A Beginner's Guide to the Russian Revolution: Part One

In A Beginner's Guide to the Russian Revolution, you will get a survey of one of the most important events of the twentieth century. Not only was a staunchly autocratic state turned over to radical control, the world saw for the first time the entrance of a radical communist state into the arena of international affairs. The first part of A Beginner's Guide to the Russian Revolution will focus on the social, political, and economic situation of Russia in the nineteenth century. These factors would be responsible for the formation of the radical tendencies among Russia's middle and lower classes that would spur the country into open revolution.

Russia was a state unlike most others in Europe during the nineteenth century. Whereas many other states were turning to liberal ideas with legislatures and limited monarchies, Russia continued to be ruled by an autocratic czar. There was no assembly and no checks on his power. This was starting to become a liability in a country whose intelligentsia was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution in the early nineteenth century. A failed revolution called the Decembrist Revolt was actually launched against the czar, but ended in failure in the 1820s. This revolution had the disastrous effect of causing the czar to enact harsh censorship and other repressive measures in order to dissuade further rebellion. However, the failure of the Decembrists served only to embolden young, radical minds in Russia who wanted an end to the autocracy.

Russia was also very backward socially and economically compared to the rest of Europe. It was a huge nation, encompassing a myriad different peoples who spoke different languages and belonged to different ethnic backgrounds. Furthermore, Russia was primarily an agrarian nation. While Great Britain, the United States, and Germany were becoming potent economic powers in the world arena, Russia still gripped to old ways of life. The most backward of practices was that of serfdom. Serfdom was a relic of the Middle Ages in which peasants were bound to the land that they worked and did not own. There was great pressure to abolish serfdom in the 1800s, and the resistance of a number of czars to follow through with its abolition caused frustrated intellectuals to adopt increasingly radical stances. Finally, serfdom was abolished in 1861, though by then splinter radical movements had emerged that threatened the autocracy. In addition, although the serfs were freed, they were still bound to the land financially. The emancipation proceeded under the condition that former serfs pay a high mortgage for their land. The only way they could pay it off was to remain on the land they had formerly been bound to. Many former serfs decided to give up farming altogether and moved to the cities, where swelling numbers of urban poor only exacerbated the radical fervor in Russia.

While the rest of Europe had largely settled down into a form of limited radicalism and political liberalism, Russia increasingly became host to very extreme forms of radicalism. Anarchism, which advocated the complete destruction of government in order to allow progress was begun by Mikhail Bakunin in the second half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, nihilism was on the rise in intellectual circles. Nihilism, as is inherent in its name, is a belief in nothing. Nihilists believed that only concrete and rational values were worthwhile and that titles, religion, art, and love had no place in a working society. These radical movements were further inflamed by actions taken by the czars. In a sort of synergistic relationship, assassination attempts by radicals on the czars would cause the czars to adopt stricter measures against the Russian people. More repression meant more radicalism.

These conflicts became manifest in what was known as The Revolution of 1905. This is not the Russian Revolution which is the focus of this piece, but rather a preliminary revolution that set the stage for it. It followed a disastrous war that Russia waged against a better-equipped Japan called the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The War had strained Russia financially and caused the price of food to skyrocket in the major cities. As we saw in the French Revolution, high food prices and bread shortages were one of the most potent catalysts for revolutionary action. This action came to a violent head in January of 1905 when nearly two hundred thousand people massed in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to peacefully protest the czar's inability to address the crisis. The czar responded by setting troops on the crowd, and hundreds of protesters were killed in an infamous day known as Bloody Sunday. This is not the Bloody Sunday in the U2 song, which was a similar, but smaller-scale incident in Ireland during the 1970s. In response to this violent action, workers took control of the cities by implementing general strikes. As the stagnant economy of Russia was further crippled by these strikes, Czar Nicholas II was finally forced to give in.

As a result, Nicholas approved the formation of a legislative body which came to be known as the Duma. However, unlike the French National Assembly or British Parliament, the Duma only had an advisory role and its power could not trump the czars. When the Duma acted contrary to Nicholas' wishes, he dissolved it.

The shaky ten years that followed the Revolution of 1905 was a transitory period for Russia. A new and globally catastrophic event would prove disastrous for the Russian autocracy and pave the way for a new revolutionary government. In the next part of A Beginner's Guide to the Russian Revolution, we will look at World War I and the ascendancy of radical communism in the form of the Bolshevik Party.