Russian Revolution: Causes and Early Stages
The Russian Revolution
Economic and Social Structure of Tsarist Russia
In the early twentieth century, Russia was a country where political absolutism still survived. There were large differences between cities, which had experienced the growth of capitalism and industry, and the rural areas, which remained significantly behind. The concentration of land ownership in the hands of the nobility and the poor living conditions of farmers led to peasant revolts. In 1861, a decree abolishing serfdom was issued, but it did not have the expected result. Former serfs were granted freedom, but to obtain the land they had cultivated, they had to pay their former lords a very high price. Consequently, many farmers chose to migrate to the cities.
In the western part of the Empire, a limited industrialization had been occurring since the late nineteenth century, characterized by high business concentration and the presence of foreign capital. Politically, the Empire was an autocracy in which the Czar held absolute power, believed to be “from God.” The bureaucracy and the powerful military maintained control of the Empire, while the Orthodox Church served as the great ideological pillar of the regime.
Opposition to the Tsarist Regime
The peasants, who desired ownership of the land they cultivated and demanded a better standard of living, were the first to reject the Tsarist regime. This led to numerous opposition movements, such as the Populists, who advocated for the transformation of peasant society and were considered traditional enemies of the Tsar. Anarchism also proliferated through organizations like “Land and Freedom.”
Among workers in the industrial cities, Marxist ideas were prevalent. In 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was founded, with Lenin as a prominent leader. In the early twentieth century, the RSDLP split into two factions: the Mensheviks, who argued for the necessity of a bourgeois revolution in Russia, and the Bolsheviks, who maintained that the revolution should be socialist in nature and led by the people. Concurrently, liberal parties began to emerge from the bourgeoisie, such as the Constitutional Democratic Party (KDT) and the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), which advocated for the destruction of the Tsarist regime and the establishment of a collectivist society.
The 1905 Revolution
The need for a just society with a more equitable distribution of wealth, basic freedoms, and a more open political and judicial system gained momentum from the 1880s onward. This agitation persisted throughout the reign of Czar Nicholas II. The military defeat in the Russo-Japanese War triggered the outbreak of a revolutionary movement in 1905. The revolution began with a peaceful march on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, which was brutally suppressed, resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. This day became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
During this revolt, soviets (councils), popular assemblies composed of workers and peasants, were created. After the 1905 Revolution, a Duma (parliament) was convened, and Minister Stolypin proposed reforms to land ownership, but these were insufficient to transform the structure of the Empire.