The Russian Revolution

Late tsarist Russia

Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, Russia entered a phase of internal crisis that in 1917 would culminate in revolution. Its causes were not so much economic or social as political and cultural. For the sake of stability, tsarism insisted on rigid autocracy that effectively shut out the population from participation in government. At the same time, to maintain its status as a great power, it promoted industrial development and higher education, which were inherently dynamic. The result was perpetual tension between government and society, especially its educated element, known as the intelligentsia. Of the socioeconomic causes of tsarism’s ultimate collapse, the most important was rural overpopulation: tsarist Russia had the highest rate of demographic growth in Europe; in the second half of the 19th century the rural population increased by more than 50 percent. Potentially destabilizing also was the refusal of the mass of Russian peasantry, living in communes, to acknowledge the principle of private property in land.

In the late 19th century the political conflict pitted three protagonists: tsarism, the peasantry (with the working class, its subdivision), and the intelligentsia.

The tsar was absolute and unlimited in his authority, which was subject to neither constitutional restraints nor parliamentary institutions. He ruled with the help of a bureaucratic caste, subject to no external controls and above the law, and the army, one of whose main tasks was maintaining internal order. Imperial Russia developed to a greater extent than any contemporary country a powerful and ubiquitous security police. It was a crime to question the existing system or to organize for any purpose whatsoever without government permission. The system, which contained seeds of future totalitarianism, was nevertheless not rigidly enforced and was limited by the institution of private property.

Some eighty percent of the empire’s population consisted of peasants. The vast majority of Russian peasants lived in communes (obshchiny), which held land in common and periodically redistributed it to member households to allow for changes in family size. The communal organization, composed of heads of households, exercised great control over members. Communal peasants did not own their land but merely cultivated it for a period of time determined by local custom. Under these conditions they had little opportunity to develop respect for private property or any of the other qualities necessary for citizenship. Politically they tended toward primitive anarchism. To some extent this also held true for industrial workers, some two million strong at the turn of the century, most of whom came from the village.

The intelligentsia was partly liberal, partly radical, but in either case unalterably opposed to the status quo. Radical intellectuals tried in the 1860s and ’70s to stir the peasants and workers to rebellion. Having met with no response, they adopted methods of terror, which culminated in 1881 in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II. The government reacted with repressive measures that kept the revolutionaries at bay for the next two decades. In the meantime the field was left to liberal intellectuals, who in January 1904 formed the Union of Liberation, a semilegal political body committed to the struggle for democracy.

The oppositional groups received their chance in 1904–05 when Russia became involved in a war with Japan. Caused by Russia’s designs on Manchuria, the war went badly from the start, lowering the regime’s prestige in the eyes of the people. The Union of Liberation, moving into the open, presented a program of fundamental political reforms. In January 1905, following the massacre of a worker demonstration bearing a petition drafted by the Union of Liberation (“Bloody Sunday”), the country exploded in rebellion, which, ebbing and flowing in response to news from the front, reached a climax in October 1905. On October 17 (October 30, New Style), faced with a general strike, Emperor Nicholas II issued a manifesto that promised the country a legislative parliament. The October Manifesto in effect ended the autocratic system. The following year Russia was given a constitution. Elections took place to a representative body, the State Duma, which was empowered to initiate and veto legislative proposals. The population received guarantees of fundamental civil liberties. Censorship was abolished.

Between 1906 and 1911 Russia was administered by the greatest statesman of the late imperial era, Pyotr Stolypin. Stolypin both ruthlessly suppressed disorders and carried out extensive reforms. The most important of these were laws allowing peasants to withdraw from the commune and establish independent farmsteads. Stolypin hoped to create a self-reliant yeomanry to act as a stabilizing force in the countryside. He also had other social and political reforms in mind. These were frustrated by the hostility of the court as well as of the opposition parties. He was murdered by a revolutionary in 1911.

The constitution of 1906 was frequently violated by both the government and the opposition. The former misused its emergency clauses to adjourn the Duma and rule by decree. The latter, especially the radical parties, sabotaged the legislative process. Even so, in its last decade Russia enjoyed greater freedom than ever before. It also enjoyed relative prosperity: on the eve of World War I it was the world’s leading producer of petroleum and exporter of grain. Conditions in the countryside gradually improved, and in 1916 peasants owned or rented 90 percent of the arable land.

The February Revolution

World War I weakened tsarism. The humiliating defeats that the Russian army suffered at the hands of the Germans, who expelled it from Poland, lowered the prestige of the monarchy further. There were also unsubstantiated rumours that Empress Alexandra, a German by origin, betrayed military secrets to the enemy. The opposition, instead of rallying behind the crown, exploited its difficulties to wrest further powers so as to be in a position to take charge once the war was over. The government, for its part, clung jealously to all its prerogatives, from fear that involving public figures in the war effort would make it impossible to reassert strong tsarist authority once peace was reestablished. In no other belligerent country were political conflicts waged as intensely during the war as in Russia, preventing the effective mobilization of the rear. One result of this was disorganization of food supplies. Although Russia produced more than enough to feed itself, economic mismanagement combined with the breakdown of transportation led in the third year of the war to a sharp rise in prices and to food shortages in the cities.

The final assault on the monarchy began in November 1916, when the head of the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, Pavel Milyukov, during a session of the Duma, implied the government was guilty of treason. During the exceptionally severe winter of 1916–17, food and fuel deliveries to the major cities, especially the capital, Petrograd (the name given to St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924), continued to decline. Dissatisfaction with the government’s conduct of the war, coupled with economic hardships, led in late February 1917 (early March, New Style) to an outburst of popular fury. The revolt began with a mutiny of the Petrograd garrison, staffed by superannuated reservists; from them it spread to the industrial quarters. Nicholas II, persuaded by his generals that he and his wife were the main obstacle to victory, agreed to abdicate (March 2 [March 15, New Style]).

Instead of improving Russia’s war effort, the abdication of the man who, however unqualified to rule, symbolized for the mass of the population the idea of statehood led to the rapid disintegration of the country.

Authority was nominally assumed by a provisional government, issued from the Duma and headed by Prince Georgy Lvov. In fact, it was from the outset exercised by the Petrograd Soviet (“Council”), a body that claimed to represent the nation’s workers and soldiers but actually was convened and run by an executive committee of radical intellectuals nominated by the socialist parties. Similar soviets sprang up in other cities. In the summer of 1917, their socialist leaders united to form in Petrograd the All-Russian Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The All-Russian Soviet assumed responsibility for ensuring that the provisional government, which it labeled “bourgeois,” did not stray from the path of progress. It legislated on its own without bearing responsibility for the consequences. On March 1 (March 14, New Style), fearing a counterrevolution, the Soviet issued “Order No. 1,” which instructed the troops to disarm their officers. Its effect was to cause a breakdown of discipline in the armed forces.

The regime of “dual power” quickly brought disarray to the country. In May representatives of the Petrograd Soviet entered the government, but this action did not stop the slide to anarchy as peasants seized land, soldiers deserted, and ethnic minorities clamored for self-rule. An offensive that the minister of war, Aleksandr Kerensky, launched on June 16 (June 29, New Style), 1917 in the hope of rallying patriotic spirits soon ran out of steam.