The Soviet Revolution
The Soviet Revolution was a unique event in the history of mankind; it made Russia the first country to establish a communist regime, an actualisation of Marxist ideals. The revolutions of 1905 and February[1] 1917 paved the way for socialist revolution: the year 1905 saw the creation of soviets, councils elected by workers,[2] which became all-important in the upheavals of 1917 and indeed changed the face of Russia. Between 1905 and 1917, Russian government was remoulded from autocracy to fragile democracy and finally socialism.
The 1905 Revolution was the first step away from undiluted autocracy. Russia’s defeat in the war against Japan saw an upsurge in the population’s discontent. After Bloody Sunday, the massacre of about 130 workers bearing a petition to the Tsar, the whole nation rose in revolt.[3] The St Petersburg Soviet was established by socialist leaders to direct revolutionary activities; these reached a peak in October 1905, and the Tsar was forced to allow a legislative parliament to be elected.[4] The Russian people enjoyed greater civil and political rights as a result.
But the socio-economic climate gradually worsened. The First World War was one of the foremost catalysts of the February Revolution of 1917. The war had a severe impact on Russia: the army suffered a number of defeats and the country underwent an economic and social crisis; serious food shortages followed. The revolution was a spontaneous reaction to the appalling living conditions that were imposed on the majority of the people. In Petrograd,[5] 90, 000 people demonstrated for bread on February 23.[6] This escalated into a general strike on February 26, and the city garrison, which at first fought against the crowds, soon joined the revolutionaries.[7] With no army to defend it, the three-hundred-year-old Romanov Dynasty collapsed on March 3 and Russia became a de facto republic.[8]
Dual power was established: that of the new Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. Essentially bourgeois, the Provisional Government consisted largely of liberals; although it enacted much progressive legislation,[9] it could not achieve the peace the masses craved, and neither did it carry out land reform.[10] Demonstrations effectively brought down the Provisional Government in April and as a result in May it became a coalition government, with moderate socialists from the Soviet among its ranks.[11] Nevertheless, the government went through a number of internal crises throughout 1917, and the Russian people were increasingly dissatisfied with it.
The Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies[12] represented the voice of the masses. It was divided between three main revolutionary parties: the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The Socialist Revolutionaries, who promised agrarian reforms, were ever-popular with the peasant majority of the Russian population. The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks shared a strong grounding in Marxist principles; however, while the Mensheviks rejected socialist revolution as premature, the Bolsheviks insisted that Russia was ready to instigate what they believed would be the first of a chain of socialist revolutions worldwide. Vladimir Lenin, their brilliantly politically-minded leader, spearheaded this radical cause.
It is in fact arguable that without Lenin the October Revolution would never have happened; without his leadership the Bolsheviks might have never had the urge, or the courage, to seize power. When he returned to Russia from Swiss exile he shocked members of his party with his April Theses. His ideas of immediate revolutionary action leading to socialism were greeted with almost unanimous opposition.[13] The dissenters were proved justified when the Bolsheviks staged an unsuccessful coup in July.[14] Numerous leading Bolsheviks were arrested, and Lenin escaped into exile in Finland. The party trembled on the verge of non-existence.[15]
But in August another crisis in the Coalition Government, the “Kornilov affair”, let the Bolsheviks regain their strength.[16] Public opinion of the Coalition Government and the moderate socialists represented in it plummeted. In early September, the Bolsheviks began to win majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets,[17] and Leon Trotsky, a prominent Bolshevik, was elected chair of the Petrograd Soviet.
While it is controversial whether the October Revolution was a shrewd coup d’etat or an authentic proletarian revolution, it is certain that its success was due to the “complete disintegration of governmental authority.”[18] The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin¸ sprang to the opportunity to seize power in the name of the Soviet. During the night of October 24-25, Bolshevik troops[19] occupied key positions in Petrograd. On October 25, the troops took the Winter Palace; the weakened Coalition Government had no armed forces to protect it and was dissolved without much trouble. On October 26, the Bolsheviks declared that power had passed to the soviets.[20]
What followed was not the socialist coalition government that the masses expected, but a dictatorship by the Bolshevik party.[21] However, the regime took a long time to consolidate: the Bolsheviks had to conclude a peace with the major European powers and go through a long period of civil war before their power was secure. Russia finally became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922.[22] Lenin and his exclusively Bolshevik government[23] succeeded in transforming Marxist doctrine into a reality, boldly transforming Russia into the first communist country in the world.
[1] All dates in this essay are Old Style.
[2] See Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 8.
[3] “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, The New Encyclopædia Britannica (Macropedia), 15th ed., vol. 28 (Chicago, 1991) 998.
[4] The revolution was effectively suppressed, as were the soviets.
[5] Raphael Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution 1917-1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962), 12.
[6] Ibid., 12.
[7] Martin McCauley, The Soviet Union 1917-1991, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1981), 1.
[8] Raphael Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution 1917-1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962), 2. Also see McCauley, The Soviet Union, 2.
[9] The Provisional Government abolished capital punishment, declared amnesty to political prisoners, and granted the people the right to strike. See ibid.
[10] Peace and land reform were intrinsically connected. With millions of peasants fighting for Russia it was impracticable for the Government to do anything about land reform. The troops would be severely deflated by peasants returning home to claim their piece of land, and the Government did not have the means to compensate the landlords for their loss. But peace would have been hard, almost impossible, to achieve. See Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 22.
[11] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 4; see also Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1985), 47. Alexander Kerensky, a prominent Socialist Revolutionary, became Prime Minister in July. See Martin McCauley, Russia since 1914 (London: Longman, 1998), 7.
[12] A successor of the earlier St Petersburg Soviet, which had been liquidated by the Tsar. The Petrograd Soviet was established on 27 February, 1917. See McCauley, 1.
[13] The Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik party rejected the theses 13 votes to 2, with 1 abstention. One comment by a Bolshevik on the April Theses was, “Delirium, the delirium of a madman!” See Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol 1. (London: Macmillan, 1950), 79-81.
[14] The “July Days”. See McCauley, The Soviet Union, 4.
[15] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 5.
[16] Although some aspects of the affair remain ambiguous, it seems that Kerensky saw General Kornilov as a threat from the right and ordered him to send troops to suppress an imaginary second Bolshevik coup. When Kornilov did this, Kerensky charged him of treason. Kornilov and his close colleagues were arrested. See Hosking, 47.
[17] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 6.
[18] Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 28.
[19] The Bolsheviks utilised the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee and the Red Guards, a group of armed revolutionary workers, and gathered a following of radical soldiers and sailors. The movements of the forces were planned by Trotsky. See “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, 998.
[20] The October Revolution had been planned to coincide with the the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. When the Bolsheviks declared the Provisional Government had been overthrown and power had passed to the soviets the Mensheviks and Right Socialist Revolutionaries left the congress in protest, leaving Bolsheviks and left Socialist Revolutionaries in the majority. McCauley, The Soviet Union, 8.
[21] When the Constituent Assembly convened in November, Socialist Revolutionaries gained a majority of the votes, 40.4 %. The Bolsheviks, receiving no more than 24 %, promptly shut the assembly down. See “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, 998.
[22] Wikipedia: Soviet Union, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union (accessed May 10, 2008).
[23] Some leading Bolsheviks resigned in protest against a one-party government. After about a month the party admitted some Left Socialist Revolutionaries into its folds, but they were forced to agree to Bolshevik policies. The Socialist Revolutionaries, however, left the government in protest against Lenin’s peace terms with Germany. Indeed, democracy was brutally quashed: in the next few months the Bolsheviks labelled all parties against the new regime as counterrevolutionaries and closed down non-Bolshevik newspapers and journals. See Kenez, 29-30.
