The Russian Revolution

The October Revolution took place in Russia during 1917 in the middle of World War One. This time was the height of Europe's social-democratic movements, and many social democrats believed that socialism would fail in Russia due to how autocratic and agricultural-based it was, thus lacking a strong economic base of capitalism. However; Lenin viewed this very differently, he viewed Russia's lack of development of capitalism as an opening for socialism, as it meant a weak bourgeois and a large and exploited working class made up of farm laborers.

Vladimir Lenin was on his way to becoming a lawyer at Kazan university but completely changed his course and became very involved with the revolutionary cause. He looked up to German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and and hoped to bring the Social-Democratic movement not just to Russia but to the whole world. He spent most of his life being an active advocator for the Social-Democratic movement, and he led the ‘Bolshevik’ faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, when it split in 1903.

Russia was always on the brink of collapse due to the exploitation of the huge working class by the small population of aristocrats and after Bloody Sunday, in which lots of protesting workers were killed, the people began to perceive Tsar Nicholas II as the enemy of the working class. After the war began in 1914, a huge Russian army was created to fight against Germany and members of the working class were required to fight. Heavy losses against Germany resulted in almost 2 million people being killed and the Russian people blamed the Tsar.

This long-standing discontent with the monarchy erupted into mass protests against food rationing in the February of 1917. The Tsar sent forces to crush the protests, but mutinous Russian Army forces ended up siding with the revolutionaries and the Tsar abdicated. A Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov ended up replacing the Romanov rule; along with the Petrograd Soviet, which represented the soldiers and workers.

A major faction in the Petrograd Soviet was the Bolsheviks, which was led by Lenin. They believed that Russia should have a communist government, and Lenin took full control of the government in October, establishing Russia as the world's first communist nation. He implemented very progressive policies in Russia such as granting equal rights to men and women. The US, being very anti-communist, saw Russia's communist government as a threat to US values and sent supplies to anti-Bolshevik groups such as the White Army.

Lenin also insisted on pulling Russia out of World War One and succeeded in doing so through the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918. However; through the treaty Russia lost one-third of the old empire’s population, one-third of its railway network, half of its industry, three-quarters of its supplies of iron ore, nine-tenths of its coal resources and much of its food supplies. The US was furious about this, as Russia pulling out of the war allowed the Germans to reallocate troops to face the Allied forces on the Western Front.

Ultimately Lenin failed in achieving his goals, as due to his struggle to retain power, workers’ democracy was eroded as the Party took total control over all aspects of economy and state building.
In 1917, major acts of violence started to occur everywhere due to the lack of a proper police force and was heightened due to the Bolsheviks approval and encouragement of this breakdown of social order. Lenin himself thought that mob justice was a justifiable expression popular anger against the bourgeois order. This unprecedented social breakdown caused the Bolsheviks to resort to draconian measures and all common crimes were dealt with by the Cheka, an extralegal private police force.

The Russian revolution was clearly a failure due to its inability to provide essential services to its citizens and inability to establish order among the people. Lenin had taken power with the expectation that a successful communist country such as Russia would inspire a world revolution that would succeed in implementing communism everywhere. However, the failure in Russia caused people to fear communism more and the socialist movement failed across Europe and in the US (First Red Scare), thus leaving Russia as an isolated communist country.

Writing about this revolution has taught me about how precious our democracy in America is. As with out our government's commitments to the constitution, law, and freedom of speech, we would likely descend into a state very similar to this.

Sources:
https://research.sociology.cam.ac.uk/news/significance-october-revolution-1917
https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2017/11/social-breakdown-in-revolutionary-russia-tsuyoshi-hasegawa.html
https://research.sociology.cam.ac.uk/news/perceptions-russian-october-revolution-great-britain
https://www.bl.uk/people/lenin