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| Lenin during the October Revolution |
Background to Revolution
The October Revolution was not the first revolution to hit Russia in 1917. In February (March) a revolution rocked the Russian Empire which we looked at in February, which I would suggest reading to better understand the October Revolution. As a result we shall only briefly discuss the long term origins of the October Revolution. Since the mid-nineteenth century Russia had hoped to 'catch up' to the states of western Europe - France, the UK, and Germany especially - starting with the reforms of Tsar Alexander II, including abolishing serfdom in 1861. Russia hoped to be an industrialized, capitalist power without the powerful democratic institutions which the UK and France had. Although they accepted some form of democracy, like the creation of the local governments called zemstvos, power was supposed to remain with the tsar. After the assassination of Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) in 1881 his successors opted for more autocracy than Alexander. Russian society had changed by this time. Industrialization had created a new class of people, universities had allowed left-wing ideas to flourish, and nationalism was slowly emerging in the multi-ethnic empire. Internationally Russia was seen as backward and autocratic with it facing a humiliation over the Russo-Japanese War which saw Russia defeated by Japan. This inspired the 1905 Revolution which actually saw Leon Trotsky arrive on the scene. Although defeated the 1905 Revolution led to the creation of a parliament, called the Duma, which was extremely weak. The tsar could, and did, dissolve it whenever he wished and the first prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin, was actually chosen because he crushed the rebellion in 1905.
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| Soldiers in Sarikamish |
Marxism and Lenin
In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels released their seminal pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. Since 1848 the writings of Marx and Engels have influenced up to possibly millions around the world, and they expanded upon it with works such as Das Capital. To summarize Marxist ideology, it opposes capitalism and where private property, as a form of means of production, is communally owned. The writings of Marx and Engels spread across the world with future member of the Mensheviks, the less radical leftists, Vera Zasulich personally writing to Marx saying: You are not aware that your Capital enjoys great popularity in Russia. Although the edition has been confiscated, the few remaining copies are read and re-read by the mass of more or less educated people in our country. The October Revolution was not the first time there was an attempt to create a state inspired by Marxism. Following the collapse of the Second French Empire the Paris Commune was formed which was brutally suppressed by the French army; later Lenin would count to see if his communist state would outlast the Paris Commune. This brings us onto Lenin. Vladimir Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, became involved in Marxism while in university, and his brother Aleksander was also a Marxist. Aleksander was later executed for his involvement in an assassination attempt of a tsar which may have caused Lenin's radicalization. In 1902 he had caused a stir with his booklet What is to be done? calling for a disciplined, centralized party to act as a vanguard of the working class which he elaborated on in 1905 stating that the Romanov monarchy should be abolished in favor of a 'provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.' To achieve this rather paradoxical idea revolutionary terror, similar to that of the French Revolution, would be required. He would also expand upon Marx in 1917, in what is now described as Marxist-Leninism, stating that imperialism was the last stage of capitalism.
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| Karl Marx |
Lenin was not the only revolutionary in Russia. He was part of the Social Democratic Labour Party which was split between the Bolsheviks, Lenin and like-minded individuals, and the Mensheviks (Minoritarians). The Mensheviks called for a more decentralized party without the projected dictatorship. Meanwhile, there was also Viktor Chernov's Socialist Revolutionaries who disagreed with the Social Democrats in who the revolutionary class were. The Democrats viewed the urban proletariat as this class whereas the Revolutionaries viewed the peasantry holding this distinction. In 1897 Lenin and his family were exiled, and with a few exceptions spent most of his time in exile until 1917.
The February Revolution
On March 8 (February 23) in Petrograd, (St. Petersburg), on International Women's Day the socialist Social Democrats issued leaflets to women waiting in food lines. These leaflets read:
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| The February Revolution |
The government is guilty; it started the war and cannot end it. It is destroying the country and your starving is their fault. The capitalists are guilty; for their profit the war goes on. It's about time to tell them loud: Enough! Down with the criminal government and all its gang of thieves and murderers. Long live peace!
Through this the women started protesting which in turn inspired factory workers in the Vyborg District and Putilov Factory. As protests escalated the troops Tsar Nicholas II sent to put down the protests mutinied and joined the protesters as mutineers in the navy threw their officers into the sea. In the 1905 workers' councils called soviets were formed to organize the working classes and they returned in the February Revolution. However, Lenin and Leon Trotsky were in political exile when they were formed. Two shadow governments were formed in Petrograd: the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government began arresting the tsar's ministers as a way to prop themselves up, and to protect them from the Soviet. Then with no option Nicholas II released this statement on March 15:
In agreement with the State Duna, we have thought it best to abdicate the throne of the Russian state and to lay down the supreme power. Not wishing to part with our beloved son, we hand down our inheritance to our brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich.
Grand Duke Michael, however, could not keep control and just after a day he abdicated ending four hundred years of Russian Tsardom. The Provisional Government took over under liberals, conservatives, businessmen, liberal nobles, and professionals under Prince Georgy Lvov. Only major socialist was part of this government, the Justice Minister Alexander Kerensky who the tsarina had even called for him to be hung. Inspired by Europe and the USA they established freedom of speech, and 'an immediate and complete amnesty in all cases of a political and religious nature, including terrorists acts, military revolts, and agrarian offences.' If there were these reforms why did the October Revolution happen?
Between Revolutions
Catherine Evtuhov and Richard Stites has described the Provisional Government as 'dual powerlessness.' The Government was intensely divided with it having moderate socialists like Kerensky, and former nobility like Prince Lvov. While the liberal Kadets wanted to keep the old tsarist administration whereas the socialists wished to grant non-Russian peoples increased autonomy, like in Ukraine. During the February Revolution the Soviets had become powerful but the Government became distant from the Soviets; in early June soviets around the country sent representatives to Petrograd to the First All-Russia Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Most importantly the Government had continued to fight the very unpopular war. Soldiers were executed for desertion, food was diverted from the starving population to the front, and Russia was still facing military setbacks. At the start of April Lenin presented his April Theses criticizing the apparent failures of the February Revolution and that power should lie with the soviets who should bring about socialism. Germany, wishing to disrupt Russia, smuggled Lenin into Russia via train from Switzerland as others returned from internal or external exile, including Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. In April workers and soldiers protested in Petrograd due to the continuation of the war, and following another protest in July the state chose to brutally crush it and blame the Bolsheviks. Many Bolsheviks were arrested and Lenin had to go into hiding. The people were dissatisfied and started turning to the Bolsheviks seeing the moderate socialists as betraying them. A former soldier in Moscow said:
You [The Provisional Government] have the audacity to say that freedom has come. But isn't your current power over the people that the bourgeoisie delivered to you, based on coercion?...The bourgeoisie is striving for democratic forms of governance because in them it sees the most convenient method of oppression and exploitation.
Following the July Days Kerensky took over the government but anger at the government remained. Unlike Lvov he was more eager to use violence against deserters and protesters, such as sending troops to suppress the 'Tsaritsyn Republic' declared by radicalized soldiers and Bolsheviks. Then the Kornilov Affair happened. Commander-in-Chief General Lavr Kornilov wished to end left-wing protests, and some of his followers wanted him to seize power. However, he just wanted to hang soviet members and see order return to Petrograd. When Kerensky asked Kornilov to come to Petrograd to help restore order in September the general opted to purge the government, so Kerensky released Bolsheviks, including Trotsky's Red Guard, to stop him. Soldiers deserted Kornilov when the Red Guard infiltrated his army, and workers and railway workers went on strike disrupting his supply lines. In the end Kornilov's coup failed and there was a drastic swing to the left in the soviets and army. Thus the stage was set for October.
October
Following the July Days Lenin had been hiding in Finland where he had been advocating armed revolution. In October he returned, in secret, to Petrograd to plan a revolution. On October 23 the Bolshevik Central Committee voted 10-2 to oust Kerensky's government, and they formed a committee under Trotsky to organize the revolution itself. They were so confident that they didn't even bother concealing their plans so Kerensky actually knew some details of it! However, Kerensky's weak position and, the radicalization of the urban masses and army meant there was little he could do other than seize the Bolshevik press, which he soon lost control of. On October 25 armed forces occupied railway stations and military strongholds while at Kronstadt sailors announced their allegiance to the Bolsheviks. The next day the Provisional Government's headquarters, the Winter Palace, was seized and ten years later was mythologized in, what has been regarded as a cinematic epic, Sergei Einstein's October. Despite popular depictions the seizing of the Winter Palace was not actually violent; often the October Revolution has been described as a bloodless revolution. Thus history was made.
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| Lenin speaking to soldiers during the Revolution |
Aftermath
Although the Revolution itself was bloodless the aftermath was not. A bloody three-way civil war lasting several years broke out between the Bolsheviks, (the Reds), the peasant armies (Greens), and anti-Communists and foreign powers (Whites). Costing between seven and ten million lives the Russian Civil War was a brutal affair which devastated entire communities. The Bolshevik Revolution did inspire people all across the world. In Germany the Spartacists under Rose Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tried to form a communist government without the revolutionary terror and dictatorship of Leninism until they were crushed in 1919; a similar attempt was made in Hungary under Bela Kun; mass movements across the globe from China to Argentina; and the rise of Communist Parties across the world. Regardless if they agreed with Lenin, like the newly formed Japanese Communist Party, or virulently disagreed with him, like Luxemburg, people across the world became inspired. There was also a right-wing backlash. Many countries including the USA, UK, Japan and France actually fought the Red Army during the Civil War, and at home anti-communism was rife. The First Red Scare hit the USA in the 1920s, the forged 'Zonviev letter' helped cause the British Labour Party to be defeated in the 1924 General Election, and when Japan enfranchised all men in the mid-1920s it came with a law suppressing radical politics. Left and Right were greatly influenced by the October Revolution.
Conclusion
The October Revolution is by far one of the most significant events of the twentieth century, and perhaps the most important political revolution since the French Revolution. To this day millions have been affected or inspired by the October Revolution. It made Marxism the most discussed ideology until the 1990s and recently Marxism has returned. I myself am a Marxist, although I am a Luxemburgist instead of a Marxist-Leninist, and I became one through reading the Menshevik-Bolshevik debates. Regardless of your political standing you cannot deny the significance of the October Revolution. Whether you believe it changed history for good or for ill it went on to shape the entire history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The events of 1917 affect our lives in 2017.
The sources I have used are as follows:
-A History of Russia since 1800: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces by Catherine Evtuhov and Richard Stites
-The Penguin History of Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century by Robert Service
-The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 by Richard Sakwa
-The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923. Vol. 1 by E.H. Carr
-Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 by Geoffrey Hosking
-A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes
-The Age of Extremes, 1917-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm
-The Age of Extremes, 1917-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm
-History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
-Imperialism, The Highest State of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or get me on Twitter @LewisTwiby
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or get me on Twitter @LewisTwiby
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