Episode 6 Revolutionary Russias
The Rise of Communism from Marx to Lenin
Dr Vejas Gabriel Liulevius (2019)
Film Review
In the summer of 1874, three years after the Paris Commune, populist, pro-revolution university students from St Petersburg traveled to the countryside to work alongside Russian peasants in the hope of using subversive pamphlets to persuade them about the need for revolution. For the most part, the peasant ignored their pamphlets, listened passively or turned them into the secret police.
Marx believed revolution was only possible in Germany, France, the UK or the US because these were the only Western countries with an industrial working class. He believed revolution was impossible in Russia because the population was 80% rural and engaged in primitive agriculture and only 50% ethnic Russian. Although the serfs had been freed under Alexander II, the scarcity of factory jobs left them no choice but to continue working for their feudal lords. In addition, unlike most of Europe, Russia was still ruled by an autocratic emperor who ruled by divine right and brutally suppressed any efforts at reform
The 1860s saw the rise of the Russian nihilists, inspired by the 1863 novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsy What is to Be Done. Chernyshevsy’s main character is a totally dedicated revolutionary. Russian populists (aka narodniks) and nihilists, who came to be called Socialist Revolutionaries, disagreed with Marx’s view that a successful revolution required significant evolution from feudalism towards modernity.
The Socialists Revolutionaries advocated using anarchist tactics to pursue their vision of a peasant utopia. In 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassination by an anarchist group called The People”s Will.*
Plekhanov, a populist revolutionary exiled to Switzerland in 1880, established the first Russian Marxist group and the first Marxist newsletter Iskra (The Spark). In 1998, Russia’s Social Democratic Party.
in January 1905, Russia experienced a totally spontaneous revolution, following a series of major government blunders. In 1904, Russia declared war again Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and North Korea. After Japan sank two Russian fleets, 100,000 workers protested outside the czar’s palace demanding reform. The czar’s troops fired on peaceful protestors, leading to major strikes across Russia, as well as a mutiny by the Russian army and navy (which sank the battleship Potemkin). Railway workers totally shut down national communications. Peasants burned the manor houses of their feudal lords, and police discarded their uniforms and refused to report for duty.
In factories, workers established the first soviets (worker councils), as did the Russian Army. The Marxist Leon Trotsky created a central council of soviets in St Petersburg, placing the whole city under worker control.
In his October Manifesto, Nicholas II responded with a number of reforms, including the creation of a Duma (parliament) with limited powers. After more moderate revolutionaries capitulated, government forces invaded the central soviet and imprisoned Trotsky.
*According to Matthew Ehret of the Rising Tide Foundation, British agents played a major role in numerous “anarchist” assassinations of world leaders in the late 19th and early 20th century (including Alexanader II and US presidents Garfield and McKinley. See https://risingtidefoundation.net/2023/03/20/kropotkin-the-anarchist-international-and-the-assassination-of-czar-alexander-ii-and-president-mckinley/
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The Most Revolutionary Act 