RUSSIAN HISTORY
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Why do we study history?
Before embarking on any aspect of the study of history, the question arises, “Why do we study history?” The conventional answer, of George Santayana, is:
“Those who do not study history are compelled to repeat it.”
Now, it seems to me that this sentence makes very little sense. It doesn't work like that. It's very good for the historians’ advertisement, but beyond that, I think it has very little value. And the reason for that is because there are no lessons.
History does not repeat itself. Life is complicated. It has always seemed to me that looking for history lessons is more likely to lead you to trouble because we are bound to learn the wrong lessons.
So, if I start by saying that there are no lessons, why do it, why study history?
What we learn from history is how human beings behaved in certain circumstances. What do we learn by studying history is how some human institutions function in different historical circumstances, and what do we gain?
We gain a broader understanding of humanity, of what we are. And that might lead us to wisdom. Will we be able to make better decisions as a result of having acquired wisdom?
I hope so. I think it does make a difference. We would be able to better evaluate a new set of circumstances because we have learned something about the extraordinary circumstances in which human beings have acted and performed.
Formation of Russian State
I am planning to talk about the character of the Russian state from its establishment to the pre-revolutionary time. And the great dividing line is 1861, the liberation of the serfs. Serfdom meant that the person owning the land owned the peasants working on it too.
Serfdom started because of two reasons:
One is the impoverishment of the peasantry and this impoverishment came about because the Russian lands were not particularly suitable for agriculture. The consequence of this is that Surplus, which produced and made possible the existence of cities, did not develop in Russia.
Kyiv was a state of cities and towns but Russia had nothing comparable. And the political consequence was that the Bourgeoisie, under restraining force on the autocracy, did not come into existence at all. Not even up to the 20th century.
Serfdom
Serfdom was eventually abolished because of two reasons:
The system was economically inefficient and some people argued that the serf had little interest in improving the land.
It seems to me, however, that the liberation of the serf was fundamentally a spiritual decision. That is, the Russian rulers, including the nobility and the Tarres court lost faith in the morality of keeping people serfs.
It seems to me it's not an accident that 1861 is the same year as the beginning of the American Civil War. Which also was fundamentally caused by the recognition that we should not hold people as serfs, as slaves.
The Industrial Revolution
Industrialization, in the last decade of the century, was extremely remarkably successful. Witte, with whose name we associate this great industrialization spurt, argued in a very conservative court which is afraid of the consequences of industrialization. Witte argued that Russia needed to
industrialize to remain a great power. For us to have an army,
we have to be able to compete in terms of moving armies around and it was this sense of what we might call conservative modernization which convinced the relevant people.
Indeed what was happening that Witte carried out a policy of heavily taxing the peasantry, and thereby forcing the peasantry to sell their product Which then could be sold abroad and Russia would accumulate a positive balance of trade.
Setting high tariffs, again for the same reason, to have a positive balance of trade. And, as a consequence, Witte, who was Minister of Finances was able to put Russia on the gold standard. And the gold standard meant that various foreign capitalist entrepreneurs regarded Russia as a very safe investment.
And foreign capital came into Russia in a very impressive fashion, which, by the way, would have the consequence that after the Russian Revolution, the French who lend so much money to the Russians were very much concerned about getting it back.
The policies which Witte introduced resulted in building railroads, building large factories, steel, and iron, that is the first stages, the early stages of Russian industrialization. But it's very much comparable to what would happen a few decades later in Soviet industrialization, which also favored heavy industry as opposed to consumer goods for obvious reasons. And indeed the achievements of the rail road map work which was created during the Witte years. The building of the Trans-Siberian railroad would have very positive consequences in the Soviet era.
The Tsarist court got into much trouble after facing defeat from Japan and consequently, in 1905 the first Russian Revolution took place which failed due to strife among the different classes of the society i.e the peasants, the working class, and the army. But it wasn’t futile as for the first time a parliament called the DUMA was formed under the Tsarist rule.
The February Revolution
By the way, we have a complexity here because Russia up to February 1918 operated based on an old calendar. And so February 23rd, when the demonstrations started in Petrograd, according to the modern calendar was March 8. March 8 is International Women's Day, which may have something to do with what actually happened.
Well, what did actually happen?
The news spread in Petrograd that there was not enough grain, and women came to demonstrate. And that in itself was not very surprising. There had been demonstrations before. But the demonstration grew in size.
Workers from the large industries, from the large factories of Petrograd, joined the demonstrators and two or three days later according to police reports, 150,000 to 200,000 people appeared in the streets of Petrograd.
By the way, the reason that there was not enough grain was not so much because the country did not produce, it was that the transportation system in the course of the war broke down, and the army, which needed to be supplied with bread, also took away so much as there was reason to believe that Petrograd would starve.
Well, what was there to do that are ordered the military governor to disperse the revolutionaries. Again, so far nothing surprising. However, two days later, the soldiers refused to carry out the order and joined the demonstrators.
And this is the crucial moment because it seems that the issue is not that the people did not want to live with the old way and the overthrow of the regime by searching on to the centers of power. It was the collapse of authority, the unwillingness to carry out the order, which was the revolution.
Now, Trotsky who was really a very fine writer and wrote very good and worthwhile books on the Russian Revolution argues that it was the Bolsheviks who provided the spirit for this revolution.
In the course of a week, the Tsarist government was no more. The Tsar first asks his brother Michael to take the crown. Michael wisely refused the job, because he understood that this would not work, and that was the end. Tsarism ended with so little bloodshed.
The Provisional Government
The Provisional Government had to deal with three very difficult issues.
First, the question of the war
Second, the question of land reforms
Third, the question of nationalities
Ultimately, the Provisional Government failed because, based on principles in which they believed, it was impossible to resolve these issues.
The Socialists stood for “Defensism”. Their principle was to turn the war into a defensive war. Ask for peace without annexation, without indemnity, and bring the war to a conclusion without victors and defeated. But no one was able to give a definite and applicable policy which resulted in demonstrations and soldiers refusing to carry out orders.
When the serfs were liberated in 1861, they received approximately half of the land, which they had cultivated, and the other half went to the landlords, to the nobility. Now, the village was overpopulated and the peasants craved for taking all the lands. The Provisional Government agreed on Land Reforms but only after the successful conclusion of the war. Meanwhile, the peasants simply chased landlords away and took the land themselves.
Nationalist movements did not have much influence with the possible exception in Poland or maybe in Finland. And now that the authority was disintegrating nationalist movements, the nationalist spirit took an increasingly powerful force.
Bolshevik movement
There were only about 20,000 Bolsheviks in the country at the time of the February revolution in Petrograd. The first Bolshevik leaders who returned from Siberia in exile were Lev Kamenev and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin who then reestablish the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda.
And quite understandably, they pursued a moderate goal. They realized that the Bolsheviks were in no position to take over the government, and they were willing to participate in the Soviets.
Now, Lenin, who was in Switzerland in exile learning about the Bolshevinous behavior of the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, was really upset. He wanted to come back to Russia. He wanted to come back to Petrograd. And the way he could come back was with German help.
This is a very significant fact because after all, arguably, he could be depicted as an agent of the enemy, and indeed in some circles in the course of 1917, this was the profound argument, accusatory argument. Now Lenin was not much disturbed by that. Lenin did not become an agent of Imperial Germany. Lenin believed that once the revolution was established, the revolution would spread to the rest of Europe, and then the German high command will be sorry that they ever sent him back to Russia.
In the course of 1917, the Bolsheviks were gaining strength. Now, was this because of the success of Bolshevik propaganda? Was it really the result that the Bolshevik regime, the Bolshevik leadership was really so clever?
I think not. The Bolsheviks indeed received some financial support from the Germans but clearly, the financial means available to the non-Bolshevik newspapers, socialist and non-Socialists, were way beyond what the Bolsheviks had.
It was not Bolshevik propaganda that won over the politically significant class workers in Petrograd, but it was simply a large segment that was never the majority of the Russian people, came to the understanding of principles which the Bolsheviks already had. That is Lenin opposed the war from 1914 regarded it as an imperialist war in which the workers and the peasants would have no interest.
And consequently, when we look at October 24th or November 7th according to the modern calendar, what is striking is how easily the provisional government disappeared.
The October Revolution
It was not Bolshevik agitation that brought down the government. It was
simply that the government, the provisional government, was incapable of administering the country at the time of war.
Leninism
Lenin, of course, regarded himself as a Marxist. He did bring, however, a new element into Marxism, and that was a very significant line in a book which he wrote in 1902 and that line was that
“The workers left to themselves are capable of developing only trade union consciousness. The task of the revolutionaries is to bring proper revolutionary consciousness to the people.”
The task of the revolutionaries, that is the Bolsheviks, was to agitate, to explain to the workers what their genuine interests were.
Elections
Elections were called in 1917, the first genuinely democratic elections in the course of Russian history. Then, not surprisingly, that demonstrated that a fundamentally peasant-oriented party, the Socialist Revolutionaries, had the largest number of votes. The Liberals did very poorly, that so-called the Kadet Party, which was a Liberal Party and the Bolsheviks had perhaps a quarter of the population’s support.
Now, this quarter, however, was very significant because it was in the major city among the working classes and among the soldiers, interestingly, in the rear regiments rather than in the front line.
Well, the way the Bolsheviks dealt with the problem was the first day and the previous, when the Constituent Assembly was called together, Bolshevik soldiers simply dispersed them and that was the end of the establishment of a democratic form of government for a long time to come.
Bolsheviks were disappointed. It became clear that the Russian people, after all, did not support the policies which they advocated. The second disappointment, the second problem is the Bolsheviks had to face is that after all the country was at war.
War
Now, how do you stop this war? In this issue, two points of view were presented among the Bolshevik leadership. One was that it is our task to bring the revolution to the rest of Europe, and by continuing the war we will agitate among the German soldiers, and the German soldiers will not fire at us because they will see that we are fighting for the coming of socialism in Europe and consequently, they called for the continuation of the war.
They were genuine internationalists. They took it for granted that the Russian Revolution in a hostile sea of capitalist powers cannot succeed. What we do is to bring about to be a spark of a world socialist revolution, a European socialist revolution.
Lenin, however, as a much more realistic statesman said,
"No, we cannot do that. The Germans will simply come and we don't have the power to resist and we have to conclude the separate peace."
Therefore, Lenin supported the immediate end of the war.
End of War
Indeed such peace was concluded at the Brest-Litovsk in which Russia made major major concessions. They lost Ukraine, they lost the Baltic states, and however, they were able to stay in power.
Civil War
The Civil War started almost immediately on a very small scale. The military leaders who had been jailed at the time of the Kornilov Affair simply escaped from their prison and escaped to the south in regions, which were inhabited by Cossacks.
It is only in these Cossack regions that the white movement, the Anti-Bolshevik movement, could come into existence. What is striking about them, about the beginning of the Civil War, how small scale that conflict was, how difficult it was for the Generals to call together followers. For some months in the course of the spring of 1918, they managed to put together an army of perhaps 3000.
That is what we have in mind when we talk about the Russian Revolution, that neither the Bolsheviks nor the Anti-Bolsheviks were able to come up with major forces behind them. It was their task to organize. It was really two sets of leaders believing in two sets of different principles, which fought against one another in the hope of organizing a functioning government, which can administer the country.
The Civil War started out slowly. The Bolsheviks also did not have the means to disperse a small force of 3000. But, gradually, they put more and more soldiers, and ultimately the size of the conflict grew and before the civil war that lasted for almost three years with great bitterness.
The Bolsheviks formed the Red Army in which they recruited ex-Tsarist officers while the Anti-Bolsheviks formed the White Army in which they recruited professional soldiers.
Victory of Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks had legalized the peasants’ occupation of the whole land through their land reforms. But that does not mean that the peasants were pro-bolshevik rather they opposed the Bolsheviks with less strength.
The peasants did form some armies under anarchist principles, and anarchism became a significant military force in the course of the Civil War. And these anarchists stood closest to their understanding of the world of the peasants, and what we can see from the course of the fighting was that these anarchist bands, these anarchist armies fought the Whites rather than the Reds.
And only once Whites were defeated, they did on against the Bolsheviks. And ultimately, of course, the Bolsheviks were able and managed to disperse them. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks emerged victoriously.
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