The Russian Revolution (1917)
The First World War (1914-1918) put tremendous strain on all the countries involved in it. The war caused great suffering, both for the soldiers at the front and for the civilian populations back home. These problems were most extreme in Russia, the poorest and most backward of the major combattants. By the winter of 1916-17, the Russian government had demonstrated its inability to manage either the military or the domestic aspects of the war. Poorly armed and poorly led, the Russian army, made up mostly of peasants, could not defend the country against the Germans. At home, the civilian population suffered growing shortages of food, fuel and other necessities, and had lost all faith in Tsar Nicholas II.
In February 1917, popular discontent boiled over into mass protests in the capital city of Petrograd (St. Peterburg). In a scenario very similar to the revolutions that had occurred in western and central Europe in 1789 and 1848, the army joined this revolutionary movement. Nicholas II had to yield power to a Provisional Government, which called elections for a constitutional assembly. Middle-class liberals, democratic socialists, populists representing the peasants, and the revolutionary socialist Bolshevik Party joined together to form a new government. Allied with democratic Britain and France and with the United States, which had joined the Entente forces in April 1917, Russia’s new government promised to remain in the war against the autocratic monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Meanwhile, workers formed councils, called soviets, that took control of factories and made them hotbeds of agitation.
Peasants and workers soon became disillusioned with the provisional government, which postponed major reforms until the war was finished and which continued to send soldiers to fight and die at the front. Returning from exile in Switzerland, the leader of the small Bolshevik party, V. I. Lenin, sensed an opportunity to make a very different kind of revolution. He changed the policy of his party, calling for an immediate end to the war and immediate implementation of a revolutionary program. The workers’ councils or soviets should take over running the factories, expropriating their owners, and he encouraged peasants to seize land without waiting for legal reforms. As the provisional government became more and more disorganized, Lenin pushed his supporters to take direct action. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks staged a second revolution, dissolving the Provisional Government and seizing power in the name of the working class.
The Bolsheviks under Lenin’s leadership quickly gained control of Russia’s two major cities, Petrograd and Moscow, but many parts of the country revolted against them. Lenin organized a ruthless, centralized system of terror to crush these ‘White’ opponents. The Bolsheviks also demonstrated a genius for effective propaganda, coordinated by Lenin’s brilliant associate Leon Trotsky. After four years of savage fighting, the Bolshevik party, which had renamed itself the Communist Party, consolidated control over the former Russian empire and set up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Claiming to be guided by Karl Marx’s socialist ideas, the Communists eventually abolished private ownership of land, factories, and stores.
The Bolshevik Revolution inspired enthusiasm among war-weary workers in other European countries. After 1918, Communist parties were founded throughout the rest of Europe. In order to be considered part of the movement, these parties had to swear unquestioning loyalty to the Russian Communists. Proclaiming itself the enemy of western imperialism, Communism also attracted strong support in the non-European world; as we have seen, it inspired protests against white rule in South Africa, among other things. From 1917 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communist movement remained a major factor in European politics and world affairs.
I. The Origins of the Russian Revolution
A. Backwardness and rapid modernization
1. the peasant problem after 1861
2. the growth of industry and a modern proletariat
B. Russian socialism and radicalism
1. the Populist tradition
2. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
C. The Russian Revolution of 1905
1. military defeat and revolution
2. the soviet movement
3. the failure of the revolution
II. The Russian Revolutions of 1917
A. The February (March) Revolution
1. provisional government and soviets—dual power
2. revolution in the countryside and the army
B. The triumph of the Bolsheviks
1. Lenin and the strategy of revolutionary defeatism
2. weaknesses of the Provisional Government
3. the October (November) Revolution
III. Impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917
A. The Bolshevik peace appeal
B. Revolutionary movements in Europe, 1918-1920
1. The German Revolution
2. protests in France, Italy, Hungary
C. The international Communist movement