Russian Revolution

I

Introduction

Russian Revolution, political upheaval in imperial Russia culminating in 1917 with the establishment of the world’s first self-proclaimed communist state, later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922-1991). Two distinct political revolutions resulted in a rapid change of regimes in 1917. The first, which began on March 8 to 12, 1917 (February 23 to 27 in the Julian, or Old Style, calendar, then in use in Russia), overthrew the autocratic monarchy; it is frequently called the February Revolution. The second, an armed insurrection on November 6 and 7 (October 24 and 25), organized by the Bolshevik Party against the Provisional Government, brought a Soviet regime to power, and it is usually designated the Bolshevik, or October, Revolution. The political revolutions of 1917 were accompanied by a peasant revolution in the Russian countryside. Additionally, the imperial Russian state included many nationalities which sought greater autonomy or independence during the upheaval. The Russian Revolution saw a major re-casting of Russia’s relationship with its closest neighbours. (The Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Soviet government on January 31, 1918; all references to dates in this article are made in accordance with the new calendar.)

II

Background to the Russian Revolution

A

Russia Under Autocracy

A long period of instability preceded the Russian Revolution. In 1917, 80 per cent of the population of imperial Russia belonged to the peasantry, subsistence farmers who until 1861 had been serfs. Their emancipation under Tsar Alexander II was accompanied by great reforms that modernized the legal system, introduced local self-government, and promoted education. Peasants were still tied to meagre land parcels by obligations to their village commune. They also paid redemption payments to compensate their former owners until 1905. After 1861, rural life continued to follow traditional patterns. A growing peasant population experienced land hunger, and primitive agriculture barely met the needs of the countryside and towns.

Reform stimulated demands for more political change, especially from young educated radicals. Frustrated in the 1870s by failure to arouse the peasantry to rebellion, radicals assassinated Alexander II in St Petersburg in 1881. His son, Alexander III, came to the throne determined to root out subversion. He presided over a mixture of authoritarian and economically beneficial policies. “Temporary” military rule suspended local government in large parts of the Empire, and the secret police largely suppressed terrorism, while the educated, public-spirited “intelligentsia” devoted itself to “small deeds” of quiet opposition to autocracy. Under Alexander III, forcible Russification of the smaller nationalities of the Empire began to deflect demands for national self-expression. Protectionist economic policies fostered industry. Many peasants moved to the towns, became workers, and formed a restive working class.

Dying unexpectedly in 1894 at the age of 49, Alexander left the throne to his 26-year-old son, Nicholas II. The new tsar re-affirmed the principle of autocracy and his father’s “temporary” police measures. Economic growth also continued: investment expanded Russia’s cities, and soon after 1900, major projects, such as the Trans-Siberian Railway, were complete. Russia entered the global economy as French and British investors seized opportunities for profit in its burgeoning industries.

Urbanization and industrialization brought significant social stress; living conditions in workers’ suburbs were intolerable. Intelligentsia and workers revived revolutionary sentiment. Their movements were influenced by the Russian populism of the 1870s, which looked to the peasants as a source of revolutionary potential, and to the European socialism of Karl Marx, which focused on the industrial working class as the motor of change. Illegal parties, notably the populist Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR) and the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party, appeared as the new century dawned. Both parties conducted terrorism and organized robbery to fund political activities. In 1903, the RSDLP split into Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who favoured a small membership of professional revolutionaries devoted to leading the working class to socialism through violent revolution, and the Mensheviks, who favoured evolution towards socialism through parliamentary democracy. Both branches of the RSDLP encouraged illegal strikes to draw attention to worker discontent and political hopes.

B

The Revolution of 1905 and its Consequences

The autocracy tried to unite Russia around a war with Japan that began in February 1904 (see Russo-Japanese War). Defeats and the PSR’s assassination of the hard-line minister Vyacheslav von Plehve in July only fed discontent, which Nicholas unsuccessfully tried to arrest with a decree promising minor reforms in December 1904. Outrage erupted after the January 22, 1905, “Bloody Sunday” massacre of workers in St Petersburg, and the government lost control during what became the 1905 Revolution.

Strikes spread in the cities; in the countryside, peasants seized noble land and declared local self-rule. Mutinies erupted in the army and navy (see Potemkin Mutiny). Middle-class groups formed the Constitutional Democrat Party (Kadets), which sought a parliamentary democracy. Kadets allied with the PSR and the RSDLP and backed the foundation of “soviets” or councils of workers. In October 1905 a general strike, led by the St Petersburg Soviet, paralysed the Empire. On October 30, Nicholas was forced to issue his October Manifesto promising a parliament, the State Duma, and granting political liberties. The revolutionary movement subsided as middle-class Russians resolved to work within the new arrangements, while the army and courts martial quelled violent resistance from the soviets and peasants.

The restoration of the tsar’s authority did not solve underlying social and political questions. Elections to the first two Dumas (1906, 1907) yielded fractious parliaments and were rapidly closed; and a decree of June 16, 1907, altered the voting system to favour the most conservative parties and shut out anti-tsarist opposition. Nicholas and his advisers failed to rally enough creative and intelligent support to their side. They covertly fostered nationalist “Black Hundreds” to launch pogroms against Jews and socialists. Russification policies continued. Educated Russians increasingly divided into an alienated opposition, disappointed with the Duma and frustrated by government incompetence, and an “official” Russia that supported the autocracy and government, but worried that Nicholas was an unsuitable ruler.

The peasant revolution of 1905 was the only upheaval that stimulated the autocracy to constructive measures. Redemption payments for ex-serfs were abolished. To modernize agriculture and build support for private property among peasants, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin inaugurated a scheme to convert communal landholding into individual farms. This transformation of millions of small rural households would have required a long period of stability to achieve the intended result. It had only just begun by 1914.

After 1905 the socialist parties still tried to undermine the state. PSR tactics fragmented. Disputes raged between those who promoted terror, and those who wanted to enter the Duma; PSR peasant supporters were demoralized after 1905. The RSDLP attempted to heal the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (although this rift was permanent from 1912), and grassroots pressure compelled both factions to contest Duma elections. Social Democrats in parliament called for workers’ rights; they also exploited legal trade unionism to organize at grassroots level.

Strike activity increased dramatically from 1912, when troops killed striking gold miners on the River Lena in Siberia. The RSDLP profited by this upswing to advance its ideas among educated and skilled workers. On the eve of World War I, in July 1914, another general strike brought St Petersburg to a standstill. Only the declaration of war ended the unrest in displays of patriotism similar to those witnessed elsewhere in Europe. The strike collapsed as workers apparently joined other sections of society to back the war.

III

Russia and World War I

Tsar Nicholas joined the war on the side of the Entente, with Britain and France, against the Central Powers, the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires. Imperial Russia’s forces seemed to offer the Entente a “steamroller” that would press Germany and Austria with overwhelming force on the eastern front. Yet, early Russian victories were rapidly reversed and the Central Powers took Russia’s Polish territory, plus its Baltic lands (today’s Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) by the summer of 1915. One million Russian soldiers were dead and four million injured. Nicholas took over from his uncle as commander-in-chief and left Petrograd (as St Petersburg was renamed, in 1914) for the front.

The Duma met twice in 1915 but in September Nicholas closed it, rejecting its calls for a government of public confidence chosen from its deputies. At the front he was indelibly associated with military disaster. Peasant conscripts replaced experienced soldiers and the army of 1916 confronted supply shortages, matched by inflation and shortages in the cities. The tsarist ministries refused to listen to experts in industry and science seeking to help the war effort. Refugees and injured troops flooded into the cities, and aid failed to match the scale of the suffering.

Rumours that Empress Alexandra, by origin a German, was a traitor, circulated widely among the troops. Government was largely in her hands and she took advice from Grigory Rasputin, a holy man whose disreputable behaviour damaged the monarchy’s prestige irreparably. Scandals in government prompted a rapid succession of ministers, and liberal Duma politicians openly denounced “treason in high places”. When a member of the royal family and a nationalist politician murdered Rasputin, on December 29-30, 1916, the tsar’s isolation from his last supporters was exposed. Many expected a palace coup to replace Nicholas.