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Russian Studies Spring 2013 What Was DoneThe Russian Revolution of 1917
(The Dirty Commie Rats took over.)
I.
Interpretive
Introduction (Historiography)
Explanations for what happened in 1917 range across the political spectrum. What happened? Who dunnit? What shape or direction did the events take?a. Marxists i. Orthodox Marx’s prediction was that socialist revolutions would inevitably
take place in highly developed capitalist countries (like Germany, Britain or
France.) Russia was neither developed nor capitalist, but the process
of industrialization had begun by the 1890’s and was accelerating. As more
and more factories were built, an industrialized proletariat began growing that
would eventually be radicalized. It would be the proletariat which would lead
the revolution, not the ignorant, even reactionary peasantry. The proletariat
was better educated, urban, and ready to become active in politics. In 1903
the Russian Social Democratic Party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The
Mensheviks led by Georgi Plekhanov emerged as the
more orthodox Marxists. They sided with the liberals in seeking a
constitutional monarchy that would hasten the development of a capitalist
industrial economy in Russia and eventually bring about the creation of a
proletariat capable of leading a socialist revolution. ii. Revisionist Revisionist Marxists (like Eduord
Bernstein in Germany) emerged after Marx’s death. They argued that a
socialist society could be brought into being democratically and peacefully
through the legislative process and through the pressure of trade union
collective bargaining. (They believed that violence would pervert the
development of a socialist state. They believed that decisions should be made
democratically by all workers, not just by an elite leadership.) iii. Leninist Lenin argued that a world-wide revolution could be provoked by
revolution in Russia. This revolution would not be led by the workers
(who were too ready to compromise on collective bargaining agreements), nor
would it be led by the peasants (who were not educated well enough to
understand their best interests). A successful revolution could only take
place if it were spear-headed by a political elite,
a secret group of highly educated revolutionaries totally dedicated to
pulling down the system and replacing it with a highly centralized,
authoritarian government. These elite would implement its decisions through a
strictly disciplined party structure and lead the nation through an intensive
period of social transformation involving class conflict and rapid
industrialization. These historians argue that the October Revolution was a genuine
proletarian revolution, neither premature nor accidental. It had indeed been
governed by historical law. Its goal was to destroy the classes which
supported the Tsar’s regime: the nobility, the bourgeoisie, capitalists and
shopkeepers, even well-to-do peasants (kulaks). If you belonged to this
class, you could not avoid being a ‘class enemy’ and therefore should be
liquidated. Workers and peasants alone would inherit the land. Was the Bolshevik claim to represent the workers and peasants
justified? Did the revolution have popular support? Did the Bolsheviks betray
the working class? Or did they provide opportunities for workers to rise in
the new system? b. Liberals Liberals wonder why c. Modernizers Modernizers believe that To the Russian revolutionaries, modernization meant
industrialization, and industrialization was necessary to create modern
weaponry. Modernization meant finding the money to build the factories and
towns to construct aircraft, tanks, and artillery. Unless Russia modernized
quickly, she would be conquered by Germany, which had demonstrated its
superior firepower and organization in WWI.
In this interpretation of what happened, socialism is less important
than rapid industrialization. d. Conservatives i. Entropists In the tradition of Hobbes and Edmund Burke, conservatives argue
that all revolutions follow the same pattern: when authority is overthrown,
things fall apart. Too much freedom encourages social unrest and can lead to
the nightmare of civil war. (The Time of Troubles III) ii. Ideologues Americans portray Lenin and the Bolsheviks as Commie Rats who
created a rogue state which played havoc with our security for nearly eighty
years. The legitimate (liberal) government had been seized via a coup de’tat
by gangsters and terrorists. The Bolshevik’s secret weapon was party
organization and discipline. The state
they ruled was totalitarian. It
tyrannized its passive people through ideology, propaganda, and violence. The
Bolsheviks were no different than the Nazis. Anything that can be done should be done to avoid the creation of
another state which embraces an ideology in opposition to our fundamental
beliefs in natural rights. (life, liberty, property) We will support any
government which provides law and order and creates the conditions where
business can get done. iii. Accidentalists “Hey, shit happens.” The stars aligned in the perfect formation to
allow a tiny minority like the Bolsheviks to seize power. Pure Luck. It is a
stretch to attach a meaning to an essentially random act. II. 1905 Revolutiona. Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) Catastrophic military defeat in the Far
East whose consequences were national humiliation, the loss of territories,
and worst, the revelation that the vaunted Russian military could not even
compete with another “3rd World” power, much less the Germans or
the British.
b. Bloody Sunday Jan. 1905 slaughter outside the c. October Manifesto The tsar concedes. The autocracy ends, and a constitutional
monarchy is installed which promises real power to the Duma (legislative
assembly) and promises civil liberties. At long last, liberalism has come to d. The Duma
The Tsar sought to rig the election in order to ensure a pliant legislature. Every 2,000 landowners selected a representative. Every 30,000 peasants elected a representative. Every 90,000 workers select a representative. Every 4,000 urban citizens select a representative. Even with the system rigged to enable the tsar to retain power, in the first election almost all of the representatives came from the Cadets and Social Revolutionaries. The Tsar dissolved the Duma and rigged the vote again and then again to get a compliant Duma. And its usurpation Ministers remained answerable to tsar not the Duma. The army in the West was reinforced
by one million troops returning from the East, and martial law was declared
in rebelling peasant villages. The St. Petersburg and Moscow Soviets were repressed. Even so, the
effort to create a market economy over rode political concerns. A major
program of agrarian reforms was begun which sought the creation of small
independent farmers. Enormous loans from the West were negotiated, and major
investments were made in industry. Then WWI
intervened… III. The
February Revolution 1917 During February 1917, a spontaneous uprising against tsar
was sparked by desertions and mutinies in the army as the catastrophic losses
Russia suffered in WWI continued to mount. The Bolsheviks were not in
play. The crisis resulted in a tentative move, again, towards
liberalizing the Tsarist autocracy.
a. World War One The Russian army had suffered four million casualties and
counting; victory against the Austrians was followed by repeated defeats at
the hands of the better equipped and better led German Wehrmacht; economic
turmoil spread at home as the price of bread went up and up. The Tsar was at
the front, and the Tsarina and the mad priest Rasputin were in control at home. b. Abdication of the Tsar (March 15) Now, who would gain sovereignty? c. The Provisional Government (Control of army, capital, police and
ports was given to Georgi Lvov, the head of the Zemstvo League, as its first head until a Constituent Assembly
could draft a new constitution and elections could be held.) i. War Policy The liberals resolved to honor their treaty alliances with
the Brits and the French and fight on. Their goal was a negotiated victory
which would give them ii. Land Policy The new government restricted land seizures by peasants
until “after future elections” ie never. iii. Constituent Assembly A new constitutional convention was called. Founding
Fathers stuff. iv. Kerensky to Power A charismatic speaker, a Menshevik, was appointed to build
a bridge between the government and the Soviets, the shadow government being
organized among the workers, peasants and soldiers by the SR’s and the SD’s. v. Kerensky Offensive From mid-June to early July, the Russian Army went on the offensive against the
Germans in central Europe was turned back. It was a disastrous failure, and
resulted in more than
200,000 casualties, and
the patience of the soldiers snaps. Many deserted. vs. d. The Soviets Neighborhood, grass roots assemblies elect representatives to
councils of workers, peasants and soldiers. SR’s dominated but the Bolsheviks
and Mensheviks figured as a prominent minority. The i. Order #1 On March 1st, the Petrograd Soviet issued a call
for the democratization of the Army through the creation of elected soldiers’
committees. The Soldiers were exhorted
to disobey officers if they were not consulted in the decision making
process. Most importantly, the order asserted the authority of the Soviet on
all policy questions concerning the armed forces. Confrontation between the
enlisted men and the officer corps, loyal to the provisional government,
seemed certain. Lenin enters 1. “All power to the Soviets” Lenin immediately announced that the workers themselves were finally in a position where they could seize power. He called for the Soviets to take full control from the Provisional Government. (In essence, the slogan taunted those member of the Soviet not willing to assert power and too willing to compromise with the liberals.) 2. “Land, Peace and Bread” His slogan called for immediate land reform, an end to the war,
and the opening of the granaries to a famished populace. (Nice politics, but
it also called for civil war.) iii. July Days 1917 In July, after the catastrophe of the Kerensky offensive,
spontaneous uprisings took place in Petrograd. Workers and soldiers took to
the streets clamoring for the Soviets to take the government, but their
effort was disorganized and therefore quickly lost steam. Lenin was cautious,
seemingly caught off guard. He refused to commit to overthrowing the
Provisional Government, and the energy went out of the demonstrations. He had
preached insurrection but had not planned it. The Bolsheviks appeared too
timid to the rebels and too radical for the general public. The government
cracked down. It seemed like Lenin’s moment had passed. He fled the country
for Finland. To the rescue came a right wing general who tried to seize power
in late August to protect the country from a communist revolution and so
restore the tsar to power. In response, Kerensky armed the workers in Given a second opportunity, Lenin took full advantage of it. He
could claim that the workers, not the government, had saved the country from
the coup. His party was the only one not associated with the Provisional
Government and its failures. His party was the one most closely associated
with workers’ power and armed uprising. When the Bolsheviks seized power in
October, the coup was bloodless, and a sizeable chunk of the people supported
him. IV. The
October Revolution 1917 a.
The Seizure of Power Did the Bolsheviks want a
quasi-legal transfer of power based on a decision of the Congress of Soviets
that the Provisional Government no longer had a mandate to rule, or did they
want to seize power directly and prove that they had the courage to do so? Lenin called for the latter, but
he was out of the country, and the Central Committee was reluctant to take
such a gamble when things were so clearly moving their way. In October Lenin
returned to the country, and on October 24th, the Petrograd Soviet
did move to occupy key government institutions such as the telegraph offices
and railway stations. They created check points on the city’s bridges and
surrounded the Winter Palace where the Provisional Government was in session.
There was no violent resistance. In a meeting of the Congress of Soviets the
following day, the Bolsheviks, who were a minority, announced that Lenin
would be the head of the new government, the Council of People’s Commissars,
and Bolsheviks held every position on that committee. b. Council
of People’s Commissars ie.
Lenin and Trotsky i. Immediate Decrees Peace
initiative, land seizures, factory seizures, nobility abolished, Church
suppressed, alphabet reformed, calendar reformed, Cheka
created, national debt repudiated. ii. Suppression
of Constituent Assembly Vote in December: The SR’s won 40% of the vote, and the Bolsheviks
only got 25%. The Bolsheviks had dominated the vote in Petrograd and Moscow
and within the armed forces. The SR’s overall victory was the result of
winning the peasant vote in the villages. This was the last free election in
Russia for eighty years. When the Assembly met, they were unceremoniously
dispersed. The Bolsheviks reasoned that they did not represent the people as
a whole. They had taken power in the name of the workers. Lenin created a one
party system and had the Cheka arrest all
opposition. iii. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk March 1918 (map) Lenin pulls Russia out of the war and surrenders to the Germans.
He gives up 27% of the country, 1/3rd of its industry, ¾ of its
coal mines. Russian conservatives are outraged. The allies are outraged. The
Germans are happy. Lenin believed that this treaty would be torn up once the
workers’ revolution broke out in Germany. That did not happen, but the
Germans did wind up losing the war and were forced to return the territories
in the Baltic states and the Ukraine that they had taken from the Russians. V. The Civil War 1918-21 a. Reds (Trotsky) v. Whites, Allies and Poland (map) White (Anti-Bolshevik) forces formed in the South of Russia
supported by Czech troops, in the North supported by British and American
troops, and in the Southwest supported by French troops. b. War Communism To survive its baptism by fire, the Russian Bolsheviks used
violence and terror to consolidate their government’s power and win the civil
war. The Bolsheviks designated all of their opponents as ‘class enemies’: the
Russian nobility, the Russian bourgeoisie, and the interventionist capitalist
armies. To win the war required the nationalization of industries and state
distribution of commodities. The Bolsheviks justified these
policies ideologically as first moves towards communism. In 1918 there was
huge optimism that a new world would rise out of the
ashes of this conflict. During the Civil War the Red Army became the primary
bureaucratic organ of the Bolshevik government. Marxists argue that the
effort required to win the Civil War ‘militarized’ the Bolshevik party and
resulted in tendencies towards rule by fiat, centralized authority, and
summary justice. The Bolsheviks were the party of workers, soldiers and
sailors: people used to authoritarian rule. Liberal historians would argue
that it was Lenin’s insistence on central control of the party that led to such
authoritarian measures. In reality the Red Army was composed primarily of peasant
conscripts, and most of their officers were holdovers from the old tsarist
army. To maintain control over the army, the Bolsheviks assigned political
commissars to each officer who had to countersign each order. The Cheka
was established during the summer 1918 after Lenin was shot and nearly
killed in an assassination attempt. Both the Reds and the Whites
resorted to terror. Lenin and Trotsky justified their repressive
policies by insisting that the revolution’s survival was at stake. They
regarded their tough minded policies as Jacobin in nature, not Tsarist.
Industry was nationalized; private enterprise and trade
were reduced; the peasants were allowed to keep land they had seized in 1917,
but the government resorted to grain requisitions (at gunpoint) to feed
workers and soldiers. By 1920 the economy had been devastated. Industrial and
agricultural production had come to a standstill. Trade that did exist came
only in the form of barter. No currency was recognized. The Soviet government survived because the Reds held a
strategic advantage via interior lines of supply and communication. The
Whites also failed to convince peasants to return to the old order, and they
refused to guarantee autonomy to national minorities. c. Comintern In March 1919 Lenin founded the Communist Internationale (Comintern), a
league of revolutionary socialist parties dominated by the Bolsheviks that
was dedicated to promoting world revolution. To distinguish his movement from
the other more moderate socialist parties in Europe, he renamed his party the
"Russian Communist Party". The revolution he had hoped for in
Germany, though, was crushed. (See the 1919
Spartacist Revolt) VI. The NEP 1921 a. One Step Backward Fifteen to twenty million people were killed, starved or
died of disease between 1914 and 1921. When the Civil War finally ended,
millions of Red Army vets had to be assimilated into the economy. Peasant
uprisings broke out in several regions. A major revolt erupted at the naval
base in Kronstadt which shook the new government.
These iron workers and sailors had previously been staunch supporters of the
revolution, but now they demanded civil rights. Trotsky put the revolt down
violently. In March 1921 Lenin announced his New Economic Policy: “one
step backwards, two steps forward.” The NEP de-nationalized most industry and
commerce (except for heavy metals) and freed the peasant to sell their grain
at market prices. Retail trade and the labor market were also freed. By
1924-25, the Soviet economy had recovered. Even though Lenin retreated on
economic policy, he locked in his control of the Communist party. Previously,
party members had felt free to engage in debate and even oppose Lenin’s
policies. No more. An iron rule against ‘factionalism’ was implemented. In
foreign policy, the Soviets adopted a doctrine of ‘peaceful co-existence’
with the capitalist West while its economy recovered. By 1925-26, the Bolsheviks felt more confident about
pursuing their original intention of turning Russia into a socialist state.
Displeasure with the cultural pluralism and social freedoms of the NEP period
brought new threats about ‘class enemies’. Workers were resentful of ‘bourgeois
experts’. b. Lenin’s Death 1924 Lenin suffered a stroke early in May 1922,
and before he could fully recover, he suffered another even more debilitating
stroke in the spring of 1923. He died in January 1924. VII. Stalin Revolution 1928-34 a. Power Struggle and “What is to be Done” redux When Lenin died, three
rivals in the upper echelons of the party vied for power: Trotsky, Bukharin
and Stalin. Trotsky, the Red Army
leader and promoter of international revolution; Bukharin, the moderate editor of Pravda who
sought to continue NEP policies. Stalin, the Communist Party General
Secretary, who promoted the policy of “Socialism in One Country”. (See Stalin, The Possibility of Building Socialism in our Country (1926)) After
using Bukharin as the chief polemicist against theTrotsky-Zinovievite
Left, Stalin turned on his Rightist allies during the winter of 1928.
The
break occured during debate over grain procurement policy. Stalin
argued that coercion would be necessary to squeeze more income from
agriculture in order to finance industrialization. During the NEP a
very large proportion of all marketed grain came from a small
percentage of peasant farmers. Stalin argued that negotiating with
these 'kulaks' would hurt the industrialization drive. The Rightists
proposed moderate, small-gain, low conflict policies, trading
manufactured goods for grain and maintaining NEP policies, to avoid
class warfare in the countryside. They also objected to Stalin's
renunciation of collective Bolshevik leadership. Bukharin referred to
Stalin as 'Genghis Khan with a telephone'.
Stalin
promised more results and manouevered the Right into a position which
made them appear to be allied to elitist 'liberal' policies.
b. Five Year Plan: Industrialization Beginning in 1928, Stalin set a crash course to
industrialize the economy. In Feb 1931 he described the challenge Russia faced: (see Those Who Fall Behind Get Beaten
(1931). He argued that Russia could not survive the coming
clashes with the West unless it industrialized rapidly. To accomplish this
goal, all of the country’s resources needed to be focused on developing heavy
industry.
c. Collectivization The only way to finance such a crash course would be by selling the country’s grain on the international market. That meant forcing the peasantry to work harder for less than ever. To force the peasants to go along, Stalin declared class war on kulaks (rich peasants) and forced all the peasants to join together in collective farms and divert their income to the government. See Stalin, Problems of Agrarian Policy in the USSR. December 27, 1929 (On kulak liquidation). By establishing full centralized control of the economy and extending administrative control to the village level, Stalin argued that a milestone on the road to socialism had been achieved. On the village level the organization of collective farms (kolkhozezs) meant browbeating, confiscation of farm animals, church desecrations, and mass deportations of kulaks. In March 1930, Stalin announced that the program had become Dizzy with Success: He blamed local authorities for exceeding instructions and ordered the return of farm animals. at the same time a new wave of factory workers were recruited to act as kolkhoz organizers.
The first five years of
Stalin’s plan created chaos and actually reduced production. Propaganda
trumpeted the creation of large, productive mechanized farms, but the
reality of collectivization was simply the old village mir
with fewer peasants and draught animals living in the same huts and
tiling the same fields but now delivering 40% of their crop at low set
prices.
Collectivization
wrought a massive demographic shift from the countryside to the cities.
Between 1928 and 1932 more than 12 million peasants migrated to the
cities. In 1931 alone 2.5 million peasants were forcibly deported
to Siberia and Kazakhstan. During the winter of 1931-32 an induced
famine killed 3-4 million people in the major grain producing regions
of the country: Ukraine, Centrl Volga, Kazakhstan and the N. Caucasus.
In December 1932 the government required all peasants to possess
internal passports to prevent starving peasants from leaving the
countryside.
d. Cultural Revolution The
Five Year Plan attempted to 'liquidate the kulaks as a class'. As part
of his struggle to subdue the Right Opposition, Stalin also targeted
the bourgeois intelligentsia and 'experts' who had retained key
places in the state bureaucracy. He painted the Right as over reliant
on the advice of non-party experts and too prone to 'liberalism' rather
than revolutionary zeal.
By unleashing Communist Youth Groups (Kommosol; RAPP), he intended to
create a belligerent revolutionary avant-garde that would be come a new
intelligentsia. In the villages, this policy meant that young urban
party militants 'went to the people' using Civil War rhetoric and
claiming that apocalyptic change was at hand. "We are building a new
world." Their visionary utopianism proclaimed the advent of new
cities, projects for communal living, the transformation of nature, and
the arrival of the new Soviet man. However. their anti-religious
and re-education campain confirmed in the minds of many peasants that
the Bolsheviks were 'anti-Christ'. By mid-1930 Stalin had begun to rein
in these 'hairbrains'
e. Socialism Achieved?
By 1934 Stalin proclaimed that Life's Getting Better (1934). He declared victory: enemy classes liquidated, unemployment vanquished, collectivization achieved, universal primary education begun. The new Soviet man had emerged; nature was being transformed.
Had socialism been achieved?
"Revolution
from Above" had succeeded in changing the modes of production at the
foundation of the economy which Marxist theory argued would result in
the alteration of the whole superstructure of society. even Western
economists acceded the fact of 'industrial take off' in production, but
they also claimed that similar levels of grwoth could have been
achieved by maintaining NEP policies.
Collectivization
remained the 'Achilles heel' of the economy. despite propaganda claims,
the real kolkhoz remained the small village based primitive form of
farming, only with sharply reduced living standards. Collectivization
for the peasants meant extreme economic exploitation: a second serfdom.
Even
so, the state had survived, but according to Marxist theory, it should
then begin to 'wither away'. Stalin finessed this difficulty by
aarguing that although socialism had been achieved, 'communism' still
beckoned in the future. Trotsky claimed that a new bureaucracy (the
party) had replaced the working class, but Stalin claimed that he
had created a new intelligensia: the sons of the working class.
In
1931 Stalin began a retreat in earnest from the ultra-revolutionary
class war enthusiasms of the cultural revolution's militant
anti-elitism. In his speech New Conditions -- New
Tasks in Economic Development (1931), Stalin denounced the vulgar egalitarianism of the militants and accepted
a new social hierarchy based on education, occupation and social
status. He presented himself as a man of culture, like Lenin, and
reorganized higher education along traditional pre-revolutionary norms.
Heroes returned to history books and the virtues of family life were
extolled.
The
cult of Stalin began in earnest, and the character of the Soviet Union
began to solidify: closed frontiers, siege mentality, cultural
isolation and restricted contact with the West. Stalin cultivated an
air of mystery and inscrutability around his rule. He urged vigilance
against 'wreckers' and denunciation of all 'class enemies'.
A new 'service nobility' enjoyed privileges and a a higher standard of living. The new intelligentsia welcomed back old technical experts, and in the cultural sphere Swan Lake and Pushkin were back in vogue.
For the rest of the urban dwelling populace, the new socialism meant food rationing and being crammed into communal apartments with several families occupying one room and sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities. Tensions simmered.
Then in early 1935, Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party boss, was assassinated, and a new spasm of terror commenced.
f. The Great Purge (1935-37)
Stalin blamed the former opposition groups for the murder, but he engineered the killing himself to provide a pretext for purging the party, bureacracy and military of any potential political opponents.
In August 1936, show trials of opposition party members began. (Kamenev and Zinoviev from the left, then marshal Tukashevsky and the military leadership, next the Rightists Rykov and Bukharin, and finally, the leader of the secret police (Yagoda) tasked with executing Stalin's purges. These 'trials' were theatrical contrivances whose scripts included confessions of economic sabotage and collusion with Western enemies prior to summary execution.
Late
in 1936 mass arrests began in the upper echelons of the party which
heralded witch hunts seeking out enemies of the people. In reality
Stalin and his henchmen Molotov and Ezhov, the new secutity head,
demanded quotas of 'traitors' on lists from party heads across the
country. And so Old Bolshevik elites along with cohorts from the Civil
War through collectivization were either shot or sent into the Gulag.
All party memebers were forced to defend their loyalty before purge
commissions. Stalin sought to take out any new enemies as well: the
victims of class war vs. NEP men and kulaks.
Stalin
argued that these individual class enemies had become even more
dangerous once the enemy classes had been destroyed. He encourage
denunciations and unleashed massive popular participation in acts of
personal recrimination and private revenge. 500,000 more inmates were
added to the Gulag (total 1.3 million) and as many as a million people
had been shot in jail.
In March 1939 Stalin repudiated the 'excesses of vigilance' perpetrated during the purges and had his henchman Ezhov shot.
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