Early 20th Century Anti-Colonialism

I. National Aspirations and Self-Determination



A. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points--Wilson gave his Fourteen Points speech before a joint session of Congress, to assure them--and the American People--that the United States was entering the World War to ensure peace and freedom for all, and not to assist Great Britain and France of achieving their war aims.

1. Point 5--A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

2. Versailles Peace Conference--attended by representatives of many nations, seeking self-determination for their national aspirations.



II. Ireland



A. Home Rule Controversy

1. Home Rule--the political goal of most Irish people, particularly those who identified themselves as “nationalists.”

a) Parliamentary--a series of Irish politicians--Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, and John Redmon, in particular--worked with the English parliamentary parties to achieve the goal of Home Rule. Parnell was especially adept at the maneuvers necessary to gain leverage with the Whigs and Tories

b) Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)--other Irish nationalists felt compelled to use the force of arms to achieve Home Rule--or, better yet, complete independence from Great Britain.



2. Orange Order--made up of Protestant Irish who considered themselves “loyalists”--that is to say, loyal to the Crown of England.

a) Orange Order threatened civil war if “forced” into Home Rule; proposed that northern counties of “Ulster” remain with England.

b) Orange Order purchased 25,000 rifles and 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition from Germany, which gave the slogan “Mauser or Kaiser, Any King Will Do” a special meaning--but seems a somewhat strange slogan for a group that identified itself as loyal to the King of England (and, presumably, his government).



c) Curragh Mutiny--the commander of the Curragh Barracks, home base of the British military presence in Ireland, was ordered by the British prime minister to prepare the troops at Curragh to much to Belfast should disorder break out. That commander, Sir Arthur Padget, “misunderstood” those orders to mean an immediate mobilization. However, rather than have his officer corps, solidly Irish Protestant, have to mobilize “against their own people,” he offered them a chance to resign; 57 of the 70 officers did so. This forced Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, to withdraw the order. Emboldened by making the British government back down, and confident the military would never move against them, the Orange Order became even more intransient.

3. War in 1914--put Home Rule on the back burner, but the Irish members of Parliament (MPs) backed the war effort anyway, and encouraged all Irish men to join the military.



B. 1916 Easter Rising



1. Revolutionary Cadre--while many Irish supported England during the war, a dedicated group around schoolteacher, barrister, and poet Padraig Pearse seized control of several public buildings (including the General Post Office--GPO) on Monday, April 24, 1916 (the Monday after Easter). Several members of the IRB, along with socialist labor leader James Connolly and his Irish Citizen’s Army.

2. Roger Casement--a leading figure with the Irish Volunteers (a paramilitary group not affiliated with the IRB--but which the IRB had infiltrated) attempted to procure rifles from Germany, but Germany was less sanguine about the chances for a successful rebellion, and did not supply anywhere near the number of weapons Casement requested.

a) German communications had already been compromised by the British, who knew where the arms were to be delivered, and when the rebellion was to take place.

3. The Rebellion Crushed--although it took nearly a week to accomplish, and lots of heavy artillery that destroyed much of central Dublin, the participants left at the end of the week, in order to save civilian lives and those of their comrades (the leaders expected to be executed), Pearse and Connolly surrendered under a white flag.



a) The leaders were executed during the next two weeks, after secret military tribunals. James Connolly was so badly wounded that the doctors only gave him a couple of days to live, so he was brought to Kilmainham Gaol on a stretcher and strapped to a chair so the rifle squad could shoot him before he died.



b) The actions of the British government in this instance turned those who died or were executed for the action into martyrs, and the survivors into patriots. Before the Rising, support for the IRB was largely among the poor; afterwards support for the rebels and against the British became more widespread.

4. Public Outcry--against the heavy-handed treatment (particularly the execution of Connolly) led Great Britain to imprison the rest of those they arrested (except Roger Casement, who was executed in Great Britain); the executions were also halted because the British were still hoping to persuade the United States into entering the war, and the Irish lobby in the US was particularly vociferous in the attacks against this action (in part, it is believed the reason that Eamon De Valera avoided execution was because he was still a US citizen).



C. Anglo-Irish War (1919-1921)

1. 1918 Irish Election--a separatist political party, Sinn Fein, ran promising to boycott the British Parliament, and instead establish a parliament in Dublin, the Dial. This group also encourage a boycott of British courts, and the non-payment of taxes to the British, as well. Sinn Fein when the election by an overwhelming margin, and the party followed through on their promises, electing De Valera the first president.



2. Establishment of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)--from the ashes of the IRB, and led by a former clerk by the name of Michael Collins, who developed the tactics the IRA used against the British--all the while bicycling around Ireland while the British pursued him in a massive manhunt.



3. British response--imprisoning Irish political leaders, hanging alleged rebels. The British government recruited former soldiers to supplement the Royal Irish Constabulary--known for their makeshift uniforms, the Black and Tans. These men were responsible for murdering civilians in retaliation for attacks on the army and police, burning villages and parts of towns and cities.

a) The reality of the death and destruction wrought by British-aligned forces made David Lloyd-George’s threat of the “scorched-earth” response in Ireland real, and it would have affected more than just the Irish middle class.



D. Irish Civil War (1921-1923)



III. Zionism

A. Definition--the belief that Jews, as a distinct people, should have a homeland in what they believe to be their ancient land, Judea/Israel.

1. Judaism a religion or a nationality--most Jews would answer that it is both. “Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century, most of the European world agreed that Jews constituted a distinct nation. This concept of nation does not require that a nation have either a territory or a government, but rather, it identifies, as a nation any distinct group of people with a common language and culture. Only in the 19th century did it become common to assume that each nation should have its own distinct government; this is the political philosophy of nationalism. In fact, Jews had a remarkable degree of self-government until the 19th century. So long as Jews lived in their ghettos, they were allowed to collect their own taxes, run their own courts, and otherwise behave as citizens of a landless and distinctly second-class Jewish nation.” (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewnation.html).

a) This definition begs the question, is there a difference between a nation and an ethnic group--and should all ethnic groups be considered nations?

B. The Diaspora--recall that the migration of Jews throughout the Mediterranean predates any conflict with the Romans, but that Jews did retain, during this entire time period, an attachment to their homeland.

1. Bar Kochba Revolt (135)--revolt led by Simon Bar Kochba, who actually ruled parts of Galilee for two years before the Romans crushed the revolt. As part of the sanctions in retaliation for this revolt, Jews were prohibited from entering Jerusalem (admittedly a harsh penalty)--but they were not “expelled” from Israel.

2. Establishing Palestine--the Roman ruler Hadrian abolished the use of the name Judea, naming the country instead Palestine, to recall the Philistine people the Jews fought for control of the country with in ancient times.

3. Palestine under the Arabs--Jews maintained a steady, if small, population in Palestine, with few of the discriminatory issued they faced in the Christian world--but scratching a living out of the land there was very difficult.



C. Labor Zionism--advocated settling Jews in Palestine, working in Kibbutzim (communal farms) and as workers in cities. Political Zionism, on the other hand, relied upon appeals to the European powers (especially Great Britain immediately after the end of World War I, when that country assumed political control over Palestine. Jews began moving to Palestine in larger numbers, although their population never was greater than the Muslim population in the region.



1. Greater numbers of Jews--living in the country made the fantasy of establishing a Jewish state a greater reality for Jews--and a threat to those people already living there, who responded with greater hostility toward Jews. This became particularly true during the mandate period, after the Balfour Declaration, when Great Britain proclaimed support for the creation of a Jewish homeland.

IV. Conclusion--What Creates a Nation?

The Rise of Fascism

I. Failure of Socialist Revolutions

A. Reliance upon Gradualist Tactics

1. Parliamentary Solutions--because the socialist political parties became vested in the bourgeois political process, they saw this “gradualist” means of rectifying and reforming capitalism as preferable to the dangers of Marxist revolution.

a) Not everyone who viewed themselves as socialists also viewed themselves as adherents to Marxism, believing in the inevitability of the proletarian revolution.

b) This reliance upon the political solution left these social democrats susceptible to attacks not only from the left, however, but also from the right--and those on the right would prove just as impatient with the pace of change as those on the left.

c) The gradualists used revolutionary rhetoric, because they felt it was what the people wanted to hear; but in political action they attempted to stay “in the middle of the road,” veering neither to far left nor right; they attempted what political scientists would term today “triangulation.” tacking to what they believed were the popular positions on a variety of tactics.

2. Problems of the postwar period--these problems were most severe in Germany, which in the early 1920s had runaway inflation reaching Zimbabwean proportions; storied were told of people bringing money in wheelbarrows to pay for the day’s loaf of bread. But even the victors experienced social dislocation.

)a) Worker militancy before the war--workers and their unions in the period just before the outbreak of hostilities were beginning to flex their muscles and contest the status quo; workers went on strike in a variety of countries and a variety of industries during this time period.

b) Sacrifices during the war--for most of the countries in Europe, the war was a time of sacrifice and privation--but these sacrifices were not shared equally by the entire population. This situation added to the class resentment that added to the feelings that European societies, as they were then constituted, were unjust and need to be changed.

3. The Failure of Gradualism--while people might have been satisfied with a gradual change in the way European societies were structured before the war, the crisis in confidence of governments throughout the region because of the horrendous cost of the war contributed to feelings that government could no longer be trusted to make the necessary changes.

B. The Socialist Split--Harman claims that there were three factors that weakened socialism as a result of the war.

1. Social Democrats--put nationalism before class solidarity. Some of these people would eventually drift into fascism; the most prominent name to do so was Benito Mussolini, who left the Italian Socialist party--where he served as editor of the party newspaper--to found fascism in Italy.

2. Revolutionary Socialists--willing to stand and fight in the streets for the socialist revolution. Many revolutionary socialist were Marxists--they believed that the proletarian revolution was the next logical step in the evolution of society. Many of these people (or, at least, the ones that survived) moved into the various communist parties. As the Russian Revolution continued to be threatened, these people continued to support it. After Lenin died, and Stalin won the power struggle with Trotsky over who would succeed Lenin, the communists supported the idea of protecting “socialism in one country,” and many willing followed the dictates of Stalin to protect the Soviet Union.

3. Independent Socialists--vacillated between the Social Democrat position and the Revolutionary Socialist position.

II. Fascism

A. Definition: 1: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

1. Historical use--this term has become a contested political epitaph, and has lost some of its original meaning. Historically speaking, however, it has stood in counterpoise to its opposing political system, socialism/communism. Historically, the term has been used to describe some political philosophies on the right.

a) During the 1960s, it was used by members of the left as a term of disdain for many of the ideas they disagreed with on the right; it was politically potent because the best known fascist politician was Adolph Hitler. It was often coupled with the word “pig” to goad police into doing something unprofessional, as in “fascist pig!”



b) The political right in this country has spent part of this decade pushing back against this trend, accusing liberals of being fascist; this has further muddied the concept.

2. The Connection between Fascism and Socialism--despite the seeming connection--Mussolini was a socialist, Hitler called his political party the National Socialists--the two political systems are diametrically opposed to one another, and should not be confused; one cannot be a socialist and a fascist.

a) Socialism is internationalist in its outlook--it views the divisions among humans to be along class lines, rather than along ethnic or national background. Socialism also has a strong economic component--that the workers should control the means of production. It is primarily an economic/political movement.

b) Fascism emphasizes nationalism to the point of being jingoistic (extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy). Economics is an afterthought for most fascists; the economics component mostly has to do with ensuring that order is maintained, so unions are usually made illegal. Fascism is largely a social/political movement

B. The Rise of Mussolini and Fascism

1. Root of the term--from the Latin word Fasces, which means the binding together. It was used in iconography to symbolize the binding together of a nation (see the 1916 US dime). For Italian fascists, using the iconography of ancient Rome was a way to harken back to this supposed glorious period of Italian history, and to tie their efforts in modern Italy to that period.

2. Mussolini left Socialist Party--Mussolini left the Socialist Party over his avid support for Italy’s entry into World War I. He was well known politically, but had little political popularity, except for other disillusioned socialists and some militarists who were disappointed over Italy’s being denied land from Austria and along the Dalmatian (Yugoslav) coast.



3. Occupation of factories in Rome and Turin--by 1920, economic conditions in Italy were worsening; harvest levels for both wheat and corn fell to approximately half of their war time highs. Approximately 500,000 workers occupied factories around the country, most prominently in the industrial center of Turin. The leaders of the unions, however, felt that the time was not right for a socialist revolution--or even hard bargaining with capitalists--and essentially bargained workers back into the factories with little change.



4. Mussolini mobilizes former soldiers--Mussolini mobilized many former soldiers concerned about the apparent power of “reds” in the factories into a paramilitary organization known as the “Blackshirts” for the color shirt they wore at rallies and mobilizations. With the collaboration of local police and the army, groups of Blackshirts began assaulting socialists, destroying their meeting places, forcing them to drink castor oil.

a) Because their assaults were against socialists, they had the tacit support of industrialists and the bourgeois, interested in keeping the workers under control.

b) Mussolini even gets the government to pay members to assault socialists, thereby making his organization even more attractive to unemployed or underemployed soldiers.

c) Blackshirts usually behaved like bullies, only fighting when they badly outnumbered opponents

5. The March on Rome (1922)--the Italian prime minister, trying to control this growing political movement, offered Mussolini a place in his government; Mussolini instead that he be made prime minister. The king acquiesced to this request.

C. Il Duce--despite his distaste of parliamentary democracy, Mussolini spent the next two years running the government as prime minister--although his Blackshirts came in handy to keep order.

1. Imprisonment of opposition--during the early years of the regime



2. Assassination of Matteoti--Mussolini’s henchmen kidnapped and murdered a socialist member of parliament, Matteoti, who had the audacity to stand up in front of the body and denounce the actions of the government. Mussolini declared the end of democracy in Italy, and himself at “the Leader”--and the king and army let him do so.

Europe in Turmoil

I. The German November Revolution

A. The March 1918 Offensive

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--the concessions wrung out from the Soviet Union at Brest-Litovsk allowed Germany to move troops and war material from the Eastern Front to the Western Front (which was also why the Allies were putting so much pressure on Russia to stay in the war); Germany then quickly developed a plan to execute an offensive to win the war before the United States could land troops in Europe and push the advantage toward the Anglo-French side.

2. New Strategy--planned as a four-stage offensive, to break out of the trench warfare stalemate that had lasted nearly three years by this time, each stage of the offensive was to consist of three parts:

a) Artillery bombardment--the new strategy called for relatively short, intense bombardment with artillery; in the firs of the four offensive, the German army shot more than 1 million artillery shells along a 160 mile front in under 5 hours.



b) Stormtroopers--the initial attack was instigated by a select group of soldiers, called stormtroopers, chosen because of their military skill. The were to attack the weakest part of the enemy’s defense, disrupt command and communications, and then hold their position until the regular troops arrived.

c) Consolidation--while the stormtroopers made the initial attack, the rest of the army was to advance shortly afterward to consolidate the new position.

3. Initial success--despite intelligence reports that tipped off the Allies of the impending attack, Allied forces were initially overrun, and the German army made the greatest advances since before the war bogged down in trench warfare in late 1914.

4. Ultimate failure--the Germans were unable to follow-up on this initial success. The Allies quickly shifted their own strategic defensive tactics, and moved most of their troops and command structure further behind the forward trenches, beyond the reach of German artillery, which meant that the initial bombardment was less effective. The front lines were largely guarded by snipers and machine gun nests, and the areas the stormtroopers attacked were quickly reinforced. The casualty rate for the stormtroopers quickly became atronomical, meaning that the German army was depleting itself of its best soldiers. Even the early success was illusionary, because the greatest success of the new strategy took place in those area of the least strategic importance.

B. Entry of United State Armed Forces--was essentially the turning point of the war, because the troops and war material the Allies could now bring to the point of attack along the Western Front simply overwhelmed the German forces there. The arrival of US forces occurred several months before the Germans anticipated it happening; even if the offensive had been successful, it is doubtful whether the Germans would have been able to hold their advanced positions.

1. 100 Day Offensive--began August 18, 1918 and lasted until the formal German surrender in November.

2. Breakdown of German Army--despite continued communication problems between the Allied forces--and the fact that American commanders refused to place US troops under the command of any “foreign” officer (except for the all African American battalion from Harlem), the US entry into the war force the German army to begin to retreat along the western front.

a) German General Ludendorff,, the commander of the German army, in the midst of what was apparently a nervous breakdown, asked the Kaiser to form a new government. The Kaiser brought in several pro-war Social-Democratic Party (SPD) to be ministers in the new government.

b) The eventual surrender by the civilian government, rather than by the German, permitted the creation of the “stabbed in the back” myth, which helped create the atmosphere for the re-establishment of militarism in Germany in the 1930s; defeat was blamed on the weakness of the civilian government--the socialist in particular.

C. Naval mutiny--the German Naval high command, hoping to stave off defeat and rehabilitate the reputation of the navy, order the High Seas Fleet to leave their blockades ports and enter the North Sea to engage the British Royal Navy.

1. Kiel Mutiny--rank and file sailors, realizing that this was a death warrant for themselves, mutinied instead. The sailors armed themselves, and joined with dockworkers in the city to disarm opponents, and the group also established a sailor’s and workers council to run the city.

D. Revolution in Germany--the Kiel Mutiny touched off protests against the war and the government in a number of cities: Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Dresden, and a number of smaller cities, as well.

1. Munich--socialists took control of the royal palace and declared the ‘Bavarian Free State.”

2. Berlin

a) Karl Liebknecht--recently freed from prison, Liebknecht led a procession of workers and soldiers with guns and red flags through the streets of Berlin to the imperial palace--recently abandoned by the Kaiser, who fled to Holland--and declared a socialist republic from the balcony.



b) Phillipe Scheidermann--a pro-war Social Democratic Party(SPD) leader in the Kaiser’s last government, proclaimed a republic from the balcony of the imperial parliament.

c) Factions reunite--the two SPD factions (temporarily) reunited to present a “revolutionary” government of people’s commissars for endorsement by an assembly of 1,500 workers’ and soldiers’ delegates--in effect, a German soviet.

3. “Moderate” socialists--pro-war socialists outnumbered radicals in the new socialist government, and they used their greater numbers--and collaboration with the military and others on the right--to suppress the opposition on the left.

a) Friedrich Ebert--President of the short-lived Socialist Republic, and first president of the Weimar Republic. Worked with the military and the Freikorps (right-wing former soldiers, many of whom eventually found their way to the National Socialist Party--the Nazis) to put down the Spartikus Revolution, led by Liebknecht and Luxemberg. Members of the Freikorps murdered both Liebnecht and Luxemberg.



b) The failure of the war led to a greater sympathy for left-wing solutions, and many people who previously had supported liberal political solutions moved left and looked to the SPD as a proponent of those left-wing solutions--only the moderate politicians who controlled the party, while advocating radical solutions for public consumption, acted in a “gradualist” fashion, making only piecemeal reforms.

c) Public impatience with the slow pace of reform led many to back the Independent Socialist Party, whose members had broken with the SPD over the war. The government could no longer rely on the army, either, since rank-and-file soldiers, also dissatisified with the slow pace of reform, joined workers in the streets in larger cities.



d) Emergence of the Freikorps--the government turned to the Freikorps to put down the Spartikus Revolution, and to intimidate their opponents on the left. The members of the Freikorps were drawn largely from the ranks of the stormtroopers, many of whom felt alienated from the rest of German society because of their experiences during the war, and also feeling that they had been betrayed by that society--that they had not suffered a military defeat, but abandoned by other members of German society. This alliance nearly backfired in 1920, when members of the Freikorps staged the Kapp Putsch in 1920, and attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. While Adolph Hitler was not himself a member of the Freikorps, many members migrated to the Nazi Party and the SA.

II. The Spirit of Revolution--Germany was not the only country where revolutionary firmanent took place.

A. Austria--had a socialist party similar in structure to Germany, and worked to tone down worker protest to remain “respectable.”

B. Turkey--no socialist revolution, but Greece declared its independence; the conflict here quickly devolved into atrocities on both side. The Turks, however, in reaction to the defeats their army experienced to Russian forces on the battlefield, blamed another Christian minority in the country--the Armenians, and began a program of genocide that eventually murdered somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million men, women, and children.

C. France--French troops in Archangel, like their British and American counterparts, refused to take any a part in battles in Russia, and French sailors had to be evacuated from the Black Sea after several mutinies.



D. Great Britain--strikes by workers in Glasgow (“Red Clydeside”), London, Liverpool, and Belfast, which nearly turned into a general strike that united Catholics and Protestants.

E. United States--witnessed the greatest strike wave in history--steel, meat packing, metal workers. A general strike in Seattle.



F. Spain--inspired by events in the Soviet Union, farm workers in the south of the country had a number of strikes and meetings to attempt to organize. In Barcelona, workers went on strike for next several years; when local business leaders hired gunmen to murder labor leaders, anarchist leaders took matters into their own hands to strike back.

The Russian Revolutions

Scene from Sergei Eisenstein, October, 1917: Ten Days That Shook the World (1927)



I. The 1st Russian Revolution--weariness with the war, and the shortages of food and other materials, made Russian workers and their families willing to stand up to the state oppression to end the war and bring their loved ones homes.



A. February Revolution--began on February 23, which socialists declared Working Women’s Day

1. Distributed leaflets--the socialists in Petrograd (the Russianized version of St. Petersburg) marked the day by distributing leaflets to workers in the city, made speeches, and held meetings, but did not call for the workers to go on strike or take any action, for fear of government reprisal.



2. Spontaneous strikes--many women workers in the city, tired of seeing their families go to bed hungary every night, went out on strike, marching in the streets and calling their fellow workers out with them. Discontent was focused food, with shouts of “Bread for the workers!” and “Down with high prices! Down with hunger!”

3. Popular support--the next day, women workers in Petrograd were joined by approximately 400,000 workers in the city square, demanding an end to the war. Armed police attacked the unarmed crowd; soldiers in barracks in the city were used to assist police patrols, and a contingent of soldiers was recalled from the front to put down the rebellion--but instead fraternized with the crowd, and joined them, disarming the police and arresting politicians. The tsar’s advisors recommended that he abdicate the throne, which he agreed to do on March 1.



B. Provisional Government

1. Russian Duma--dominated by landowners and industrialists; few members of the small bourgeois class were members, and those who were largely followed the lead of the upper classes.



a) Duma leaders tried to maintain the monarchy until it became impossible for Nicholas to hang on. The tsar’s ineffectiveness was magnified because during the war he stayed close to the front, leaving his wife Tsarina Alexandria, to rule on domestic issues. The tsarina, unfortunately, had come under the influence of an allegedly debauched Russian Orthodox monk, Grigory Rasputin, who was able to bring comfort to her hemophiliac son.

b) Duma provisional government was dominated by large landowners and industrialists, and lead by a member of the royal family, Prince L’vov. The only figure involved with the provisional government with any revolutionary credentials was Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer who had defended revolutionaries in court.




2. Establishment of the Petrograd Soviet--the lesson learned from the aborted 1905 Revolution led to the re-establishment of the Petrograd Soviet. The worker-led soviets quickly became the focus of the revolution and the de facto government of the city. The elected executive board took over the responsibility of the day-to-day governing of the city--providing food for mutinying soldiers, overseeing the arrest of old police and government officials, arranging for each factory to provide volunteers for the revolutionary militia that maintained revolutionary order, and establishing a newspaper to keep citizens informed of events.



a) All of this was done without much guidance from previous revolutionary leaders, who had largely been exiled to Siberia--although most had subsequently escaped and were living elsewhere in Europe (or the United States, in Trotsky’s case).



3. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party--the main Marxist political party on the eve of the 1905 Revolution, but rent by factional splits.

a) Mensheviks--Menshevik means minority party in Russian. The Mensheviks argued for a broadly-based radical socialist party, but one that would cooperate with bourgeois political parties.



b) Bolsheviks--Bolshevik means majority party in Russian--but the Bolsheviks’ position as majority party was very short-lived, largely because of the belief of their leader, V.I. Lenin, that the socialist revolution would be best served by leadership provided by a small vanguard of dedicated revolutionaries, like himself, rather than relying on inexperienced leaders rising to the top in the chaos of a developing revolution.



c) Unattached radicals--some members of the RSDLP remained unaffiliated with either faction--most conspicuously Trotsky--until forced to make a choice in October 1917.

4. War of Revolutionary Defense

a) The Duma provisional government refused to pull out of the war, provoking great displeasure from the Petrograd Soviets (and much of the rest of the country as well).

b) Experienced radical leaders were still outside of the country at this point. The first two to arrive in Petrograd, Stalin and Molotov, had little expertise in Marxist revolutionary thought (Stalin, in fact, was little more than a hired thug at this point), and offered little guidance to the soviets.



c) Although the soldiers and workers had little confidence in the leaders of the Duma, but they had less confidence in their own ability to guide a revolution themselves, and therefore took little action against the Duma.

5. Failure of the Provisional Government--many blame the arrival of Lenin from Switzerland (courtesy of the German government, which transported him via rail to Sweden, then by ferry to Finland, and then by rail to Finland Station in Petrograd); but it was the government’s insistence on carrying on the war effort, and the growing disenchantment of the greatest number of Russians with this policy, that led to their downfall.

a) Tsarism without the Tsar--the Duma provisional government attempted to maintain the policies of the Tsarist regime without the Tsar as figurehead, not realizing it was the policies that made the Tsar unpopular.

b) Russia’s “colonies” were not overseas, but its governance of non-Russian peoples--fifty percent of the population--within its “empire.”

c) The continuation of unpopular policies quickly made the provisional government unpopular, and this more than any machinations on the part of Lenin led to its downfall.



d) The Kerensky Offensive--the straw that broke the camel’s back. Caving in to continued pressure from the allies, Kerensky (who came to power because of his own political skills, and the lack of such skills by nearly everyone else in the Duma) agreed to opening a new offensive in Austrian Silesia (part of the present-day Czech Republic). The military offensive was a disaster--horrendous casualties, along with mass desertions and mutinies. Kerensky vacillated between attempting to reassert tsarist military discipline, and co-opting militant leftist leaders within the ranks. Lenin had anticipated this development, and was ready to take advantage of the situation.



II. The Soviet Revolution

A. The Bolshevik Revolution--resulted from great number of Russians, dissatisfied with the vacillations and lack of success of the provisional government--and particularly its failure to end Russian involvement in the war--turned to someone who promised a new solution to their problems.



1. Lenin’s vision--his insistence upon building a revolutionary vanguard within the nascent (small and brand new) trade union movement within the small industrial sector gave the Bolsheviks a huge advantage over other groups.

a) Party organization--by the summer of 1914, the Bolsheviks had a substantial following in the factories of Petrograd, and a large contingent presenting the working class in the Duma--although many went to prison for refusing to support the war effort.



2. Trotsky’s vision--Trotsky argued that although the working-class in Russia was very small, because of the country’s “special circumstances” (mainly having to do with the working-class being concentrated in Petrograd and Moscow), that Russia could “skip” the bourgeois revolution and proceed directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. “Peace, Land, Bread”--Lenin’s political program, as it was presented to Russians, was simply stated, and appealed to the great mass of people. His speeches and pamphlets distilled Russian dissatisfactions in much the same way that Thomas Paine did for Americans in the Revolutionary War.

4. Kornilov Affair--dissatisfaction with the provisional government came not only from the left, but from the right as well. General Kornilov attempted to lead Russian troops against the workers’ militia in Petrograd, but the cossacks abandoned him, and the militia captured Kornilov and about 7,000 of his supporters with little trouble

5. Bolsheviks become increasingly popular, and during the summer won majorities in both the municipal and parliamentary elections in Petrograd.

Scene from Reds


6. The October Revolution-- “The Ten Days that Shook the World” The Bolsheviks were able to seize power in Petrograd with little difficulty, and practically no bloodshed. The Bolsheviks declared the dictatorship of the proletariat--distributing land to peasants, nationalizing the banks, seizing all church property (including bank deposits), seizing all private bank deposits, handing over control of factories to the soviets, and fixing the wage rate higher that it had been during the war, as well as declaring a standard 8 hour work day.

B. The Aftermath

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--Germany demanded (and eventually received) land concessions, which cost Russian most of the Ukraine--which included most of the country’s known coal reserves, and the best land for growing wheat. Trotsky attempted to forestall this development by refusing to sign the demands-- “neither war nor peace”--but Lenin, conceding the war weariness of the country, decided to make the concessions, while hoping that socialist revolutions in the rest of Europe would make the treaty moot.

2. Internal threats-- “white” (as opposed to “red”) Russians and Cossacks--mainly large landowners and their mercenaries--led the “white” forces. Bolsheviks forces eventually responded to the white atrocities with atrocities of their own, including the murder of the royal family.

3. External threats--Russian (or the Soviet Union, as it was known by now) was also invaded by Japan, Great Britain, and the United States in the years immediately after the end of the war--although only Japan stayed any length of time.


Scene from Dr. Zhivago