October/November Revolution

V.I. Lenin secretly returned from Finland (and Switzerland in April) on November 07, 1917 (October 25 according to the Julian calendar) to St. Petersburg, where he organized an armed uprising in which the rebel soldiers and workers under the Bolsheviks overthrew the Kerensky government and changed the entire socio-political system after the civil war that followed. The Tsar’s Winter Palace was captured on November 07, almost bloodlessly, while Kerensky fled; the other members of the Provisional Government were arrested.

The Bolsheviks fought to consolidate their power against the pro-tsarist reactionaries (“Whites”) and the Western invading armies. During the ensuing civil war between the “Reds” and “Whites”, the Bolsheviks managed to use propaganda to present themselves as fighters for preserving the independence and integrity of Russia against the foreign (Western) occupiers (Americans, for example, had occupied Vladivostok in August 1918 and the area around till spring 1920, etc.).

During the October/November Revolution, the workers hoped that the new Russia would be ruled by the soviets, but the course of events very quickly took a different course. It should be noted that the peasantry did not participate in the revolution, nor did Lenin make any crucial attempts during the revolution in St. Petersburg to animate the peasants and attract them to the side of the Bolsheviks.

The revolution was Marxist, and the peasantry was not viewed very favorably in Marxism, given that all attention was focused on the working (urban-industrial) class of producers. The peasantry was even labelled as a conservative-reactionary element. However, the basic problem with the peasantry was that the peasants constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia, as much as 80%, and without them, victory in the civil war was practically impossible.

Due to the very limited revolutionary-political base – in November 1917 there were slightly less than 300,000 Bolsheviks in all of Russia – Lenin and his comrades faced great opposition on all fronts. In order to expand the revolutionary base immediately after the revolution in St. Petersburg, when the revolution had to be defended under the threat of a severe civil war, Lenin promised the broad masses of the people two things:

1) Peace (i.e., Russia’s exit from the war under extremely unfavorable conditions from the point of view of national interests), and

2) Distribution of land to the peasants, who at that time constituted 80% of the population (i.e., an agrarian reform that would provoke a counter-reaction of the aristocracy and large landowners from whom the land was to be confiscated for distribution to the peasants).

The Bolsheviks, for purely political reasons, but not ideological ones, implemented an agrarian reform, i.e., a new land policy, which they adopted from the social revolutionaries, as the revolution had to be defended at all costs. Of course, based on Marxist principles, the land was nationalized and collectivized (state farms and collective farms) shortly after the successful revolution during the civil war, so that in the end the peasants were cheated. However, in the revolutionary year of 1917 and the following years of the civil war, the peasants considered the acquired land their own.

During the Russian Civil War (1918-1920), grain and some other food products were forcibly requisitioned by the Bolshevik authorities to feed the Red Army soldiers at the military front and the urban population in the background. However, in response to this policy, the peasants began to sow less grain, which led to famine and disease. Finally, Lenin was forced to give in, and immediately after the Civil War, in 1921, he introduced the New Economic Policy, which was in favour of the peasants, since it was based partly on a market economy. The political goal of this economic policy, at least for a while, was not to turn the peasants against the new Soviet Russia, which on December 30, 1922, became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

During the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War (1917–1920), there were supporters of a revolutionary war in order to accelerate the development of socialism on Marxist foundations in Europe. This meant exporting the Bolshevik revolution beyond the borders of Soviet Russia. Lenin himself wanted to consolidate Bolshevik revolutionary power in Russia and therefore advocated signing a separate peace with the Central Powers that would take Russia out of the war and make the Bolsheviks’ position easier in the fight against the “white” tsarist reaction.

At that time, some Bolsheviks advocated the abolition of money and the overnight introduction of a socialist economy, while the peasants wanted the new government to leave them alone and their newly acquired land. However, the fiercest resistance to the Bolshevik government was provided by supporters of the tsarist system known as the “White Guards”.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918

By signing a separate peace in Brest-Litovsk on March 03, 1918, with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), Lenin ended the war with Russia’s main enemy, Germany, but the price of peace was too high. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet government immediately moved to withdraw from the Great War and enable consolidation of the new government and the economic reconstruction of the country.

On November 08, 1917, the government issued the Decree on Peace, in which it addressed all warring parties with an appeal to conclude a general peace without annexations and contributions on the principle of status quo ante bellum. Thus, the geopolitical map of Europe would not change and would remain the same as before the war. This peace proposal was entirely suitable for Russia, given that at that time the Baltic territories of Russia in the west were already occupied by Germany, and if the war were to continue, there was a real danger that the Central Powers would soon occupy Belarus and Ukraine.

The Entente powers rejected Lenin’s proposal and offered Soviet Russia funds and assistance to prolong the war, as Russia’s withdrawal from the war would give great advantage to the Central Powers, even though the United States had entered the war in April 1917. However, Lenin rejected this Entente proposal, arguing that Russia’s further participation in the war would turn it into an agent of Anglo-French imperialism.

However, things went more easily with the Central Powers, because Germany was interested in Russia’s withdrawal from the war. Thus, Soviet Russia signed an armistice with the Central Powers on December 15, 1917, in Brest-Litovsk, and on December 22, final negotiations began for signing a separate peace treaty between the Central Powers and Soviet Russia. By then, Russia had lost huge territory in the west from Estonia to the Black Sea, and German troops had broken out on the Dnieper River. Kiev was occupied in early January 1918.

On January 18, 1918, a delegation of the Central Powers demanded that Russia renounce all occupied territories in the west as a condition for signing a peace. Simultaneously with these negotiations, the Ukrainian counter-revolutionary government, patronized by Germany, began negotiations and on February 09, 1918, concluded a separate peace with the Central Powers, which now uncompromisingly demanded that Moscow accept the dictated terms for peace. The head of the Soviet negotiating team, Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879–1940), contrary to Lenin’s instructions, broke off the negotiations on February 10, with a declaration of refusal to sign the peace treaty, announced the end of the war, and the demobilization of the Russian army.

The German army decided to take advantage of the new situation on the Eastern Front, and on February 18, 1918, launched an offensive along the entire front line. The Soviet government had to request the renewal of negotiations, and peace was finally signed on March 03, under even more difficult conditions than those rejected by Trotsky. With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Soviet Russia renounced Poland, Lithuania, and Courland (western regions of Livland /Latvia), and recognized the independence of Ukraine, Estonia, Livland /Latvia, and Finland. These areas had to be evacuated immediately.

Russia had to hand over Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi to the Ottoman Empire. German and Austro-Hungarian troops occupied part of Russian territory beyond the border stipulated by the peace treaty (along with Ukraine) as far as Rostov-on-Don in the south and Narva in the north. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was short-lived as Germany capitulated on November 11 and the Soviet government annulled the treaty two days later. However, the signing of this treaty initiated the Russian Civil War as the Bolsheviks were declared traitors and German agents by the tsarists.

The Russian Civil War, 1918 to end-1920, divided the country into supporters of the Bolshevik revolution and those who supported the former tsarist regime. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente forces entered Russia to prevent the Germans from occupying key centers. After German capitulation in November 1918, Allied troops remained in Russia to help the Whites fight the burden of the civil war. Lenin used this to present the Soviet government as fighting against foreign occupation and for Russian independence.

The Bolsheviks, who had disbanded the tsarist army, given land to the peasants, and demanded a separate peace, had to quickly create a new military force to oppose the Whites and the Allies. Thus was created the Bolshevik Red Army by Trotsky. The Red Army soldiers had to fight with the “Greens” (anarchists), Poles, and dissidents throughout Russia from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. In the Russian Far East, they fought against the American and Japanese invasions. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918 executed all members of the Romanov dynasty for political and security reasons. At the end of the civil war, the Bolsheviks with their Red Army won.

New Post-Revolutionary Soviet Russia

After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the end of the Civil War, Bolshevik Russia had to be satisfied with a smaller territory than the old Russian Empire. The borderlands in the west – Finland, Estonia, Livland /Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Belarus and Ukraine, Poland, and Bessarabia /Moldova – were lost, at least for a time. However, in the three independent Transcaucasian republics – Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – the path to power was open for the Bolsheviks after the evacuation of the British from Transcaucasia in December 1919. Thanks to the intervention of the Red Army, Transcaucasia returned to the borders of Russia in April 1921.

The first major problem that the new Soviet government had to face was the famine that raged during the winter of 1921/1922 and claimed about five million lives. It was also the main reason for the collapse of the Russian economy in 1921. By the end of 1920, the White Guards were completely defeated, and the Allies withdrew from Russia. The seven years of war from 1914 to the end of 1920 brought Russia into a state of true chaos. The people were dissatisfied with inflation, food and fuel shortages, but also with the increasingly harsh autocratic measures of the Soviet authorities, which were introduced to overcome internal and external threats to the young Soviet state. In 1921, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) to encourage economic recovery but also to appease the peasants, thus allowing a limited market economy and freer production. The NEP period was also a period of significant freedom, which was also expressed in the arts.

The problem of the succession remained. Lenin himself favoured Trotsky as his successor, but  Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) proved to be the most capable politician to seize power after Lenin’s death in 1924, following an illness in 1922. A triumvirate was formed to rule the country: Zinoviev (1883–1936), Kamenev (1883–1936), and Stalin. Lenin did not trust Stalin, whose main rival for power was Trotsky. Through skillful political maneuvering and control of the party machinery, Stalin managed to eliminate Trotsky, take over leadership of both the party and the state, and finally establish a personal dictatorship and a cult of personality. The second half of the 1930s saw Stalin’s political purges when the October/November Revolution ate its own children (except Stalin).

(Concluded)