A Short History of the Russian Revolution (Short Histories) - Softcover

Swain, Professor Emeritus Geoffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780767935 ISBN 13: 9781780767932

Verlag: I.B. Tauris, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In 1917 revolutionary fervour swept through Russia, ending centuries of imperial rule and instigating political and social changes that would lead to the formation of the Soviet Union. This book provides a concise yet thorough overview of the revolution and the path to civil war.

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Geoffrey Swain is Alec Nove Professor of Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK.

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A Short History of the Russian Revolution

By Geoffrey Swain

I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

Copyright © 2017 Geoffrey Swain
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78076-793-2

Contents

List of Illustrations, x, 
Acknowledgements, xii, 
Timeline, xiii, 
Introduction, 1, 
Chapter 1: The Revolutionary Tradition of Russian Labour, 5, 
Chapter 2: The Provisional Government, 26, 
Chapter 3: The Success of Coalition, 56, 
Chapter 4: The Failure of Coalition, 80, 
Chapter 5: Six Months of Social Revolution, 105, 
Chapter 6: Insurrection, 129, 
Chapter 7: A Soviet Government, 150, 
Chapter 8: The Bolshevik–Left SR Coalition, 173, 
Conclusion, 200, 
Further Reading, 206, 
Notes, 209, 
Index, 223, 

CHAPTER 1

THE REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION OF RUSSIAN LABOUR

In 1917, Russia had been set on a course for revolution for over a decade. Since the 1905 Revolution, unrest which lasted in fact from the end of 1904 until the summer of 1907, the Tsar's control over the working masses of the population was tenuous and maintained by force. Pressurised by a revolutionary general strike to introduce a constitution of a sort, the Tsar reneged on his promise as soon as he could. The State Duma granted in 1906 had very limited powers to control legislation, and was based on an indirect electoral system which dramatically underrepresented the working-class and peasant population. When even this sham electoral system failed to produce a pliant assembly, the electoral system was adjusted on 3 June 1907, in a move technically illegal under the Tsar's own constitution; thereafter even fewer workers and peasants were elected to the Third State Duma, the only assembly to last a full term.

Throughout the 'constitutional' period of Russia's history, from 1906 to 1917, Russia's liberal politicians, led by the Constitutional Democrat or Kadet Party, hoped that work within this unrepresentative and rigged assembly could persuade the Tsar to make further constitutional concessions. The majority of labour movement politicians, however, rejected such a reformist strategy and supported the view of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democrats that the only way forward in Russia was for there to be a second revolution. For all Russian revolutionaries, the 1905 Revolution was merely a 'dress rehearsal' for the real event. What did that dress rehearsal show Russian workers? It showed that the opposition to the Tsarist autocracy could only remain united for a limited period; it showed that while initially united and nationwide, the fissures between the liberal and socialist opponents of the Tsar quickly became acute; and it showed that the 'muscle' of the revolutionary struggle, which the organised working class provided, felt let down by the actions of the liberal elite in October 1905. As the political outlook of organised labour stabilised during the course of 1905, so most workers favoured advancing their own socialist programme rather than joint action in coalition with the liberals. This evolution was clearly seen in the events of 1905 itself, but was as clear in the events which followed, in particular the short-lived 'parliamentary' months of spring 1907; the revived labour unrest of 1912-14 after the Lena Gold Fields massacre; and the election of a workers' group to the War Industries' Committee in 1915. On all four occasions, when faced with a choice between reform and revolution, Russian workers opted for revolution.

THE ST PETERSBURG SOVIET IN 1905

The 1905 Revolution is best remembered for Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, the day a demonstration of unarmed workers tried to present the Tsar with a petition calling for political reform, but were met instead by a hail of bullets; 96 demonstrators died instantly and a further 34 later succumbed to their wounds, while 333 were injured. That petition was a strange document, a confusing combination of reformist and revolutionary demands, beginning with a plea to seek 'justice and protection' for 'our wives, children and helpless old parents' but also listing a series of revolutionary demands – for freedom of speech, for a free press, for freedom of religion and for freedom of association – and linking those demands to the need for an accountable government formed through a Constituent Assembly elected on universal, secret and equal suffrage; such an assembly would then legislate for free universal education, the eight-hour day and a social insurance system administered by elected worker representatives, these being the measures felt to be most essential in improving the workers' lot.

The origins of that petition went back to the last months of 1904, when liberal-led opposition to the Tsar was beginning to mobilise. In January 1904, Imperial Russia had gone to war with Imperial Japan over rival claims for influence in Manchuria and Korea. The war did not go well for the Tsar, with the sinking of the Pacific fleet and the eventual fall of the besieged naval base at Port Arthur. Soon, opposition began to mobilise around liberal members of Russia's local government councils. Ever since these elected local councils – called dumas in the towns and zemstvos in the countryside – had first been established in the 1860s, liberal politicians had argued that it was anomalous that the Tsar allowed elected councils, albeit on a very restricted franchise, to operate at local government level, while insisting that at national level no representative assembly was possible. Ever since 1879, when for reasons of international diplomacy the Tsar encouraged the formation of the new Bulgarian state as a constitutional monarchy but still insisted that Russia should have no constitution itself, there had been demands from liberal politicians that the Tsar call a national Zemstvo Congress. By autumn 1904, unrest provoked by the war with Japan was such that, from 6 to 8 November 1904, a Zemstvo Congress was finally held. It reached two broad conclusions: first, that pressure needed to be put on the Tsar to agree to the formation of a legislative assembly, putting on one side for the moment the question of how representative that assembly should be; and second, that all public bodies should send petitions to the Tsar, urging him to make these changes.

The more radical among the liberals decided to broaden this petition campaign and imitate the actions of the French liberals before the 1848 Revolution and organise a Banquet Campaign: since public assemblies were unlawful, notionally 'private' banquets should be held with doctors, lawyers and other professionals and these banquets should then draw up further petitions to be sent to the Tsar. Could the industrial working class be included in this petition campaign? Back in February 1904, the St Petersburg authorities had allowed the Russian Orthodox priest Father Gapon to establish an Assembly of St Petersburg Factory Workers. His vision was that a Christian trade union movement might evolve in Russia on the basis of this initiative, loyal to traditional social values but prepared to confront exploitative employers. At first the Assembly grew slowly, with only three branches being formed between February and September, but then it grew exponentially: eight more branches had opened by December with a total membership of 10,000. Liberal activists, concerned to involve the labour movement in their struggle, saw the potential offered by Gapon's Assembly and encouraged him to become involved in the petition campaign, providing some working- class muscle for the broad 'all-class' opposition movement against the Tsarist autocracy. Gapon hesitated at first, but was persuaded.

Father Gapon was not alone in trying to organise the working class. By the start of the twentieth century, underground socialist parties were emerging, most notably the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), which identified the peasantry as the revolutionary class and sought to strengthen links with it, and the Social Democratic Party, which followed Karl Marx in identifying the urban working class as the vanguard for revolutionary change. Many Social Democrats and SRs also joined the Gapon Assembly, hoping gradually to take control of the organisation and push it away from what they saw as Gapon's Christian reformism. It was Social Democrat activists in the Assembly who persuaded the hesitant Gapon to join the petition campaign. Their task was made easier by the actions of the St Petersburg industrialists. They had become increasingly wary of the Gapon Assembly, which appeared determined to lay the groundwork for a trade union movement in Russia, and on 27 December the administration of the massive Putilov Works, one of the biggest employers in the capital, decided to sack four members of the Gapon Assembly as 'trouble-makers' in a move designed to break its influence. Within days, 25,000 workers had downed tools in protest and by the end of the first week in January 1905 over 400,000 workers were on strike. Gapon held talks with the Putilov director on 5 January, but when these failed, the Assembly committed itself to marching with a petition to the Winter Palace. Gapon ran the final text of the petition past his political advisors before the march began.

After Bloody Sunday, revolutionary events in St Petersburg went in two, parallel directions: first, the Social Democrats and SRs captured control of the labour movement; and second, the various liberal groups opposing the Tsar showed themselves ready to do a deal with the Tsar before the concerns of the workers had been addressed. To calm the strike wave unleashed by Bloody Sunday, the Tsar agreed to reduce the length of the working day in the capital and to establish a commission of enquiry. However, he was also determined that the work of the commission of enquiry should not be politicised and so, before it met, he closed down all 11 branches of the Gapon Assembly. When moves to establish the commission of enquiry began, it was announced that workers would be invited to elect their own delegates to it, and workers used these elections of 13 February at first to demand that the ban on the Gapon Assembly be lifted, and when this did not happen, and in part because this did not happen, the workers turned instead to the Social Democrats and SRs. To quote the historian Gerald Surh, 'St Petersburg workers were not only organizing but reaching toward new organizational forms, of which the Soviet of Workers' Deputies would later prove to be the most developed and popular embodiment.' For the first time, Russia's illegal revolutionary parties were able to emerge from underground and agitate among the masses: when the 417 elected worker representatives assembled for a series of pre-meetings on 16-17 February, the assembly was chaired by a radical lawyer, G. S. Nosar, who assumed the identity of one of the worker electors, P. A. Khrustalev. At this meeting it was agreed to demand the reopening of the closed Gapon Assembly branches; immunity from prosecution for all members of the commission of enquiry; and the release of all those arrested since 1 January 1905.

The second demand of the workers' representatives on the commission of enquiry proved to be one the Tsar simply could not meet. The workers insisted that their representatives should have immunity from prosecution because they intended to repeat the demand of the Gapon petition that a Constituent Assembly was the only way to bring harmony and prosperity to Russia; since this demand could be interpreted as anti-state propaganda, they did not want to be arrested for raising what they saw as an essential issues. The Tsar wanted his commission of enquiry to consider only the social causes of unrest and not to become a focus for political agitation, and so this second workers' demand was never agreed to and as a result the commission of enquiry was boycotted by its worker representatives. The 417 worker electors, on the other hand, did not return quietly to their factories: they continued to meet, if infrequently, and, particularly within the factories from which they had been elected, they began to form the nucleus of trade union representation. The Tsar's commission of enquiry fiasco opened the way for the start of a legal labour movement in Russia which radical socialists were increasingly able to dominate.

These events within the factories of St Petersburg were not making the headlines in the first half of 1905. It was the various liberal opponents of the Tsar who were making the running. More zemstvo congresses were held and under this pressure the Tsar decided to make a concession: on 6 August he agreed that elections could be held to a nationwide assembly, to be called the State Duma; however, the powers of this assembly would be entirely consultative. The Tsar hoped that this would be enough to divide his liberal opponents. On 25 August the war with Japan was brought to an end and when the Fourth Zemstvo Congress met on 12–15 September, the liberals did indeed split into a more conservative wing, ready to accept the Tsar's offer of a consultative assembly, and those more radical liberals who wanted to continue the struggle for a legislative assembly.

The Tsar's strategy was blown off course by the re-emergence of labour unrest in the autumn. What began on 19 September as a localised printers' strike in Moscow, prompted by the employers' attempt to claw back some of the salary increase offered at the start of the year, quickly spread. Disentangling economic from political motivations for striking was impossible in autumn 1905. As part of the Tsar's response to Bloody Sunday, a review of strike legislation was underway and on 20 September the minister of justice made public a circular instructing its representatives to cease prosecuting strikers; then, early in October, the minister of the interior agreed to release the leaders of a strike at the Obukhov Works. In this climate, any strike had political connotations and the whole of Moscow was soon supporting the striking printers, and the printers in St Petersburg came out in sympathy with their Moscow comrades on 3 October. Then other workers joined in, including the railway workers who took up the printers' cause. By 9 October, railway workers in Moscow were on strike, joined three days later by St Petersburg railway workers. Russia's first ever nationwide general strike was underway.

The ad hoc strike committee, established in the capital to co-ordinate activity and enforce discipline, decided to increase its authority by establishing an elected workers' council. This called for elections to be held on the same basis as those that had been held in February for the earlier commission of enquiry. In this way the St Petersburg Soviet was established, which at its height in November 1905 was composed of 562 delegates from 181 factories and 16 trade unions. Ura Shuster has suggested that many of the 'electors' of February became 'representatives' within their factories over the summer months and were then elected once again to the Soviet in the autumn. Such continuity was reinforced by the decision of the St Petersburg Soviet to elect Khrustalev-Nosar as its chairman; his subsequent arrest led to the future Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky taking his place. The Soviet's executive also included representatives from the illegal Social Democrat and SR parties.

By 17 October the strike in St Petersburg was so solid that the Tsar had to retreat further. His October Manifesto issued that day made clear that his planned State Duma would go ahead, but that now 'no law shall take effect without confirmation by the State Duma' and elected deputies would 'participate in the supervision of the legality' of the actions of his 'appointed officials'. The manifesto also referred to 'granting the population the essential foundations of civil freedom, based on the principles of genuine inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association'. However, the manifesto did not specify how any of this was to be guaranteed. As Trotsky famously declared on 18 October at a rally in the grounds of St Petersburg University, the Tsar's October Manifesto was nothing but 'a scrap of paper' offering no clarity on the precise powers of the proposed State Duma nor the franchise on which it was to be elected; it was a far cry from the demand in the Gapon petition which had clearly called for a Constituent Assembly.

For the majority of liberals, however, the Tsar had crossed the Rubicon; the State Duma would have legislative power and this was something with which they could work, so they proposed that the strike be called off. The St Petersburg Soviet, on the other hand, called for the strike to continue. Although Trotsky and the other leaders of the St Petersburg Soviet hoped in their heart of hearts that the Tsar might yet be forced to abdicate, they focused on a more immediate demand, that of an amnesty for all political prisoners. On 21 October, Trotsky and the St Petersburg Soviet leadership met the Tsar's newly appointed prime minister and pressed their case, and although there was no blanket amnesty, on 22 October the Tsar did issue a decree releasing from prison those, including Trotsky's wife, who had been arrested since the spring. There was another partial victory when at the end of October mutinies occurred at the Kronstadt naval base situated on an island just outside St Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland; sailors had wrongly assumed that the promised right to form associations might include them. Although the release of the arrested 'mutineers' was beyond the Soviet's power, the authorities were forced to reassure the Soviet on 5 November that none of those involved would be executed. Despite such successes, by early November it was clear that the workers' appetite for the general strike was running out of steam and so Trotsky decided that the time had come to organise a return to work. Threatened strike action called by the Soviet could force concessions from the authorities as late as 23 November, but gradually, things moved in the Tsar's favour.

(Continues...)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: I.B. Tauris
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1780767935
• ISBN 13: 9781780767932
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar