The last Tsar, Nicholas II, was determined to rule as an autocrat but did not possess the intelligence or temperament of a strong ruler.
The emancipation of 1861 is a big turning point. It liberated the serfs, who previously were owned as part of the land they lived on, giving them the right to own property and businesses. It started the terminal decline of the old noble landowners, who were already heavily indebted and now deprived of their free serf labor and newly subject to the pressures of capitalism. Between 1861 and 1900 over 40% of the gentry’s land was sold to peasants. Prior to 1861 the gentry’s estates were not run like businesses at all.
Concept of the “Two Russias.” The educated urban elites and the peasants. The elites had very little knowledge the peasants’ lives. Russian populists romanticized peasant living, but would have dissolutionment when actually going to live with peasants and seeing they were no better people than the elites, being savagely violent and dumb. A example Russian peasant proverb: “Beat your wife like a fur coat, then there’ll be less noise.”
Rising literacy causes revolutions, English, French, and Russian revolutions all happened as literacy rates approached 50%. It disrupts traditional society, reducing the power/importance of patriarchal elders and spreading new ideas to the youth.
The literate young men would leave their farms, desiring to go work in the cities. City work was backbreaking, with no labor protections. He argues the Tsar’s refusal to enact labor laws improving workers’ conditions was a contributing factor to the revolution. Marxist/Socialist revolutionary factory workers would meet in secret.
There was a huge suppression of dissent by the State. Secret police who could in imprison or exile on the just the suspicion of “political crimes.” State agents posed as revolutionaries to report on what was going on. 100s of bureaucrats were employed in reading people’s intercepted mail. In 1917, the average Bolshevik activist had spent 4 years in jail or exile. This suppression led to radicalization, resulting in the activists rejecting the more moderate liberal reform goals of the western European nations for a more violent and terrorism-filled ideology.
At the top of the movement were guilt-ridden children of nobles, who felt they got their wealth and knowledge only because of the unjust exploitation of the peasants. They had the idea that they could be redeemed from their original sin of “privilege” by achieving the liberation of the peasants. They were newly minted atheists, and this was their substitute religion.
What is to be Done? by Chernyshevsky was a book that pushed lots of people (including Lenin. Marx learned Russian just to read it) towards becoming a revolutionary. The protagonist is a force of nature who suffers no pleasures in life or any distraction from the single goal of the revolution. Another book’s character, Bazarov of the book Fathers and Sons by Turgenev was embraced as a model for the revolutionaries, despite being intended as a monstrous caricature of nihilists (evidence of the huge gulf between one generation and the next).
Originally, during the early 1870s, revolutionaries were populist, but the failure of the “to the People” movement where many went and spent time in peasant villages trying to convert people to their cause, they realized the peasants weren’t having it, and gradually changed to a strategy of conspiracy to seize power using violence. They explained the failure of propaganda on the idea that the laws of social progress dictate that the richer peasants would always support the current regime.
The marxists succeeded the populists and kept the class struggle to overthrow the current system but changed the good guys from the peasants to the working class. Marx saw history as a inevitable sequence, where capitalism had to arise first before socialism.
Lenin had no real compassion for people and would gladly increase their suffering if he could use it to agitate for his revolution. The split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903 was defined by Lenin. His personality, and his harsh methods and disregard for democracy in his sole aim of revolution.
End part 1
The great famine of 1891 was a big pusher towards political agitation, particularly marxism.
Note, the term “liberal” or “political liberal” is used a lot and seems to be the those who wanted to keep the Tsarist state, but have it undergo liberal reforms for the benefit of the workers.
The author’s perhaps biggest point so far has been how the autocracy continually pushed people into radicalism by clamping down hard and viciously on any attempts at even moderate reform.
Bloody Sunday, on Jan 9 1905, where the state’s soldiers shot on an unarmed peaceful procession asking for reforms caused a lot of people to start hating the Tsar. Months of protests and violence ensued, with Russia teetering on the edge of collapse. Finally, after months, the Tsar accepted their demands and signed the October Manifesto, which among other things initiated forming a constitution and the duma. But after the Manifesto rioting if anything got worse, but eventually the Tsar was able to put it down, with vicious suppression, thanks to the continued loyalty of his military and the uncoordination of the various revolutionary sects. The Manifesto also mostly satisfied the liberals, leaving the socialists alone in rebellion.
From the 1905 Manifesto to 1917, discontent simmered. The well-to-do Liberals became conservatives, fearing future violence against them, and the peasants and working-class had had none of their economic demands met in the Manifesto.
During those years Stolypin tried to convert the peasants into land owners by getting them to private their communes, but resistance from the gentry, land captains, and older/wealthier peasants made this largely a failure.
In WWI Russia was hopelessly incompetent. It’s military leaders had been promoted because of loyalty to the Tsar rather than military knowledge. They were still obsessed with using cavalry, which were mowed down by German artillery, they resisted digging trenches, which mowed down many more men. They had no ammunition and food supply for a long war, and were not quick to start working on making more.
End part 2
Food shortages caused by WWI ultimately brought down the Tsar. It was a very sudden end, with no one predicting it even 2 weeks out. Protests and strikes about bread quickly turned political as people demanding the ousting of the Tsar. The soldiers, who already resented the government because of its incompetence in the war so far, started siding with the working class protesters and violence between protesters and police escalated quickly. The Tsar was very committed to his oath to uphold the principle of Autocracy and one could argue he preferred abdicating to becoming a constitutional monarch.
The protests were very riot-like, with lots of excess violence as time went on, caused in part no doubt because they had emptied all the prisons.
A provisional government was constructed and also the Soviet, which literally means council, the Soviet had the power because all the workers were behind it, but the government was officially in charge. At this time, the Bolsheviks were not really involved in the Soviet. It was largely Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary members and Social Democrats. The government was mostly liberal bourgeois folks, not socialists, originally, but Mensheviks Soviet members joined later, which decreased their popularity as they became part of the government in a coalition with the liberals and helped the Bolsheviks.
Lenin returned to Russia April 3, 1917, a couple months after the February revolution had begun. Lenin lived like a spartan, exercising to build his muscles and didn’t live lavishly even after seizing power, author said Bolshevism had a “macho culture”: violence, power etc. He didn’t have lots of mistresses either, but he cultivated in himself coldness. Lenin quote: “I can’t listen to music too often, it makes me want to say kind, stupid things, and pat the heads of people. But now you have to beat them on the head, beat them without mercy.” He had no interests or hobbies outside of politics and his quest to seize power.
His April Theses were radically different that what current Bolsheviks, let alone Mensheviks or SRs were even considering. It was much more radical, arguing the proletarian revolution should try to seize power now, skipping the lengthy period of Bourgeoisie rule.
Gorky was one socialist who was disenchanted with revolution because of its violence and anti-civilization nature. Quote: “In my view the overwhelming majority of the population in Russia is both evil and as stupid as pigs.” He blame Lenin for taking a revolution that would’ve been Westernizing for Russia and “peasantizing it.”
The Bolsheviks seized power in October. And started rolling back freedoms and stepping up persecution of competing political parties. People really hated any form of privilege, peasants really believed everyone should get the exact same things, so the Bolshevik “eat the rich” policies struck a chord with people. They encouraged plundering bourgeois property as a form of social justice by revenge: “looting the looters.” Armed gangs robbed everywhere in the country as law and order completely vanished in early 1918. Mob violence killed people by the thousands, the Cheka courts had no legal principles and often primarily convicted people on the basis of their upbringing and former social class. Bourgeois people were forced to do menial labor like cleaning streets, primarily to humiliate them. Noble lands were split up and brought into the village communes.
As a result of their disastrous negotiating strategy, the Soviets’ peace with Germany involved giving up 34% of its population (55 million people), 32% of its agricultural land, 54% of its industrial enterprises and 89% of its coal mines.
In 1918 Lenin created Committees of the Rural Poor which were supposed to consist of the poorer peasants in communes with the goal of inciting class conflict between the wealthier peasants and the poorer ones. It failed miserably and was abolished within a year. The peasants all thought of themselves as one group and the slightly wealthier peasants were looked up to and respected as the older and most success farmers.
This book was very interesting, but very long, and I took far fewer notes in the second half of the book. (Still read the whole thing though.)
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