· Describe Marx’s communist utopia.
· In what ways was Marx’s philosophy similar to other utopian writers?
·
How did the social and economic
conditions in
· Why did Marx believe that the cornerstone of every society was its economic system?
· Why was Marx opposed to religion?
· Describe Marx’s theory of change in society.
· Why did Marx believe that it was inevitable that communism would replace capitalism?
By far the most influential utopian writer in history was
Karl Marx. Marx’s ideas, composed in the
middle of the nineteenth century, became the basis of communism, an ideology
that eventually controlled the lives of a third of the world’s population at
its height in the twentieth century. A
German who lived most of his life in
Marx was born into a middle class German family in 1818. Although many of his adult relatives had been influential rabbis in the town of Trier, when Karl was six his family converted to Christianity to enhance his father’s legal career. As a boy, Marx soon showed a remarkable aptitude for scholarship, although he was expelled from the first university he attended for drunkenness and brawling. In actuality, his conduct was not unusual for German students of the time, and he was quickly admitted to the University of Berlin where he studied philosophy, graduating with a doctorate in 1841. While a student, Marx developed radical political views that were bound to be unwelcome in the conservative German states. After editing a radical newspaper for two years following his graduation, Marx was expelled from Germany and lived most of the rest of his life in exile.
Marx’s political beliefs were shaped by two strong influences. The first was the body of utopian writing generated in the nineteenth century. From the Frenchman Henri Saint-Simon he took the belief that human society (like science) operates from a specific set of unwritten laws that can be studied and modified by man. Saint-Simon believed that these laws were primarily economic, governing how goods are produced and distributed in a society. Another French writer who influenced Marx was Charles Fourier. Fourier believed that people could be organized into small, self-contained communities where both labor and profits were shared and everyone had an opportunity to participate in the government and to receive an education. Much more successful were the ideas of Englishman Robert Owen who was successful in turning the mill town of New Lanark, Scotland into a model community. It was Owen who first used the term “socialism” in his argument that the means of production (factories, transportation, etc.) should be controlled by organized society rather than rest in the hands of individuals. Although Marx later ridiculed those he called “Utopian Socialists” as unrealistic dreamers, wishing and hoping that their ideas would be suddenly embraced by society, students of Marx cannot escape the obvious contribution that men like Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen made to his ideas.
The second major influence on Marx was the turbulent economic and political environment of Europe between 1789 and 1848. The French Revolution, which began with calls of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and its promise of finally liberating mankind from the exploitation of the rich aristocracy, soon became betrayed by the terror of the guillotine and the military dictatorship of Napoleon. In addition to the violence and turmoil created in the wake of the French Revolution, the nineteenth century was a period of tremendous economic change. Beginning in England, a revolution of a different kind was taking place as more and more manufacturing was being done in factories. Independent skilled craftsmen were being eliminated in favor of the robotic nature of factory work. Similarly, the small farmer was being chased off the land as there was less demand for farm labor due to the increasing use of machinery and modern farm techniques. These farmers had no choice but to give up their independence and stream into the ever-expanding cities, selling their labor to the factory owners. The rich factory owners became ever richer as they eliminated their competition and created huge monopolies that fixed prices and kept wages down. Workers from the age of five onward worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day for wages barely adequate to keep them alive. Families were crowded as many as five to a room, living in horrible slums, plagued by disease, and non-existent sanitation. In one of his writings, Marx quoted a British official describing the horrors of child labor:
Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.[1]
The human cost of the industrial revolution could not escape anyone’s awareness, and even though Marx’s middle-class background and education shielded him from ever personally experiencing these horrors, he was determined to reform society to eliminate them.
After leaving Germany in 1843, Marx and his wife settled in Paris where he met the son of a well to do German merchant family, Friedrich Engels. Engels and Marx were to form a life-long partnership. To the scholarly and sheltered Marx, Engels provided his extensive knowledge of real life conditions in the factories, which he had acquired managing one of his family’s companies in Manchester, England. In Marx, Engels found a man that he considered to be uniquely brilliant. After Marx’s death, Engels wrote, “Marx was a genius—the rest of us were talented at best.”
With Engels’ assistance, Marx developed a theory that sought to explain how societies were formed, operated, and changed over time. He believed, like Saint-Simon, that the laws under which society operated were purely economic and that whoever controlled society controlled the means of production: “The history of humanity must therefore always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange.” The art, religion, law, education, and government that a society adopted were, in Marx’s view, merely a reflection of its economic system, used to reinforce the interests of the dominant class. Marx, like another German philosopher, Ludwig A. Feuerbach, who taught that “man is what he eats,” believed that man and the world were purely material, as opposed to spiritual, beings. There was no God or life after death. Religion was simply used to delude the people into accepting injustice on earth in hopes of everlasting reward. For this reason, Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses.”
Marx viewed history as a perpetual struggle in which one group or “class” controlled the means of production (land in feudal times or factories after the industrial revolution) until it was challenged and eventually displaced by another group. Marx explained this evolution in terms suggested by the German philosopher Georg Hegel. Marx referred to this process as the dialectic. An existing system (the thesis) is eventually attacked by a new force, the antithesis, and a struggle ensues. As a result of this struggle, a new system is created containing elements of both the old system and the demands of the new force. Marx called this new system the synthesis. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the primarily feudal, land-owning aristocracy had been challenged by the new industrial class, enriched by the same increased trade that had led to the European settlement of America and the development of technology such as the steam engine. This rising monied class was no longer willing to accept a system in which power was based upon land or aristocratic titles. To Marx, the French Revolution illustrated the class conflict that ensued between the traditional aristocracy and the new rising middle class. In Britain, this struggle was less violent, but still evident in the efforts of the House of Commons to gain power from the Crown and the House of Lords.
The demise of the feudal structure led to the modern system of capitalism, where a wealthy few (capitalists) owned the means of production and the rest of society was forced to work for them, thus producing a new class conflict between owners (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat). Marx believed that the system of capitalism produced by the industrial revolution could not survive the pressure of the eventual demands of the working class. As a result of this struggle between capitalism and the working class, a new system called communism would eventually emerge. Marx was confident that the working class would eventually win this class struggle because capitalism itself contained the seeds of its own destruction. The ruthless desire of factory owners to wipe out their competition actually worked to weaken the capitalist system as more and more capitalists were forced out of business by their larger and more aggressive competitors. Due to his theory of class struggle and emphasis on material motivation, Marxism was sometimes called “dialectical materialism.”
· Why did Marx believe that communism would be the final stage of human development? How did he believe that capitalism would end?
· Why did Marx believe that capitalism was a necessary step on the road to communism?
· What characteristics would mark the transition from capitalism to communism?
· Where did Marx predict that communist revolutions would first occur? Why was Russia an unlikely site for a communist revolution?
In 1847 Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which in less than fifty pages described the society that would be created from the destruction of capitalism. Marx wrote that “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” To those who viewed this as unrealistic, he countered:
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach (scold) us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.[2]
Communism would represent the final stage of human development because only one class would remain—the working class, thereby putting an end to all class struggle. Since all historical development came out of the conflict between classes, conflict would be eliminated in Marx’s one class or “classless” society.
Unlike earlier utopian works, The Communist Manifesto did not stop at describing an ideal society. It was a practical guide to a working class revolution. Marx had no desire merely to interpret the world. He wanted to change it immediately and called for the proletariat to use its numerical superiority to violently overthrow capitalism. Political power, he believed, was simply the ability of one class to oppress the other. Workers, he wrote, must seize this power and apply it to their oppressors, the capitalists: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State.” By this statement, Marx meant that all goods would be held in common (hence the term “communism”) by the government. He urged workingmen of all countries to join together, ending his manifesto with these words:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be obtained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite![3]
Although the revolutions that swept Austria, Germany, and France in 1848 cannot be credited to the publication of The Communist Manifesto, it did influence some of the revolutionary leaders. At the very least, the revolutions indicated that Marx’s ideas were not some impractical dream, but spoke to the real needs and desires of many Europeans for radical change. The revolutions found Marx back in his native Germany where he escaped arrest only by threatening the policemen who came to arrest him with a loaded pistol. His wife pawned what was left of the family silver to enable them to escape to England where Marx spent the final 35 years of his life. While living in London, Marx spent almost every day writing in the morning and studying in the British Museum in the afternoon. As a result of his constant study, research, and writing, Marx and his family lived in deep poverty, surviving only on handouts from his friend Engels and an occasional job writing for newspapers like the New York Tribune for whom he briefly served as a foreign correspondent.
Marx’s largest written work, Das Capital, was published in 1867. Here he put all of his thoughts together in a very detailed work, continuing to emphasize the ideas expressed in The Communist Manifesto and his other writings. In Das Capital, Marx further defined his theory of capitalist exploitation. He maintained that the only true value of an item was the labor required to manufacture it. The fact that the capitalist charged far more for an item than he paid the worker for the time required to manufacture it and the value of its raw materials was cited as evidence of the exploitation of the working class.
In Das Capital, Marx also elaborated upon his theory of revolution and the inevitable process of transformation from capitalism to communism. To Marx, the existence of capitalism was an essential precondition for the development of a communist society. Prior to the development of industrial capitalism, society could not consistently produce enough to meet the needs of its population. “This development of productive forces,” wrote Marx, “is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general.” In other words, there is no point in creating equality if there is not enough to satisfy the needs of all. Despite its ability to produce an ever-increasing array of goods, Marx believed that capitalism would inevitably fall just as had the slave society of the ancient world and the feudal society of the Middle Ages. As the proletariat grew increasingly large and impoverished, the workers, aroused and educated by communist intellectuals, would eventually revolt. “Revolution is necessary,” said Marx, “not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because only in a revolution can the class which overthrows it rid itself of the accumulated rubbish of the past and become capable of reconstructing society.” This process would not be immediate and society would need to go through a transitional period between capitalism and communism, “a long and painful travail,” that Marx called socialism. During this period, the wage system would need to be preserved as the capitalist system was destroyed. This process would be guided by a strong government, what Marx called a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In addition, during this transition period, other actions would need to be taken to destroy the evils of capitalism:
· A heavy progressive or graduated income tax
· Abolition of the right of inheritance
· Centralization of all banking, communication, and transportation in the hands of the State
· The elimination of child labor and free education for all children in public schools
· The abolishment of religious institutions
After all aspects of capitalism were removed, this dictatorship would be unnecessary as society progressed into pure communism, and the need for government would disappear. Because the process leading to communism was based on the collapse of the capitalist system, Marx believed that this revolution would occur first in countries like Britain, France, and Germany that had the most advanced industrial systems.
When Marx died in 1883 no country had adopted his ideas but he had followers throughout Europe. Social Democratic parties were established (and often outlawed) in most European countries, dedicated to enacting Marxist beliefs. Most of these parties worked within the parliamentary systems of their governments to mobilize support among the working class and to advance their cause through peaceful, legal methods. Ironically, the man who eventually established the first communist country in the world disdained parliamentary methods in favor of violent revolution. This man, Vladimir Ulyanov, is better known to the world by the name he assumed to hide his identity from the police—Lenin. Lenin would take Marx’s theory and put it into practice by overthrowing the government of Russia in 1917, thus creating the world’s first communist state.
According to Marxist dogma (set of beliefs), Russia was one of the least likely sites for a communist revolution early in the twentieth century. The most backward of the major European powers, Russia had barely begun the process of industrialization and resembled more of a feudal society than a capitalistic one. In 1913, only 18% of the Russian population lived in cities or towns and industrial production accounted for only 20% of the national income. On the basis of industrial output per capita (industrial output divided by population), Russia ranked tenth in the world, behind every other major European power. Even more significantly, there was virtually no proletariat; out of a population of some 168 millions, only about 2 million were industrial workers.
· Describe the two inherent geographic weaknesses of Russia.
· How did the Kievan society compare to those established in Western Europe?
· What two factors tended to isolate Russia from Western Europe?
· Why did the Kievan Rus’ eventually fall to the Tatars?
Russian backwardness can be explained by a number of factors that make it unique among western countries. Russia occupies the largest plain (a generally flat area of land) in the world. Without mountains or bodies of water to provide natural defenses, Russia has been subjected to numerous invasions throughout its history. As a result, security and the need to defend against outsiders is a recurring theme of Russian history. In addition to its military vulnerability, Russia has been plagued with economic scarcity as well. Due to its extreme northern latitude, most of northern Russia has an extremely short growing season. In the south, where temperatures are more moderate, much of the potential farmland is plagued by inadequate rainfall. Russian rulers have struggled for centuries to allocate resources to two competing needs—defense and the maintenance of adequate food supplies.
The first major Russian civilization emerged in the ninth
century in an area northeast of the
Despite its cultural advancements, the Kievan state had several fatal weaknesses. It lacked natural defensive borders, so the cost of maintaining an adequate defense was extremely high. In addition, its decentralized form of government made it difficult for rulers to extract enough taxes to bear the enormous cost of defense. Ultimately, the Kievan Rus’ proved to be too weak to withstand the threat of Mongol invasion from the East. The Mongols—or Tatars as the Russians called them—began to press upon the eastern borders of the Rus during the reign of Genghis Khan in the 1220s. In 1240, the armies of Genghis Khan’s grandson, Batu, destroyed Kiev. For the next two and a half centuries, the Mongols ruled Russia, further isolating it from the rest of Europe. Not all of the former Kievan Rus’ fell under Mongol control. The extreme western parts, including Kiev, eventually came under the control of Catholic Lithuanian princes who eventually merged with the Polish dynasty in the late fourteenth century.
Authoritarian Mongol rule quickly replaced the decentralization of the Kievan state. The Mongols preferred to rule through native nobles known as boyars. The Mongols also retained the structure of Orthodox Christianity, using it as another means of organizing and controlling the population. Mongol rule was harsh, swiftly punishing rebellion and demanding high levels of tribute (taxes) from the peasantry. The high cost of this tribute impoverished the natives, bringing an end to sophisticated architecture and other cultural advancements.
· What factors allowed the princes of Moscow to establish their independence from the Mongols?
· Why were Russian Tsars considered autocratic rulers?
· What is serfdom? What factors led to its establishment in seventeenth century Russia?
· What was “The Time of Troubles?” Why did they lead to the establishment of the autocratic Romanov dynasty?
The princes in the northern portion of the Mongol empire had proven to be especially efficient agents of Tatar rule by the fourteenth century. One such prince, Ivan I, became so effective at extracting tribute from his population that he became known as Ivan Kalita or Ivan “Moneybags.” In 1327, after Ivan had crushed a native rebellion against Mongol rule in Tver, he was made ruler of the entire region surrounding the settlement of Moscow. Due to his wealth, Ivan and his descendents were able to rapidly expand their holdings, eventually becoming virtually independent of Mongol control. The rulers of Muscovy realized their precarious position as they attempted to gradually free themselves from Mongol influence. The boyars of the city formed a tightly knit society, fiercely loyal to the ruling prince. Any form of division or disloyalty was seen as a potentially fatal threat to the fragile independence of Moscow. The growing strength of the area also led the Orthodox Church to establish Moscow as its center in 1326, thus giving the city right to claim itself as the legitimate heir to the Kievan Rus’, and the defender of Russian faith and culture against the Tatar infidels.
By 1480, under the rule of Ivan III (who was also known as Ivan the Great), Moscow had grown enough in size and strength to refuse to pay any tribute to the Mongol overlords. It was during his rule that the primitive fortifications surrounding the center of Moscow, known as the Kremlin, were expanded and permanent stone buildings erected, including the massive Cathedral of the Assumption.
The triumph of Muscovite Russia over the Tatars
significantly legitimized the principle of autocracy
(total power vested in one individual).
Ivan the Great strengthened his power by working to reduce the influence
of the only potential threat to his regime, the boyars who held their noble
positions and property through heredity, by supplanting (replacing) them
with a lesser rank of nobility, the dvozyane. Unlike the boyars, dvozyane held their position and
property as direct grants from the current ruler, which could be revoked at any
time. Needless to say, dvozyane could be counted on to provide absolute
obedience to the ruler, or as the prince of
Ivan the Terrible also vigorously sought to expand his
territory. His armies drove south along
the
The highly authoritarian and centralized state created by
Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible hit a crisis point late in the sixteenth
century in what became known as the “Time of Troubles.” The aggressive military conquests of Ivan the
Terrible had pushed the Russian empire westward into conflict with the more
technologically advanced Swedes and Poles.
Serfs, resentful of increasing state control, began to rebel, fleeing
their obligations and escaping to unoccupied territories where they lived as
free men. Some of these free peasants
armed themselves into bands of warlike horsemen or Cossacks, acting totally outside the realm of government
control. In addition, a dynastic crisis
erupted when Ivan the Terrible’s son, Fedor, died without an heir in 1598. Fifteen years of chaos ensued as rival
claimants to the throne battled each other.
Finally, in 1610, Polish armies captured
·
What changes did Peter the Great
enact in
· Describe the peasant commune. How did it distribute land?
· In what ways did the autocracy, church, and nobility work together and reinforce each other’s position? Why did this strengthen the autocracy?
·
What evidence was there that
By the seventeenth century,
The reforms of Peter the Great and his desire to build
The rural village was the basis of Russian life, containing 95% of the population. Most villages contained fewer than 500 inhabitants. Families usually consisted of five to eight people. Life expectancy was low, in the upper twenties on average, but this figure is deceptive due to the very high rates of child mortality. Almost half the children died before age five. Women were expected to marry young and to bear as many children as possible. The land was owned by nobles and worked by peasant serfs. Russian landlords were often absent, fulfilling their obligations to the state, so great authority was placed upon a uniquely Russian institution—the peasant commune (in Russian mir), which consisted of the village’s male heads of households. It was the commune that decided what would be grown. To ensure fairness, land was divided into narrow strips (usually nine to twelve feet in width and several hundred yards in length) and then the strips were allocated to various families. A single household might receive fifty or more strips of varying quality scattered throughout the village. Periodically, the strips would be redistributed to account for changes in family size. Woods, pastures, and fisheries were available to all. Serfs paid two forms of taxes. The first was to their landlords in the form of feudal dues (obrok). The second direct tax was paid to the state in the form of a poll tax levied on every adult male. Together, direct taxes accounted for over 50% of peasant income. The entire village bore collective responsibility for the payment of taxes. If one family’s harvest was not sufficient to pay their taxes, others had to make up the difference. This served the interest of the state well, making it easier to collect taxes.
After Peter the Great’s death in
1725, the pace of modernization came to a virtual halt as six ineffective
rulers presided over
The effect of the Pugachev Rebellion
was to strengthen ties between the land-holding nobility and the
autocracy. Only by “bleeding the
peasants” could
Although she remained rurally backward,
·
Why did the Crimean War serve as a
stimulus to change in
· Why did some Russians begin to advocate the abolition of serfdom? What factors argued against changing the system?
·
Why didn’t the abolition of
serfdom have a dramatic effect on rural
· Why were the Great Reforms considered incomplete?
· Why did the peasant commune tend to inhibit the development of modern farming practices?
· What was the goal of the Populists? Why did the “To the People Movement” fail? How did Populist tactics change following this failure?
·
What effect did the assassination
of Alexander II have on
Less than fifty years after the defeat of
To the new Tsar, Alexander II, who had come to the
throne in 1855, defeat in the Crimean War brought home the need to re-examine
Russian society after a long period of complacency. Russian military strength had always been
built upon the size of its military, yet in the Crimean War
There is no doubt that free labor is better. It is wrong to suppose that once our peasants are free that they will become even lazier…. A free man knows that if he does not work he is not going to be fed for nothing and as a result, he works hard…. I have some unsettled land which I have worked using my own peasants, not under barshchina (feudal obligation), but by hiring them under a free contract. The same peasants, who idle about on barshchina, work extremely hard there and are even willing to work on holidays.[8]
To address these weaknesses required fundamental change;
however, change inevitably threatened both the autocracy and the nobility. Serfs living on landowners’ property accounted
for 51% of
Alexander II decided that it was better to grant emancipation from above than face the possibility that serfdom would abolish itself from below.[9] In 1861, it was announced that serfdom would end. The serfs would not, however, be given the land necessary to support their freedom. Except for their homes and a small private plot of land, the peasant communes were required to purchase land from the noble landowners or, in the case of state peasants, from the government. Approximately 50% of the land was allotted for peasant purchase. The government reimbursed landowners for the purchases and peasants were forced to pay back the government over a 49-year period.[10] Although serfdom had officially ended, very little actually changed. Peasants were still bound by their obligation to pay for the land, which they worked largely in order to pay their taxes. In order to earn the money to pay their mortgages, they were forced to work as contract labor on the landlord’s land. The commune was retained, largely because it was the most efficient way for the government to insure the payment of taxes and mortgages. The collective responsibility for tax and mortgage payments also provided a measure of security for individual peasants. In addition to the ending of serfdom, a new elected body of local government was created, the Zemstvo. Zemstvo officials were responsible for many of the local government tasks that had previously been the responsibility of the nobility, most notably health care, education, and agricultural policy. Although peasants were represented, elections were done on a constituency basis where nobles were allotted 75% of the seats.
Unfortunately, Alexander II’s Great Reforms were incomplete. Due to the Tsar’s fear of angering the
nobility, the reforms created significant problems that would plague
One effect of the reforms of Alexander II was to stir up
forces that demanded even more change.
Calls for reform in
·
Describe Witte’s plans for
modernizing
· Describe the five major elements of Russian society in 1900.
· Explain the ruling philosophy of Nicholas II.
· Who was Rasputin? Why was he able to gain tremendous influence in the Tsar’s government?
Despite the innate conservatism of Alexander III
(1881-1894) and his son Nicholas II, the dangers posed by the unification of
The stress of modernization inherently challenges
political stability. The revolutions of
1848 throughout
Presiding over this volatile situation was Tsar Nicholas II who had ascended to the throne at age twenty-six upon his father’s sudden death in 1894.[12] Often viewed as a feeble-minded fool, incapable of comprehending the disintegration of his regime; the last Tsar was actually quite intelligent, having mastered four languages in his youth. His greatest determination was to preserve the Tsar’s position as autocrat. Nicholas viewed himself as the father of the Russian people. To dilute his power was to abdicate his divine (God-given) responsibility: “I will never agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people God has entrusted to me.” [13] Autocracy, unfortunately for Nicholas II, was simply incompatible with the demands of ruling a huge country in the modern age. Nicholas even had to personally approve all name changes and the requests of wives to leave their husbands. In addition, he had to deal with hundreds of personal petitions each week from his subjects. Although Nicholas was extremely hard working, his insistence on total control led to his inability to maintain any overall strategy for addressing his country’s ills. As a result, he was frequently buried in minor matters and unable to give serious attention to crucial issues.
In addition to the other problems of his rule, Nicholas II endured a personal tragedy when his only son, and heir, Alexis, was diagnosed as a hemophiliac.[14] While the Tsar’s physicians seemed helpless during the young boy’s potentially fatal bleeding attacks, a Siberian monk, Rasputin, was seemingly able to stop the bleeding. This ability gave him tremendous influence with Nicholas’s wife, the Tsaritza Alexandra. Rasputin exploited his relationship with Alexandra to the fullest, using his position at court not only to seduce countless aristocratic women, but also to influence government decisions. Rasputin’s relationship with the Tsaritza eventually led to widespread rumors that they were lovers or that he used his position to seduce her daughters.[15]
· Why did Lenin become a revolutionary?
· What argument led to the 1903 split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks?
· Describe Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.
·
Why did Lenin argue that a
communist revolution could take place in
As social tensions rose in
Like his older brother,
In 1903, the leaders of the Russian Social Democratic
Party held a congress in
Lenin also believed that a country did not have to go
through a prolonged stage of capitalism prior to progressing on to communism. This belief, which was in direct conflict with
Marx’s entire theory of history, was necessary in order to explain how
· What factors led to the Revolution of 1905?
· What changes did the revolution cause?
· Why did further revolution appear unlikely?
A terrible famine in 1891 led to renewed calls for reform
of the Tsar’s autocratic state. A decade
later,
The 1905 Revolution,
combined with
Ultimately, the Revolution of 1905 had little impact on
altering conditions within
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Lenin was in exile
in
·
Why did the First World War prove
to be a disaster for
· Why was Nicholas II’s decision to take personal command of the army a huge mistake?
· Describe the events that led to the Tsar’s abdication.
· Describe the government that replaced the Tsar and the system of dual power that emerged after the March Revolution. Why did the leaders of the Soviets refuse to seize power?
·
Explain why
· Why did the Provisional Government continue to fight in the war?
The First World War was the ultimate test of a modern
nation-state. Imperial
The war began disastrously. A swift invasion of
By 1917, 1.7 million Russian soldiers had died in the war. Another 10.5 million had been seriously wounded or taken prisoner. At home, prices had risen 398% from pre-war levels as the government simply ran out of money and was forced to print vast quantities of currency to meet its obligations.[27] The war created a huge need for railway stock and the Russian railways could no longer both serve the needs of the military and get sufficient food to the cities. Under this pressure, Nicholas II was forced to allow some political reform, delegating more responsibility to the Duma and allowing a National Union of Zemstvos to form. This late action, however, did little to stem the rising tide of discord as the Duma leaders soon demanded that a cabinet be formed that would be responsible to the Duma rather than serving at the pleasure of the Tsar. Nicholas II, of course, refused this demand. Finally, in late 1916, Duma leaders began to openly criticize the Tsar. One deputy, Pavel Milyukov, bitterly attacked the Tsar’s government in the Duma:
the gulf between us and that government has grown wider and has become impassible…. While the Duma with ever greater persistence insists that the rear must be organized for a successful struggle, while the government persists in claiming that organizing the country means organizing a revolution and deliberately prefers chaos and disorganization, then what is this: stupidity or treason?[28]
The end of the Tsarist regime came, not from a planned
revolution, but rather from a series of spontaneous acts that emerged from the
growing frustration with the Tsar and the war in early March 1917.[29] On March 8, a large number of women textile
workers went on strike in
The situation is serious. The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralyzed; the transportation system has broken down; the supply system for food and fuel are completely disorganized. General discontent is on the increase. There is disorderly shooting in the streets; some of the troops are firing at each other. It is necessary that some person enjoying the confidence of the country be entrusted immediately with the formation of a new government. There can be no delay.[30]
Nicholas ignored this request, commenting: “That fat Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense, which I shan’t even answer.” He then commanded the
Rather than adhere to the Tsar’s order to dissolve, on the
evening of March 12, leaders of the Duma met to form a new government that
“corresponds to the wishes of the population and that can enjoy its
trust.” This Provisional (temporary) Government
was made up of the leading liberals of Russian society who hoped to establish a
democratic, Western-style government. At
the very same time, in another wing of the building housing the Duma, the
Three hundred years of Romanov rule had now come to an end, but what would replace it? In forming a provisional government, the leaders of the Duma realized that they had no popular authority to rule. The last Duma had been elected by an extremely limited franchise that virtually excluded the votes of workers and peasants. The new government’s leaders came from the nobility, industrialists, and small professional class of Russians. The president of the new government was Prince Georgii Lvov, a liberal nobleman who had been a leader in the Zemstvo union, and its cabinet contained only one socialist, the radical attorney Alexander Kerensky.[32] Deeply aware of its lack of a popular mandate, the Provisional Government pledged to hold free elections to elect a constituent assembly that would write a constitution under which a permanent government would operate.
In contrast with the Provisional Government, the Petrograd
Soviet had widespread popular support.
On the day prior to the Tsar’s abdication, the Soviet issued its famous Order Number One, which instructed
soldiers to only obey those orders of the Provisional Government that did not
conflict with those of the Soviet. The
leaders of the Provisional Government were clearly aware that their power was
dependant on the Soviet. The new
minister of war wrote: “The Soviet … has in its hands the most important
elements of real power, such as the army, the railways, the posts, and
telegraphs. It is possible to say flatly
that the Provisional Government exists only as long as it is allowed by the Soviet.”[33] What emerged in the wake of the March
Revolution was a period of dvoevlastie, or dual power between the Provisional Government
and the Petrograd Soviet. The leaders of
the Soviet could have easily seized power; however, for both intellectual and
practical reasons they avoided this step.
The largest groups in the Soviet were socialists, either Mensheviks (the
Marxists who had split from Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1903) or Social
Revolutionaries (the heirs of the peasant-based Populist movement of the late
nineteenth century). They believed that
For the next six months,
·
How did Lenin return to
· Describe Lenin’s strategy for achieving power.
· Describe the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution. What factors led to their success?
At the time of the March Revolution, the most radical
critics of the Tsar’s regime were either in exile in
Lenin arrived at
In July, pro-Bolshevik army units attempted a coup (violent overthrow of the government)
in
Lenin now believed that the time was ripe for another grab
at power. On October 23, he secretly
returned to
The coup coincided with the meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As testimony to their growing strength, the Bolsheviks held 300 of the 670 seats in the Congress. Also supporting the uprising were 193 left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries. On November 8, Trotsky stood before the Congress and announced: “In the name of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet, I announce that the Provisional Government no longer exists.” The Mensheviks and moderate Socialist Revolutionaries strongly opposed the takeover, believing that a socialist revolution was premature and could only lead to disaster. Georgii Plekhanov, the “Father of Russian Marxism,” declared: “Russian history has not yet ground the flour to make the wheat cakes of socialism.”[46] When it was announced that the Bolsheviks had seized power, the Mensheviks and moderate Socialist Revolutionaries, in a huge tactical error, walked out in protest, allowing the remainder of the conference to quickly authorize the takeover.[47] In his message to the Congress, Lenin promised an end to the war, the transfer of all private land to the peasant communes, and the right of self-determination to all nationalities within the Russian Empire. Bolshevik audacity (daring) had paid off handsomely as now Lenin, the leader of a party of less than 400,000 people, had claimed control of a state of more than 170 million people.
· Describe the violence that followed the October Revolution.
·
What immediate changes did the
Bolsheviks bring to
· Describe the Russian Civil War. What measures did the Bolsheviks employ in fighting their enemies?
· What factors allowed the Bolsheviks to win the civil war?
The Bolsheviks assumed power over a war-weakened,
revolution-ravaged country that was in terrible condition. They had come to power with the support of
barely the majority of the people in the large cities of
Lenin quickly began to lay the foundations for the single-party
dictatorship that characterized
Lenin met the need to make peace with
In the spring of 1918, the Bolshevik government came under
attack from both counter-revolutionary forces and the Allies. A powerful but fragmented group of
anti-Bolsheviks, soon known as the Whites,
began a civil war that would claim almost as many lives in its three years as
the country had lost in World War I. The
Allied Powers (mainly
Allied intervention in
… the fact that the Bolsheviks could at least claim to stand for “the revolution”—and they had captured its most important symbols such as the Red Flag—also surely enabled them to mobilize a certain level of support, albeit only a conditional support and as the less bad of two options, from the peasantry, and indeed as we shall see from certain workers too, who feared that a victory of the Whites would reverse their gains from the revolution.[58]
Taking advantage of their shorter supply lines, ideological unity, and dislike of foreign intervention, the Bolsheviks put an end to White resistance by 1920.
· Why was their conflict between the policies of War Communism and the peasantry? What other problems affected the country?
· How did the Bolshevik Party change as a result of the civil war?
·
Describe how the
At the same time that it was waging war, the new Bolshevik
government was engaging in a radical restructuring of the Russian economy. After the revolution, Lenin issued a decree
turning over the administration of rural land to village Soviets, which had
evolved from the peasant communes.
Factories were similarly turned over to workers’ committees. The needs of fighting the war, however, soon
increasingly led to greater government control under a program known as War Communism. The government nationalized all factories in
June 1919, and appointed managers replaced the factory committees. Factories were organized upon a military
model and discipline was stricter than it had been before the war. In the countryside, peasants began to hoard
grain because currency inflation made selling their crops worthless. As Russian industry had almost ceased to
produce consumer items, farmers were naturally reluctant to sell their grain
for valueless currency when there was nothing to buy anyway. What resulted was urban starvation and a
massive depopulation of the cities. Many
urban workers maintained close ties to their rural villages. With no food available in the cities, people
simply returned to the land. Anarchist
Emma Goldman returned to
It was almost in ruins, as if a hurricane had swept
over it. The houses looked like broken
old tombs upon neglected and forgotten cemeteries. The streets were dirty and deserted; all life
had gone from them. The population of
The government responded with a grain tax that amounted to confiscation of almost all grain. Peasants refused to pay, hiding their grain and slaughtering their livestock. Red Army requisition units now proceeded to seize grain directly from the peasants. Violence soon broke out, as the peasants believed that those who had promised them land were now betraying them. Angry peasants murdered 2,000 members of the requisitioning brigades during 1918; in 1919 the figure rose to nearly 5,000; and in 1920 to over 8,000.[60] Only peasant ignorance and disorganization prevented this rebellion from being a greater threat to the Red cause. In early 1918, Lenin had officially changed the name of the party from Bolshevik to Communist. This greatly perplexed the peasants. The Bolsheviks had promised them land and now the Communists were taking their grain. As a result, confused slogans such as “Long Live the Bolsheviks! Death to the Communists!” were heard in rural areas. What ultimately resulted from this war on the peasants was widespread famine. The 1918 harvest collected only a fifth of the targeted amount of grain. By 1921, the grain harvest was less than half of prewar levels. Industrial production was even more in peril, dropping to 13% of its 1913 level. In addition to the ten million lives lost in World War I, eight million more perished in the civil war, and starvation and disease killed an additional seven million between 1917-1921.
The experience of the civil war greatly changed the party as well. The Communist Party that emerged from the war was radically different from the Bolshevik Party that had seized power in 1917. Party membership grew dramatically, almost tripling since the October Revolution. The new members, largely drawn from workers and peasants, were significantly different from earlier party members that had been primarily from the intelligentsia. The war also changed the decision-making process of the party. Although Lenin was by no means a believer in democracy, party decisions were hotly debated within its small central committee and even Lenin was harshly criticized in its general party congresses prior to 1919. Besieged by numerous enemies, the party closed ranks and grew increasingly intolerant of dissenting viewpoints. Local party officials, who had been previously appointed by local organizations, began to be appointed by the Central Committee. As one Old Bolshevik (a term applied to those who were party members prior to 1917) wrote to Lenin in July 1919: “We have cut ourselves off from the masses and made it difficult to attract them. The old comradely spirit of the party has died completely. It has been replaced by a new one-man rule in which the party boss runs everything.”[61]
Although the goals of the revolution had clearly been to abolish privilege, the party quickly became the new elite. Warm leather jackets soon became the most obvious symbol of party membership. In early 1918, Lenin himself had backed a plan to organize a special closed restaurant for the Bolsheviks in Petrograd on the grounds that they could not be expected to lead a revolution on an empty stomach. By the end of the civil war, party members also claimed higher salaries and special rations, subsidized housing in apartments and hotels, access to exclusive shops, and hospitals, private dachas (country cottages), chauffeured cars and, first-class railway travel, not to mention countless other privileges once reserved for the tsarist elite. Despite the greater privileges for party members, the top leadership generally did not seek to emulate the opulent lifestyle of the Tsars; Lenin, for instance, lived in three small rooms of the Kremlin.
In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed, consisting of six formally independent socialist republics that had all been part of the pre-1917 Russian Empire: Russia, Ukraine, White Russia (Belorussia), Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.[62] In theory, the union was a free association in which all member states were equal and free to secede at any time; however, in practice the new government was a tightly controlled unitary state with all power residing in Moscow. The Soviet constitution of 1924 set up a system based on a succession of soviets in villages, factories, and cities. This pyramid of soviets in each constituent republic culminated in an All-Soviet Union Congress of Soviets at the apex (top) of the national government. While it appeared that the Congress exercised sovereign (ultimate) power, this body was actually unimportant as the governing structure that developed during the civil war made the Communist Party the sole governing organization in Russia. All other political parties were banned. In the one-party state, government titles were essentially meaningless as one’s position in the party determined their political power. Lenin, for instance, held no governmental title at all; his position as the leader of the country emanated solely from his uncontested position as party leader. The party itself was organized into three governing levels. The ruling organ of the party was the Party Congress, which usually met yearly. The party then elected a Central Committee that formulated specific policy. During the civil war a small elite group within the Central Committee, the Politburo, consolidated power in its hands. The first Politburos included Lenin, Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev. In addition to government positions, the party soon controlled the appointment of all other important positions in society, or what became known as the nomenklatura, the elite of Soviet society.
What many had celebrated as a dictatorship of the proletariat thus became a dictatorship over the proletariat. Ironically, the most accurate prediction of the fate of the revolution came from a strong supporter of communism, the German Sparticist leader Rosa Luxemburg, who wrote shortly before her murder in 1919:
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life in every public institution dies out, becomes mere appearance, and bureaucracy alone remains active. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen extremely energetic and highly idealistic Party leaders direct and govern; among them, in reality, a dozen outstanding leaders rule, and an elite of the working class is summoned to a meeting from time to time to applaud the leaders and to adopt unanimous resolutions put to them. In essence this is the rule of the clique, and of course, their dictatorship is not the dictatorship of the proletariat but the dictatorship of a handful of politicians…. Socialism without political freedom is not socialism…. Freedom for only active supporters of the government is not freedom.[63]
· Why was the Kronstadt mutiny significant?
· What factors led to the New Economic Policy? Assess its success.
When the Tenth Party Congress met in March 1921, the Communist government was facing a widespread crisis as the economy was in a state of collapse. Peasant opposition to grain requisitioning was growing steadily, as the Cheka reported 118 separate peasant uprisings throughout the country. Even more significantly, some of the earliest groups to support the Bolshevik cause were now strongly critical of the Communist regime. In February, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in Petrograd mutinied, publishing a manifesto that demanded the free election of soviets by secret ballot and a restoration of freedom of speech and press. The Kronstadt mutiny threatened the very legitimacy of the government as in 1917 Trotsky had called the Kronstadt sailors the ‘pride and glory of the Russian Revolution.” Kronstadt sailors had fought in the October Revolution and loyally served the Red cause in the civil war. Now, in their manifesto (policy statement), they accused the Communists of betraying the revolution:
By carrying out the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its emancipation. But the result has been an even greater enslavement of human beings. The power of the monarchy, with its police and its gendarmerie, has passed into the hands of the Communist usurpers, who have given the people not freedom but the constant fear of torture by the Cheka, the horrors of which far exceed the rule of the gendarmerie under tsarism… The glorious emblem of the toiler’s state—the sickle and the hammer—has in fact been replaced by the Communists with the bayonet and the barred window, which they use to maintain the calm and carefree life of the new bureaucracy, the Communist commissars and functionaries…. The Russia of the toilers, the first to raise the red banner of liberation, is drenched in blood.[64]
The government responded to this threat with overwhelming military force. In March, the Kronstadt rebellion was crushed by Red troops at an enormous cost. Over 10,000 of the 50,000 Red troops were killed in the fighting, and 2,500 of the captured rebels were executed within months.
Despite the suppression of the Kronstadt mutiny and the defeat of the White Armies, War Communism was clearly an economic disaster. Prior to the Party Congress, Lenin had decided that it was necessary to take “one step backwards in order to go two steps forward,” explaining that Russia had tried to do too much too soon in attempting to change everything at once. He also noted that there had not been the expected firestorm of complementary communist revolutions sweeping the globe. Communist outbreaks in Germany and Hungary after the end of World War I had been brutally squashed. Russia stood alone, as the capitalist countries were universally hostile to the new Soviet regime. Compromise was necessary to survive. Besides ending his calls for communist revolution abroad, Lenin recommended a return to certain practices of capitalism, the so-called New Economic Policy, or NEP. Under NEP, grain requisitioning was ended. Instead, peasants would be required to pay a fixed amount of their grain harvest to the state. Any remaining amount they were free to sell at a profit, providing an incentive to produce as much as possible. In addition, NEP permitted small, privately owned businesses. Large industries, banking, transportation, and public utilities, what Lenin referred to as “the commanding heights of the economy,” remained under government control, but in the city as well as the countryside, elements of capitalism were now back in operation.[65]
The New Economic Policy was only one means of resolving the crisis. At the Tenth Party Congress, the party passed a resolution banning all “political factions.” Whereas open debate had always been permitted within the party, especially at the Central Committee level, now any group opposed to the policies of party leadership could be condemned as being guilty of the crime of “factionalism.” Greater discipline within the party was also mirrored by continued ruthless suppression of opposition from outside the organization. Overall, it has been estimated that 100,000 people were imprisoned or deported and 15,000 people shot in the crushing of the remaining peasant revolts during the spring of 1922. The party remained keenly aware of the potential of peasant opposition. In many ways, NEP was a surrender to the peasants, setting aside the party’s desire to collectivize agriculture in favor of a return to rural capitalism. Party leaders, however, believed that they had no choice. The grain harvest of 1921 was a disaster, yielding only 43% of prewar levels. Starvation was prevalent throughout the country:
Hunger turned some people into cannibals…. One man, convicted of eating several children, confessed for example; “In our village, everyone eats human flesh but they hide it. There are several cafeterias in the village—and all of them serve up young children….” Mothers, desperate to feed their children, cut off limbs from corpses and boiled the flesh in pots. People ate their own relatives—often their young children, who were usually the first to die and whose flesh was particularly sweet.[66]
Even more humiliating was the need to rely on foreign charity. The American Relief Administration, established by future president Herbert Hoover, was feeding ten million people in the USSR per day during the summer of 1922 at a cost of $61m.
NEP eventually proved to be a success in stimulating the production of grain. By 1923, yields had increased to 75% of prewar levels, and by 1925 they exceeded prewar production. Widespread starvation and, more importantly from the party’s point of view, rural opposition to the government virtually ended. Grain taxes remained low to encourage as much production as possible. More efficient peasants were soon permitted to rent additional land and employ their neighbors as contract labor. As a top Communist leader and strong supporter of NEP, Nikolai Bukharin, later said, peasants were encouraged to “enrich themselves.” These wealthy peasants became known as kulaks.[67] Traders, known as “NEP Men,” also became wealthy as they facilitated the exchange of goods between the cities and countryside.
NEP was a time of relative cultural freedom. The arts flourished as Soviet literature, art, and theater, registered considerable achievements. Great emphasis was placed on the popularization of culture, especially in the key cities, where the theater and art exhibitions were accessible to the people. Most artists initially supported the revolution, and while blatantly anti-government works were banned, wide freedom was given to artists to create radical new expressions that mirrored the communist desire to totally replace the old, traditional order.[68]
The New Economic Policy proved to be Lenin’s last major contribution as the leader of the Soviet Union. His health had been poor since being wounded by an assassin in 1918.[69] Having led a sedentary life prior to 1917, by 1922 he was exhausted by the demands of running a country in perpetual crisis. In May 1922 he suffered a major stroke, leaving his right side virtually paralyzed and temporarily depriving him of speech. A second stroke followed in 1923, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on January 21, 1924 at the age of 54. Lenin’s body was embalmed and placed in a glass case where for decades Soviet citizens waited in long lines to pass reverently past his tomb. His brain was removed, sliced into over 30,000 sections, and studied by Soviet scientists for clues to his genius. In a secular (non-religious) state, Lenin was soon elevated to the status of a god.[70] The city of Petrograd, cradle of the revolution, was renamed Leningrad in his honor shortly after his death, and his image was ubiquitous (everywhere) within the Soviet Union for the remainder of its existence.
Jeffrey
T. Stroebel, The
[1] Karl Marx, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and other Writings (New York: Carlton House, 1932), p. 109.
[2] Marx, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and other Writings, p. 337.
[3] Marx, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and other Writings, p. 355.
[4] Ivan killed his own son in a fit of rage, and it is legend that he gouged out the eyes of the architects who built St. Basil’s Cathedral in the Kremlin so that a cathedral of such beauty could never again be created.
[5] Peter attempted to travel incognito under the name of Peter Mikhailov as part of a large Russian delegation. This was ineffective, however, due to the Tsar’s immense height. Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, the Tsar’s presence was impossible to hide.
[6] When recruits left for service, villages held funeral services for them, realizing that they were never to return to the villages or their families. Wives of recruits were considered widows, free to remarry.
[7] The close relationship between the Orthodox Church and the autocracy was obvious to all. When Alexander I met with Napoleon, the French emperor remarked, “I see that you are emperor and a pope at the same time. How useful.”
[8]
Quoted in David Christian, Imperial and
Soviet
[9] Serfdom had been abolished in the neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire as a result of the revolutions of 1848.
[10] The payments were finally cancelled in 1906.
[11]
Although small in number, approximately two percent of the population, this
group would furnish almost all of
[12] Alexander III, a huge robust man, died suddenly of a kidney disease at age forty-nine.
[13] Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 136.
[14] Alexis was born in 1904.
[15] It is still a contentious point in Russian history as to whether Rasputin and Alexandra had a sexual relationship. Extremely intimate letters from the Tsaritza to Rasputin exist, but there is no conclusive evidence to support the widespread allegations of a sexual relationship between the monk and members of the Tsar’s immediate family.
[16]
In a country with strict political censorship, it is surprising that Marx’s
works were not banned. In allowing the
publication of Das Capital in 1872, a
Tsarist censor proclaimed, “very few people in
[17] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 130-131. Lenin later used the title of Chernyshevsky’s novel for his 1902 essay calling for a small conspiratorial organization to lead the revolution.
[18]
The name Lenin was probably derived from the Siberian river, the
[19]
The Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, had thousands of agents to monitor every aspect of
Russian life. Hundreds of bureaucrats
were employed in
[20] Dimitri Volkogonov, translated and edited by Harold Shukman, Lenin (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 64. Lenin’s ideas were not entirely new to Russia. In 1862 Petr Zaichnevsky had written in Young Russia that change would only come to Russia through a violent seizure of power by a small, well-disciplined group of conspirators who would then establish a revolutionary dictatorship. This dictatorship would then carry out the socialist transformation of society and exterminate all who opposed them. In a chilling premonition of the Communist Revolution, Zaichnevsky wrote: “Remember: anyone who is not with us is our enemy, and every method may be used to exterminate our enemies.” Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 131-132.
[21] Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1965), p. 329.
[22] Social Revolutionary leader Victor Chernov quoted in Dmitri Volkogonov, translated and edited by Harold Shukman, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 5.
[23] Gapon was later identified as a police informer and murdered by Social Revolutionaries in 1906.
[24] One such mutiny, aboard the battleship Potemkin, in the Black Sea later became the subject of an epic Soviet film by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925.
[25] All five Bolsheviks in the Duma were arrested in 1915 and exiled to Siberia for the possession of a manifesto written by Lenin.
[26] Alexandra was openly referred to as Nemka (the German woman) and censored letters from the front indicated that her relationship with Rasputin was a major topic of discussion. See Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (New York: Athenaeum, 1967), pp. 364-365.
[27] Nicholas II had compounded the government’s money problems by ordering a ban on the sale of alcohol during the war. Under state monopoly, 30% of government revenue had come from liquor sales.
[28] Christian, Imperial and Soviet Russia, p. 171.
[29] In 1917, Russia operated under the Julian calendar, which ran 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of the western world. Thus, the events of early March actually took place in late February according to the calendar at use in Russia at the time.
[30] Christian, Imperial and Soviet Russia, p. 173.
[31] It is unlikely that the Tsar’s government could have done anything to prevent the loss of Petrograd; however, one incident serves to reinforce the incompetence of the government’s efforts. On March 13, troops loyal to the Tsar fought their way through rebels to reinforce the Tsarist defenses at the Winter Palace only to be denied entrance because the commandant feared that the men’s muddy boots would damage the newly polished floors. See Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 340-341.
[32] Kerensky was the only official of the government to also be a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.
[33] Quoted in Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 359.
[34] Volkogonov, p. 100.
[35] There were an estimated 365,000 desertions between March and May 1917, contrasting with 195,000 desertions between 1914 and the March Revolution.
[36] In January 1917 prices had risen 300% from their prewar levels. By October, they had risen 755%.
[37] Volkogonov, Lenin, pp. 106-7.
[38] The German government continued to support the Bolsheviks after Lenin’s return. The German representative in Russia requested three million marks from his government to support Lenin’s government in June 1918. Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, p. 23-24.
[39] They were still, however, a minority even in the Soviets. In the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which met in June, the Bolsheviks had 105 delegates, the Mensheviks 248, and the Social Revolutionaries 285.
[40] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 416.
[41] These percentages, obtained in multi-party elections, clearly showed that the Bolsheviks were the strongest party in both of Russia’s largest cities.
[42] The Aurora fired blank shots at the Winter Palace, because it had no live ammunition.
[43] The October Revolution was later officially celebrated on November 7 (October 26 old style), marking the morning of the seizure of the Winter Palace.
[44] The greatest challenge to the Bolsheviks in their capture of the Winter Palace was an unexpected problem. The palace contained a huge wine cellar. The attackers became uproariously drunk and began to rampage through the surrounding neighborhood looting shops and apartment as well as shooting anyone who appeared to be from the upper classes. Bolshevik leaders attempted to stop this orgy by pumping the wine out of the cellar into the street, but the crowds drank it out of the gutter. The looting (and drinking) continued for over a week. See Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 394.
[45] Kerensky fled to Britain and ultimately to the United States. He died in New York City in 1970 at the age of 89.
[46] Dimitri Volkogonov, edited and translated by Harold Shukman. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Weidenfeld, 1991), p. 30. Ironically, Mikhail Gorbachev’s top aide Aleksandr Yakovlev echoed the same sentiments in 1990. “The problem is that a rash experiment was performed on Russia,” he said. “An attempt was made to create a new model of society and put it into practice under conditions that were unfit for socialism. No wonder the new way of life was imposed by terror.” Quoted in David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 304.
[47] Trotsky shouted at the moderates as they left: “Go where you belong, to the dustbin of history.”
[48] Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, p. 4.
[49] Volkogonov, Lenin, p. 70, 181.
[50] Orlando Figes, “Maxim Gorky and the Russian Revolution,” History Today (June 1996), p. 19.
[51] The Social Revolutionaries, with the solid support of most of the peasant communes, won 40%. The liberal, democratic Kadet Party won 5%, and the Mensheviks 3%. The remainder of the 41.6 million votes went to various nationalist parties.
[52] Izvestiia (newspaper), 23 August 1918 quoted in Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 534-535.
[53] Lenin later repudiated the terms of Brest-Litovsk after the November 1918 armistice.
[54] Quoted in Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 630.
[55] The Provisional Government had inquired whether the imperial family might be given asylum in Great Britain; however, King George V, a first cousin of both Kaiser Wilhelm II and Nicholas II, feared that, since Nicholas had the image if a tyrant, the British royal family might become even more unpopular if it welcomed the Russian imperial family in England. For years there were rumors that the Tsar’s youngest daughter, Anastasia, survived the execution. Despite claims made by several women to be Anastasia, none of them could provide absolute proof of identity. The last “Anastasia,” Anna Anderson died in Virginia in 1984. DNA tests made in 1994 on some of her tissues preserved in a hospital lab, proved conclusively that she was not a Romanov but was, as her opponents had always claimed, a Polish woman from Berlin. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church declared Nicholas II and his family saints for ther “humbleness, patience, and meekness” while imprisoned and executed.
[56] One of the controversial actions that Trotsky took in building the Red Army was the use of former Tsarist officers. To monitor their loyalty, a political commissar was assigned to every unit and required to counter-sign every order. The use of these officers was bitterly criticized by some Bolsheviks such as Joseph Stalin. It was one of the first areas of disagreement between Trotsky and Stalin.
[57] More people learned to read in the barracks and bivouacs of the Red Army than the rest of the country put together during the first five years of the Soviet regime. By the end of 1920, there were 3,000 Red Army schools, with over two million books. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 601.
[58] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 668.
[59] Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1923), pp. 8-9.
[60] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 753
[61] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 695
[62] From 1945-1991, the USSR consisted of fifteen republics of which Russia was by far the largest. Russia was over six times larger in area than the second largest republic, Kazakhstan, and had almost three times as many people as the second largest republic in population, the Ukraine. Ethnic Russians were placed in positions of power in many other republics as well.
[63] Quoted in Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, p. 71.
[64] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 763.
[65] Some Marxists believe that the need to institute NEP was evidence of the correctness of Marx’s belief that capitalism must precede socialism.
[66] Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 777.
[67] The term “kulak” means fist. Prior to the revolution, it was applied to prosperous peasants who loaned money to other peasants at high interest rates.
[68] One work that was banned was Evgeny Zamyatin’s novel, We, a biting futuristic satire of the fully developed totalitarian state that described how a ruthless group of people established a state that controlled all aspects of human activity. It was published in England in 1924, and provided the inspiration for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, as well as for George Orwell’s 1984.
[69] He had been shot in the chest and shoulder by a Social Revolutionary, Fanya Kaplan, who was quickly executed.
[70] The deification of Lenin was bitterly opposed by his widow, Krupskya, who wrote following his funeral: “Don’t build monuments to him, palaces in his name, grand ceremonies in his memory and so on. When he was alive he had no time for such things, he found such things oppressive.” Krupskya died in 1939. Volkogonov, Lenin, p. 440.