A History of Russia and Revolution

Introduction:

The Russian Revolution is one of the most important events of the twentieth century. A revolution encompassing seventeen years, and arguably closer to twenty, or perhaps even longer depending on how you view the timetable, is not only interesting, but offers us much to take and learn from in our own efforts for revolution. What is particularly interesting and unique to this historic event is that it is actually three revolutions over the course of twelve years that make up the whole revolution: the Revolution of 1905, the February Revolution and the October Revolution of 1917. It produced some of the most influential thinkers and ideologies within the leftist current, and, as such, should be studied to see not only how these ideas came to be, but why. With all that being said, I present a history of the Russian Revolution in the hopes that you not only learn something new, but also come away from this with, perhaps, a different outlook on one of the most important historical events of the twentieth century whose effects are still known in the modern day.

* Note: I use the modern name for all cities mentioned. For example, St. Petersburg was not known as St. Petersburg, but was known as Petrograd. I have used the modern names for the purpose of simplifying the vast history involved.

The Tsardom of Russia:

Modes of Production Throughout History

The history of Russia is incredibly vast and spans from antiquity to the modern day. As every landed state, i.e., lands constituting a population of people(s), does, Russia transformed from a society based on collective community ownership, egalitarian social relations, an economy based on subsistence, and a complete lack of private property—private property, of course, refers to individual ownership of land and resources—, this we know as primitive communism, to a society organized by classes and their irreconcilable antagonisms; most notably that of the ruling bourgeoisie class who dominates all other classes, the peasantry to the proletariat to all other toilers, both politically and economically through owning the means of production and heading the state thereby forcing the other classes to work jobs of wage-labor wherein the owner of the means of production, the capitalist, forms a contract through which the worker gets paid a wage for using the means of production to produce goods that the capitalist sells for a profit—of which the laborer will receive a miniscule fraction of in the form of their wage—, this we know as capitalism.

This transition does not occur quickly, it takes centuries, and sees steps in its progression from primitive communism to society based on free citizens and slaves to feudalism to capitalism. What this means is that capitalism is the bourgeois revolution away from medieval-like feudalistic society with serfs and nobility to society dominated by proletariat and bourgeoisie class struggle. Marx and Engels were able to see that each change in societal structure is caused by class struggle. For example, in feudalism it was the rise of a new class of merchants and artisans in cities that became wealthy and undermined the rule of the feudal lords and led to capitalism.

For the purposes of the Russian Revolution, it is not necessary to go all the way back and recount the change from antiquity into slave society, so we shall begin with the Tsardom of Russia; a feudal state which began in 1547 and lasted until 1721.

Ivan the Terrible

The first person we must know is Ivan IV, who is commonly known as Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Terrible became the Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia in 1533 at the age of three, and became the first Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia from 1547, at the age of sixteen, until he died in 1584. Tsar is the Slavic derivative of the Latin Caesar which means emperor. He is known as the Terrible, which more closely translates in modern times to “dangerous; powerful,” because he was ruthless in subordinating the nobles to his will, executing and exiling numerous, but also for quite a few things such as codifying new laws in the Sudebnik of 1550, establishing the first feudal representative body of Russia, the Zemsky Sobor, decreasing the clergy’s influence, and introducing local self-management in rural regions—all these reforms had the intention of strengthening the state. There was no reign during the Tsardom of Russia that was more powerful than that of Ivan the Terrible.

Russia expanded from 2.8 to 5.4 million square kilometers during Ivan’s time through being at a near-constant state of war. This expansion turned Russia into a multiethnic and multireligious state, and it continues to be so to this day.

The Oprochnina

At some point, and for disputed reasons by historians, Ivan began to strongly dislike his advisers, the noble boyars, and the government of the Zemsky Sobor. Whether it was personal quibbles, policy differences or a deteriorating mental state, it caused him to split Russia into two parts: Ivan’s private domain called the oprichnina and the public realm called the zemshchina. He purposefully chose the most prosperous and important districts of Russia for the oprichnina.

In the oprichnina, Ivan had his personal agents, a private army called the oprichniki, attack boyars, merchants, and common people. He went so far as to have some of them—boyars—executed and their land and other possessions confiscated into the state.

The Genocide at Novgorod

The worst of it came to the city of Novgorod in 1570 when Ivan launched an attack that lasted five weeks and saw up to 15,000 people dying directly at the hands of the oprichniki and countless others dying as a result of the city being sacked and razed, and the outer regions seeing 90% of the arable land burned and rendered unusable for farming. The upper class of Novgorod was tortured using a variety of techniques like being roasted over fire, or being strung up by the hands and having their eyebrows singed off. Women and children were tied up and thrown from a bridge into the river where they were trapped under the sheets of ice. Those that emerged were immediately pushed back down into the water by soldiers using boat hooks, spears, lances, and axes. The famines caused by the Tsar razing a massive amount of farm land caused many of the poorest to flee into the city for shelter. Ivan ordered all of the paupers and beggars to be expelled from the city in the middle of the winter, leaving them to die from cold exposure, starvation, and disease.

The Time of Troubles & The Romanov Dynasty

It is clear to see how he became known as the Terrible when his domestic policies had such a devastating effect on the people. The oprichnina ended in 1572 and resulted in diminished trade along with peasants beginning to migrate away from Russia. Ivan’s policies are notably responsible for the Time of Troubles, a period of social struggle and civil war in Russia.

What is important to know about the Time of Troubles is that it ended with Russia being ruled by the Romanov dynasty which ruled the country for 300 years from 1613 to 1917. The Tsarist autocracy survived the Time of Troubles because the state had a very strong central bureaucracy which expanded from twenty-two government departments in 1613 to eighty by the middle of the century. This effectively allowed the state to dominate all social classes and even control the Orthodox Church.

Stenka Razin

In 1649, the Sobornoye Ulozheniye was put into law. It was a legal code that fully sanctioned serfdom and put the majority of Russian people, who were peasants, under the control of their nobles. Around this time is when the boyars formed a new nobility with the rising upper class called the dvoryantsvo. This new nobility would perform service in the military and would be given land and peasants in return. The 1649 code attached peasants to their noble, who had full control over them, and those who tried to escape were deemed state fugitives.

Stenka Razin was a Cossack who led a revolt against the state in 1670 and 1671. He formed a militia consisting of wealthy Cossacks and escaped serfs seeking freedom from the nobility. The uprising became so large that at one point it even threatened Moscow. Tsarist troops were able to defeat the rebels who had occupied major cities. Razin was publicly tortured and executed, but his confidence and the nature of his revolt shined through in the later generations of Russians.

Peter the Great

The Tsardom of Russia continued to be a fledgling empire while growing its land until Peter the Great came to be Tsar and changed Russia dramatically. Peter became Tsar in 1696 and Westernized the Tsardom of Russia. He had toured Western Europe which was beginning to go through the Age of Enlightenment of thinkers such as John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Thomas Hobbes. Peter required the nobles to wear Western clothing and shave their beards. He also banned arranged marriages and brought the Orthodox Church under state control. Military academies were established to modernize the Russian army in the Western European officer and corps style. Under Peter the Great, Russia was at war with Sweden, which we know as the Great Northern War, and eventually defeated them and annexed the Baltic coast and parts of Finland. Peter founded a new city in the annexed part of Finland which would become known as Saint Petersburg. As a celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the official title of Emperor, and the Tsardom of Russia officially became the Russian Empire which lasted for 200 years.

The Russian Empire:

Peter the Great - First Emperor of Russia

After the defeat of Sweden, Russia emerged as a great power in Europe. In just four years, from 1721 to 1725, Peter reorganized the government to more closely resemble that of the Western European style which made Russia an absolutist state in which the Emperor had complete power. He replaced the council of nobles, the boyar Duma, with a Senate, the supreme council of the state. He divided the country into provinces and furthermore into districts. Ministries were established in the new capital St. Petersburg which replaced the old government departments. He brought the Orthodox Church under the control of the state and continued the requirement of state service for all nobles. Peter the Great was very unpopular to the nobility which, once again, began regrowing their power after the death of Peter in 1725.

Catherine the Great - First Empress of Russia

The second notable leader of the Russian Empire is Catherine the Great who ruled from 1762 until 1796. She, like Peter, very much so supported the ideals of The Enlightenment. Under her reign, the nobility became much more powerful as she ended the mandatory state service for them. She was the leader during the peasant uprising in 1773, also known as Pugachev’s Rebellion after its leader Yemelyan Pugachev, as a result of the very oppressive social system which required serfs to spend almost all of their time laboring the land of their lords. The cry of the rebellion was “Hang all the landlords!” The rebels, once again, threatened to take Moscow before the rebellion was put down. This caused Catherine to form a greater alliance with the nobility.

Nicholas I - The Reactionary

After Catherine the Great, the Russian Empire would continue down a path of conservatism lasting until Alexander II. During this period of conservatism, the most notable leader is Nicholas I. Nicholas I was leader from 1825-1855 during a time when Russia was beginning to fall behind Western Europe due to the inefficiency of government, the vast isolation of people, and the prolonged continuation of serfdom. Nicholas I is well known as being a very reactionary leader who championed the doctrine “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality”. He put down the Decembrist Revolt in December 1825 which saw liberal nobles, army officers, and revolutionaries trying to install Nicholas’ brother as the monarch. A unique figure to come out of this time was Alexander Herzen.

Alexander Herzen - Early Revolutionary Ideas

Herzen was a writer who began as a liberal but increasingly adopted early forms of socialism. He was a Westernizer who believed that Russia was backwards and needed to embrace Western ideas. His writing and thinking was influential to the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the Trudoviks—all of whom we will get into shortly. Contemporary thinking of the radicals believed that he was too soft and moderate as he would not commit to violent revolution.

Alexander II - The Reformer & The Start of The Kulaks

The time of Alexander II was a period of reform for the Russian Empire. The biggest change needed when he became monarch in 1855 was the abolition of serfdom. In 1859, the population of Russia was 67 million and of that there were 23 million serfs. Alexander II issued the Edict of Emancipation in 1861 that officially outlawed serfdom. The newly freed peasants were able to buy land that the government allotted to them—this created the first kulaks, which translates to landlord. The kulaks became a class of peasants who owned land which other peasants worked on, and they played a very important role in the revolution. Kulaks were still peasants in the social hierarchy, but they owned land and had power over the majority of peasants which made them become quite wealthy, and therefore more politically influential. Even though serfdom had been abolished, the majority of the population were still peasants whom had seen their noble oppressors replaced with landowning kulak oppressors. The kulaks were conservative and reactionary in nature.

The Russian Nihilist Movement

During the 1860s, the Russian Nihilist movement took shape and influenced the thinking of that time. The Nihilists preferred the destruction of human institutions and laws which they deemed artificial and corrupt. Russian Nihilism and the movement believed that the world lacks comprehensible meaning, objective truth, or value. They questioned the outdated values of the Russian establishment and, under the influence of the Decembrists of 1825, became dedicated to reforming the Russian political system.

The most important thinker of this time is Nikolay Chernyshevsky who is known as a utopian socialist and the leading theoretician of the Russian nihilist and Narodniki movements—his most famous work is What Is to be Done?, a novel about a woman who escapes the control of her family and an arranged marriage by seeking economic independence through socialist cooperatives based on peasant and agricultural communes that are working towards industrialization. Chernyshevsky inspired all kinds of revolutionaries in Russia, and beyond, for generations. Vladimir Lenin, Georgi Plekhanov, Peter Kropotkin, and Rosa Luxemburg were all very impressed with the work.

The Nihilist and Anarcho-Communist Sergey Nechayev wrote the Catechism of a Revolutionary, a manifesto which is a manual for the formation and conduct of secret societies. It was written in 1869 and is by far the most radical document of its time in Russia. Nobody knows for certain how or even if Mikhail Bakunin, the revolutionary Anarchist, had input on the work or if it was solely the ideas of Nechayev. In the Catechism, he outlines a Jacobin style program of organization and discipline in which the revolutionary should be dedicated completely to the cause of revolution and willing to go through any crime or treason to bring about the downfall of the establishment. This program became one of the leading convictions of the radical movement in Russia.

The Narodniks

The Nihilists were at the forefront of the Narodnik movement. The Narodniks were the members of a movement calling for revolutionary agitation against tsarism. The Narodism ideology was a form of agrarian populism. Their campaign of “Going to the People” in 1874 was largely inspired by two Russian theorists: Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Lavrov. Alexander Herzen is known as the founder of the Russian populist movement and his work was also influential to the Narodniks. The Going to the People campaign was largely targeted at the peasantry in efforts to form and inspire a mass movement that could overthrow the ruling class.

The followers of Pyotr Lavrov, called Lavrovists, advocated for a long period of peaceful propaganda and agitation among the peasantry while the followers of Mikhail Bakunin, simply called buntars or revolutionaries, believed that it was necessary to facilitate active revolutionary agitation in the peasants. Two of the most powerful and active organizations during the time of the Narodniks were the Land and Liberty and the Circle of Tchaikovsky.

The Circle of Tchaikovsky was both a revolutionary organization and Russian literary society for self-education. The Circle formed in 1868 and was named after Nikolai Tchaikovsky, a prominent member of the organization. It was founded in St. Petersburg by students as a group opposed to the violent methods of revolution suggested by Sergey Nechayev, the author of Catechism of a Revolutionary. The initial purpose was to share literature and knowledge that had banned in the Russian Empire. One of the more prominent students was Mark Natanson who was also a member of Land and Liberty. Eventually the group began uniting the students of other cities, and conducting propaganda activities among workers and peasants to incite a revolution. The Circle organized the printing, publishing, and distribution of scientific and revolutionary literature that had been banned. Among these works was the first volume of Marx’s Capital, and books by others including Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Alexander Herzen, Pyotr Lavrov, Ferdinand Lassalle, and John Stuart Mill. Important members of the Circle include Peter Kropotkin, Sophia Perovskaya, and Pavel Axelrod. In 1872, the Circle began organizing cells of workers with the purpose of training them in propagandizing the countryside. The last activities that the Circle of Tchaikovsky took part in was the Going to the People campaign where they brought revolutionary propaganda directly to the peasantry. By 1874, most members of the group were arrested and later prosecuted, so the group disbanded.

The Land and Liberty organization went through two periods of activity: the first between 1861-1864 and the second, and more influential, between 1876-1879. The second composition included three important revolutionaries—Mark Natanson, Sophia Perovskaya, and Georgi Plekhanov. The most important of those three is Georgi Plekhanov who is known as the father of Russian Marxism. The group led student movements, secretly published and distributed revolutionary literature, conducted propaganda and agitated workers, and took part in several strikes. Land and Liberty had disagreements between members and split into factions that supported inciting the peasantry in the countryside and those that supported a transition to formal political struggle. Plekhanov was of the belief that the peasants in the countryside needed to be agitated to the point of revolt and he formally left the group in June of 1879. In August of 1879, the group broke apart into two independent organizations: the revolutionaries who supported inciting the peasantry and acts of terror throughout the state, called the People’s Will or Narodnaya Volya, and the revolutionaries who supported more formal political measures, called the Black Repartition.

The Going to the People campaign was largely a student-led effort in which many of them left their universities to go live and work among the peasantry. They were so enamored with the ideas of the campaign that they took up the dress of the peasantry and worked as manual laborers as a way to engage the local population. The campaign involved many women; most notably Catherine Breshkovsky, who went on to be one of the founders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Vera Figner, who founded the Moscow Circle which succeeded the Circle of Tchaikovsky, and Sophia Perovskaya, who was a founding member of Land and Liberty. Going to the People turned out to be largely disappointing in accomplishing its goal of agitating and bringing revolutionary ideas to the peasantry. The Narodniks failed for a few main reasons: the peasantry was largely supportive of Alexander II due to the Emancipation of 1861, the Narodniki did not capture the true revolutionary that is in every oppressed person, for they simply believed that education would be enough to agitate the peasantry to the point of revolution, and the Narodnaya Volya, the People’s Will, assassinated Alexander II which set revolution back years as the peasantry was generally horrified and against the murder. In the end, the Narodniks saw the peasantry as the revolutionary class, but believed that they could not lead themselves to it, and, as such, needed members of the Russian intelligentsia to lead them in the struggle. After the assassination of Alexander II, the majority of the leaders of the Narodnik movement in the Narodnaya Volya were hanged which severely damaged the movement, but it persisted on a smaller scale. The movement later reemerged through the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in the early twentieth century and both its ideas and actions helped make way for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

The Emancipation of Labour

After leaving the Land and Liberty, Georgi Plekhanov formed the Emancipation of Labour—the first Russian Marxist group—in 1883. Other founding members are Vasily Ignatov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and Pavel Axelrod. The group was formed in exile from Russia in Geneva. Emancipation of Labour published the first Russian translations of many of Marx’s works and distributed them. We can view the Emancipation of Labour as an adversary to the Narodniks in left-wing politics of the Russian Empire, the socialist movement of the EOL compared to the populism of the Narodniks. Plekhanov drafted and published two programs for the group in 1883 and 1885. These programs were a building block to the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The group was present at the first congress of the Second International in 1889, and represented the Russian Social Democrats. The Emancipation of Labour influenced a group inside Russia known as the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, formed by Vladimir Lenin and a few others in St. Petersburg in 1895.

The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class

The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (LSEWC), was founded in St. Petersburg by Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, and a few others in 1895. The group mainly agitated workers by distributing socialist leaflets, supporting workers’ strikes, and infiltrating workers’ education classes to teach them the rudiments of Marxism in St. Petersburg. In December 1895, the LSEWC had prepared the first issue of their newspaper Rabocheye Delo, or The Workers’ Cause, but before it was released six of the leading League members were arrested during a raid on the house where they’d worked on their newspaper. Among them, Lenin was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 15 months in jail and thereafter three years of exile in Siberia.

Lenin married his fiancée, Nadezhda Krupskaya, in Siberia and continued to guide the league. More members were arrested in 1896, but the group remained at large and had great success in organizing a strike of textile workers in St. Petersburg in May 1896. The strike lasted three weeks and spread to twenty factories and was considered the greatest strike in Russian history up to that point.

At the end of the 1890s, the League was transporting illegal literature through Finland and Sweden. They were helped in organizing transportation efforts by Hjalmar Branting, a Swedish Social-Democrat who would go on to be the Prime Minister of Sweden three times. The group, like the Emancipation of Labour, contributed to the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

Lenin - The Early Years of a Great Revolutionary

Vladimir Lenin was born in 1870. He was the third of six children and his family was very tight-knit. His father was the son of a serf, but became a schoolteacher and eventually rose to the position of inspector of schools. His parents were supporters of the monarchy and used education as a way to influence the children into non-revolutionary ways of life. Lenin was intellectually gifted and finished his studies at the gymnasium as the first ranked student. He learned Latin and Greek as a teenager and taught Latin to his older sister, Anna.

His father, Ilya, died of a brain hemorrhage in January 1886, when Vladimir was just 15 years old. He did not react well to his father’s passing and became confrontational for a while. It is believed that this event is what caused Vladimir to renounce his belief in God and become atheist.

It was around this same time that Lenin’s older brother, Aleksandr, but whom they called Sacha, was attending Saint Petersburg University where he received a gold medal for his dissertation in biology, and was elected to the university’s Scientific-Literary Society. Here Sacha became involved in political activity and agitation against the monarchy. Sacha studied the writings of Nikolay Dobrolyubov, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, and Karl Marx. He, soon after, joined the socialist Narodnaya Volya where he was selected to construct bombs for the assassination of Alexander III. He and his co-conspirators were arrested and hanged in May 1887 when Lenin was 17 years old.

The deaths of his father and brother unquestionably had an influence on Vladimir taking the path of the revolutionary.

Lenin continued studying and excelling even after his family was shunned. The headmaster at the gymnasium Lenin attended was Fedor Kerensky, the father of Alexander Kerensky. Fedor helped Lenin attend university by writing a report on him calling Lenin the “model student”. Lenin was able to attend Kazan University where he studied law. At Kazan, he became interested in radical ideas, met Lazar Bogoraz, a revolutionary who had association with others intent on reviving the Narodnaya Volya. In December 1887, Lenin attended a demonstration calling for the relegalization of student societies, and was arrested along with 100 others. The university accused him of being a ringleader of the protest and expelled him; the Ministry of Internal Affairs began police surveillance on him as he was effectively exiled to his grandfather’s estate in the village of Kokushkino.

It was during this period that he voraciously read revolutionary literature, especially Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? It was likely this time of forced idleness that sealed the decision for Lenin to choose a revolutionary life. One theorist that doesn’t usually get mentioned when talking about Lenin is Pyotr Tkachev, who wrote about the idea of a revolutionary vanguard and influenced the Narodnaya Volya. He is mentioned few times in Lenin’s writings and the most significant reference to him is a negative one, but it is possible that Lenin came to develop his own idea for the revolutionary vanguard from the basis of Tkachev’s.

Lenin was eventually able to return to Kazan in the fall of 1888 where he joined a secret revolutionary circle with M.P. Chetvergova, and discovered Marx’s Capital. He became increasingly enamored with Marxism.

His mother moved with him to the city of Samara in September 1889 for the winter. Here he came in contact with Alexei Skylarenko and joined his discussion circle. He fully adopted Marxism and began translating Marx’s and Engels’ Communist Manifesto into Russian. He also began reading the works of Georgi Plekhanov and found himself in agreement with Plekhanov’s argument that Russia was in the midst of changing from feudalism to capitalism. During this time in Samara, Lenin became skeptical of the militant tactics of the Narodnaya Volya and debated against its effectiveness.

In 1890, after much petitioning by his mother Maria, Vladimir was able to take his law exams which he passed in November 1891 with the equivalent of a first-class degree with honors. Lenin was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in Samara in 1892. His clients consisted mostly of poor peasants and artisans. During this time he began to loathe the class bias of the legal system, a hatred he carried for the rest of his life. Working as a lawyer gave him the perfect cover for radical politics, to which he devoted the bulk of his free time. He remained an active member of Skylarenko’s discussion circle and began formulating ideas about the applicability of Marxism to Russia.

Lenin moved to St. Petersburg in August 1893 where he worked as a public defender, and associated with revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895, his comrades sent him abroad to meet with Russian revolutionary exiles in Western Europe, chief among them was the father of Russian Marxism, Georgy Plekhanov. When Lenin returned he and other Marxists, including future rival Julius Martov, formed the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.

We know from a pamphlet written by Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, that by the time he moved to St. Petersburg, he had a tremendous knowledge of the works of Marx and Engels, more so than the majority of Marxists at that time. Lenin was proficient in foreign languages so he was able to read many of their works in the native German and he translated the most important parts of their work into Russian for himself. The first big work published by Lenin, “Who are the Friends of the People?” in 1894 featured quotes from the Communist Manifesto, Critique of Political Economy, Poverty of Philosophy, German Ideology, “The Letter of Marx to Ruge” of 1843, Anti-Dühring, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Alexander III - The Return to Reactionism

Alexander III, who became tsar in 1881, was an incredibly reactionary leader who was most interested in consolidating his own autocratic power. He returned to the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” of his grandfather Nicholas I. Alexander weakened the power of the elected local administrative bodies and brought peasant communes under the supervision of government appointed land-owning proprietors called “land captains”. His main advisor was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who influenced and helped Alexander champion all of the reactionary reforms during his rule. His reign also saw the Russian famine of 1891-92, referred to as the Tsar’s Famine because it was caused in large part by Alexander selling large shares of grain to foreign countries, and an epidemic of cholera directly after which resulted in a death count between 375,000 and 500,000. Alexander III adopted the state policy of Russification, which he enforced through making Russian the only language taught throughout the empire and dissolving German, Polish, and Swedish religious and cultural institutions. He was very hostile to Jewish people and implemented the May Laws of 1882, which encouraged openly anti-Jewish sentiment and riots against them. He also banned Jews from living in rural areas and even shtetls, small towns made up predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews. Furthermore, he limited the occupations that Jewish people could do.

Some of the remaining members of the Narodnaya Volya movement were encouraged by the success of their assassination of Alexander II, and they began planning the murder of Alexander III. The group planned to assassinate Alexander III by throwing a bomb into his carriage. The main ideologist and bomb-maker of the group was Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov who, along with four comrades, was hanged in 1887 at the age of 21. Aleksandr was the older brother of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who later became known as Vladimir Lenin.

Alexander III finished his reign and died of disease in 1894.

Nicholas II - The Last Emperor

Nicholas II, son of Alexander III, became emperor in 1894. This was a time when the Industrial Revolution was beginning its transformation of Russia, and creating the conditions that would bring about the Russian Revolution. His administration is perceived for both suppression and inaction at times. Nicholas II was supportive of some economic and political reforms, but ultimately was committed to keeping the autocratic rule strong.

He was leader during Bloody Sunday, the Revolution of 1905, the Duma system, the Coup of 1907, World War I, the February Revolution of 1917, and a short part of the Provisional Government. Nicholas II made a number of decisions that put the nail in the empirical coffin—the biggest one probably being his decision to continue fighting in WWI even as Russia was suffering food shortages and amounting heavy losses which turned parts of the military against him.

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The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

Eventually, in 1898, the time was deemed proper for the formation of a revolutionary Russian Marxist party that would bring together all the Marxist groups in Russia and those abroad. The First Congress and the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) took place at a secret conference in Minsk in March 1898. There were nine official delegates including those from the Jewish Labour Bund, the “Worker’s Newspaper”, and the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. They developed a program that was based strictly on Marx’s and Engels’ theories. The most important being that the true revolutionary potential lay with the industrial working class, the proletariat, that, although, made up only 3% of Russia’s population at the time, was growing in number and revolutionary fervor. The First Congress is considered a failure, not because of ideological disagreements or lack of party program and direction, but because five of the nine delegates were arrested by the secret police within a month of the Congress convening. As a result, the RSDLP became dormant for a period of time as Lenin left Russia.

Lenin left Russia and moved to Munich, and, later on, London where he joined with Plekhanov, and others, in forming Iskra—the Spark—the political newspaper which became the official organ of the RSDLP. Iskra quickly became the largest secret Russian newspaper since the middle of the nineteenth century. It also allowed for the establishment of socialist networks throughout Russia and beyond, as these networks were used to distribute Iskra to workers. The paper ran polemics against the so called “economists” who argued purely for trade union activity and non-revolutionary means of reform, and against the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were actually the ideological successors of the Narodniks and were populists—not socialists—although he did accept their belief that the peasantry held revolutionary potential. Iskra had a vital role in agitating the urban proletariat and bringing to them the spirit of revolution. It was through editing the paper that Vladimir began using the pseudonym “Lenin”.

Lenin wrote the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement in 1902. In it, he argues that trade union activity alone would not be able to challenge capitalism and the aristocracy. He also advocates for a highly disciplined and centralized vanguard party consisting of professional revolutionaries that would be able to lead the proletariat in the struggle and effectively raise the average worker to the level of the revolutionary. It is one of the most important revolutionary works ever written and, in my opinion, the most important of the October Revolution.

By 1903, it was deemed safe for the RSDLP to convene a second congress. They met originally in Brussels at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in exile in July 1903, but were met with too much unneeded attention from Belgian authorities, so the Congress moved to London where they had 37 sessions and 51 delegates. One of the issues was about whether or not Iskra should be the organ, or representation, of the party abroad—33 supported the newspaper, 5 backed the Bund, 2 were economists who disagreed with the paper, and 6 delegates abstained.

It was during the fifteenth session that the delegates voted in favor of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, state power being in the hands of the proletariat where it can suppress bourgeois resistance.

The 22nd session is when the most major disagreement occurred, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed on the wording that defined party membership. Martov wanted a party member to be someone with “regular personal association under the direction of one of the party organisations”, while Lenin proposed a member should be someone “who recognizes the party’s program and supports it by material means and by personal participation in one of the party organisations”. It was a dispute over whether the party should be big-tent, loose membership or whether it should be a party of professional revolutionaries. Plekhanov originally supported Lenin, and later on became a harsh critic of him, while Leon Trotsky supported Martov. The congress voted 28-23 in favor of Martov, but that support included the five Bundists and two economists who would step away from the Congress and leave the RSDLP altogether. After they left, Lenin’s faction had the majority and as such they began calling themselves the Bolsheviks which translates to majority, and Martov began calling his faction the Mensheviks, or minority. They also voted to cut the editorial board of Iskra from six members down to three: Lenin, Plekhanov, and Martov. However, Georgi Plekhanov, the Chairman of Iskra, later decided to seek reconciliation with the party members that had chosen to abstain from the vote to reduce the editorial board to three; he nominated three members, all of them Mensheviks, and Lenin resigned as Editor which left Iskra firmly in the hands of the Mensheviks, and began the divide between Lenin and Plekhanov.

Bloody Sunday and the Russian Revolution of 1905

Georgy Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest who came to be known for his abilities as an orator and organizer of the working and lower classes in Russian cities. Father Gapon, as he was called, became the head of the Assembly, an organization of factory and mill workers in the city of St. Petersburg, in 1903. He was not a socialist, but he believed that the intelligentsia and the clergy had to foster a “sober, Christian view of life” and, through mutual aid, “improve the lives and working conditions of laborers without violent disruption of law and order in their relations with employers and the government.”

The Assembly had made the decision to draft a petition that shined light on the problems and opinions of workers and called for improved working conditions, fairer wages, and reducing the workday to eight hours. The political demands included an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which Russia ended up losing, and a call for universal suffrage. At this point, the working masses, whether they were proletarian or peasant, were still firmly traditional and conservative which led them to still have support for the tsar as they believed that if the tsar was made aware of their conditions then he would do his best to improve them. Gapon and workers set out to deliver the petition Tsar Alexander II at the Winter Palace on January 22nd, 1905; this march was not supported by the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, or even the Socialist-Revolutionaries as they all believed it lacked political demands.

Alexander II had left the day before, but the crowds of striking workers and their families did not know that. An unknown number of workers were apart of the crowds, but fair estimates number them around 5,000. Soldiers had been brought in by train and were placed across the city—they numbered close to 10,000 and included Cossacks, cavalry units. Officers had been ordered to stop the crowds before they reached the palace square but the reaction was inconsistent. Some officers allowed smaller groups to proceed marching, others called on them to disperse, and many ordered their troops to fire indiscriminately into the crowds without warning. Cossacks and other cavalry units charged the crowd cutting them down with their sabres or trampling them with their horses.

An unknown number of people died that day, moderate estimates average close to 1,000 killed or wounded. The Tsarist records put 96 dead and 333 injured although this is agreed to be grossly underestimated. The immediate effect of Bloody Sunday was a mass strike movement that spread through large cities across the empire: in Moscow, Warsaw, Riga, and many other cities. Over 400,000 people participated in January alone.

The most significant effect was the change in how the Russian peasantry and working class perceived the tsar. They no longer looked at him as a hero of the people, but the same as the rest of the bureaucrats that had made their lives miserable. This, without a doubt, paved the way for the Revolutions of 1917.

Widespread demonstrations and strikes spread all over the Empire and were brutally put down by soldiers. In June, sailors on the Potemkin battleship mutinied. In October, a railway strike turned into a general strike in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The workers established the short lived Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Delegates consisting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks to represent and advocate for them politically. The influence of opposition movements consisting of liberals, progressives, populists, and socialists grew exponentially, with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party taking part in strikes and seeing positive reception from the working class and peasantry.

In March 1905, Nicholas II was presented with demands for a legislative State Duma, which became the legislative body of Russia from 1905 to 1917. He initially only granted the Duma consultative power, but the response from the masses was to continue their strikes, demonstrations, and rebellion so he had no choice but to grant the Duma legislative power by signing the October Manifesto in October 1905. It granted basic civil rights, allowed for political parties to form, and brought Russia closer to universal suffrage.

The manifesto satisfied the liberal elements of Russia, but the RSDLP and the Socialist-Revolutionaries didn’t care for the election and called on armed struggle to destroy the Empire.

The final event of the Revolution of 1905 was the Moscow uprising. Lenin had returned to Russia in late November and had immediately called for an armed uprising. The workers in the city were provoked through the arrest of the Saint Petersburg Soviet on the 3rd of December. That day, about 150 members of Moscow’s worker squads occupied Fidler’s technical school which was the worker’s ministry of war. They waved a white flag, but troops proceeded to shell the building with artillery from the afternoon until the early morning of the following day—this is when most of the deaths occurred.

After this, the people of Moscow called for a general strike on December 7th, it remained peaceful until the 9th. Four Soviets coordinated the uprising which was based in the revolutionary Maxim Gorky’s apartment where they made food and bombs. Workers were armed with guns and constructed barricades throughout the city. On December 10th, the Socialist-Revolutionaries bombed the Moscow headquarters for the Okhrana, the Empire’s secret police force. The Bolsheviks handed out pamphlets on street fighting to workers on the 11th—they also sent pamphlets stating that their priority was to hand power of the city over to the people, establish an elected government in the occupied parts of the city, and introduce an 8-hour workday to prove that their system of governance would protect the rights and freedoms of people better than the monarchy or Duma.

By December 19th, the rebels laid down their arms and returned to work. In total, 35 soldiers died and 1,059 rebels were killed, including 86 children and 137 women. Less than a year after this, the commander who put down the rebellion would be assassinated.

This marked the end of the rebellions in 1905. 1906 and 1907 saw a rise in overt political violence and a decline in workers strikes. As a result of the relaxed freedom of speech measures of the October Manifesto, Soviets began to rise and take over unions while other political parties such as the Constitutional Democrats, or Cadets, and the Octobrists formed.

Nicholas II enacted the Fundamental Laws, known as the Russian Constitution of 1906, as a last resort to preserve power and control. It created a bicameral Russian parliament who had to approve all laws. It was composed of an upper house, the State Council, and a lower house, the State Duma. The tsar appointed half of the members of the State Council while the other half were elected by governmental, clerical, and commercial interests. Members of the Duma were elected indirectly through a class-based weighted system. The tsar had an absolute veto ability over any legislation, and could dismiss the Duma whenever he suited. He could also issue decrees, think Executive Orders, during the Duma’s absence.

Many historians consider the Coup of June 1907, also known as Stolypin’s Coup, the official end of the Revolution of 1905. It came as a result of the first two Dumas that ended up being more radical than the Tsarist government had hoped for. The First Duma introduced agrarian reform bills that the monarchy and kulaks fiercely opposed—all of the socialists had boycotted the First Duma elections, which meant that this reform was introduced by a moderate legislature. In the Second Duma, about 20% of the seats were occupied by Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Popular Socialists. The imperial government was unable to work with the Duma, so, as a result, Tsarist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin engineered the coup as an excuse to dissolve it.

The pretext for the coup came as a result of the RSDLP agitating revolutionary ideas among Tsarist soldiers. On June 2, the government demanded that the Duma hand over 55 Social Democratic members, deputies who, as all members of the Duma, had been guaranteed parliamentary immunity through the Fundamental Law, unless the Duma decided to strip it away. The government did not wait for the Duma to set up a commission to investigate the accusations and arrested the members without allowing the Duma to perform its parliamentary duty. On June 3, the Duma was dissolved, and later that same day, a new electoral law was put into effect which gave the wealthy landlords, the kulaks, sixty percent of Duma electors, peasants were given twenty-two percent, merchants and artisans had fifteen percent, and just three percent of electors went to the urban proletariat.

The reception to this was largely negative because Nicholas II had contradicted the constitution by changing it which was not allowed under the constitutional code. It made it clear that the tsar still believed that his authority was autocratic and above the authority of all other institutions. This also made it quite obvious that Nicholas II did not believe in constitutionalism and Russia remained an autocracy with the facade of democracy. This effectively put an end to the Revolution of 1905, as revolutionary activity stopped for a period, and ensured that all future Dumas were elitist and controlled by the higher classes of Russian society.

The Split of the Social Democrats

Although the RSDLP saw an internal division in 1903, it was still one party with two factions. The Bolsheviks came to believe, after 1903, that the proletariat, backed by the peasantry, were the only classes capable of carrying out revolution. The Mensheviks increasingly sided closer to the bourgeoisie as they believed that the proletariat and peasantry must seek out enlightened, liberal bourgeois members to carry out revolutionary tasks. Simply put, Bolsheviks believed that the revolution would have to be carried out without direct participation from the bourgeoisie. The Third Party Congress consisted of only Bolsheviks.

The Fourth Party Congress, also known as the Unity Congress, was held in Stockholm in 1906. As the name suggests, the outcome was a short lived formal reunification of the two factions with the Mensheviks in the majority. The differences in their views, however, were made quite apparent during the Congress.

The Fifth Party Congress was held in London in 1907. At this Congress, the Bolsheviks consolidated power and debated strategy on communist revolution. The major issues debated were whether or not they should prepare for an armed uprising with the Bolsheviks in favor, and the Mensheviks opposed; opting instead to favor the creation of a Workers’ Congress in the style of Western-European Social Democrats, the Bolsheviks won this debate. Another major issue was the expropriations that financially supported their political activity. The Bolsheviks supported the continuation of these expropriations, robberies, while the Mensheviks continued to advocate for an end to all violent activity. The Mensheviks won this debate and these acts were condemned by the party, but just weeks later, in Tbilisi, Georgia, a bank robbery occurred that was planned by Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, with Stalin possibly participating in the robbery himself. This further split the party.

The Third Duma, active from 1907 to 1912, consisted of just 19 members under the new electoral laws. The Fourth Duma, from 1912 to 1917, saw a complete split in the RSDLP, with the Mensheviks having seven members, while the Bolsheviks had six.

From 1908 on, both factions faced further internal splits. The Mensheviks split into two factions: the “Pro-Party Mensheviks” led by Georgi Plekhanov, that wished to maintain both illegal underground revolutionary activity as well as legal work; and the “Liquidators”, advocated for by Pavel Axelrod, Fyodor Dan, and Nikolay Chkheidze, that wished to only pursue legal activity and rebuke all illegal and underground revolutionary work.

The Bolsheviks split into three factions: the Proletary group led by Lenin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev, who fought fiercely against all other sub-factions and wanted to bring about revolution by any means; the Ultimatists led by Grigory Aleksinsky, who wanted to issue ultimatums to RSDLP Duma deputies to follow the party line or resign; and the Recallists led by Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky, who called for a recall of all the RSDLP Duma deputies, a boycott of all legal work, and an increase in radical underground and illegal work.

Lenin’s Proletary group called a conference in Prague in 1912 that saw the expelling of liquidators, ultimatists, and recallists from the RSDLP, and the creation of a separate party known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), while the Mensheviks established the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks), sometimes referred to as the RSDLP (United). The RSDLP officially split into two separate parties and would never again be united as, from 1912 to 1917, the two parties would be fierce opponents of one another.

World War I

At the onset of WWI, the Russian army was under-equipped and officers were poor leaders. The Russians saw enormous casualties. By 1915, morale was poor and many recruits were sent to the front without guns. At the same time, the tsar refused to work with the Duma, and began listening more and more to Grigori Rasputin.

During the war, millions of refugees fled Russia. Russia had seen a surge in urban proletariat workers as they were necessary for the war effort. The military faced repeated failures. The bureaucracy was showing its ineptness to all of Russia.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had taken a stance of social chauvinism in support of the war, while Lenin and the Bolsheviks called out the war for what it was; an predatory fight designed to annex resources and land which would be subjugated to the whims of the ruling class. Lenin was very correct in his rebukes against WWI as time has shown.

By 1916, the impact of the war was taking a toll on all Russians with massive shortages of food and fuel, an increasing number of deaths, and rising inflation. The number of strikes from the urban proletariat increased significantly during WWI, and the peasants, who had been patiently waiting for land reform for over fifty years, were becoming highly agitated against the government. Distrust was even forming in the elites after Rasputin became increasingly more influential to the tsar. In the eyes of the majority of Russian society, the monarchy was failing and quickly losing much of its support.

The February Revolution of 1917

Over 300 years of Romanov dynasty rule came to an end in 1917. The war was continuing to lower morale throughout all of Russian society and the monarchy showed no appearance of bringing it to an end in Russia. All of this culminated in the February Revolution of 1917.

The Revolution began on February 23 when working-class women took to the streets of Saint Petersburg to protest against food shortages and rising bread costs. Protests were a common occurrence during the war, but this particular protest was encouraged by groups in the Russian underground, mainly the Bolsheviks, and saw large crowds of men and women taking up the city center.

At first, Cossacks and other military and police units tried to disperse the crowds but didn’t have much success. By February 27, Saint Petersburg had slowed to a standstill and key units of the military had abdicated to the side of the protestors. Together they seized weapons from the city’s armories and arrested Tsarist ministers on the 28th. Tsar Nicholas II, at first, wanted to retake Saint Petersburg, but he was convinced by the Duma and his own generals that the only way to achieve internal peace was to abdicate the throne. He abdicated on March 2, 1917; that same day, the provisional committee of the State Duma, formed of moderate and liberal politicians, declared itself the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government

The cabinet positions of the Provisional Government were chosen by Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the Constitutional Democrat, or Cadet, Party. The Provisional Government immediately asked the St. Petersburg Soviet for its support. The Soviet responded by sending an eight point list for its conditions of support, which was neither accepted nor rejected, but put into consideration. This resulted in a supervisory committee called the Contact Commission forming as the organ of communication between the Executive Committee of the St. Petersburg Soviet and the Provisional Government. Its main goal was to influence and lobby the Provisional Government, but it mostly played a reformist role and formed a dual power vacuum in Russia.

The St. Petersburg Soviet was dominated by Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and, as such, was open to working with bourgeois liberals in their “fight for socialism”, which included supporting liberal reform and advancing the bourgeoisie before the revolution.

The Provisional Government assumed power but remained, as the name suggests, weak. Its continued support of the war effort only brought more and more outrage from Russian citizens who were tired, hungry, and poor as a result of the continuation of the imperialist war. This reached a breaking point in April as Lenin returned from exile.

The April Theses

Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg in early April. He subsequently gave his “April Theses”, which outlined new Bolshevik policies for revolution. The Theses are a ten-step program for the Bolsheviks under the conditions of 1917 Russia. In the Theses, Lenin:

• Condemns the Provisional Government as bourgeois and urges no support for it. He calls for revolutionary defeatism to bring an end to WWI.

• Asserts that Russia is passing from the first stage of revolution, which, as a result of insufficient class consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to the second stage, in which power must be placed in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of peasants.

• Recognizes that Bolsheviks are the minority throughout most of the Soviets against a “bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements”

• Calls for a republic of Soviets of Workers, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies to be formed instead of a parliamentary republic.

• Calls for abolition of the police, army, and the bureaucracy, and that the salaries of all officials should not exceed the average wage of a worker.

• Calls for an increased importance placed on the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies, the confiscation of all landed estates, and nationalization of all lands in the hands of the state. Model farms to be set up on each large estate under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public to use.

• Calls for the immediate union of all banks into a single national bank under control of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.

• States that the immediate task of the Bolsheviks is not to introduce socialism, but to bring social production and the distribution of products under control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.

• Lists three immediate party tasks: 1) alteration of the official party stance on the imperialist war to that of revolutionary defeatism, 2) alteration of the party view of the state to demand a commune state, and 3) the changing of the party name to disassociate with the social chauvinist European social democrats to the Communist Party.

• Calls for a new revolutionary International—this became the Communist International, or Third International, and was formed in 1919.

Not all Bolsheviks supported the Theses, but the majority did, and as such it became the official program of the new Russian Communist Party.

The April Crisis

The April Crisis was the result of unpopular foreign policy in regards to the prolongation of war in Russia. As we know, the war effort was incredibly unpopular to the vast majority of Russians, but the Provisional Government did not do enough to denounce the war nor try to bring about peace to Russia.

Pavel Milyukov, the one who decided the cabinet positions of the Provisional Government, and made himself Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent a telegram to the Allied governments on April 18 stating that Russia was prepared to fight to a “victorious end”, and that Russia had the right to multiple parts of modern-day Turkey.

Newspapers printed the Milyukov note on April 20. It united fringe groups of Russians against the Provisional Government. Vast numbers of soldiers and workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow where they demonstrated both violently and nonviolently. Skirmishes occurred between pro and anti-government activists and armed soldiers occupied streets. The protestors believed that the Government had failed to represent their desires. There was a faint, yet important, call for Soviet power during the April Crisis, which foreshadowed the events of October and beyond.

In response to the mounting unrest, Milyukov and the Minister of War, Alexandr Guchkov, resigned from their positions. They were replaced by six members of the socialist current: Alexander Kerensky, new War and Naval Minister, Matvei Skobelev, new Minister of Labour, Victor Chernov, Minister of Agriculture, ? Pesheklionov, Minister of Food Supply, Irakli Tsereteli, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, and ? Pereverzev, new Minister of Justice. The Bolsheviks continued their unwavering stance against Russian involvement in the war, and became the only socialist party that refused participation in the bourgeois coalition government. This made them rise in popularity among the masses, especially among soldiers and workers who desperately wanted to see an end to the war.

The July Days

The Coalition Government had a short period of respite between periods of unrest before the July Days occurred. The July Days were a four day period consisting of spontaneous armed demonstrations by soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers against the Coalition Government. These demonstrations were more violent than the previous ones.

In the middle of June, Alexander Kerensky, the new War Minister, authorized a new military offensive against the Austro-Hungarian and German forces. The offensive took place from June 18 to July 6. German troops began a counteroffensive that brought devastation to the Russian army. It was met with extreme discontent back home. Instead of creating support for the Coalition Government, it bred dissatisfaction as the people were tired of the war and the ungodly amount of casualties.

On July 2, facing backlash for the failures of the government, four ministers belonging to the Cadet Party stepped away from the Coalition Government in protest. Georgy Lvov, the first Prime Minister of the Russian Republic, announced that he’d be resigning on July 7.

On July 3, 1917, soldiers of the First Machine Gun Regiment led demonstrations through St. Petersburg. They marched to the Tauride Palace, the head of the Soviet, while chanting the Bolshevik slogan “All Power to the Soviets”. The soldiers commandeered vehicles and fired their weapons into the air throughout the day.

The protests continued throughout the following day with even more soldiers and workers joining the demonstration. They became more violent as they broke into apartments and shot out windows. They demanded to see a government official and the Soviet leaders sent out Victor Chernov. He tried to calm the crowd but was seized and held hostage until Leon Trotsky convinced the crowd to release him. Lenin did not offer Bolshevik support but gave them a speech. Without leadership to support them, the crowds of protestors soon dispersed.

The Soviet leaders called a meeting where they blamed the Bolsheviks for the demonstrations. However, there is no conclusive evidence that the Bolsheviks actually orchestrated the protests. What we do know is that they openly refused to support the demonstrations.

Afterwards, military authorities sent soldiers to arrest the demonstrators leading to clashes in the streets and an unknown death toll. Both the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supported punishment against the protestors. On July 5-6, the offices and printing plant for the newspaper Pravda, and the headquarters for the Bolshevik Central Committee were destroyed. On July 7, the Coalition Government issued an arrest warrant for Lenin, who was forced to leave Russia once again and take temporary exile in Finland.

On July 8, Alexander Kerensky became the second Prime Minister of the Russian Republic. He wanted to reestablish the central government’s authority over Russia. One of his first goals was to arrest Bolshevik leaders for their alleged responsibility of the July Days. Trotsky, Kamenev, and Lunacharsky were all arrested weren’t released until the end of August 1917.

Kerensky tightened civil liberties and reinstated the death penalty for soldiers that rebelled, deserted, or were otherwise disorderly on the Eastern Front. On July 18, he moved the new government ministers into the Winter Palace and moved the Soviet away to the Smolny Institute.

Bolshevik power was temporarily weakened as a result of the July Days. The government restructured to end the dual power vacuum of the Coalition Government. The new government was made entirely of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who became more reactionary and conservative under the leadership of Kerensky.

The Kornilov Affair

The Kornilov affair was an attempted coup by the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov. It is a confusing event with many of the details and motivations conflicted as a result of the confusion of all parties involved.

Kornilov had been made commander by Kerensky immediately after he became prime minister. Kornilov was a strict anti-revolutionary, and, more specifically, anti-Bolshevik. Kornilov had organized a force to “restore peace in St. Petersburg”, but it is unknown whether or not he had the intention of installing a military dictatorship afterward. What is known is that Kerensky had no intention of allowing Kornilov to enter the capital with a military force out of fear of the possibility.

On August 27, Kerensky sent a telegram directing him to return to St. Petersburg, but Kornilov had already gathered a force and was on his way—the telegram likely hastened his arrival as he believed that Bolsheviks had taken control of the city.

The government knew that an attack was coming so they took the measure of creating the Committee for Struggle Against Counterrevolution on August 28. The committee included several notable Bolsheviks who’d been released from prison to help organize the defense of the city. The Bolshevik-led Red Guard, made up of workers and soldiers as a paramilitary force and prerequisite to the Red Army, were quick to take action in the city.

The Soviet, now including the Bolsheviks, worked with rail unions to slow the progress of the oncoming force. They also infiltrated the army and convinced soldiers within the force to desert. The Soviet in St. Petersburg, mostly the Bolsheviks, were given arms incase combat was a necessary defense measure.

The Soviet’s measures were largely successful as Kornilov’s force had seen a large number of losses and lost total support on August 30, which killed the coup before they arrived in the city.

Resulting from this, Kornilov was imprisoned along with 30 additional army officers, the next day, on September 1, 1917, the Provisional Government established the Russian Republic, abolished all remnants of the old monarchical system, and created a temporary parliament called the Provisional Council as preparation for the elections of a Constituent Assembly, and, most importantly, the popular support of the Bolsheviks was revived, who were seen as popular heroes for putting an end to the attempted coup. This resulted in the rearmament of the Bolshevik Military Organization, and the Bolsheviks kept the weapons they were armed with in anticipation of defending the city, which they used in the October Revolution. Trotsky soon after became the chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet.

The Short Lived Russian Republic

The membership of the Bolsheviks had grown from around 20,000 members in February 1917 to over 200,000 members by the end of September 1917. They became the majority in St. Petersburg and Moscow. They also controlled the thirteen provinces surrounding Moscow which held 37% of the total Russian population.

The St. Petersburg Soviet proceeded to release all jailed Bolsheviks in early September. The support for the Bolsheviks only continued to grow among the lower classes as they viewed the government as incapable of supporting their needs and interests.

While in Finland, Lenin had wrote The State and Revolution which released shortly before the October Revolution. In the book, Lenin describes his, and the Marxist, view on the state as a mechanism for the oppression of a class, and the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat in which the proletariat seizes control of the state and the means of production to suppress counterrevolutionary measures by the bourgeoisie and other forces. In my opinion, it is an absolute must read for any communist! He also continued to lead the Bolsheviks through newspaper articles and decrees of policy.

Knowing that the Bolsheviks had popular support amongst the masses, Lenin returned to St. Petersburg in October and immediately began advocating for the overthrow of the Kerensky-led government by the Bolsheviks. Lenin believed that power should be taken in both St. Petersburg and Moscow simultaneously, as to make it indifferent which city rose up in revolution first. The Bolshevik Central Committee drafted a resolution calling for the dissolution of the Provisional Council in favor of the St. Petersburg Soviet. The resolution passed 10-2, as Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev dissented. Trotsky’s St. Petersburg Soviet voted to back a military uprising.

Within the St. Petersburg Soviet, the Bolsheviks created the Military Revolutionary Committee, also led by Leon Trotsky, that included armed workers (the Red Guard), sailors, and soldiers. The committee was responsible for planning strategic locations to occupy throughout St. Petersburg. Kerensky became aware of these plans and it is believed that some of the details were leaked by the dissenters Kamenev and Zinoviev.

The October Revolution of 1917

On the morning of October 24, 1917, soldiers loyal to the Kerensky government marched on the printing house of the Bolshevik. Rabochiy put, Worker’s Path, newspaper destroying the equipment and thousands of papers. Later in the day, the government announced the closure of four newspapers and called for the editors and writers to be prosecuted on criminal charges for inciting insurrection.

As a response to the seizure of Rabochiy put, the Military Revolutionary Committee issued a statement at 9 a.m. denouncing the actions of the government. At 10 a.m., Bolshevik-aligned soldiers retook the house. Kerensky ordered all but one of the city’s bridges to be raised at 3 p.m. that afternoon.

This was followed by multiple skirmishes between Red Guard militias and loyalist soldiers. At 5 p.m., the Committee took control of the Central Telegraph of St. Petersburg, giving the Bolsheviks firm control over the communications in the city.

The uprising continued to the next day, October 25, in which the Bolsheviks captured government facilities, communication posts, and tactical vantage points with little to no opposition. The garrison and most of the soldiers in the city joined the Bolsheviks against the Provisional Council. It was conveniently timed and organized to hand power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies which began that same day. Kerensky left St. Petersburg and Lenin issued a proclamation via telegraph throughout Russia that the Provisional Government had been overthrown by the Military Revolutionary Committee.

They carried out a final assault on the Winter Palace, against a force of 3,000 Cadets, officers, cossacks, and a battalion of female volunteers. Hundreds of these soldiers abandoned their defense of the Palace before the Bolsheviks carried out their assault. The Bolsheviks issued an ultimatum to the Provisional Government to surrender. Some revolutionaries entered the palace at 10:25 p.m. By 2:10 a.m., on October 26, the Bolsheviks had gained control of the Palace and the members of the Provisional Council were imprisoned.

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (ARCWSD), met at 10:45 p.m. on October 25. The agenda was split into two parts: the first part consisted mostly of the moderate socialists—the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks—speaking out and condemning the Bolsheviks, the second part, after the moderate socialists had departed the Congress, consisted of the election of the presidium which was filled by Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who supported the revolution.

The second session of the Congress was held the following day on October 26, from 9 p.m., to 5:15 a.m. of October 27. It was here during the second session that Lenin informed the Congress of the creation of a new government of Soviets, read the decrees on Peace and on Land, and proposed that the Congress should dissolve the old All-Russian Central Executive Committee and replace it with a provisional workers’ and peasants’ government called the Council of People’s Commissars.

At 10:30 p.m., the Congress chose to adopt the Peace Decree, which included an appeal to all the countries involved in WWI to conclude a truce and to immediately begin negotiations of democratic peace with no annexations or indemnities.

The Land Decree was adopted later that day. It contained the following provisions:

• the nationalization of lands, including privately owned land, and its circulation into the national property

• confiscation of landlord estates and their transfer to the disposal of the land committees and county councils of peasant deputies

• transfer of land to the use of peasants on the basis of equalization

• the abolition of hired labor in Russia

They also enacted Lenin’s Decree no. 1 , which officially created the Council of People’s Commissars, which, due to the lack of peasant representation, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries refused to take part in. Lenin was announced as the founding chairman, Stalin was made Commissar of Minorities Affairs, and Trotsky was made Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The second meeting officially adjourned at 5:15 a.m., on October 27, 1917.

On November 2, 1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Workers’ Soldiers merged with the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Peasant Congresses, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries agreed to join the Council of People’s Commissars, forming a coalition government with the Bolsheviks.

On November 10, 1917, the government applied the term “citizens of the Russian Republic” to Russians, whom they sought to make as socially and economically equal as possible by eliminating the designations of civil inequality like estates, titles, and ranks.

On December 16, 1917, the government eliminated hierarchy in the army by removing all titles, ranks, and uniform decorations.

Other decrees include: the nationalization of all Russian banks, all foreign debts were repudiated, control of the factories was given to the Soviets, the properties of the Russian Orthodox Church were expropriated, and wages were fixed at higher rates, and the workday was shortened to eight hours.

The Russian Civil War

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RFSR) was established after the October Revolution of 1917. Russia began consolidating power and spreading the revolution throughout Russia proper and beyond. They were largely successful inside Russia, but faced trouble in ethnically non-Russian parts of the former empire.

A coalition of anti-Bolshevik groups formed and attempted to overthrow the socialist government from 1918-1922. The Allied Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Italy, United States, and Japan) joined in on the side of the anti-Bolshevik coalition, known as the White Army. They even occupied parts of what would become the Soviet Union for over two years before they withdrew their forces. Finally, in 1922, the Red Army defeated the White Army and established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The civil war destroyed much of Russia’s infrastructure, and crippled the economy. The Bolshevik-led Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to rebuild Russia physically and economically. Russia also faced a famine in 1921-22 that took the lives of as many as five million.

Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the USSR from 1922 to his death in 1924. During that time he issued the NEP, New Economic Policy, which was a temporary economic policy that allowed for small private enterprises to be owned. It was deemed necessary to attract foreign investment and rebuild the brittle economy that the civil war had destroyed. It was abandoned in 1928.

In Conclusion

As we have learned through an expansive look at the history of revolution in Russia, no revolution comes about easily. The Russian Revolution certainly didn’t; it was decades in the making, its origins tracing all the way back to the Nihilist Movement of the 1860s. Perhaps you gained a new outlook on the Russian Revolution. During my research, I certainly gained a new respect for the revolutionaries that paved the way and led the Russian Revolution. I don’t write this as a means of discouraging you by stating the obvious: revolution takes a long time and is incredibly difficult to bring about. I write this because it’s material, it’s real, and as both dialectical and historical materialists, we need to learn from history and look at the material conditions behind each revolutionary event in their entirety.

After reading this, you may think that socialist revolution is impossible in such advanced capitalist states that plague the Western World. It’s not, all revolution comes about based on the material conditions of the oppressed. We are the oppressed in uber-capitalism. Our conditions are worsening because capitalism has outlived its potential and its usefulness. The conditions for our revolution is beginning to take shape, but we must not be foolish, and be strategic in our timing just like the Bolsheviks were.

If there is one thing that every inspiring revolutionary can gain from learning about the history of the Russian Revolution, it is this: the revolution, at times, will seem impossible, it will seem futile, it will suffer setbacks that delay it, and it will be challenged on the ideological and physical fronts, but, as the Bolsheviks did, we must be patient, we must never lose our revolutionary fervor, and we must be decisive when the time comes for us to take action.

All Power to the Soviets! All Power to the People!