The

Russian Revolution: History In An Hour

Rupert Colley

Introduction

The communist system unleashed by the Russian Revolution of 1917 was the greatest political

experiment ever conducted. The Revolution promised freedom from the shackles of

Imperialism, corruption and exploitation but until its collapse in 1991, the peoples of the vast

Soviet empire endured seventy years of misguided socialism and totalitarianism.

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled over a vast empire that was backward, impoverished and

in some respects resentful of his autocratic rule. Its people demanded reform and change. The

effects of the outbreak of war in 1914 finally, in March 1917, brought down the Tsar and the

300-year-old Romanov dynasty.

The Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar proved equally ineffectual at addressing the

needs of Russia’s major problems. Only the representatives of the workers, or ‘Soviets’, seemed

to understand the problems that lay at the heart of the empire. From the various Soviet parties,

it was the Bolsheviks and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, that seized power and established the Soviet

Union with its promises of a new socialist utopia. The consequences shaped the entire

twentieth century and its ramifications were felt across the world.

This, in an hour, is the Russian Revolution.

(Note on dates: Until January 1918, Russia used the ‘Old Style’ Julian Calendar that before 1900

was 12 days behind our Gregorian calendar, and after 1900, 13 days behind. This text uses the

New Style throughout.)

Emancipation

On 3 March 1861, Alexander II issued what seemed on the face of it the most revolutionary

reform in Russia’s history – his ‘Manifesto on the Emancipation of the Serfs’. The edict freed 23

million serfs from their bondage to landowners, and wrested ownership of 85 per cent of

Russia’s land from private landowners in favour of the peasants. The landlords, understandably,

opposed such a sweeping change but were told by the Tsar, ‘It is better to abolish serfdom from

above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below’.

Alexander II, c.1870

The high ideals of Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs fell very short of its ambition.

Landowners held onto 15 per cent of the land and this was, invariably, the best land; while

peasants had to buy back their land from the nobles, usually at an inflated price. The majority

were, inevitably, unable to afford the cost, and were offered a loan by the government,

repayable at 6 per cent over forty-nine years. The peasant, freed from serfdom, was no better

off and no happier.

Twenty years later, on 13 March 1881, a group calling themselves the People’s Will threw a

bomb at the Tsar’s carriage in St Petersburg, fatally wounding Alexander II. The Tsar’s son

(Alexander III) and twelve-year-old grandson (Nicholas II) were witness to Alexander’s violent

end. As future tsars they never forgot.

Ironically, Alexander II had, just hours before his death, put his signature to a draft decree to

establish a parliament, a Duma, the first step towards a constitutional monarchy. He knew that

the emancipation of the serfs had failed, and that his reforms, though laudable, merely created

demand for greater reform. Thus, by their very action, the terrorists had unwittingly aborted

any chance of constitutional reform. Instead, they got a new Tsar, Alexander’s son, Alexander III,

who immediately tore up his father’s parliamentary proposal, undid his reforms and intensified

the level of repression.

The new tsar’s Manifesto on Unshakable Autocracy, issued within two months of his father’s

death, summed up Alexander III’s view on how Russia should be ruled. Liberalism and

democracy were considered signs of weakness; for the benefit of all, his people needed to be

ruled with a firm hand and the nation needed to be more ‘Russian’. Ethnic languages and

nationalistic tendencies were repressed. The vast empire was to be subject to the Tsar’s

Russification and autocratic rule.

The Tsar intended to start teaching his son the art of statesmanship once Nicholas had reached

the age of thirty. But on 1 November 1894, aged only forty-nine, Alexander III died of kidney

disease. His son was still only twenty-six. Following the death of his father, a fearful Nicholas

was thrust unprepared into the limelight, reputedly asking, ‘what will become of me and all of

Russia?’

Nicholas II: the Last Tsar

Russia in the early twentieth century was a mesh of nationalities and ethnicities – Ukrainian,

Georgian, Finnish, Baltic, Armenian, German, and Polish among others. According to the Russian

census of 1897, Russians themselves only constituted 44 per cent of the Tsar’s sprawling

empire. This was far from a happy conglomeration of nationhood, and the Tsar needed all the

mechanisms of State control to maintain command of his subjects.

Determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and rule by autocratic means, he misread the

underlying discontent within the empire as the malign influence of the Jew, rather than as

genuine grievance. Organizations such as the pro-tsarist Black Hundreds instituted pogroms

against the Jews; their communities were forced to settle in the Western reaches of the empire,

the Pale of Settlement, where their movements were curtailed.

Nicholas II, c. 1900

Sergei Witte, Russia’s minister of finance and after 1905, Russia’s first prime minister, was

convinced that if Russia was to hold its own against the great European powers, it needed to

industrialize. He financed Russia’s industrial and economic progress through large foreign loans,

burdening Russia with foreign debt, and heavy indirect taxation. This particularly affected the

peasants, as rents rose and grain prices fell; in some areas the effect was devastating – such as

the famine in central Volga in 1898–99.

Socialists

In 1898, amidst this turmoil, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) emerged as the

leading advocates of Marxism and revolution. In 1902 its newest member, Vladimir Lenin,

published his pamphlet, What Is To Be Done? in which he firmly allied the Party to the interests

of the working classes. Only the Party truly understood the needs of the workers, more so than

the workers themselves, who, left to their own devices, were concerned only with narrow

ambitions, such as improved pay and conditions. It was down to a party of professional

revolutionaries, fighting on their behalf, the ‘vanguard of the proletariat’, to bring about

wholesale revolution.

Declared illegal, in 1903 the RSDLP had to hold its Second Congress in London where its

members quarrelled to the point the Party split into two factions – Bolshevik and Menshevik.

(Bolshevik translates as the majority faction, the Mensheviks the minority, although, confusingly,

until 1917, the Mensheviks were the majority faction). Both factions agreed that the three-

century old Romanov dynasty had to go, but whereas Lenin and the Bolsheviks advocated a core

of professional revolutionaries under centralised leadership who would lead workers into

revolution, the Mensheviks proposed a more gradual approach. Come the revolution, the

Bolsheviks would immediately transfer power to the urban working classes, the dictatorship of

the proletariat. The Mensheviks followed the more traditional Marxist thinking that Russia had

first to develop as a capitalist economy before being ready to undergo a ‘transition to socialism’,

requiring them to work with the Duma. Opposing both, another new party, the Socialist

Revolutionaries believed the route to revolution lay not with the urban working classes but the

peasants.

Russo–Japanese War

Russia’s territorial aims in the East risked bringing it into conflict with the ambitions of Japan. On

8 February 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Russian ships based at Port Arthur in

Manchuria. The resultant war was a disaster for Russia, the supposedly military superpower.

The annihilation of the Russian navy in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and southern Japan

in May 1905 caused great shock in Russia; the defeat attributed directly to the Tsar. His land

armies fared no better. If the Tsar hoped the war would divert attention from unrest at home

and stir the patriotic breasts of his subjects, he was much mistaken.

The 1905 Russian Revolution

Bloody Sunday and the 1905 Russian Revolution

On Sunday, 22 January 1905, the workers of St Petersburg organized a peaceful demonstration

to demand political and constitutional reform. 150,000 demonstrators, including whole families,

led by an Orthodox priest, Father Georgy Gapon, marched through the city streets to present a

petition to the Tsar. Penned by Gapon, the petition called for a reduction in the working day

from eleven to eight hours; the right to strike; the introduction of universal suffrage; and an end

to Russia’s on-going and disastrous war with Japan.

Gapon and his legion of demonstrators were not anti-tsar – indeed, dressed in their Sunday

best, families carried icons and portraits of Nicholas II, whom they affectionately called their

‘little father’, and sung hymns and songs proclaiming their support for him. Unbeknownst to the

marchers, Nicholas II, forewarned of the demonstration, was not at the Winter Palace, but at his

summer residence on the outskirts of the city.

The Tsar’s troops shooting at demonstrators in St Petersburg, Bloody Sunday, 22 January 1905

Arriving at the Palace, the marchers found their way barred by thousands of armed troops who

first fired warning shots, then fired directly into the dense crowd. Panic ensued; many were

killed or wounded. Cossacks on horseback charged, galloping through the crowds, slashing at

people with their sabres. Elsewhere canon was used against the helpless hordes. Estimates vary,

but nearly 200 people were killed and many more wounded; the casualties included children.

Bloody Sunday, as the tragedy became to be known, was the moment the Russian people lost

their faith in the Tsar. Up to then, there had been economic hardship and discontent, the Tsar

ruled by autocracy and he had made use of the Okhrana, his secret police, but, on the whole, he

had the support of the masses. That Sunday, he may not have issued the fatal order to fire but

the people held him responsible – and they felt betrayed.

Mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin

Following the defeat at Tsushima during the Russo–Japanese War, mutinies broke out across

the armed forces, most notoriously, among the crew of the Battleship Potemkin of the Black Sea

Fleet. Morale, already low, coupled with harsh discipline and resentment of Russia’s

participation in what was viewed as a pointless war, created a volatile situation. On 27 June

1905 the provision of maggot-infested meat brought the crew to the edge of rebellion. When an

officer shot one of the crew, spontaneous mutiny broke out. The mutineers, in turn, killed seven

officers. Flying under the red flag of revolution, the sailors sailed the ship that evening to the

port of Odessa in the Ukraine. The funeral two days later for their fallen comrades turned into a

city-wide protest, resulting in government troops firing into the crowds. As the Potemkin set out

to sea, Nicholas II dispatched a number of ships to intercept it to force its surrender. But when

the Potemkin declined to surrender, these crews refused to open fire. The Potemkin finally

reached Romania where its crew gave up the ship and sought asylum.

The Russo-Japanese War was finally concluded in September 1905 with the Treaty of

Portsmouth (in New Hampshire). Despite its humiliating defeat, Russia won an honourable

peace due to Sergei Witte, the Tsar’s ex-finance minister. For his efforts, Witte, who had been

out of political favour, returned to the fold and was appointed prime minister.

The October Manifesto

Nicholas II donated large sums of compensation to the victims of Bloody Sunday and their

families but it was not enough – this massacre sparked the 1905 Russian Revolution. Workers

and peasants, no longer feeling constrained by the law or loyalty to the Tsar, staged protest

marches and strikes throughout the empire. In the countryside, peasants forcibly ejected

landowners from their estates; and in cities and towns, workers formed councils of elected

workers – or, to use the Russian word, ‘Soviets’.

Read more The Russian Revolution: History In An Hour published by Harper Press

History In An Hour