Monthly Archives: September 2014

Lenin at the Finland Station in Petrograd in Spring 1917

“Few contemporaries imagined that, after three centuries of rule, the Romanov dynasty could vanish in several days.” (Freeze, 273.) 

February 1917, the stage is set for change and progress as Tsar Nicholas abdicates his throne at the demand and protest of an unhappy Russian people. A provisional government was established out of a crippled Duma and appointed Soviet leaders from multiple socialist parties. This uneasy dual governmental system proved ineffective and would lead to instability that prompted the October revolution.  World War One continued to rage on, and the people demanded not only revolutionary change, but a revolutionary leader. They received just that in the return of an exiled Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin arrived to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland and was greeted the night of April 3rd to a crowd of Bolshevik supporters. Lenin brought with him an unprecedented fervor and belief in his system of communist administration for a newly liberated Russia. The strength of Lenin’s determination to ensure that Russia accepted a Bolshevik system of a proletariat empowering future was driven home by his April Theses, delivered in Petrograd on April 4th.

Lenin Speech at the Tauride Palace (April 4th 1917)

The theses itself was short, but deliverable in that it had realistic and identifiable goals. One of the most simplistic, but striking, characteristics about Lenin and his theses is that he picked a path that was easily discernible, but nonetheless bold. Lenin called for the people to do mainly two things. One was to dismiss the duality coalition of the provisional government set up between petty bourgeois leaders left in the wake of the Tsar, and semi-soviets from lesser hard lined socialist parties. This was a pseudo emancipation from the Tsar and the regime of old, and to accept it would be like returning to the bondage of the state that brought them to this point in the first place. Secondly, it was for the people to accept the uncompromising Bolshevik tenants of revolution that would empower the people and create a completely different free society branded under a new name with a hope of succeeding where the name of other liberal socialists failed, and that was communism.

Lenin left no one guessing what his views were concerning the future for Russia, and as history revealed in the October revolution, he succeeded.  The power of Lenin’s theses lay in that he openly and honestly addressed the public that they had failed in revolution thus far. They had stopped short of wresting power and emancipating themselves, stopping at stage one and consequently they “placed power into the hands of the bourgeoisie to the second stage, which must place power into the hands of the proletariat and the poor strata of the peasantry” (Lenin, April Theses.)

The theses laid out a plan to have a total revolution that would set Russia apart on the world stage as a leader of of a liberally left sided thought of political and personal emancipation. The theses was driven to success by the historical tyranny of the Tsar, and the raging European war spurred on by capitalist imperial bourgeoisie of European states who would see Russia implode after the end of the war and return to a despotic monarch rule. Lenin spoke directly to the people, the peasants, the soldiers, the middle class, and empowered them to create a destiny separate from the common place practice of ruling elites. The theses had ten main points, and even outlined party tasks to include 1.) immediate summoning of a party congress, 2.) altering the party platform, 3.) renaming the party as communists, (Lenin, April Theses.) However, the majority of the speech was directed at choosing the path of emancipation and for the people to join Lenin and his Bolsheviks to accept nothing less than true freedom in a communist future for the Russian people.

Lenin at Finland Station

Works Cited:

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=article&ArticleID=1917theses1&SubjectID=1917april&Year=1917

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1917april&Year=1917

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&show=images&SubjectID=1917april&Year=1917&navi=byYear

V. I. Lenin, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1952), Vol. 2, pp. 3-17.

Freeze, Gregory L. Russia: A History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Theses

Protest

“In a country ruled by an autocracy, with a completely enslaved press, in a period of desperate political reaction in which even the tiniest outgrowth of political discontent and protest is persecuted, the theory of revolutionary Marxism suddenly forced its way into the censored literature before the government realized what had happened and the unwieldy army of censors and gendarmes discovered the new enemy and flung itself upon him. ” – Lenin (“What is to be done: Criticism in Russia”) c.1901

20th century Russia and protest go together like bread and butter, or vodka and angry Siberian bears, depending on which side of the peasantry you viewed it from. The earliest uprisings, and most notable for the eventual 1917 revolution, took place in 1905. As unrest and peasant disparity increased throughout the end of the 19th century into the early 20th, the people began to react accordingly with protests and strikes that took various forms.

In 1905, the Russian state was dealing with a broad range of problems that led to civil unrest and peasant disobedience. They included overall problems in agriculture production and development, problems with internal national perception (especially following failures such as the Crimean War), problems with labor, and problems with the disproportionate levels of education throughout the population.  Although the serfs had already become “emancipated”, Russia lacked the internal governance ability to maintain good order and fair practice of trade for produce and overall population well being. The vast majority of the population was comprised of small scale farmers on a communal system of shared land and labor. This proved to be ineffective as the farmers could not create enough produce to sell in order to break even, or even feed themselves, let alone ever become wealthy and prosper. This provides obvious reasons for protests and in 1902 they went to the streets in mass, angry that their farm systems were failing, and that there was no work to be had elsewhere. Strikes, looting, and pillaging took place in the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava, to name a few.

 Bloody Sunday 1905

Another area of interest that sparked unrest was in deciding national prominence by birthright, or through citizenry conversion and immigration. Russia was a large territory that encompassed a lot of ethnic and religious minorities. Polish people, and Jews, began to exemplify this problem in the early 20th century when they found contention with the state and greater population during assimilation. The emancipation of the serfs left a more or less “free” populace, however, codes of civil rights and liberties had not been established for those who would fall out of the realm of being ethnically and traditionally Russian. The lack of a homogeneous population who fully understood their path as a nation led to a subtle forms of unrest that played into the overall greater problem faced by twentieth century Russia.

Labor was a major issue in pre-1917 revolution Russia. Wage workers were expected to work regularly up to eleven and a half hours a day, if not more. Penalties were harsh state wide for things like tardiness, or failure to produce at an effective level, and unions or workers organizations were barred from existence. Wages paid out were the lowest in all of Europe at the time, and factory workers could, like their agrarian cousins, barely make a living.

All of the workers within a factory were at the will of the assembly and could be fired as a whole without notice if there were any infractions. The lack of jobs and abundance of willingness of people to work led to deplorable working conditions. One such strike in 1904 led to the firing of the entire Putilov factory giant, (Freeze, 251.)

“Bloody Sunday”, as it is so appropriately named, took place in 1905 when one such protest and worker strike occurred on January 22nd in St. Petersburg Russia. A peaceful city wide protest and general worker strike was shattered by gunfire from state military forces, and the consequences would largely bring upon the 1917 revolution and subsequent downfall of the Tsar. This is the culminating strike of many smaller ones that dotted the country side. The people had in a sense “woken up” to the failure of their own state to provide the freedom to seek life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Russians sleeping in the city streets. C.1908

Works Cited:

http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/quotes.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905#mediaviewer/File:Shestviye_u_Narvskikh_vorot.jpg

Freeze, Gregory L. Russia: A History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b42933/0

The Russian Empire survived a conflict ridden existence of violent political change and internal reform from 1721 up to the Russian revolution in 1917. One point of interest, in this vast historical time period, is the Crimean War that took place in the mid-19th century from October 1853 to February 1856, culminating in a Russian defeat by a coalition of French, British, and Ottoman Turks. Understanding the history and relation of Russia and Crimea play into current events and understanding Russian interest in the region from a historical aspect.

Battle of Sinop 1853

The Crimean war was spurned on by poor relations between Russia and the ruling Ottomans in the contested area of Crimea. Russia viewed their rights to protect ethnic and Russian Orthodox citizens from Ottoman subjugation, within the region that is now largely the Ukraine and Romania, as paramount in maintaining sovereignty of the empire. The expansion and protection of Russian Orthodox Christianity in the region was viewed as an affront to the supremacy of the holy Roman Church, of which France had a vested interest in maintaining at the time.  This led to violations of multiple treaties and the escalation of full blown naval and land based warfare between the aforementioned parties.

Historical Map of the Area of Operations

The heaviest fighting was seen when the allied troops landed a coalition fighting force in Russian controlled Crimea. The battle of Sevastopol began, a siege that would last a full year and mark the focal point of the fighting. Russians eventually retreated and gave up Sevastopol late in 1855. The amount of casualties in the war is viewed in retrospect as costly and unnecessary by all sides, totaling near 750,000 deaths combined.

Siege of Sevastopol

The Crimean war brought upon some valuable lessons to be learned by all parties, but specifically Russia. The realization that Russia had become weaker than the rest of the modernizing European powers was highlighted by their inability to effectively wage war for their own national interest. Technologically, they were far behind the French and British in naval superiority, and socially it had become apparent that the feudalistic ways of serfdom were no longer effective in maintaining and implementing national interest. The eventual emancipation of the serfs in 1861 can be drawn back to, in part, the failure of Russia to succeed in this costly and embarrassing war that reshaped the political geography of the region and set the tone for World War one, as well as the following revolution that would prompt a great change in Russian history.

Works Cited

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.02161/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1854%E2%80%9355)#mediaviewer/File:Panorama_dentro.JPG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War#mediaviewer/File:Battle_of_Sinop.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War