The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour

by Rupert Colley

Emancipation On 3 March 1861, Alexander II issued what seemed on the face of it the most revolutionary reform in Russia’s history – his ‘Manifesto on the Emancipation of the Serfs’. The edict freed 23 million serfs from their bondage to landowners, and wrested ownership of 85 per cent of Russia’s land from private landowners in favour of the peasants. The landlords, understandably, opposed such a sweeping change but were told by the Tsar, ‘It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below.’ Alexander II, c.1870 The high ideals of Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs fell very short of its ambition. Landowners held onto 15 per cent of the land and this was, invariably, the best land; while peasants had to buy back their land from the nobles, usually at an inflated price. The majority were, inevitably, unable to afford the cost, and were offered a loan by the government, repayable at 6 per cent over forty-nine years. The peasant, freed from serfdom, was no better off and no happier. Twenty years later, on 13 March 1881, a group calling themselves the People’s Will threw a bomb at the Tsar’s carriage in St Petersburg, fatally wounding Alexander II. The Tsar’s son (Alexander III) and twelve-year-old grandson (Nicholas II) were witness to Alexander’s violent end. As future tsars they never forgot. Ironically, Alexander II had, just hours before his death, put his signature to a draft decree to establish a pa...

Nicholas misread the underlying discontent within the empire as the malign influence of the Jew, rather than as genuine grievance. Organizations such as the pro-tsarist Black Hundreds instituted pogroms against the Jews;

Bloody Sunday, as the tragedy came to be known, was the moment the Russian people lost their faith in the Tsar.

The manifesto worked to a degree. The strikes were called off and new political parties, the conservative Octobrists and the Constitutional Democrats (known colloquially as the Kadets) emerged, both supporting the manifesto and determined to use it as a platform for wholesale constitutional reform.

reserved the right to dissolve the elected Duma at any time and rule by emergency decree, as well as the right to veto any law passed by the Duma. The Okhrana, meanwhile, retained their oppressive presence. Nonetheless, elections took place and the first Duma went ahead, meeting on 10 May 1906. Dominated by ministers sympathetic to the peasantry, its demands were too radical for the Tsar and, on 21 July, he responded by dissolving it. On the same day, he appointed Pyotr Stolypin his prime minister.

Stolypin’s objective was to do away with the peasant communes, which were essentially too backward and liable to stir unrest, and to encourage the peasantry to set up as independent farmers, loyal to the regime. In November 1906, Stolypin abolished the redemption dues that had so hindered the Russian peasant since the Emancipation Edict of 1861. It was, to use Stolypin’s phrase, a ‘wager on the strong and sober’; an attempt to end political unrest among the peasants. But agrarian reform went hand-in-hand with repression – many leading revolutionaries were executed on the orders of Stolypin, victim to the hangman’s noose or, as it became known, ‘Stolypin’s necktie’, while the ‘Stolypin wagon’ exiled vast numbers of political opponents to Siberia.

The second Duma, instituted March 1907, blocked Stolypin’s reforms but the prime minister was not to be denied. With the Tsar’s backing, he managed to have the Duma dissolved within three months. He got the backing of the Octobrists and changed the voting system, thereby ensuring a reduced peasant voice and a greater return of conservative and moderate members. He then managed to form a third Duma, November 1907, one that was decidedly tsarist. Stolypin may have pushed his reforms too far, thereby earning the disapproval of the Tsar. Indications were that the prime minister was about to be dismissed. On 14 September 1911, Stolypin was shot while attending the opera in Kiev with the Tsar and his two eldest daughters. As he fell, he yelled out, ‘I am happy to die for my Tsar’, and blessed the Tsar with a sign of the cross. Rumours persisted that the assassination had been officially sanctioned, and that Nicholas’ secret police had allowed Stolypin’s assassin, Dmitry Bogrov, easy access to the opera house. As he lay dying in hospital, the Tsar, kneeling at his bedside, begged Stolypin’s forgiveness. The prime minister died four days later on 18 September. Nicholas halted the investigation into the incident and Bogrov, who, it turned out, was an agent of the Okhrana and a revolutionary, was hastily hanged before being properly interviewed. With Stolypin’s assassination, Russia’s programme of reform came to an immediate and abrupt end.

Since the revolution of 1905 and particularly the events of Bloody Sunday, Nicholas II had become a reviled figure overly influenced, it seemed, by his wife the Empress Alexandra.

It was to Russia, protector of all Slavs, that Serbia turned.

Germany, in turn, gave Russia twelve hours to halt its mobilization. The deadline passed, and on 1 August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia

As general disillusionment set in, the Duma proposed political reform and the formation of a government that would ‘enjoy public confidence’ but the Tsar, again protective of his autocracy, blocked such proposals, sacked all those who had instigated it, and dissolved the Duma.

Russia’s economy buckled under the strain of war, wages doubled but prices trebled; inflation soared, taxes rose, workers went hungry.

The voices of nationalism reasserted themselves, with those in Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and the Ukraine demanding independence,

On 15 March, with the situation getting increasingly tense, liberal members of the now former Duma sided with the Petrograd Soviet and formed a provisional government.

the Tsar nominated instead Michael, his brother. Michael was resentful that he had not been asked, and aware that it was a poisoned chalice, refused to accept the position. He took it upon himself to sign the necessary proclamation transferring power to the will of the people and the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government was provisional in that it intended to rule only until elections to a Constituent Assembly could formalise a permanent government. Consisting of Kadets, ex-Duma members and moderate socialists – Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries – it could only exist with the powerful support of the Soviets. Even the new government’s Minister for War, Alexander Guchkov, admitted as much, ‘the government does not possess real power, and its directives are carried out only to the extent it is permitted by the Soviets, which enjoys all the real elements of real power, since the troops, railroads and post and telegraph are in its hands.’

The Provisional Government did effect some reform, most notably the freedom of expression. Without the fear that the Tsar’s, now-disbanded, Okhrana would descend on them, people suddenly could talk freely and debate. The election for the Constituent Assembly, when it came, would be open to all those over the age of twenty-one – including women. The death penalty was abolished. Even Lenin conceded that Russia was the ‘freest of all the belligerent countries’.

However, the Provisional Government did not help its own cause by committing itself to the continuation of the war. On 20 April, Pavel Milyukov, appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs within the new government, sent a telegram to Russia’s wartime allies, Britain and France, promising Russia’s continued commitment to the war effort through to ‘its glorious conclusion’. ‘Milyukov’s note’, as the incident became known, was intercepted and resulted in anti-government protests and demands for the minister’s resignation. Milyukov duly obliged, leaving behind a government widely regarded as untrustworthy. The government’s response was an immediate reshuffle and an invitation to more Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries to join its ranks. The resultant coalition, formed 18 May, still maintained Prince Lvov as its head but now included six socialists, the most prominent being the new Minister for War – the Socialist Revolutionary, Alexander Kerensky.

Two months later, on 16 June 1917, the Soviets held their first All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Made up of various parties, it was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; the Bolsheviks being only a minor component. Irakli Tsereteli, a leading Menshevik and Chair of the Petrograd Soviet, emphasizing the point, declared ‘no such party exists in Russia,’ to which, Lenin famously replied: ‘There is such a party!’

From 16–20 July, half a million workers and soldiers, together with sailors from the Kronstadt seaport, rebelled demanding an immediate end to the war.

Lenin went into hiding, residing in a straw hut in the forests next to Lake Razliv, north of Petrograd. Here he stayed for a month, disguised as a haymaker, writing and contemplating. By the end of August, Lenin had left Razliv for safety in Finland. Disguised by a clean-shave and a wig, he travelled under the name of K. Ivanov, a worker from an arms factory. It was during this time, Lenin wrote his State and Revolution, outlining the future of the revolution, in which the State and democracy would wither away, to be replaced by Soviets. Meanwhile, Trotsky and leading Bolsheviks were caught and imprisoned.

On 21 July, Prince Lvov resigned, handing power over to Kerensky. Members of the bourgeois parties, such as the Kadets, also left resulting in a new coalition comprising mostly of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries,

By early September, the Bolsheviks had become the majority party within both the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets.

Military Revolutionary Committee, the new name for the Red Guards,

The October Revolution in Petrograd on 7 November (25 October, Old Style) was not, in fact, the first socialist uprising within the Russian empire. Two days before, Jaan Anvelt, an Estonian Bolshevik, led a successful uprising in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

Soviet tradition had it that a single blank shot fired from the ship Aurora, a veteran of the Russo–Japanese War, signalled the storming of the Winter Palace. Subduing Cossack guards, and women from the Women’s Death Battalion, the revolutionaries found Kerensky’s cabinet and arrested them on the spot where the illiterate revolutionaries forced them to write their own arrest warrants. Meanwhile, Lenin, never one to expose himself to danger, donned his disguise, hid, and waited for news. In the end, the toppling of Kerensky’s Provisional Government had been relatively bloodless and easy. There were no demonstrations, no violence. Not a shot was fired. All told, it was a very different revolution from February. Kerensky, disguised as a nurse, fled to the town of Pskov, where eight months earlier, Nicholas II had abdicated. Gathering the few remaining troops still loyal to him, he attempted a counterattack but was defeated and went into hiding, eventually fleeing to France. Later that evening on the momentous day of 7 November, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in the Smolny Institute. The meeting was not without disagreement. Moderate socialists argued that the Bolsheviks’ overthrow of the Provisional Government, of which many had been members, was illegal and walked out in protest. As they left, Trotsky sneered at them, ‘You’re finished; you pitiful bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you now belong – into the dustbin of history.’ The next day, Congres...

the ultimate goal of Socialism was Communism and with Communism, the ‘state would wither away’, to use Karl Marx’s phrase. There would be no need for the mechanics of State control and repression would become a thing of the past, and the ‘entire society will be one office and one factory with equality of labour and equality of pay,’ Lenin predicted.

‘Neither war nor peace’ – meaning that Russia would neither wage war nor accept Germany’s harsh peace terms. It was intended as a delaying tactic to allow time for workers to rise throughout Central Europe.

Lenin’s view that all form of democracy was bourgeois.

the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd’s Tauride Palace on 18 January. Lenin presented his decrees only to have them all rejected. He left in disgust, and the meeting continued without him until four the next morning, by which time the caretaker of the building announced ‘the guard is tired. I propose that you close the meeting and let everybody go home.’ The following day, they returned only to find the building locked and the Assembly dissolved by the Bolsheviks. Russia’s new democracy had lasted just thirteen hours.

In the ensuing fight the Czechs gained control of the town of Chelyabinsk, only 130 miles from Yekaterinburg, where the Tsar was being kept prisoner. The Bolsheviks, fearful that the Czechs would seize the town and liberate the royal family, had the Tsar and his entourage murdered. The risk of them becoming a focal point for a counter-revolution was too high. Nine days later, Yekaterinburg did indeed fall to the Czechs.

Disparate groups now united to form an anti-Bolshevik alliance, the ‘Whites’. This comprised: monarchists and socialists; different ethnic groups and nationalities; those disaffected by Lenin’s dissolution of the Constituent Assembly; and those furious that Lenin should have given away so much of Russia to Germany as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Unlike the Reds, who had their shared ideology, the Whites had no common bond but their hatred of Bolshevism. This was to prove an inherent weakness.

Trotsky pulled together a formidable Red Army, the ‘Reds’, led by 48,000 former army officers of the Tsar who Trotsky obliged – by holding their families hostage – to train and lead his men.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk may have given Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States their independence,

By the end of civil war in Russia, they had all gained their independence apart from the Ukraine and Belorussia, both of which fell under Russian control.

In November 1918, the Great War came to an end. The Allies immediately withdrew their forces from the Whites,

the middle classes, the bourgeois, the intelligentsia, were all targeted.

The civil war had caused Russia’s economy to collapse. Inflation was out of control to the point money had become worthless and was replaced by barter; industry had ground to a halt. Famine took hold, killing 7.5 million, and family pets became ‘civil war meat’.

Blame for the disintegrating economy was firmly placed on the better-off peasants, the kulaks, who, as class enemies, grew rich at the expense of others. Kulaks were, according to Lenin, ‘prepared to strangle and massacre hundreds of thousands of workers … We declare war on the kulaks! Death to them!’ Other peasants were encouraged to murder the kulaks – who were really just more efficient peasants – spelling disaster for Russia’s agriculture.

It was here that Lenin introduced NEP and tightened his grip on power by banning all discussion within the party. In particular, targeting a group within the Russian Communist Party, the Workers’ Opposition, which advocated greater democracy within the Party and the ‘right to criticize’.

His brain was removed and kept in formaldehyde for two years before being sliced into 30,963 wafer-thin slices to be studied and examined in minute detail to work out how the brain of a genius worked.