Opposition to Tsarism and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia
Opposition to the Tsar
The opposition to the Tsar was very fragmented. Every group had different demands according to their social class.
Middle Class. The middle class demanded a liberal system or a democracy. The main party was the KD, also known as Kadets (The initials for Constitutional Democrat party in Russian)
Peasants and Small Farmers. Peasants followed the Social Revolutionary Party, also known as Esers because of their initials, SR. Their main leader was Alexander Kerensky.
Workers. They followed, among others, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The RSDLP was created as a social democrat party but in 1905, in a congress in London, it split into two different factions.
The Bolsheviks, the majority in Russian. They were in favor of the revolution to take power. Their leader was Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, Lenin.
The Mensheviks, the minority. They supported the idea of taking power by a democratic election. They stopped being followed by workers and became a middle-class party.
The 1905 Revolution
After a terrible defeat against the Japanese Empire, the Tsar seemed weak, so revolutionary groups started a series of strikes and demonstrations.
In January 1905, a demonstration headed to Saint Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the Tsar’s residence, to hand him their demands. The demonstrators did not want the end of the Tsar but some democratic reforms. Nicholas II did not understand how critical the situation was, so he ordered violent repression to those who defied him. That day was remembered as Bloody Sunday due to the number of deaths and injured. The protests continued, and the workers organized themselves in soviets (councils or assemblies) for the first time. In the end, the Tsar gave in to some demands collected in a sort of constitution with a parliament (Duma) elected by universal suffrage; however, Nicholas, when things had settled, took back the reforms.
The 1917 Revolutions
February Revolution 1917
In 1914, the Russian Empire joined World War I. Neither the economy nor the army was ready to face the German army or that kind of effort. After a series of defeats, the Tsar himself took control of the army in 1916. That was his biggest mistake; from that moment on, everyone would blame him for the continuous bleeding defeats, the terrible conditions of the soldiers on the front, and the shortages at home.
The revolution started in Saint Petersburg. The demonstrators demanded bread and peace. On February 25th, a General Strike was called. The day after, the 26th, some troops joined the strikers and refused to shoot against the demonstrators. The Tsar accepted he had lost and abdicated. A new provisional government was settled by the moderate opposition represented by the Kadets and Esers (Democrats and Social Revolutionaries). The main leader of this new February government was Alexander Kerensky, an Eser.
This new democratic government faced three different problems that made it collapse in the end.
The War. Most of the Russian population, especially the February protesters, were against the war; they wanted it to stop. However, Kerensky kept Russia in the war.
Disputes inside the government and the army that led to a pretended coup by General Kornilov.
The power of the Bolsheviks among the workers. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin, had returned from exile in a German train.
These problems caused a new wave of strikes and demonstrations in July 1917, harshly repressed by Kerensky’s government. The new government was in the same position as the old one, repressing workers.
October Revolution 1917
After the February revolution, Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, returned from exile. In April, he wrote a series of demands, the April Theses, which were the base of the October revolution:
End of all war actions.
Peace with Central Empires.
Land distribution among the peasants.
Factory control to the workers.
Nations’ autonomy.
All power to the soviets.
At the end of October, on the 24th (November 7th by the Gregorian calendar), the cruiser Aurora fired one of its guns at 9:45 pm, marking the start of the October Revolution. During that night, the Red Guards (Bolshevik workers’ battalions) stormed the main government centers, including the Winter Palace, at the cry “All power to the soviets!” By the next day’s morning, the revolution had triumphed, at least in Petrograd (the new name of Saint Petersburg after the February revolution). In the following days, the Bolsheviks took control of some of the main cities and production centers in the country, but some areas were out of Bolshevik control, and Kerensky had fled. This led to the Civil War. The first measure taken by the new Soviet government was peace; they signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Central Powers.
The Creation of the Soviet State (1922-1929)
The NEP (New Economic Policy)
After the War Communism, Lenin entrusted Nikolai Bukharin with creating a new economy that allowed the newborn Soviet state to survive and grow. This new economy was also known as State Capitalism. It allowed a free market and production for farmers, although the land property belonged to the State. Small and medium businesses were also allowed. The State kept control over transportation, banks, mines, and big factories and enterprises. The results of the NEP were outstanding; farming production grew by 40%. The whole economy grew and, most importantly, recovered from the devastating effects of World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War. But the NEP was temporary, just until the economy recovered; by 1925, it was suspended.
The USSR
While Bukharin was creating the NEP, Lenin created the new State, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1922, the Soviet Union was born. The new State was a federation, heeding the nationalist demands. By 1923, there was a Constitution: Republics had total autonomy in local affairs. Every community had its soviet; these soviets elected representatives to every republic’s soviet and then to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, which was the legislative branch. The Supreme Soviet named the Presidium and the Council of the Peoples’ Commissars, the executive branch. In the end, everything was controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the only party allowed in the Union. The presidents of the Presidium and the Supreme Soviet shared their power with the General Secretary of the CPSU.
Stalin’s Government
Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a personal dictatorship where the communist ideal was still alive but filtered by his powerful personality. He ruled over the USSR using three tools:
- Cult of Personality. Stalin became omnipresent through propaganda. There were pictures of him everywhere. He was the father, the husband, the grandfather of every Russian. This presence was reinforced by World War II.
- The Party. During Stalinism, the only way to be promoted, to be someone, was through the Communist Party.
- The Terror. Stalin set up a secret service network that controlled every citizen of the Soviet Union. The NKVD was managed by Lavrentiy Beria. In the late 1930s, they purged many party members who were sent to concentration camps in Siberia (Gulags).
The flourishing cultural activity of the NEP Era with film directors like Eisenstein or abstract painters like Malevich (suprematism) or El Lissitzky (constructivism) was condemned as bourgeois and banned to favor an official and traditional art style, social realism, that represented the success of the working class.