In Finland, Lenin had worked on his book State and Revolution and continued to lead his party, writing newspaper articles and policy decrees. (On arrival back in Russia, these soldiers were either imprisoned or sent straight back into the front.). During the Civil War, Nestor Makhno led a Ukrainian anarchist movement, the Black Army allied to the Bolsheviks thrice, one of the powers ending the alliance each time. This was dominated by the interests of large capitalists and the Russian nobility and aristocracy. The crisis in morale (as was argued by Allan Wildman, a leading historian of the Russian army in war and revolution) "was rooted fundamentally in the feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory could be achieved."[12]. Critics on the Right have long argued that the financial and logistical assistance of German intelligence via their key agent, Alexander Parvus was a key component as well, though historians are divided, since there is little evidence supporting that claim. Among them, in order of release date: Media related to Russian Revolution of 1917 at Wikimedia Commons, 20th-century revolution leading to the downfall of the Russian monarchy, This article is about the revolution that began in 1917. Increasing peasant disturbances and sometimes actual revolts occurred, with the goal of securing ownership of the land they worked. There was also no running water, and piles of human waste were a threat to the health of the workers. "Doklad petrogradskogo okhrannogo otdeleniia osobomu otdelu departamenta politsii" ["Report of the Petrograd Okhrana to the Special Department of the Department of the Police"], October 1916, Krasnyi arkhiv 17 (1926), 4–35 (quotation 4). Trotsky is represented by a pig called Snowball who is a brilliant talker and makes magnificent speeches. Victorious, they reconstituted themselves as the Communist Party. The Kornilov Affair failed largely due to the efforts of the Bolsheviks, whose influence over railroad and telegraph workers proved vital in stopping the movement of troops. Nicholas ignored these warnings and Russia's Tsarist regime collapsed a few months later during the February Revolution of 1917. On 27 February, socialist Duma deputies, mainly Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, took the lead in organizing a citywide council. "[53] Similarly to the October Revolution, the Cuban Revolution removed a more traditional, hierarchical regime with the aim of establishing greater overall equality, specifically in the removal of former authoritarian president Fulgencio Batista. Meanwhile Germany was able to produce great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts.[4]. It continued for several years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The historiography of the Revolution generally divides into three camps: the Soviet-Marxist view, the Western-Totalitarian view, and the Revisionist view. [59] Since the fall of Communism (and the USSR) in Russia in 1991, the Western-Totalitarian view has again become dominant and the Soviet-Marxist view has practically vanished. His weak personality and failure in the assessment of the situation led … When famine began to hit due to the poor railway system, workers abandoned the cities in droves seeking food. "The Revolutionary Youth League: Cradle of Communism in Vietnam. One of the Tsar's principal rationales for risking war in 1914 was his desire to restore the prestige that Russia had lost amid the debacles of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). He did so on 15 March [O.S. Then in October, a second Russian Revolution placed the Bolsheviks as the leaders of Russia, resulting in the creation of the world's first … ", Duiker, William J. In February 1917, striking workers elected deputies to represent them and socialist activists began organizing a citywide council to unite these deputies with representatives of the socialist parties. [5], Meanwhile, Socialist Revolutionary leaders in exile, many of them living in Switzerland, had been the glum spectators of the collapse of international socialist solidarity. The Bolsheviks had secured a strong base of support within the Soviets and, as the supreme governing party, established a federal government dedicated to reorganizing the former empire into the world's first socialist state, to practice soviet democracy on a national and international scale. Although the Tsar accepted the 1906 Fundamental State Laws one year later, he subsequently dismissed the first two Dumas when they proved uncooperative. The outbreak of war in August 1914 initially served to quiet the prevalent social and political protests, focusing hostilities against a common external enemy, but this patriotic unity did not last long. Instead of restoring Russia's political and military standing, World War I led to the slaughter of Russian troops and military defeats that undermined both the monarchy and Russian society to the point of collapse. Russia was backward, but not that backward, with a working class population of more than some 4-5% of the population. According to Edvard Radzinsky and Dmitrii Volkogonov, the order came directly from Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov in Moscow. by means of revolution). Question: Who led the Russian Revolution? [23], The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet believed that they represented particular classes of the population, not the whole nation. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, International Responses to the Russian Civil War (Russian Empire), Social Conflict and Control, Protest and Repression (Russian Empire), Governments, Parliaments and Parties (Russian Empire), Labour Movements, Trade Unions and Strikes (Russian Empire), Organization of War Economies (Russian Empire), Orlando Figes's free educational website on the Russian Revolution and Soviet history, Soviet history archive at www.marxists.org, Archival footage of the Russian Revolution // Net-Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive, Kevin Murphy's Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize lecture Can we Write the History of the Russian Revolution, Thanks to Trotsky, the 'insurrection' was bloodless, The Bolsheviks and workers' control: the state and counter-revolution - Maurice Brinton, Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks, Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, Group of forces in battle with the counterrevolution in the South of Russia, Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee, Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russian_Revolution&oldid=996431361, Aftermath of World War I in Russia and in the Soviet Union, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007, Articles with disputed statements from February 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Planned Bolshevik demonstration in Petrograd banned by the Soviet. First All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opens in Petrograd. Since the Age of Enlightenment, Russian intellectuals had promoted Enlightenment ideals such as the dignity of the individual and the rectitude of democratic representation. It completely changed the government and outlook on life in the very large country of Russia. The response of the Duma, urged on by the liberal bloc, was to establish a Temporary Committee to restore law and order; meanwhile, the socialist parties established the Petrograd Soviet to represent workers and soldiers. In the autumn of 1915, Nicholas had taken direct command of the army, personally overseeing Russia's main theatre of war and leaving his ambitious but incapable wife Alexandra in charge of the government. [nb 2], The social causes of the Russian Revolution can be derived from centuries of oppression of the lower classes by the Tsarist regime and Nicholas's failures in World War I. There were many encouragements to expect more from life. [35][36], The Russian Civil War, which broke out in 1918 shortly after the October Revolution, resulted in the deaths and suffering of millions of people regardless of their political orientation. With Lenin's arrival, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased steadily. These men, usually of peasant or working-class backgrounds, were to play a large role in the politicization of the troops in 1917. The industrial revolution reached Russia significantly later than the rest of Europe. The soldiers did not feel as if they were valuable, rather they felt as if they were expendable. Formation of Provisional Committee of the Duma by liberals from Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). ", V. I. Lenin, "State and Revolution" contained in the, V. I. Lenin, "The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power" contained in the, William A. Dando, "A Map of the Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917. Less than one year later, the last area controlled by the White Army, the Ayano-Maysky District, directly to the north of the Krai containing Vladivostok, was given up when General Anatoly Pepelyayev capitulated in 1923. But we must here immediately add: This leadership proved sufficient to guarantee the victory of the insurrection, but it was not adequate to transfer … Russians retreat in panic, sacking the town of. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, and Emperor Nicholas II abdicated his throne. The Russian people were angry at Tsar Nicholas II for getting Russia into the war. The Chinese Communist Revolution began in 1946 and was part of the ongoing Chinese Civil War. Few events in historical research have been as conditioned by political influences as the October Revolution. [45] In early March, the Provisional Government placed Nicholas and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, 24 kilometres (15 mi) south of Petrograd. This was a naval mutiny engineered by Soviet Baltic sailors, former Red Army soldiers, and the people of Kronstadt. [28] Previously, the Bolsheviks had been in the minority in the two leading cities of Russia—St. Living in cities, workers encountered material goods they had never seen in villages. The Revolutionary Military Committee established by the Bolshevik party was organizing the insurrection and Leon Trotsky was the chairman. He was now held personally responsible for Russia's continuing defeats and losses. Religious faith helped bind all of these tenets together as a source of comfort and reassurance in the face of difficult conditions and as a means of political authority exercised through the clergy. "The Revolution at One Hundred: Issues and Trends in the English Language Historiography of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The execution may have been carried out on the initiative of local Bolshevik officials, or it may have been an option pre-approved in Moscow should White troops approach Yekaterinburg. [43] These tribunals established themselves more so from the Cheka as a more moderate force that acted under the banner of revolutionary justice, rather than a utilizer of strict brute force as the former did. The Russian Revolution was, while a huge economic, social, and political change, the result of a number of different factors that built up over time, including economic, military, and political circumstances. speech in reconvened Duma. This ironclad belief rendered Nicholas unwilling to allow the progressive reforms that might have alleviated the suffering of the Russian people. ", Smith, Steve. Working-class women in St. Petersburg reportedly spent about forty hours a week in food lines, begging, turning to prostitution or crime, tearing down wooden fences to keep stoves heated for warmth, and continued to resent the rich. Many Bolsheviks, however, had supported the Provisional Government, including Lev Kamenev.[26]. There was enormous discontent with Russia's involvement in the war, and many were calling for an end to it. The problem was further compounded by the failure of Sergei Witte's land reforms of the early 20th century. They were led by Vladimir Lenin and a group of revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks. we can then answer definitely enough: Conscious and tempered workers educated for the most part by the party of Lenin. This issue is subject to conflicting views on communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. Bolshevik resolution on the government wins majority vote in Moscow Soviet. Kronstadtin kapina 1921 ja sen perilliset Suomessa (Kronstadt Rebellion 1921 and Its Descendants in Finland) by Erkki Wessmann. Bolshevik members of the Duma are arrested; they are later tried and exiled to. The Bolsheviks turned workers' militias under their control into the Red Guards (later the Red Army), over which they exerted substantial control.[1]. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in November 1916, stating that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the country unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. Bolshevik majority in. Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party led the Russian revolution of 1917. … They eventually reached the Easterly Siberian Russian coast in Vladivostok, four years after the war began, an occupation that is believed to have ended all significant military campaigns in the nation. [5], It was these views of Martov that predominated in a manifesto drawn up by Leon Trotsky (at the time a Menshevik) at a conference in Zimmerwald, attended by 35 Socialist leaders in September 1915. Acquiring new skills gave many workers a sense of self-respect and confidence, heightening expectations and desires. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Help support true facts by becoming a member. This was mainly because, as the war progressed, many of the officers who were loyal to the Tsar were killed, being replaced by discontented conscripts from the major cities who had little loyalty to the Tsar. Since the autumn of 1914, he had insisted that "from the standpoint of the working class and of the labouring masses the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsarist Monarchy"; the war must be turned into a civil war of the proletarian soldiers against their own governments, and if a proletarian victory should emerge from this in Russia, then their duty would be to wage a revolutionary war for the liberation of the masses throughout Europe. He campaigned for an immediate end of Russia's participation in the war, granting land to the peasants, and providing bread to the urban workers. Daniel Orlovsky, "Corporatism or democracy: the Russian Provisional Government of 1917. It began during the First World War, with the February Revolution that was focused in and around the then-capital, Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg). Closed on 24 June. World War I was very hard on the Russian Empire. [21] On 16 March [O.S. 25 February], virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down, together with many commercial and service enterprises. Workers’ Rights Issues The emancipation of the serfs led to a dramatic increase in population in Russian cities, as people moved away from the countryside to urban areas. Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, until 13 October. The main problems were food shortages and rising prices. This issue is subject to conflicting views on the communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. The Tsar was an inefficient and corrupt ruler. The poor conditions only aggravated the situation, with the number of strikes and incidents of public disorder rapidly increasing in the years shortly before World War I. [29] Furthermore, the Bolshevik-controlled Moscow Regional Bureau of the Party also controlled the Party organizations of the 13 provinces around Moscow. 22 February], workers at Putilov, Petrograd's largest industrial plant was closed by a strike. Millions of Russians had been either killed or wounded. Communist symbolism is perhaps the most notable of this time period, such as the debut of the iconic hammer and sickle as a representation of the October Revolution in 1917, eventually becoming the official symbol of the USSR in 1924. The war was fought mainly between the Red Army ("Reds"), consisting of the uprising majority led by the Bolshevik minority, and the "Whites" – army officers and cossacks, the "bourgeoisie", and political groups ranging from the far Right, to the Socialist Revolutionaries who opposed the drastic restructuring championed by the Bolsheviks following the collapse of the Provisional Government, to the Soviets (under clear Bolshevik dominance). one in 1905 and one in 1917. i do not know much about the 1905. but the one in 1917 was led by not john lenin, but vladmir lenin. Their attitudes became known as the Zimmerwald Left. Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him. 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