16.1: Russian Revolution

At the death of his father Tsar Alexander III in 1984, Nicholas became one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe. Russia may have been technologically and socially backward compared to the rest of Europe, but it commanded an enormous empire and boasted a powerful military. In addition, the Tsars had successfully resisted most of the modernity that had changed the political structure of the rest of Europe. Nicholas ruled in much the same manner as his immediate predecessors, holding nearly complete authority over day-to-day politics and the Russian Church.

Figure 8.1.1: Family resemblance: cousins Tsar Nicholas II (on the left) and King George V of Britain (on the right).

During his reign, modernity finally caught up with Russia. Events outside of its immediate control undermined its ability to exercise complete control over the press and Russian society. The immediate cause of the downfall of Nicholas's royal line, and the entire traditional order of Russian society, was war: The Russo - Japanese War of 1904 - 1905 followed by World War I.

Many Russians blamed the Tsar for the country's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. Shortly thereafter, 100,000 unarmed workers tried to present a petition to the Tsar asking for better wages, better prices on food, and the end of official censorship. Troops fired on the crowds, sparking a nationwide wave of strikes. For months, the nation was rocked by open rebellions in navy bases and cities. Nicholas finally agreed to allow a representative assembly, the Duma, to meet, and after months of fighting the army managed to regain control.

Very soon, it was clear that the Duma was not going to serve as a counter-balance to Tsarist power. The Tsar retained control of foreign policy and military affairs. In addition, the parties in the Duma had no experience of actually governing, and quickly fell to infighting and petty squabbles, leaving most decision making to the Tsar and his circle of aristocratic advisors. Positive changes did occur: unions were legalized and the Tsar was not able to completely dismiss the Duma. Most importantly, the state could no longer censor the press effectively.

Nicholas's only male heir, the prince Alexei, was a hemophiliac (i.e. his blood did not clot properly when he was injured, meaning any minor scrape or cut could be potentially lethal). Nicholas's wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, called upon the services of a wandering, illiterate monk and faith healer named Grigorii Rasputin. Rasputin was somehow able (perhaps through a kind of hypnotism) to stop Alexei's bleeding, and the Tsarina believed that he had been sent by God to protect the royal family. He quickly became a powerful influence, despite being the son of Siberian peasants and his questionable morals.

Figure 8.1.2: Grigori Rasputin in 1916, shortly before his death.

When World War I began in 1914, the Russian state teetered on the verge of collapse. In the autumn of 1915, Nicholas departed for the front to personally command the Russian army. In 1916, several Russian nobles were convinced that Rasputin was the cause of Russia's problems, and managed to assassinate him. By then, however, the German armies were steadily pressing toward Russian territory, and tens of thousands of Russian troops were deserting to return to their home villages. As the social and political situation began to approach outright anarchy, one group of Russian communists stood ready to take action: the Bolsheviks.

As a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin believed that the only way to create a perfect socialist future was to utterly destroy the existing political and social order, after which "natural" human tendencies of peace and altruism would manifest and create a better society for all. According to Marx's theory, a revolution could only happen in an advanced industrial society. The proletariat would recognize that it had "nothing to lose but its chains" and overthrow the bourgeois order. In Russia, however, industrialization was limited to some of the major cities of western Russia, and most of the population was still poor peasants in small villages.

Vladimir Lenin saw a way to blend the two theories. As an ardent revolutionary and a major political thinker, he created the concept of the "vanguard party": a dedicated group of revolutionaries who would lead both workers and peasants in a massive uprising, which could lead to full-scale revolutionary change and creation of a new society. Led by the party, a communist revolution could “skip” a stage of (the Marxist version of) history, jumping directly from feudalism to socialism and bypassing industrial capitalism.

In Lenin’s mind, the obvious choice of a vanguard party was his own Russian communist party, the Bolsheviks. By 1917, the Bolsheviks were a highly organized militant group of revolutionaries with contacts in the army, navy, and working classes of the major cities. When political chaos descended on the country as the possibility of full-scale defeat to Germany loomed, the Bolsheviks had their chance to seize power.

In February of 1917, workers in St. Petersburg demonstrated against the Tsar's government to protest the price of food. Within days, similar demonstrations exploded across the country. The army refused to put down the uprisings and instead joined them. The Duma demanded that the Tsar step aside and hand over control of the military. By early March, just a few weeks after it had begun, the Tsar abdicated, realizing that he had lost the support of almost the entire population.

In the aftermath of this event, power was split. Representing the interests and beliefs of the educated middle classes, the Duma hoped to create a democratic republic like those of France, Britain, or the United States, but they had no road map to bring it about. Likewise, the Duma had no way to enforce the new laws it passed, nor could they compel Russian peasants to fight on against the Germans. Most critically, the members of the Duma refused to sue for peace with Germany, believing that Russia still had to honor its commitment to the war.

Soon, councils of workers and soldiers (called soviets) sprang up and declared that they had the real right to political power. There was a standoff between the provisional government, which had no police force to enforce its will, and the soviets, which could control their own areas but did not have the ability to bring the majority of the population (who wanted, in Lenin’s words, “peace, land, and bread”) over to their side. Many fled the cities for the countryside, peasants seized land from landowners, and soldiers deserted in droves. By 1917, 75% of the soldiers sent to the front against Germany deserted.

By late summer 1917, no group had power over the country as a whole. So in October, the Bolsheviks took control of the most powerful soviet, Petrograd (former St. Petersburg). Next, the Bolsheviks seized control of the Duma, expelled the members of other political parties, and then stated their intention to pursue unconditional peace with Germany and give land to the peasants with no compensation for landowners. In early 1918, after consolidating their control in Petrograd and Moscow, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, granting Germany huge territorial concessions in return for peace (Germany would lose those new territories when it lost the war itself later that year).

Almost immediately, a civil war broke out. The Bolshevik “Red Army” engaged the “White” royalist army all over western Russia and Ukraine. Despite the fact that very few Russians were active supporters of communist ideology, the Red Army still proved both coherent and effective under Bolshevik leadership. The ensuing war was brutal. Ultimately, 10 million people were killed in the conflict that lasted four years. In the end, the Bolsheviks prevailed. A few Eastern European countries, including Finland and Lithuania, did gain their independence, but everywhere else the Bolsheviks succeeded in creating a new communist empire in its place: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Figure 8.1.3: Lenin making a speech in 1920 in support of the Red Army during the civil war.