part0029

Thus the Russian working class had contradictory characteristics for a Marxist diagnosing its revolutionary potential. Yet the empirical evidence of the period from the 1890s to 1914 suggests that in fact Russia's working class, despite its close links with the peasantry, was exceptionally militant and revolutionary.

(Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 )

Political revolution had been on the minds of all impoverished Europeans since the Middle Ages, and that was no less true in the far eastern reaches of the continent. Moscow and St. Petersburg, the most heavily populated cities of the Russian Empire, were west of the dividing Caucasus Mountains and largely involved in the affairs of Eastern European nations. In 1917, the Russian Empire was ruled by Tsar Nicolas II, and it included modern Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and part of Romania. [191] Rocked by the heavy burden of the Great War, the dynastic tsar’s reign would soon come to an abrupt end that would send shockwaves throughout the whole world.

Over 50 years had passed since the royal family had abolished serfdom, an economic system not unlike that of Norman Britain, in which workers were given the right to live on the land of the tsar in exchange for providing the state with a portion of each harvest. All people had the right to own their own land, but little had changed for Russia’s poorest people, who could still not afford to buy their own property. They remained stuck in rental agreements and prices set by landlords who could decide to evict whole families at any time. The ideals of the Communist Manifesto , a political pamphlet authored by Friedrich Engels, a German journalist, and Russian journalist Karl Marx had not been reached as had been previously hoped.

For a vast empire that had been oppressed by royal dynasties for more than three centuries, the glimmer of communism held hope for the poorest of Russia’s people. Marx and Engels had formulated a political thesis based on communal sharing of all the products of the land within each nation, and in that system, all people were equal. Communism had no space for royalty, aristocracy, or oppressive managerial regimes; it posited that the means of production—agricultural land, tools, factories, and the like—should be in the hands of the laborers.

Still suffering at the turn of the 20th century, Russia’s farmers and workers demanded change. The laborers in the cities had gone on strike in 1905, [192] causing massive worker shortages that stopped the empire’s manufacturing sector in its tracks. Tsar Nicolas II, trying to appease his nation’s most crucial workers, promised to create a people’s government in which everyone could vote on their representatives. Nicolas II was already in a very precarious situation when he agreed to enter WWI beside Great Britain, France, and Serbia to defend against Austrian retaliation for Archduke Ferdinand’s death.

The war heavily taxed an already agitated Russian populace who felt that being sent to war was the very final reason in a long list of reasons to rebel. In the last year of WWI, Russians crowded into the streets of St. Petersburg and cried out for bread. Striking industry workers joined them, demanding wage increases to cover their own costs of living. Imperial guards shot and killed some of the demonstrators but eventually cowed under the sheer volume of citizens. The tsar knew his time was done; he abdicated the throne in March of 1917, days after a group of wealthy citizens formed their own provisional government. [193] Abdication was not good enough for the most extreme revolutionaries, however, who held the royal family captive and eventually murdered them all.

For political party leader Vladimir Lenin and his followers, however, governance by the country’s bourgeoisie was little better than dictatorship by the tsar. He rallied thousands of Russian soldiers, workers, and poor to descend upon the provisional government in November of the same year and call for its dissolution. The move was successful. Without so much as a single life lost, Lenin’s Bolsheviks were empowered to organize the former Russian Empire into a brand-new communist nation. Vladimir Lenin himself was the leader of the people’s government, but he refused to take any imperialist title to place himself above any other member of the government or citizenry.

Lenin pulled Russian troops out of the war, but they came home only to find Russia in a state of civil war. The Red Army, forged from Lenin’s newly established Russian Communist Party, faced off against a mixed coalition of monarchists, democratic reformists, and bourgeoise capitalists. The measures Lenin took to empower his Red Army had a massively negative effect on the country’s economy as a whole, and while the soldiers were fed, tens of thousands of other people starved.

Facing constant threats from his opposition and even an assassination attempt in 1919, Lenin established a secret police force called the Cheka. [194] These officers executed an estimated 100,000 people who they considered enemies of the communist state, effectively winning the civil war for Lenin. [195] Infighting halted in 1922, and Lenin took the first opportunity to unite with fellow European nations Ukraine, Belarus, and Transcaucasia. They signed a treaty on December 30 of that same year, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more commonly known as the USSR.

The Russian Empire officially became the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and its own capital of Moscow served as the central place of governance for the entire USSR. When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, his office was obtained by Josef Stalin, a man whose totalitarian regime was responsible for forcing fellow nations to join the union at gunpoint, as well as the mass murder of any citizens who spoke out against him. [196] His strict rule saw heavy investment in Russia’s industrial sector which brought the nation wealth and respect throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Unfortunately for believers in Marx’ and Engels’ original political doctrine, neither Lenin’s nor Stalin’s governments and policies mirrored those laid out in the Communist Manifesto . Nevertheless, Vladimir Lenin’s preserved body lays in public view in Moscow’s Red Square. It is a popular attraction for Russians and other international citizens who believe in what he stood for, for the right of all citizens to share in the profits and wealth they help create through labor. Though the ideals of the Russian Revolution were ultimately muted, Lenin’s rise to power over the aristocracy gave hope to oppressed workers and reformists all throughout Europe and as far away as the Americas.