“In 1917, Russia was unable to supply its soldiers in the field or feed its people at home. A strong desire for an end to Czarist misrule, for bread, and peace led to riots which in turn led to revolution. A moderate revolution in March of 1917 was followed by a more radical revolution in November of 1917.”
The age of social change:
The French Revolution opened up the possibility of creating a dramatic change in the way in which society was structured.
In many parts of the world including Europe and Asia, new ideas about individual rights and who controlled social power began to be discussed.
Not everyone in Europe, however, wanted a complete transformation of society.
Responses varied from those who accepted that some change was necessary but wished for a gradual shift, to those who wanted to restructure society radically.
Some were ‘conservatives, others were liberals’ or ‘radicals’.
Through the revolution in Russia, socialism became one of the most significant and powerful ideas to shape society in the twentieth century.
Liberals, Radicals and Conservatives:
Liberals
Liberals looked to change society, wanted a nation which tolerated all 1-iP religions.
At this time European states usually discriminated in favour of one religion or another.
Liberals also opposed the uncontrolled power of dynastic rulers.
They wanted to safeguard the rights of individuals against governments.
They argued for a representative, elected parliamentary government, subject to laws interpreted by a well trained judiciary that was independent of rulers and officials.
However, they were not ‘democrats…
They did not believe in universal adult franchise, that is, the right of every citizen to vote.
They felt men of property mainly should have the right to vote.
They also did not want right to vote for women.
Radicals
Radicals wanted a nation in which government was based on the majority of a country’s population.
Many supported worfien’s suffragette movements.
They opposed the privileges of great landowners and wealthy factory owners.
They were not against the existence of private property but disliked concentration of property in the hands of a few.
Conservatives
Conservatives were opposed to radicals and liberals.
After the French Revolution, however, even conservatives had opened their minds to the need for change.
By the nineteenth century, they accepted that some change was inevitable but believed that the past had to be respected and change had to be brought about through a slow process.
Such differing ideas about societal change clashed during the social and political turmoil that followed the French Revolution.
The various attempts at revolution and national transformation in the nineteenth century helped define both the limits and potential of these political tendencies.
Lenin and his second in command, Trotsky, took Russia out of the war by accepting a harsh peace treaty from the Germans and created the Red Army, which defeated the Bolsheviks internal enemies and began more than 70 years of communist rule in Russia.
Industrial society and social change:
During this time, new cities came up, new industrialised regions developed railways expanded and the Industrial Revolution occurred.
Industrialization brought men, women and children to factories.
Work hour were often long and wages were poor.
Unemployment was common particularly during times of low demand for industrial goods.
Housing and sanitation were problems since towns were growing rapidly.
Liberals and radicals searched for solutions to these issues.
Almost all industries were the property of individuals.
Liberals and radical themselves were often property owners and employers.
Having made the wealth through trade or industrial ventures, they felt that such effort should be encouraged – that its benefits would be achieved if the workforce in the economy was healthy and citizens were educated.
Opposed to the privileges the old aristocracy had by birth, they firmly believed in the value of individual effort, labour and enterprise.
If freedom of individuals was ensured, if the poor could labour, and those with capital could operate without restraint they believed that societies would develop.
Some nationalists, liberals and radicals wanted revolutions to put an end to the kind of governments established in Europe in 1815.
In France, Italy, Germany and Russia, they became revolutionaries and worked to overthrow existing monarchs.
Nationalists talked of revolutions that would create nations, where all citizens would have equal rights.
After 1815, Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian nationalist conspired with others to achieve this in Italy. Nationalists elsewhere including India read his writings.
The coming of socialism to Europe:
By the mid-nineteenth century in Europe, socialism was a well-known body of ideas that attracted widespread attention.
Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills of the time.
They believed that if society as whole rather than single individuals controlled property, more attention would be paid to collective social interests.
Socialists wanted this change and campaigned for it.
Socialists had different visions of the future.
Robert Owen (1771-1858), a leading English manufacturer, sought to build a cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana (USA).
In France, for instance, Louis Blanc (1813-1882) wanted the government to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist enterprises.
These cooperatives were to be associations of people produced goods together and divided the profits according to the work done by members.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) added other ideas to this body of arguments, Marx argued that industrial society was capitalist’.
Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists was produced by workers.
The conditions of workers could not improve as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists. Workers had to overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property.
Marx believed that to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled.
This would be a communist society.
He was convinced that workers would triumph in their conflict with capitalists.
A communist society was the natural society of the future.
The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by Serb nationalists in June 1914 was the immediate spark that led to the First World War.
St. Petersburg is a city in the European part of Russia which is the 2nd largest Russian city and located at the head of the Gulf of Finland which was former capital of Russia
Support for socialism:
By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread through Europe.
To coordinate their efforts, socialists formed an international body namely, the Second International.
Workers in England and Germany began forming associations to fight for better living and working conditions.
They set up funds to help members in times of distress and demanded a reduction of working hours and the right to vote.
In Germany, these associations worked closely with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and helped it win parliamentary seats, formed a Labour Party in Britain and a Socialist Party in France.
However till 1914, socialists never succeeded in forming a government in Europe.
The Russian Revolution:
Socialists took over the government in Russia through the October Revolution of 1917.
The fall of monarchy in February 1917 and the events of October are normally called the Russian Revolution…
The Russian Empire in 1914:
In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia and its empire, a vast area which stretched to the Pacific and comprised today’s Central Asian states, as well as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The majority religion was Russian Orthodox, but the empire also included Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Buddhists.
Bolshevik means “majority” Adolf Hitler (who despised Communists), Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi leaders used the term Bolshevik in reference to the worldwide revolutionary movement coordinated by the Soviet Union.
The 1917 Russian Revolution, which overthrew three centuries of tsarist rule, had its roots in Marxist beliefs. The revolution’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, built his new proletarian government based on his interpretation of Marxist thought, turning Karl Marx into an internationally famous figure more than 30 years after his death.
Economy and society:
The vast majority of Russia’s people were agriculturists.
85 percent population earned their living from agriculture.
This proportion was higher than in mo European countries.
Cultivators produced for the market as well as for the own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain. Industry was found in pockets.
Prominent industrial areas were St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Craftsmen undertook much of the production, but large factories existed alongside craft workshops. Many factories were set up in the 1890s.
When Russia’s railway network was extended foreign investment in industries increased.
Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled.
By the 1900s, in some areas factory workers and craftsmen were almost equal in number.
Most industry was the private property of industrialists.
Government supervised large factories to ensure minimum wages and limited hours of work. But factory inspectors could not prevent rules being broken.
Workers were a divided social group.
Some had strong links with the villages from which they came.
Others had settled in cities permanently. Workers were divided by skill.
Women made up 31 per cent of the factory labour force by 1914, but they were paid less than men (between half and three-quarter of a man’s wage).
Divisions among workers showed themselves in dress and manners too.
Some workers formed associations to help members in times of unemployment or financial hardship but such associations were few.
Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions.
These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during 1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902. In the countryside, peasants cultivated most of the land.
But the nobility, the crown and the Orthodox Church owned large properties.
But except in a few cases they had no respect for the nobility.
Peasants wanted the land of the nobles to be given to them.
Frequently, they refused to pay rent and even murdered landlords.
In 1902, this occurred on a large scale in south Russia.
And in 1905,-such-incidents took place all over Russia.
Peasants pooled their land together periodically and their commune (min) divided it according to the needs of individual families.
Socialism in Russia:
All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914.
The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists who respected Marx’s ideas.
However, because of government policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation.
It set up a newspaper, mobilised workers and organised strikes.
Socialists were active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century.
They formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900.
Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist Revolutionaries about peasants.
Lenin felt that peasants were not one united group. Some were poor and others rich.
Some worked as labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers; they could not all be part of a socialist movement.
The party was divided over the strategy of organisation.
Vladimir Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive society like Tsaris Russia the party should be disciplined and should control the number and quality of its members.
Others (Mensheviks) thought that the party should be open to all (as in Germany).
Nicholas II was the last tsar of Russia. He was deposed during the Russian Revolution and executed by the Bolsheviks.
After Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolshevik forces in July 1918, the killers hid the victims’ mutilated bodies. The remains were discovered and exhumed in the late 1970s near Yekaterinburg, Russia, and eventually identified through DNA testing.
A Turbulent Time: The 1905 Revolution:
Russia was an autocracy.
Tsar was not subject to parliament.
Liberals in Russia campaigned to end this state of affairs.
They were supported in the empire by nationalists (in Poland for instance) and in Muslim-dominated areas by jadidists who wanted modemised Islam to lead their societies.
In the year 1904, prices of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 per cent.
When four members of the Assembly of Russian Workers, which had been formed in 1904, were dismissed at the Putilov Iron Works, there was a call for industrial action.
Over 110,000 workers in St Petersburg went on strike-demanding a reduction in the working day to eight hours, an increase in wages and improvement in working conditions.
When the procession of workers led by Father Gapon reached the Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks.
Over 100 workers were killed and about 300 wounded.
The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that became known as the 1905 Revolution.
Lawyers, doctors, engineers and other middle-class workers established the Union of Unions and demanded a constituent assembly.
During the 1905 Revolution, the Tsar allowed the creation of an elected consultative Parliament or Duma.
The Tsar dismissed the first Duma within 75 days and the re-elected second Duma within three months.
He did not want any questioning of his authority or any reduction in his power.
He changed the voting laws and packed the third Duma with conservative politicians.
Liberals and revolutionaries were kept out.
The First World War and the Russian Empire:
In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances.
Germany, Austria and Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and Russia (later Italy and Romania).
Each country had a global empire and the war was fought outside Europe as well as in Europe. This was the First World War.
In Russia, the First World War was initially popular and people rallied around Tsar Nicholas II.
As the war continued, though, the Tsar refused to consult the main parties in the Duma.
Support wore thin.
The Tsarina Alexandra’s German origins and poor advisers, especially a monk called Rasputin, made the autocracy unpopular.
Russia’s armies lost badly in Germany and Austria between 1914 and 1916.
There were over 7 million casualties by 1917.
As they retreated, army destroyed crops and buildings to prevent the enemy from being able to live off the land.
The destruction of crops and buildings led to over 3 million refugees in Russia.
The war also had a severe impact on industry.
Industrial equipment disintegrated more rapidly in Russia than elsewhere in Europe.
By 1916, railway lines began to break down.
There were labour shortages and small workshops producing essentials were shut down.
For the people in the cities, bread and flour became scarce.
By the winter of 1916, riots at bread shops were common.
The Flag of the Soviet Union was the official national flag of the Soviet state from 1923 to 1991. The flag’s design and symbolism are derived from the Russian Revolution of 1917. The flag is also an international symbol of the communist movement as a whole,
Of all the symbols of Russian apparel, none is more prominent than the ushanka hat. Instantly recognizable, this extremely comfortable and warm hat has become a fashion icon as of late. When most people think of Russia, the classic ushanka style hat is one of the first things that comes to mind.
The February Revolution in Petrograd:
In the winter of 1917, conditions in the capital, Petrograd, were grim.
The workers’ quarters and factories were located on the right bank of the Rive Neva.
On the left bank were the fashionable areas, the Winter Palace, and official buildings, including the palace where the Duma met.
In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in the workers’ quarters.
The winter was very cold there had been exceptional frost and heavy snow.
Parliamentaries wishing to preserve elected government were opposed to teh Tsar’s desire to dissolve the Duma.
On 22nd February, a lockout took place at a factory on the right bank.
The next day, workers in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy.
In many factories, women led the way to strikes.
This came to be called the International Women’s Day.
Demonstrating workers crossed from the factory quarters to the centre of the capital.
As the fashionable quarters and official buildings were surrounded by workers, the government imposed a curfew.
On Sunday, 25 February, the government suspended the Duma. Politicians spoke out against the measure.
Demonstrators returned in force to the streets of the left bank on the 26″.
On the 27th, the Police Headquarters were ransacked.
The government tried to control the situation and called out the cavalry once again.
However, the cavalry refused to fire on the demonstrators.
An officer was shot at the barracks of a regiment and three other regiments mutinied, voting to join the striking workers.
By that evening soldiers and striking workers had gathered to form a ‘soviet’ or ‘council in the same building as the Duma met.
This was the Petrograd Soviet.
Military commanders advised the Tsar to abdicate.
He followed their advice and abdicated on 2nd March. Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a Provisional Government to run the country.
Russia’s future would be decided by a constituent assembly, elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage.
Petrograd had led the February Revolution that brought down the monarchy in February 1917.
Five-Year Plans (FYPs) are centralized and integrated national economic programs, Joseph Stalin implemented the first FYP in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s.
Between 1908 and 1917, Stalin was arrested seven times and escaped five times, enjoying less than two years of liberty in the nine-year period.
After February:
Army officials, landowners and industrialists were influential in the Provisional Government.
‘Soviets’, like the Petrograd Soviet, were set up everywhere, though no common system of election was followed.
In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile.
He and the Bolsheviks had opposed the war since 1914.
Now he felt it was time for soviets to take over power.
He declared that the war be brought to a land be transferred to the peasants, and banks be nationalised. These three demands were Lenin’s ‘April Theses’.
He also argued that the Bolshevik Party rename itself the Communist Party to indicate its new radical aims.Through the summer the workers’ movement spread.
In industrial areas, factory committees were formed which began questioning the way industrialists ran their factories.
Trade unions grew in number Soldiers’ committees was formed in the army.
In June, about 500 Soviets sent representatives to an All Russian Congress of Soviets.
As the Provisional Government saw its power reduce and Bolshevik influence grow, it decided to take stern measures against the spreading discontent.
Popular demonstrations staged by the Bolsheviks in July 1917 were sternly repressed.
Many Bolshevik leaders had to go into hiding or flee Socialist Revolutionary leaders pressed for a redistribution of land.
Encouraged by the Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants seized land between July and September 1917.
The Revolution of October 1917:
As the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks grew, Lenin feared the Provisional Goverment would set up a dictatorship.
On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power.
A Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet under Leon Trotski to organise the seizure.
The date of the event was kept a secret.
The uprising began on 24 October. Sensing trouble, Prime Minister Kerenskiy had left the city to summon troops.
At dawn, military men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik newspapers.
Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone and telegraph offices and protect the Winter Palace.
In a swift response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers.
Late in the day, a ship, Aurora, shelled the Winter Palace.
Other vessels sailed down the Neva and took over various military points.
By nightfall, the city was under the committee’s control and the ministers had surrendered.
At a meeting of the All Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action.
By December, the Bolsheviks controlled the Moscow-Petrograd area.
The Imperial Russian army came to be known as the ‘Russian steam roller It was the largest armed force in the world When this army shifted its loyalty and began supporting the revolutionaries, Tsarist power collapsed.
The ship that played an important role in assault of the Winter Palace was known as Aurora.
What changed after October?
The Bolsheviks were totally opposed to private property.
Most industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917.
Land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility.
In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of large houses according to family requirements, banned the old titles of aristocracy, new uniforms were designed for the army and officials, following a clothing competition organised in 1918-when the Soviet hat (budeonovka) was chosen.
The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).
In November 1917, Bolsheviks conducted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but failed to gain majority support.
In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly.
In March 1918, despite opposition by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk.
The Bolsheviks became the only party AL participate in the elections to the All Russian Congress of Soviets, which (c) became the Parliament of the country.
Russia became a one-party state Trade unions were kept under party control.
The secret police (called the Cheka first and later OGPU and NKVD) punished those who criticised the Bolsheviks.
After October 1917, this led to experiments in the arts and architecture.
Many became disillusioned because of the censorship the Party encouraged.
The Civil War:
Non Bolshevik socialists, liberals and supporters of autocracy condemned the Bolshevik uprising.
Their leaders moved to south Russia and organised troops to fight the Bolsheviks (the reds).
During 1918 and 1919 the greens (Socialist Revolutionaries) and whites (pro Tsarists) controlled most of the Russian empire.
They were backed by foreign forces who we worried at the growth of socialism in Russia.
As these troops and the Bolsheviks fought a civil war, looting, banditry and famine became conation.
Supporters of private property among whites’ took harsh steps w peasants who had seized land.
Such actions led to the loss of popular support for the non-Bolsheviks.
By January 1920, the Bolsheviks controlled most of the former Russian empire.
They succeeded due to cooperation with non-Russian nationalities and Muslim jadidists.
In Khiva, in Central Asia, Bolshevik brutally massacred local nationalists in the name of defending socialism.
In this situation, many were confused about what the Bolsheva government represented.
Partly to remedy this, most non-Russian nationalities were given political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR)-the state the Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922.
But since this was combined with unpopular policies like the harsh discouragement of nomadism – attempts to win over different nationalities were only partly successful.
Making a socialist society:
During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised.
They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialized.
Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what collective work could be.
A process of centralised planning was introduced.
Officials assessed how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period.
The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two Plans.
On the basis they made 5 year plans.
The government fixed prices to promote industrial growth during the first two Plaris (1927-32& 1933-38).
Centralised planning led to economic growth.
Industrial production increased.
New factory cities came into being.
However, rap construction led to poor working conditions.
An extended schooling system developed, and arrangements were made for factory workers and peasants to enter universities.
Crèches we established in factories for the children of women workers.
Cheap public health care was provided.
Model living quarters were set up for workers.
The effect of all this was uneven, though, since government resources we limited.
International women’s day is celebrated on February 22nd as a mark of honour because on this day many women in Russia led the way to strikes in factories.
Pro. Tsarists were represented by white and socialist revolutionaries were represented by green colour.
Stalinism and Collectivisation:
The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture. By 1927-28, the towns were facing acute problem of grain supplies.
The government fixed prices at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their grain to government buyers at these prices.Stalin introduced firm emergency measures.
In 1928, Party members Toured the grain-producing areas, supervising enforced grain collections, and raiding kulaks the name for well to a peasants.
As shortages continued, the decision was taken to collectivise farms.
It was argued that grain shortages were partly due to the small size of holdings.
To develop modern farms, and run them along industrial lines with machinery, it was necessary to eliminate kulaks, take away land from peasants, and establish state-controlled large farms.
From 1929, the Party forced all peasants to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz).
The bulk of land and implements were transferred to the ownership of collective farms.
Peasants worked on the land, and the kolkhoz profit was shared.
Those who resisted collectivisation were severely punished. Many were deported and exiled.
Stalin’s government allowed some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators unsympathetically.
The bad harvests of 1930-1933 led to one of most devastating famines in Soviet history when over 4 million died.
Many within the Party criticised the confusion in industrial production under the Planned Economy and the consequences of collectivisation.
Stalin and his sympathisers charged these critics with conspiracy against socialism.
Accusations were made throughout the country, and by 1939, over 2 million were in prisons or labour camps. Most were innocent of the crimes, but no one spoke for them.
A large number were forced to make false confessions under torture and were executed several among them were talented professionals
The global influence of the Russian Revolution and the USSR:
The possibility of a workers’ state fired people’s imagination across the world.
In many countries, communist parties were formed like the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Many non Russians from outside the USSR participated in the Conference of the Peoples of the East (1920) and the Bolshevik founded Comintem (an international union of Pro Bolshevik Socialist Parties).
By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had given socialism a global face and world stature.
Yet by the 1950s it was acknowledged within the country that the style of government in the USSR was not in keeping with the ideals of the Russian Revolution.
A backward country had become a great power.
But it had denied the essential freedoms to its citizens and carried out its developmental projects through repressive policies.
By the end of the twentieth century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals still enjoyed respect among its people.
Hindi, R.S. Avasthi wrote 1920 Russian Revolution, Lenin, His Life and His Thoughts, and later The Red Revolution. S.D. Vidyalankar wrote The Rebirth of and The Soviet State of Russia. There was much that was written Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
Tagore was known and loved even in pre-revolutionary Russia. His poems were translated and republished numerous occasions actively promoted by Russian symbolists.
