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The Russian Revolution, 1881-1939

Дата публикации: 20 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Soviet Russia (1917-53) →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1190294694


The Russian Revolution fundamentally transformed the political, economic, and sociological landscape of one of the world's largest and most populous countries. The episode dramatically altered the shape and character of international relations across the globe during the twentieth century as well, and would serve as an inspiration for future revolutionary groups.

Prior to the Revolution, the Romanov Dynasty had enjoyed three hundred years of czarist rule over the country. Russia's small ruling class led lives marked by splendor and riches during much of this time, while generation after generation of the country's common people struggled to survive in a harsh and unforgiving agrarian society. In the years leading up to the twentieth century, dissatisfaction with the country's state of affairs grew among many sectors of Russian society. This widespread unhappiness, coupled with the military incompetence of the regime of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, sparked cries of revolution across the land in 1905. By 1917 those cries had assumed sufficient strength to topple the czar; a new political party rose in his stead. This party, which came to be known as the Communist party, was led by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, two of the most ruthlessly effective figures of the first half of the twentieth century.


Russian Society at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Alexander II, czar of Russia from 1855 to 1881, had launched reforms in a number of areas of Russian society during his tenure, the most notable of which was the emancipation of serfs in 1861. But the government, economic, and education reforms undertaken by both Alexander II and his successors, Alexander III (who ruled from 1881 to 1894) and Nicholas II, would not be enough to stop the riding tide of discontent. Russia still remained in the technological dark ages when compared with the modernization going on in Europe.

Indeed, Russian society was under strain from a number of significant forces. Farmers remained chained to their small strips of land by the terms of the 1861 "emancipation," a fact of life that provided fertile ground for the seeds of bitterness. As Sheila Fitzpatrick writes in The Russian Revolution, "The terms of the Emancipation were intended to prevent a mass influx of peasants into the towns and the creation of a landless proletariat [working class] which would represent a danger to public order." But the terms also reinforced the power of village councils and communal possession of land, "making it almost impossible for peasants to consolidate their strips, expand or improve their holdings, or make the transition to independent small-farming." The peasant class's animosity toward the landholding nobles and the government thus continued to fester.

Buffeted by the harsh environment and periodic famine conditions, Russia's peasants also found it necessary to supplement their agricultural earnings with work in area towns. Nearly half of Russia's farming families sent members to the country's rapidly industrializing towns, and the percentage was even greater in the less fertile areas of the country. Ironically, these treks to urban areas helped raise peasant literacy rates and gave farming villages greater exposure to the revolutionary ideas that were coalescing in the industrializing cities of Russia.

By the late nineteenth century, Russia had embarked on a serious, if belated, effort to close the technological and diplomatic gap between itself and Europe. In 1893 a Franco-Russian alliance was established. Around the same time Russia embarked on a determined push toward industrialization. This effort, spurred by Sergei Witte, a Russian nobleman, included construction of a mammoth railroad network (the centerpiece of which was the Trans-Siberian Railway) that proved essential in transporting workers and goods throughout Russia's widely scattered industrial centers. But while Russia boasted rich natural resources and a giant labor pool, much of the financial burden of industrialization was placed on the backs of the peasant class. Industrialization had unintended consequences as well. Uncontrolled urban growth pushed workers into crowded and often miserable living conditions, and the social and moral underpinnings of society began to fray. People living in these industrial settings became increasingly alienated from each other, and from society in general. Such bleak surroundings would provide the ideal conditions for spreading revolutionary ideas.


The Regime of Russia's Last Czar

During the last years of the nineteenth century, new political groups sprang up in the cities of Russia. These groups espoused a number of different political and philosophical belief systems, but perhaps the most important was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), an organization upholding the communist ideals of Karl Marx that was formed in 1898. In the first years of the twentieth century, devastating famines, massacres of Jews and other minorities, and intellectual unhappiness with the government all drove people into the arms of radical groups such as the Marxist RSDLP.

Nicholas II, who assumed power in 1894, was ill-equipped to face the challenges before him. He was by most accounts a devoted father and husband, but as John M. Thompson writes in Revolutionary Russia, 1917, "his qualifications for leadership of a huge and seething society were almost nil. Not broadly educated, little interested in people and politics, encased in the attitudes and prejudices of his royal and noble milieu, he found it difficult even to comprehend, let alone adjust to, the changes taking place in Russian society."

In 1904 the Russo-Japanese War erupted. This clash with Japan over the lands of Manchuria and Korea resulted in humiliating defeat and withdrawal for Russia, and was a key factor in the revolution that would break out in Russia the following year. As unrest mounted in both rural and urban areas, the army put down these local rebellions with sometimes brutal force. In the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, Nicholas II agreed to institute reforms, including a constitutional--if still autocratic--government with an elected parliament (called a Duma). The Duma was suspended for a time within months of its creation, however, and possessed no real power until 1917. Other "reforms" came to be seen as a sham; trade unions and political parties had been legalized, for instance, yet state-sponsored intimidation or execution of members was not uncommon.

The Russian economy stabilized somewhat in the aftermath of the 1905 rebellion, yet discontent grew across all levels of the population. Anger was further heightened by the unseemly influence that fanatical monk Grigori Rasputin enjoyed over the royal Romanov family. ( Rasputin was eventually assassinated by a group of alarmed noblemen in 1916.) Finally, Russia's entrance into World War I against Germany in 1914 ultimately spelled doom for Nicholas II. Devastating military losses in that conflict, coupled with growing food shortages and inflation, made the czar's position an increasingly precarious one.

Nicholas II, though, remained seemingly unaware of the imminent threat to his reign. By early 1917 he had assumed field command of the Russian Army and was receiving dire warnings about the situation in Petrograd, the nation's capital and home of the royal family. Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nikrich note in Utopia in Power that one telegram from Duma president Mikhail Rodzyanko insisted that "anarchy rules in the capital. The government is paralyzed. The transportation of food and fuel is completely disorganized. Social unrest is mounting. The streets are the scene of disorderly shooting. Military units are firing on one another." Nicholas was unmoved by the message; indeed, he turned to an assistant after reading the telegram and, according to Aleksandr A. Blok's The Last Days of Imperial Rule, commented that "once again, this fat-bellied Rodzyanko has written me a lot of nonsense, which I won't even bother to answer." The czar would not recognize the seriousness of the threat to his regime until it was far too late.


A Country Transformed by Revolution

The March Revolution of 1917 was marked by increasingly frenzied efforts by the czar to subdue the revolutionary fervor that was bloodying the streets of Petrograd, Moscow, and other places. These efforts proved unsuccessful and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in favor of a provisional government formed by the Duma. While the czar's cause would continue to be championed by the "White" Russians--Romanov supporters as well as pro-parliamentary and moderate socialist factions-- Nicholas II and his family were executed in 1918 by Communist Party representatives. A bloody struggle ensued as various political groups tried to seize control of the nation.

Vladimir Lenin, a leader of the Bolshevik party and the RSDLP, of which the Bolsheviks were a part, ultimately emerged as the victor in this struggle. A longtime political exile, Lenin was aided in his 1917 return to Russia by Germany, which was correctly convinced that revolution would neutralize the country as a military threat. Brandishing calls for peace, land reform, and worker empowerment (summed up in the slogan "Land, Peace, and Bread"), by October Lenin and his Bolshevik followers were able to wrest control of the nation away from the provisional government of Aleksandr Kerensky. This would come to be called the Bolshevik Revolution, or the Russian Revolution.

Upon assuming power, Lenin showed his determination to rid the country of external distractions so that he could launch the Marxist utopia that he had long championed. Russia reached agreement with Germany on ending hostilities in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the terms of which were dictated by the Germans. Despite non-cohesive and thus ineffectual resistance by the White Russians, Lenin was thus freed to construct his "dictatorship of the people"; in reality, however, the reins of dictatorship would be held by the Communist leadership.


A New Social Dynamic Emerges

In 1921 Lenin unveiled Russia's New Economic Policy (NEP), but the country was slow to respond. After all, the Revolution had left its mark across the country. Towns had withered, factories were silent, and much of the industrial working class had retreated to the hardscrabble world of farming. Recognizing that the peasant class would have to carry the country for a time, Lenin capitalized on the land redistribution measures that had been carried out during the Revolution; peasants were allowed to sell some produce for profit, and some small businesses became privately operated. Such quasi-capitalist arrangements bothered many Bolsheviks, but Lenin viewed the NEP as "a strategic retreat, a time for the Bolsheviks to rally their forces and gather strength before renewing the revolutionary assault," according to Fitzpatrick. By the mid-1920s Russia's economic and industrial production was approaching pre-war levels, and the country was able to resume its push toward a socialist utopia. This movement was formalized in 1922 as the Communist party united the fifteen separate republics that made up "Mother Russia" as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The Communists had firmly established themselves as the ruling governmental body in the USSR by the mid-1920s. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the ruling Communists cultivated a policy "aimed at liquidating the remains of private property in the country and in the city, at liquidating the petite bourgeoisie: private entrepreneurs, traders, artisans, cottage industries, and prosperous peasants," writes Andrei Sinyavsky in Soviet Civilization. "This was not only a political, social, and economic revolution, but also a fight for a new way of life and a new psychology of the man in socialist society. The source of all evil, of all vices--in the way of life and in human consciousness--was `property'. . . . The conventional revolutionary wisdom held that everything would be fine once there were no owners and no property." Those who supported this philosophy argued that communism would spread from Russia to other countries as well--the "domino theory"--a prophecy that eventually proved accurate. Indeed, the expansiveness of the Communist vision would prove a central factor in international politics for the remainder of the century.


Stalin Assumes Power

When Lenin died in 1924, a struggle ensued for control of the party and, by extension, the country. Joseph Stalin emerged as the country's new dictator. By 1929, when longtime rival Leon Trotsky was exiled, Stalin was firmly in power. A ruthless dictator, he quickly set a course of isolationism and nationalism, policies that would effectively cut the USSR off from much of the rest of Western civilization.

Stalin built up his power base with ruthless precision, and the Communist party and the government--which were by now viewed as one and the same--assumed ever-increasing political control. "Society's spiritual life was harnessed to the state's chariot to an extent that would have seemed impossible not long before," writes Heller and Nekrich. Stalin "concentrated all power, material and spiritual, in his hands. He was praised and glorified without restraint. A single word from him could start or stop the entire country. He would utter brief slogans and entire policies would change." Millions of Russian people were slaughtered during his regime, and those that survived lived in virtual slavery under the dark shadow of the state. Yet Stalin insisted that life was grand for his subjects, and when he made such pronouncements, "the country, bathed in blood and tears, was compelled to rejoice."


Russia's Five-Year Plans

In 1928 Stalin launched the first of his Five-Year Plans. This program reorganized the Soviet Union's agricultural world in accordance with collectivization theories, but its primary aim was to speed industrialization and economic modernization across the nation. The state emphasized iron and steel production, which it viewed as essential to fulfilling its military aspirations, and enormous construction projects that would be the cornerstones of the Russian economy in the future. The first Five-Year Plan further consolidated control of the country's economy with the state as well. The introduction of a system of economic quotas for both manufacturing and trade would become a hallmark of the Soviet economy.

As the state assumed ever-greater control of all facets of Soviet life, a bureaucracy of enormous proportions developed. This unwieldy body, observes Heller and Nekrich, "was sluggish and incapable of independent action, consisting as it did of two incompatible elements: unskilled, often illiterate Communist leaders; and the civil servants under them, who trembled with fear--a fear the leaders cultivated perennially and systematically." Indeed, fear would be the fuel that kept the gears of the state machine slowly grinding.


Attacks on Education and Religion

Stalin presided over a basic reorientation of Russian culture and society during the 1930s. He instituted severe policies in the realms of art, education, religion, and family life that had a tremendous impact on all Soviet citizens, from the poorest peasant to Moscow's leading intellectuals. This process came to be known as Stalinization.

In 1929 laws were passed under which the practice and spread of religion became a crime against the state. Churches were destroyed, priests were stripped of their civil rights, and their children were forced to renounce their fathers or risk death. Three years later a program for the total eradication of religion from the Soviet Union was announced: "the very notion of God will be expunged as a survival of the Middle Ages and an instrument for holding down the working masses," the official announcement proclaimed. The Communist party and the Soviet State subsequently established themselves in the place formerly occupied by religion.

The study of history, science, the arts, and other subjects also underwent significant change in the 1930s, as the government introduced new conservative standards designed to focus education efforts on increasing worker skills and productivity. Finally, Stalin insisted on a return to "traditional family values." Homosexual behavior and abortion were criminalized, divorces were made much more difficult to obtain, and the Marxist-inspired drive for women's emancipation fell into disrepair. To ensure that the masses heeded this new emphasis, it was understood that the state had an obligation to scrutinize all members of Russian society; thousands who were found wanting were punished severely.


Russia's "Purges"

Throughout his tenure as dictator, but especially in the late 1930s, Stalin regularly instituted "purges" of real or imagined political enemies from the Soviet Union. No one was safe from these purges, which were first aimed within the ranks of the Communist party in 1929, 1933-34, 1935, and 1936. The most widespread purge, however, took place in 1937 and 1938, as every region of the country was required to meet its quota of enemies of the state. "This was not a purge in the usual sense," writes Fitzpatrick, "since no systematic review of party membership was involved; but it was directed in the first instance against party members, particularly those in high official positions," and on down into the general population. "In the Great Purges . . . suspicion was often equivalent to conviction, evidence of criminal acts was unnecessary, and the punishment for counter-revolutionary crimes was death or a labour-camp sentence."

The Soviet Union's penal network of prison camps, or gulags, had been in operation since the Revolution, but under Stalin it reached new and horrifying heights. TheGreat Purge of 1937-38 alone sent millions of political prisoners to the gulags, where many died of starvation or exposure to the elements. Stalin had, in effect, transformed Russia into a totalitarian state--a Soviet Union wherein every aspect of its cititzen's daily lives, from family matters to vocation, was under the control of the Communist party leadership. Heller and Nekrich note that at the time of Stalin's death in 1953, "the Communist party of the Soviet Union had about 7 million members. At the other end of society, in the Gulag camps, there were 8 million people. The entire system balanced between these two extremes."

In the meantime, escalating tensions in Europe commanded the USSR's attention as well. Stalin had long coveted an alliance with Germany, which had provided valuable financial assistance during the first Five-Year Plan; the Soviet Union made a number of diplomatic overtures to its neighbor to the west. Both sides were uncomfortable with certain aspects of the other nation's political and philosophical make-up, but as Germany became increasingly aggressive in Europe and the clouds of World War II began to gather, Adolf Hitler's generals counseled him against trying to win a two-front war. Nazi Germany began to view a treaty with the Soviets in a more favorable light, and on August 23, 1939, the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed. World War II began one week later.

FURTHER READINGS




Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. 2nd. Oxford University Press, 1994.

Heller, Mikhail; Aleksandr M. Nekrich. Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present. Summit Books, 1982.

Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. Pantheon, 1994.

Moynahan, Brian. Comrades: 1917--Russia in Revolution. Little, Brown, 1992.

Salisbury, Harrison E. Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions. Doubleday, 1978.

Sinyavsky, Andrei. Soviet Civilizations: A Cultural History. Arcade, 1990.

Thompson, John M. Revolutionary Russia, 1917. Macmillan, 1989.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 20 сентября 2007 года

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