Week 8: Cases of Revolution: The Russian Experience

Mensheviks: Alexander Kerensky

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a Russian lawyer and revolutionist who was a key political figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Collectivization/Kulaks

Collectivization, policy adopted by the Soviet government, pursued most intensively between 1929 and 1933, to transform traditional agriculture in the Soviet Union and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks (prosperous peasants). Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy). The process was ultimately undertaken in conjunction with the campaign to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly. But before the drive began, long and bitter debates over the nature and pace of collectivization went on among the Soviet leaders (especially between Stalin and Trotsky, 1925-27, and between Stalin and Nikolay Bukharin, 1927-29).

Josef Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 1953 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Premier.

Bolsheviks: Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924.

Mir

Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft.

Czar Nicholas II

Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917.

"Socialism in One Country"

Socialism in one country was a theory put forth by Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin in 1924 which was eventually adopted by the Soviet Union as state policy.

Soviets

Soviets were political organizations and governmental bodies of the late Russian Empire, primarily associated with the Russian Revolution, which gave the name to the latter states of the Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union.

Council of People's Commissars

The Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the highest collegial body of executive and administrative authority of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1946.

Emancipation of the Serfs (1861)

The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Emancipation Edict of Russia, (Russian: Крестьянская реформа 1861 года, romanized: Krestyanskaya reforma 1861 goda - "peasants' reform of 1861") was the first and most important of liberal reforms passed during the reign (1855-1881) of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty. Serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords. Household serfs were the least affected: they gained only their freedom and no land.

The February 1917 Revolution

The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution, was the first of two revolutions which took place in Russia in 1917. The main events of the revolution took place in and near Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg), the then-capital of Russia, where long-standing discontent with the monarchy erupted into mass protests against food rationing on 23 February Old Style (8 March New Style). Revolutionary activity lasted about eight days, involving mass demonstrations and violent armed clashes with police and gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the Russian monarchy. On 27 February O.S. (12 March N.S.) mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, ending Romanov dynastic rule and the Russian Empire. A Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov replaced the Council of Ministers of Russia. The revolution appeared to break out without any real leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, which compounded after the start of World War I in 1914. Disaffected soldiers from the city's garrison joined bread rioters, primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers on the streets. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, the city fell into chaos, leading to the overthrow of the Tsar. In all, over 1,300 people were killed during the protests of February 1917.[6]

The Great Purges

The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938.

Russian Populists (Narodniks)

The Narodniks were a politically conscious movement of the Russian middle class in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism.

The New Economic Policy

The New Economic Policy was an economic policy of Soviet Russia proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient.

The October Revolution

The October Revolution,[a] officially known in Soviet historiography as the Great October Socialist Revolution and commonly referred to as the October Uprising, the October Coup, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolshevik Coup or the Red October, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917-23. It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November (25 October, O.S.) 1917. It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and resulted in a provisional government after a transfer of power proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, the younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (soviets) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. After the Congress of Soviets, the new governing body, had its second session it elected members of the Bolsheviks and other left-wing groups such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to important positions within the new state of affairs. This immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic. On 17 July 1918, the Tsar and his family were executed. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 7 November 1917 (New Style). The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured.

Reds and Whites

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the two Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. The two largest combatant groups were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism, economic capitalism and alternative forms of socialism, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists and non-ideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites.

The (failed) 1905 Revolution

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to constitutional reform (namely the "October Manifesto"), including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. The 1905 revolution was spurred by the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), but also by the growing realisation by the people of the need for reform, after politicians such as Sergei Witte failed to accomplish this. While the Tsar managed to keep his rule, the events foreshadowed those of the Russian revolutions in 1917, which resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy, execution of the imperial family, and creation of the Soviet Union by the Bolsheviks.

War Communism

War communism or military communism was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921.

Labor repressive agriculture

squeezing the peasantry to generate the necessary capital for modernization