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new city ○ may 2017
POLITICS
An unhappy
anniversary
This year marks the hundredth
anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
The effects of this had an enormous
impact on the history, not only of
Russia, but of the whole world for more
than seventy years. What started as
a revolt by poor oppressed workers
against a corrupt monarchical system
of government, turned out to be more
brutal and oppressive than the Czarist
regime it replaced. Frank Johnson
looks at some of the basic facts and
key personalities of this momentous
event.
B
By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of Czar Nicholas II. Government corruption
was rampant, the Russian economy remained backward,
and Nicholas repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the Russian
parliament established after the 1905 revolution, when
it opposed his will. However, the immediate cause of
the February Revolution – the first phase of the Russian
Revolution of 1917 – was Russia’s disastrous involvement
in World War I. Militarily, imperial Russia was no match
for industrialized Germany, and Russian casualties were
greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous
war. Meanwhile, the economy was hopelessly disrupted by
the costly war effort, and moderates joined Russian radical
elements in calling for the overthrow of the czar.
The February Revolution
The February Revolution (known as such because of
Russia’s use of the Julian calendar until February 1918)
began on March 8, 1917 (or February 23 on the Julian
calendar), when demonstrators clamouring for bread
took to the streets in the Russian capital of Petrograd
(now called St. Petersburg). Supported by huge crowds
of striking industrial workers, the protesters clashed with
police but refused to leave the streets. On March 10, the
strike spread among all of Petrograd’s workers, and irate
mobs destroyed police stations. Several factories elected
deputies to the Petrograd Soviet, or council, of workers’
committees, following the model devised during the 1905
revolution. On March 11, the troops of the Petrograd army
garrison were called out to quell the uprising. In some encounters, regiments opened fire, killing demonstrators, but
the protesters kept to the streets and the troops began to
waver. That day, Nicholas again dissolved the Duma. On
March 12, the revolution triumphed when regiment after
regiment of the Petrograd garrison defected to the cause
of the demonstrators. The soldiers subsequently formed
committees that elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet.
new city ○ may 2017
Photo: Wikimedia
Lenin
Born Vladimir Ilich Ulanov in
1870, Lenin was the founder
of the Russian Communist
Party, leader of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, and
the architect, builder, and
first head of the Soviet
Union. Lenin spent the years leading up to the 1917
revolution in exile, within Russia and abroad. The
Bolsheviks quickly consolidated power; privatizing
all aspects of the Soviet economy, cracking down
on dissent through the Cheka, or secret police and
instituting the Red Terror, aimed at destroying
monarchist and anti-Bolshevik sympathizers during
the Russian Civil War. Despite a series of strokes in
his final years, Lenin attempted to shape the future
of the Soviet Union, warning against the unchecked
power of party members, including Joseph Stalin.
His warnings went unheeded, and Stalin emerged
victorious from the protracted power struggle
following Lenin’s death in 1924.
Trotsky
The imperial government was forced to resign, and the
Duma formed a provisional government that peacefully
vied with the Petrograd Soviet for control of the revolution. On March 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No.
1, which instructed Russian soldiers and sailors to obey
only those orders that did not conflict with the directives
of the Soviet. The next day, March 15, Czar Nicholas
II abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Michael
(1878-1918), whose refusal of the crown brought an end
to the czarist autocracy.
The Bolshevik Revolution
In the aftermath of the February Revolution, power was
shared between the weak provisional government and the
Petrograd Soviet. Then, on November 6 and 7, 1917 (or
October 24 and 25 on the Julian calendar, which is why
this event is also referred to as the October Revolution),
leftist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader
Trotsky was born Lev
Davidovich Bronstein on 7
November 1879 in Yanovka,
Ukraine, then part of
Russia. His father was a
prosperous Jewish farmer.
Trotsky became involved
in underground activities as a teenager. He was
soon arrested, jailed and exiled to Siberia where he
joined the Social Democratic Party. Eventually, he
escaped Siberia and spent the majority of the next
fifteen years abroad, including a spell in London.
In 1903, the Social Democrats split. While Lenin
assumed leadership of the ‘Bolshevik’ (majority)
faction, Trotsky became a member of the ‘Menshevik’
(minority) faction and developed his theory of
‘permanent revolution’. After the outbreak of
revolution in Petrograd in February 1917, he made his
way back to Russia. Despite previous disagreements
with Lenin, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and played
a decisive role in the communist take-over of power
in the same year. Thus Trotsky played a crucial role in
keeping the Bolshevik regime alive. He saw himself as
Lenin’s heir-apparent, but his intellectual arrogance
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new city ○ may 2017
POLITICS
made him few friends, and his Jewish heritage may
also have worked against him. When Lenin fell ill and
died, Trotsky was easily outmaneuvered by Stalin. In
1927, he was thrown out of the party. Trotsky settled
in Mexico in 1936. On 20 August 1940, an assassin
called Ramon Mercader, acting on Stalin’s orders,
stabbed Trotsky with an ice pick, fatally wounding
him. He died the next day.
Stalin
Born in Georgia as Joseph
Vissarionovich Djugashvili
(1878-1953), Joseph Stalin*
was the dictator of the
Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) from
1929 to 1953. Under Stalin,
the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant
society into an industrial and military superpower,
but the cost in human terms was enormous. He
ruled by terror, and untold millions of his own
citizens died during his brutal reign. Stalin was
born into poverty, and his mother, a very religious
person sent her son to a seminary to study for the
priesthood. But Stalin soon rejected religion and
embraced militant atheism. He became involved in
revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities,
as a young man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir
Lenin (1870-1924) died, Stalin outmaneuvered his
rivals for control of the party. Once in power, he
collectivized farming and had potential enemies
executed or sent to forced labour camps. Stalin
aligned with the United States and Britain in World
War II (1939-1945) but afterwards engaged in an
increasingly tense relationship with the West
known as the Cold War (1946-1991). After his death,
the Soviets initiated a de-Stalinization process.
Who were the Bolsheviks?
They were members of the more radical majority of
the Social Democratic Party, 1903–17, advocating
immediate and forceful seizure of power by the
proletariat.
After 1918 all members of the Russian
Communist Party were known as Bolsheviks.
The word ‘stalin’ means ‘of steel’, presumably to
portray an image of toughness.
*
Vladimir Lenin launched a nearly bloodless coup d’état
against the provisional government. The Bolsheviks and
their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in Petrograd, and soon formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Lenin became the virtual
dictator of the first Marxist state in the world. His government made peace with Germany, nationalized industry
and distributed land, but beginning in 1918 had to fight a
devastating civil war against anti-Bolshevik White Army
forces. In 1920, the anti-Bolsheviks were defeated, and
in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
was established.
The raising of the curtain
The Iron Curtain, which after the Second World War encompassed the whole of Eastern Europe, looked indestructible. Attempts to raise this curtain, first in Berlin
in 1953, then Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in
1968 were soon suppressed and the leaders of these attempts were either executed or imprisoned. No one could
have predicted that well before the end of the millennium
Soviet Communism would be no more.
The signal for change came when Mikhail Gorbachev’s
policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (transparency) further legitimized popular calls for reform from
within. Gorbachev also made clear – at first secretly to
the Eastern European leaders, then
increasingly more public –
that the Soviet Union had
abandoned the policy of
military intervention in
support of communist
regimes. Incredibly, by
the summer of 1990,
all the former communist regimes of Eastern
Europe were replaced by
democratically elected governments. In Poland, Hungary,
East Germany and Czechoslovakia, newly formed centreright parties took power for the first time since the end of
World War II. In Bulgaria and Romania, reformed communists retained control of the governments, but new centre-right parties entered Parliaments and became active on
the political scene. The course was set for the reintegration of Eastern Europe into Western economic, political,
and security frameworks. Perhaps the darkest period in
the history of Europe had come to an end and, with the
exception of Romania, without violence.