History 1C

Lecture 8: The Russian Revolution

I. Film: "The Red Flag"

The fall of imperial Russia

War losses and mistakes pointed to the incompetence of the tsar and the Russian government.

2,000,000 Russian casualties in 1915 alone.

undermined their legitimacy

Tsar Nicholas II, a well-meaning but stupid man, abandoned his duties as ruler to become commander in chief of the armies, a role for which he was completely unsuited.

Day to day rule of Russia fell into the hands of the Empress Alexandra, who was enthralled by a bizarre, dirty, strangely charismatic monk dubbed "Rasputin" -- "the Degenerate" -- by a hostile court.

She liked Rasputin because he alone could stop her hemophiliac son's bleeding.

Hoping to end Rasputin's influence and dispel destructive rumors that he had become Alexandra's lover, members of the royal court tried to kill Rasputin.

They fed him food and wine liberally laced with arsenic. Rasputin ate lustily with no ill effects.

In frustration they finally shot him. He didn't die.

They threw him into the icy River Neva. That did the trick.

The story of Rasputin illustrates the incredible lack of reality on the part of the Tsar and Tsarina.

Food shortages led to revolution in March 1917.

Bread riots by Petrograd women, March 8.

Spontaneously spread to the factories.

Troops refused to obey orders to put down uprising, joined the crowd.

A provisional government was proclaimed by the Duma on March 12.

The Tsar abdicated, apparently with no regrets.

The revolution was widely welcomed in Russia.

Upper and middle classes thought it would help Russia fight the war more effectively.

Working classes expected better wages, more food.

Everyone expected greater liberty and democracy.

After the March Revolution, Russia became the freest country in the world.

All the usual liberal freedoms, plus an incredible amount of direct political participation.

Yet the new revolutionary government, organized in May and led by agrarian socialist Alexander Kerensky, wanted to postpone land reform, fearing it would further weaken the peasant army; the continuation of the war was Kerensky's primary concern.

This increased war weariness, especially after a military offensive by the new government was as fruitless as those by the Tsarist regime.

After the March 1917 revolution, Lenin made it back to Russia through the assistance of the German government. Hoping to further destabilize Russia, they agreed to transport Lenin, his wife, and about 20 colleagues through German territory to Russia. Arrived April 1917.

Went in a sealed train -- "like a plague bacillus," Churchill later observed.

Lenin led an attack against the provisional government in July 1917, but it failed and he went into hiding.

Kerensky's power was weakened by an attack on the provisional government by his commander in chief, Kornilov, and he lost favor with the army.

A radical Marxist, former Menshevik, and supporter of Lenin, Trotsky centered his power in the Petrograd Soviet.

Trotsky engineered a Soviet overthrow of the provisional government, November 1917.

Dictatorship and civil war

Lenin gave approval to the peasants' seizure of land and the urban workers' takeover of the factories.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March 1918. Lenin arranged for an end of war with Germany, despite the high price the Germans exacted: the sacrifice of all of Russia's western territories and an army of occupation that held much of southern Russia.

First things first: the new Bolshevik government had to survive. Besides, if it did, Lenin expected the western European capitalist countries -- including Germany -- to be swept away by Marxist revolution.

Opposition to the Bolsheviks led to civil war (1918-1921).

The officers of the old army (the Whites) organized the opposition to the Bolsheviks (the Reds).

The Whites came from many social groups and wanted self-rule, not Bolshevik dicatatorship.

The British, French, Americans and Japanese contributed small expeditionary forces that assisted the Whites.

The Bolsheviks eventually prevailed. Reasons:

unity (their opponents frequently distrusted each other, worked at cross-purposes, and had different goals.

a better army, created and organized with great brilliance by Trotsky.

a well-defined political program

mobilization of the home front

an effective secret police force -- the CHEKA -- that squelched internal threats.

a successful appeal to nationalism in the face of foreign aid to the whites.

Conclusion

World War I destroyed most of the power of the conservative or reactionary elites that had ruled in Europe for centuries.

The great ruling dynasties -- Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, Romanovs -- went up in smoke.

Liberalism had arrived. But so had the Marxist brand of socialism. And in many respects the twentieth century has been the story of which of these "forces of movement" would play the main role in world politics.

Even the fascist movements of the 20s and 30s, frequently labeled "far right wing," took most of their methods (and some of their programs) from the revolutionary left.