fall of Tsarism, till the Provisional
Government was formed.
The Revolution also gradually spread to the countryside, as disgruntled peasants
organized rent strikes to force the landowners to increase their wages as labourers.
They soon began seizing and destroying property of the landlords across the country.
The revolution of 1905 saw approximately 7000 incidents of violence against the
landlords despite the fact that its influence had been decreasing. Such acts of
violence in the countryside and the urban areas led to a great deal of repression
being unleashed by the Tsar on these rebelling elements to put the movement down.
However, this revolution had made the Tsar realize the importance of granting certain
reforms and thus, the 1905 revolution had been brought to an end by a combination
of coercion and concessions. However, as we shall see later these reforms had failed
to bring about any significant change or satisfy the masses.
As for the political reasons for the Revolution of 1917 are concerned, many scholars
have pointed to the autocratic nature of the Tsar being a responsible factor. Ever
since the Romanov dynasty was established the Tsar had ruled over the Russian
Empire on the premise that he had a divine right to rule over the Russians and thus,
exercised limitless powers. The Russian Empire was ruled by the personal will of the
tsar, who, according to Warren Walsh could override laws, reverse judicial or other
decisions and generally interfere with administration. The only exception to this was
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Peter Romanov, who had stood for liberal reforms but all other Tsars had tried to
preserve the autocratic nature of their rule by introducing more reactionary measures
like empowering their officials with emergency powers to deal with severe situations
when public order was threatened, press regulations curbing the freedom of press,
setting up of orthodox parish schools and abolishing the autonomy of universities and
students organizations. There was no rule of law or constitutional measures torestrict the activities of the Tsar. Such trends had become even more stringent and
prevalent during the reign of Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II, whose reign saw
the end of the Romanov dynasty. In fact the reigns of these two rulers are often
described as the period of counter-reforms because they not only rejected further
reforms but also reversed the minor reform measures that had been introduced
during the previous regimes. Thus, the revolutionary fervor that had been gaining
ground in Russia was further fanned by the denial of basic political reforms like the
creation of political parties, trade unions and a constitution.
It is in this regard that the concessions granted after the Revolution of 1905 become
extremely important. The magnitude of the revolution had compelled Nicholas II to
give in and make concessions. Nicholas issued his October Manifesto, promising to
create an elected legislative body (elected quite unequally, based on restricted
suffrage), to grant civil and religious liberties, and to legalize the organization of
unions and political parties. But this was too little, too late especially as it managed to
placate only a small band of moderates. In 1906, the first State Duma was
established. But it had limited powers as it was elected on a restricted franchise. But
more importantly it was to act only as a consultative body and thus, could not enact
the reforms that the rebels most cherished. Also, it could be dissolved by the Tsar as
and when he pleased. Moreover, after the war with Japan was over, Nicholas
attempted to reverse the new freedoms, and his government became morereactionary than ever. Popular discontent gained strength, and Nicholas countered it
with increased repression, maintaining control but worsening relations with the
population. According to Patrick, this was a repetitive pattern in the history of the
Russian Tsars as they were not willing to grant reforms that could dilute their
authority.
Tsar Nicholas II, although tried to wield the power of an autocrat and absolute
monarch was incompetent as a leader let alone as the Tsar. Moreover, he was
increasingly under the influence of his wife, Tsarina Alexandria, who because of her
German influence was suspected of Germanophilia during WW1. Moreover, the fact
that she was dependent on the highly unpopular Rasputin made matters worse as itworsened the relations of the Crown with the court, the nobility, the church and the
army. By the time Rasputin was expelled in 1916, the Romanov dynasty was on the
verge of collapse. By 1917, he had managed to ensure his isolation from virtually all
sections of the Russian society. His failures to improve to conditions of the peasants
and the workers have already been discussed above. Moreover, Bloody Sunday had
destroyed the myth of the Good Tsar among the peasants and the workers, which had
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sustained the regime through the centuries leading to their discontent being directed
against the Tsar and not just the aristocracy. Another important breach of relations of
the Romanov regime was with the military.
For the country's military leaders, the root of the problem lay in the armys dismal
record in the 19
th
century, which many of them blamed on the policies of thegovernment. This seems to have reached its climax with the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-05, which was a big blow to the prestige of Russia as a military power as she
suffered the humiliation of being the first European power to be defeated by an Asian
opponent. The war was also a blow to the credibility of the Tsar and the Russian State
and it dissolved the tenuous support held by Nicholas' already unpopular government.
Moreover, the army also gradually lost its place at the top of government spending
priorities as resources were diverted towards the modernization of the economy. This
treatment of the army provoked growing resentment among Russias military elite.
Officers dedicated to the modernization of the armed services were bitterly critical of
the government and opposed the appointment of aristocrats loyal to the Tsar to the
top command posts. Their grievances forced them into politics. While arguing for
increased spending on the army and the navy, they also wanted military reforms,
including the transfer of certain controls from the court to the Duma and the
government. Slowly but surely, the Tsar was losing his authority over his military
elite, which was to have a disastrous effect when the revolution broke out.
Another important factor that is linked with the growing autocracy of the tsars is that
of the suppression of the nationalist aspirations of the various nationalities that
resided within the vast Russian Empire. Russia had been home to a large number of
non-Russian nationalities like Poles, Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Jews, Tartars,
Germans, Georgians etc Since the reign of Alexander III there had been a growing
Russification of the Empire, wherein the Tsars not only refused to equate them with
the Russians but also took deliberate steps to impose the Russian language, culture,
education and religion upon them to extent of suppressing their own culture.
According to many scholars, these measures were a direct response to the growing
nationalist sentiments among these groups and a desire on the part of the tsar to
keep all his subjects- Russian and non-Russian under control. However, the repressive
measures adopted by the Tsar during WW1 antagonized the non-Russian people and
posed a constant threat to the empire. While, the nationalist movements that arose
during the latter years of Nicholas reign may not have been a direct cause for the
toppling of his regime, the old regime was weakened by the growth of nationalist
aspirations during the decades of gradual decline which led to its final downfall.
This brings us to the question of the impact of WW1 on Russia, which according to
many formed the immediate background to the February Revolution of 1917. On the
eve of WW1, Russia was in the midst of a profound social and political crisis. The
peasants and the workers were still unhappy as the reform measures had failed to
bring about a significant change in their life. Thus, there had been a resurgence of
strikes post-1905 that were more militant in nature and the demands for political
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reforms had also increased steadily. Moreover, as already seen above the relations of
the Crown with its traditional support base had been breached for a number of
reasons. Thus, in such a situation, the disastrous consequences of the First World War
on Russia proved to be the final straw, leading to the downfall of the Tsar.
Russia was quite unprepared for such a long war, and on such a large-scale. Theeconomy was unable to cope with the strain and soon there was complete physical
breakdown of the system. Agricultural production fell and land under cultivation was
reduced by a fifth. More than 80% of the factories were taken over to supply war
needs. But there was no rise in production because the new labour force, recruited
from farms, was unused to factory work. Skilled workers were replaced by unskilled.
Salaries did not keep up with the prices, because the influx of workers from the
countryside kept wages down. Output fell by about 30%. Industry was no longer able
to take care of civilian requirements and produce consumer goods. The overloaded
transport proved incapable of supplying factories with the necessary quantity of fuel
and raw material. The war not only swallowed up the whole current national income,
but seriously began to cut into the basic capital of the country. Moreover, there was a
severe shortage of labour as most of the peasants and workers were forcefully
conscripted into the army to fight for Russia in the War. Thus the back of the Russian
economy was broken. There were shortages of essential items like fuel in cities as
well. There was also no proper exchange between the towns and the countryside.
Unable to buy industrial products, the peasants tended to hold back, which led to
food shortages. This led to rationing and black marketing in the urban areas. People
began to move to the countryside in search of food, leading to chaos and a collapse
of the production system.
This crisis offset another series of strikes, which by 1916 had exploded on an
unprecedented scale. While its roots lay in economic cause, i.e., the shortages of food
and rising prices, but three-quarters of the strikes were in opposition to the autocracy
and the war. In the winter of 1916, food and fuel supplies to towns fell drastically
even though the urban population continued to increase. There was shortage of
housing and people lived in miserable conditions. The decline in urban and military
food supply triggered the mass discontent of the early months of 1917, even among
middle classes.
As the war progressed the military weakness of Russia came to the forefront. The
constant war reversals and increasing casualties along with the general atmosphere
of incompetence shook the faith of the people in the regime. Russia had entered thewar with a weak arms industry and relatively poor communications. The transport
network (railways) could not cope with the massive deliveries of munitions, food,
clothing and medical care to the fronts. There was lack of real pre-war planning.
Moreover, the Russian army was formed predominantly of conscripted peasants. This
created an army of peasants in uniform that came to be characterized by poor
training and incompetence. This along with corruption at the high levels of
government and the army translated into severe military losses, which touched
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nearly 7 million by the end of the war. The soldiers had grown weary of war and
wanted peace, leading to the development of a revolutionary mentality. The army
was also concerned about the developments in the countryside, since most of the
soldiers were peasants. There was a food crisis in the villages, due to insufficient
labour and inadequate supply of urban goods for the consumption of the peasants.
Returning workers from the cities added to the resource crisis. There was anexpectation of dramatic change that might lead to redistribution of land. If so, the
peasants in the army also wanted to be there at this time, so that they too could get
a share. This led to desertions in the army, which grew after the land seizures of
1917.
One must finally turn our attention towards the intellectual current and the
revolutionary ideas that helped in bringing about the revolution, with a special
emphasis on the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin, before we conclude our discussion on
the factors that led to the outbreak of the revolution. The middle-class and the
Russian intelligentsia, i.e., students, writers, professionals etc. were isolated from
official Russia by its politics and from peasant Russia by its education. But they were
acutely conscious of their wealth and privilege, and this guilt led them to the
revolution. They formed a self-image as the righteous champions of the peoples
cause and felt that it was their duty to educate the whole of the society. The newly
risen middle class comprising of professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers etc
may not have been active revolutionaries themselves but had inherited enough of the
old intelligentsia tradition to feel sympathy and respect for the committed
revolutionaries and lack of sympathy for the regime. Thus, the rise of these new
groups had created a favourable environment for the revolutionary ideas to flourish.
The second half of the 19th century in Russia had witnessed significant changes in the
thinking process of the Russian intellectuals. The influence of German idealistic
philosophy and romanticism diminished and a great deal of realism and trends of
socialism had emerged in the art and literature of this period, which had made the
approach of the intellectuals more radical and in tune with the daily concerns of the
people. The leading proponents of such a trend were writers like Vissarion Belinsky,
Alexander Herzen, Nicholas Chernyshevsky etc Bellinsky was the one, who had
advocated a new and tremendously influential method of literary criticism that
critiqued the existing situation and simultaneously carried a progressive message
that was essential for a better existence. Herzen, who was Bellinskys heir supported
the cause of emancipation, the rights of the individual and self-governance.
Chernyshevsky advocated the equality of women, education for the common peopleand cooperative labour in his work What Is To Be Done? which had become a bible
for future revolutionaries like Lenin. Similarly, there were other prominent authors like
Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev etc who through their writings provided a strong critique
about the existing autocracy, serfdom, economic conditions and other issues that
caused grievances to the people. These were productive works as they also provided
solutions to the existing problems and advocated means for a better existence. In
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fact, this medium of literary criticism and the environment that it had created had
become such a powerful weapon against the autocracy that strict and repressive
measures were taken by the regime to ban such works.
The role of the intelligentsia, however, has been questioned by a number of scholars
in recent years. For instance, Pipes has argued that in the 1890s the intelligentsia hadsuccessful started workers educational circles and a rudimentary form of a
revolutionary party but in the face of repressive police force they abandoned the
revolutionary movement, leaving the workers and peasants to face the brunt of the
police action. This had caused a great deal of antagonism among the workers
provoking them into taking control of their movement. Gramsci has also argued that
these intellectuals once again deserted the revolutionary cause when faced with
coercion after the 1905 Revolution. However, by this time the intellectual current had
had a profound impact on the workers enabling them to take measures into their own
hands. Thus, these scholars have refused to give credit to the intelligentsia for having
a direct impact on the Revolution.
This was the period when a number of political groups and parties were being formed
advocating radical and revolutionary ideas that also played a major role at this point
of time. Populism was the mainstream of Russian radical thought during the 1860s to
the 1880s that essentially advocated the view that industrialization and capitalism
should be avoided at all costs since it had led to the Human degradation,
impoverishment of the masses and the destruction of the social fabric in the west.
The populists wished to save the Russian peasants traditional form of village
organization, the commune from the ravages of capitalism as they believed that
through the commune, which was an egalitarian institution Russia might find aseparate path to socialism. In the early 1870s, the idealization of the peasantry had
encouraged the spontaneous mass movement- the going to the people of 1873-74,
in which thousands of students and members of the intelligentsia left the cities to go
to villages with the hope of enlightening them or conducting revolutionary
organization and propaganda. However, such movements lacked a proper direction
and failed to achieve anything significant.
There was an upsurge of revolutionary terrorism in the late 1870s, which was
motivated partly by the populist desperate hope that a well-placed blow might
destroy the whole superstructure of the regime and partly by the frustration caused
by the failures of the reforms initiated by the Tsar. Micheal Bakunin has often been
called the father of Nihilism and apostle of anarchy as he passionately advocated
the destruction of the existing institutions as he found them to be flawed. Initially,
Nihilism had been advocated merely as a philosophy to negate anything based on
tradition or superstition but it soon came to acquire a more practical aspect, which
was of terrorism. The aim of these revolutionaries were to attack the officials,
bureaucracy and any other figure associated with the regime and they believed that
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through their physical annihilation they would be able to completely overthrow the
regime. Their most daring act was the assassination of the Tsar Alexander I in 1881.
However, this instead of having the desired consequences provoked the autocracy
into taking even more repressive measures in order to suppress such revolutionaries.
While, this populist tradition may not have found much success or support among themasses or the other radicals, it had left behind its legacy in the form of the Socialist
Revolutionary Party (1901), whose most noted leader was Victor Chernov. This party
was committed to the defense of the peasants interests, advocated the overthrow of
the existing tsarist order, the establishment of a classless socialist society. The
Socialist Revolutionaries indulged in terrorist activities taking cue from the earlier
organizations of this type and murdered important officials. While, they had
humanitarian intentions as well their terrorist activities seems to have sidelined their
other achievements. However, they seem to have given a lot of inspiration to a
number of student organizations, who disgusted with the oppressive nature of the
regime converted the universities into centers of open and bitter hostilities. However,
it was in the post-1905 period that this party was torn about by factionalism.
It was in the 1880s, that the Marxists emerged as a distinct group within the Russian
intelligentsia, repudiating the utopian idealism, terrorist tactics and peasant
orientation that had previously characterized the revolutionary movement. The
Marxists led by Georgii Plekhanov argued that capitalism was inevitable in Russia
argued that capitalism constituted the only path towards socialism and that the
industrial proletariat produced by capitalist development was the only class capable
of bringing about a true socialist revolution. They chose the urban working class as
their base of support, which distinguished them from the populists and also from the
liberals, who were trying to bring about a bourgeoisie revolution. The liberals were
another important faction that had emerged from the Marxists, who stood for a
liberal reform movement. This faction was headed by Petr Struve, who had lost
interest in the ultimate goal of the socialist revolution and was advocating the
modernization of the country.
Initially the Marxists had restricted themselves to educating the workers. This had a
significant impact on them as stated by Patrick, who argued that this education
helped the workers to imbibe a modern, urban sense of the possibility of bettering
themselves. However, the Marxists soon organized themselves into the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party (1898) and were more directly involved with political
labour organization, strikes and in the 1905 revolution. According to Patrick, by 1914the party had ceased to be an elitist group of intellectuals and had actually been
converted into a working class movement.
However, this was no longer a unified organization as during the Second Congress
(1903) the RSDLP was split into the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The latter that
included Plekhanov, Trotsky and Martov emerged as the more orthodox in their
Marxism. They were less inclined to force the pace of events towards revolution and
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less interested in creating a tightly-organised and disciplined revolutionary party. By
1914, they had in fact lost the support of the working class in Russia to the Bolsheviks
as they had become more militant and thus, wanted to be with a more revolutionary
party.
The Bolsheviks were led by Lenin, who was to ultimately lead the October Revolutionin 1917. The Bolsheviks came to represent a small, tightly-knit organization that was
characterized by a high degree of commitment and ideological unity. The Bolsheviks
and their organization was defined to a large extent by Lenins ideas and personality.
Lenin in his pamphlet What is to be Done? had laid down the blueprint of the
Communist Party that was to seize power after 1917. In this pamphlet he had
rejected the notion of Economism, which essentially argued that political protests
should be left to the bourgeoisie, while the workers should be roused only to demand
economic reforms. However, Lenin argued that the spontaneous struggles of the
workers for the improvement of wages and working conditions could only generate a
Trade-Union consciousness i.e., it may itself realize the necessity for combining in
unions, for fighting against the employers to strive only for those concessions that
may improve their living conditions. He believed that the workers left to themselves
would not be able to develop into a class; develop a sufficiently strong revolutionary
character or play a significant political role. Lenin wanted the educated people to
guide the workers on the path of political consciousness. This, according to him, could
be achieved only through a coherent, strictly controlled party of dedicated
professional revolutionaries as a basic necessity for a revolution. Thus, for him the
chief ingredients for a revolutionary party were strict centralization, discipline and
ideological unity. What differentiated Lenin from the other Russian Marxists was his
active work towards bringing about a Proletariat revolution as opposed to merely
predicting one in the future. However, it should be interesting to note that Lenin wasin exile for a long period of time and indulged more in writing books, articles and
pamphlets denouncing the Russian regime than in organizing the revolution in Russia.
Thus, many scholars have said that Lenin up to the February Revolution was
preparing himself for the Revolution that was to come in October.
The factors mentioned above had created an environment that was ripe for a
revolution to take place, which broke out eventually in February. The February
Revolution started when a group of women seized the opportunity of International
Women's Day to stage bread riots throughout the capital, breaking into bakeries,
taking bread, and leaving only the amount of money they thought the stores
deserved. This soon got transformed into a general strike. As more and more units ofthe Petrograd garrison defected to the side of the revolutionaries, the united workers
and soldiers took control of the capital, culminating in the arrest and imprisonment of
Tsar Nicholas II's ministers of government on February 28. With his government all
but disintegrated, Nicholas tried to regain power by dissolving the Duma and
reasserting his throne. But at the urging of his generals and allied Duma politicians,
Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne on March 3, 1917 in favour of his brother, who
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refused, ending over three centuries of uninterrupted Romanov rule in the Russian
Empire.
Once the Monarchy was ended it was decided that the countrys future form of
governance would be decided by a constituent assembly and in the meantime a
Provisional Government was to run the country. However, this came to be a highlyunpopular body as it derived its legitimacy from the last duma, which itself was
elected on a limited and restricted franchise. The second important body that
exercised power was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers Deputies, which although not
established legally represented the revolutionary elements and was thus more
popular than the Provisional Government. The purpose of the Soviet, dominated by
the moderate socialists was to keep a check on the Bourgeoisie Provisional
Government. This dual system of government was unable to achieve anything
significant as they differed on important issues and were constantly trying to seize
power from the other body. Thus, the relations between the two factions were
quarrelsome and intense. Moreover, the new system did not end the war, land
reforms were not enacted, the economy was still in a rut and the working conditions
of the workers were not improved. As a result, the resentment and discontent among
the workers and peasants had increased manifold and this period saw a large number
of strikes and demonstrations all demanding an end to the Provisional Government as
it was dominated by the Bourgeoisie. It was this rising discontent among the peasants
and the increasingly militant mood of the workers that was exploited by the
Bolsheviks led by Lenin in the summer of 1917.
Lenin had been in exile when the February Revolution had taken place. He returned
to Russia in April and his appraisal of the political situation, known to history as the
April Theses was belligerent and uncompromising. He condemned the existing system
of governance and declared that no support should be given to the Provisional
Government. He was already looking forward to the next stage of the revolution viz.
the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. He viewed the soviets- under
revitalized revolutionary leadership- as the key institution in bringing about this
transfer of power. Other important revolutionary trends in his theses were: (1)
peace- withdrawal of Russia from the war and the overthrow of capital, without
which saw a withdrawal would not be possible; (2) land- the confiscation of the
landowners estates and their redistribution by the peasants themselves and (3)
Bread. While, the Bolsheviks did not have a majority in the Soviet to be able to put
this manifesto into action, they were gaining popularity in particular at the grass-root
level among the workers, soldiers and sailors, while, the coalition socialists werelosing their support base.
The situation for the Bolsheviks seemed to have improved more around mid-June
1917, when a Russian offensive against Germany resulted in an abysmal failure. This
further increased the desertion from the army and increased the gap between the
Government and the military leaders. As Patrick points out, the provisional
government was in deeper problems and its fall seemed almost inevitable. A coup by
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Kornilov failed due to the quick actions of the Petrograd workers, who rushed to the
rescue of the Provisional Government. However, the poor handling of the affair by
Kerensky had furthered weakened the position of the government, while, at the same
time there was an upsurge in the support for the Bolsheviks as the coup had been
resisted by the workers at the grass root levels. While, the Bolsheviks had played no
direct role in resisting this coup the fact that it was the only party not compromisedby coalitions with the Bourgeoisie or any connection with the regime that was formed
after the February Revolution had made it extremely popular. In fact, by end August it
had gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet.
Lenin believed that the stage for an armed insurrection had arrived and urged his
party members to prepare for an armed insurrection. Despite some serious opposition
to such armed insurrection from within the Bolshevik party itself, the October Coup
was actually pulled off. It was on October 25th that the Winter Palace was seized with
which the Bolsheviks were able to come to power.
Both Soviet and western historiographical trends have glorified the role of Lenin andthe Bolshevik Party that was formed by him in bringing about the October Revolution.
Without the party, the so called vanguard of the proletariat, the workers and the
common people involved in the revolution would have failed to develop the political
consciousness that was necessary to carry out a radical revolution. The Soviet
attempt to glorify his role is not surprising as it was used by the Bolshevik-
Communists to legitimize the monopolization of power by Lenin after 1917. The only
viable solution was to stress upon the leading role played by the party in bringing
about this transfer of power. The party is depicted as the mythical or archetypal
Leninist party: tightly knit, well organized and highly disciplined. Moreover, the Lenin
of this type of historiography also assumed the status of a demigod, whose leadership
of the Bolshevik Party was infallible. For instance, many of the Soviet scholars
asserted that Lenin alone was capable of determining what the correct time for
launching an armed insurrection was and when it was the correct time to restrain the
use of force. Moreover, the April theses were regarded as the most significant
ideological pillar of the Bolshevik Party that ensured its success. Thus, it would
sufficient to say that according to the Soviet historiography- No Lenin, no October
Revolution!
The early Western perception of Lenin was quite similar. For instance, John Marot has
rejected the revisionist view point of a deepening economic crisis in urban Russia that
may have pushed the workers and peasantry into a second revolution in October. Heinstead laid emphasis on the political manifesto of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the
political focus that they provided to satisfy the material wants of the workers, soldiers
and peasant by linking them to the establishment of the Soviet power.
However, William Chase and John Getty have challenged this notion claiming that the
western depiction of Lenin and the Bolsheviks were based on ignorance and a limited
approach to history that was based on focusing exclusively on the prominent
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personalities for whom evidence and information was easily available. This naturally
led to the neglect of the large-scale role played by the workers, peasants and the
common people. Chase and Getty considered the Bolshevik Revolution to be
illegitimate, in which the Bolshevik party had dispersed the constituent assembly by
force and established their rule illegally. Thus, for them the Bolshevik Revolution was
an aberration in Russian history. A number of other historians have also challengedthe stereotypical image of Lenin portrayed by the Soviet historians. For instance,
Robert Service has argued that Lenin failed to create the pressures for radical socio-
political and economic change in Russia. According to Service, this change was a
product of war-weariness, industrial decline and unemployment, food shortage and
peasant impatience for land reform. In fact, Lenin himself had made a number of
disastrous political interventions that threatened the very existence of his party.
Thus, according to Service, Lenin was no infallible demigod. Similarly, Chase and
Getty have argued that Lenins role should not be overemphasized as his party had
just used their superior military and organizational power to exploit the popular
resentments against a socially and politically estranged Provisional Government.
Richard Pipes has stated that the October Revolution should not be looked upon as a
popular uprising from below as the Bolshevik Party had come to power with no
popular mandate. Leszek Kolakowski has categorized the rise of the Bolshevik Party
to power as an accident as they were able to manipulate a spontaneous mass
movement in their favour to establish its dictatorship. Alexander Rabinowitch has
argued that the Bolshevik Party was far from the monolithic, well-disciplined and well-
organised structure that it is made out to be and in many instances the leadership
lagged behind rank and file aspirations.
Thus, to conclude, one can see that the Bolshevik Revolution was not an aberration in
the history of Russia nor did it develop overnight. All was not well within the RussiaEmpire for a long time and it was a combination of war-weariness, political
oppression, economic hardships in the countryside and urban towns and a number of
other factors had brought about the overthrow of the Autocratic Tsarist regime.
However, it was the disillusion with the dual system of governance and the parties
associated with it created a favourable environment for the Bolsheviks to exploit, who
adopted its policies to correspond with the popular demands. It was with their seizure
of power that a new era had started in the history of Russia and the world.