The Russian Revolution Extras V

The Russian Revolution: The Global Influence of the Russian Revolution and the USSR

Existing socialist parties in Europe did not wholly approve of the way the Bolsheviks took power- and kept it. However, the possibility of a workers’ state fired people’s imagination across the world. In many countries, communist parties were formed-like the Communist Party of Great Britain. The Bolsheviks encouraged colonial peoples to follow their experiment. Many non-Russians from outside the USSR participated in the Conference of the Peoples of the East (1920) and the Bolshevik-founded Comintern (an international union of pro-Bolshevik socialist parties). Some received education in the USSR’s Communist University of the Workers of the East. By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had given socialism a global face and world stature.

Yet by the 1950s it was acknowledged within the country that the style of government in the USSR was not in keeping with the ideals of the Russian Revolution. In the world socialist movement too it was recognised that all was not well in the Soviet Union. A backward country had become a great power. Its industries and agriculture had developed and the poor were being fed. But it had denied the essential freedoms to its citizens and carried out its developmental projects through repressive policies. By the end of the twentieth century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals still enjoyed respect among its people. But in each country the ideas of socialism were rethought in a variety of different ways.

USSR and India:

Writing about the Russian Revolution in India

Among those the Russian Revolution inspired were many Indians. Several attended the Communist University. By the mid-1920s the Communist Party was formed in India. Its members kept in touch with the Soviet Communist Party. Important Indian political and cultural figures took an interest in the Soviet experiment and visited Russia, among them Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote about Soviet Socialism. In India, writings gave impressions of Soviet Russia. In Hindi, R.S. Avasthi wrote in 1920-21 Russian Revolution, Lenin, His Life and His Thoughts, and later The Red Revolution . S.D. Vidyalankar wrote The Rebirth of Russia and The Soviet State of Russia. There was much that was written in Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

An Indian arrives in Soviet Russia in 1920

‘For the first time in our lives, we were seeing Europeans mixing freely with Asians. On seeing the Russians mingling freely with the rest of the people of the country we were convinced that we had come to a land of real equality.

We saw freedom in its true light. In spite of their poverty, imposed by the counter-revolutionaries and the imperialists, the people were more jovial and satisfied than ever before. The revolution had instilled confidence and fearlessness in them. The real brotherhood of mankind would be seen here among these people of fifty different nationalities. No barriers of caste or religion hindered them from mixing freely with one another. Every soul was transformed into an orator. One could see a worker, a peasant or a soldier haranguing like a professional lecturer.’

Shaukat Usmani, Historic Trips of a Revolutionary.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote from Russia in 1930

‘Moscow appears much less clean than the other European capitals. None of those hurrying along the streets look smart. The whole place belongs to the workers… Here the masses have not in the least been

put in the shade by the gentlemen…those who lived in the background for ages have come forward in the open today… I thought of the peasants and workers in my own country. It all seemed like the work of the Genii in the Arabian Nights. [here] only a decade ago they were as illiterate, helpless and hungry as our own masses… Who could be more astonished than an unfortunate Indian like myself to see how they had removed the mountain of ignorance and helplessness in these few years.’

The Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was a treaty signed between India and the Soviet Union in August 1971 that specified mutual strategic cooperation. The treaty was a significant deviation from India's previous position of non-alignment in the Cold War and in the prelude to the Bangladesh war, it was a key development in a situation of increasing Sino-American ties and American pressure. The treaty was later adopted to the Indo-Bangladesh Treaty of Friendship and cooperation in 1972.

The Treaty

The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation, 9 August 1971

Desirous of expanding and consolidating the existing relations of sincere friendship between them,

The Russian Revolution : Extras IV

The Russian Revolution: Stalinism and Collectivisation

Stalinism and Collectivisation:

The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture. By 1927- 1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute problem of grain supplies. The government fixed prices at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their grain to government buyers at these prices.

Stalin, who headed the party after the death of Lenin, introduced firm emergency measures. He believed that rich peasants and traders in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices. Speculation had to be stopped and supplies confiscated. In 1928, Party members toured the grain-producing areas, supervising enforced grain collections, and raiding ‘kulaks’ - the name for well to- do peasants. As shortages continued, the decision was taken to collectivise farms. It was argued that grain shortages were partly due to the small size of holdings. After 1917, land had been given over to peasants. These small-sized peasant farms could not be modernised. To develop modern farms, and run them along industrial lines with machinery, it was necessary to ‘eliminate kulaks’, take away land from peasants, and establish state-controlled large farms.

What followed was Stalin’s collectivisation programme. From 1929, the Party forced all peasants to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz). The bulk of land and implements were transferred to the ownership of collective farms. Peasants worked on the land, and the kolkhoz profit was shared. Enraged peasants resisted the authorities and destroyed their livestock. Between 1929 and 1931, the number of cattle fell by one-third. Those who resisted collectivisation were severely punished. Many were deported (Forcibly removed from one’s own country) and exiled (Forced to live away from one.s own country). As they resisted collectivisation, peasants argued that they were not rich and they were not against socialism. They merely did not want to work in collective farms for a variety of reasons. Stalin’s government allowed some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators unsympathetically.

In spite of collectivisation, production did not increase immediately. In fact, the bad harvests of 1930-1933 led to one of most devastating famines in Soviet history when over 4 million died.

Many within the Party criticised the confusion in industrial production under the Planned Economy and the consequences of collectivisation. Stalin and his sympathisers charged these critics with conspiracy against socialism. Accusations were made throughout the country, and by 1939, over 2 million were in prisons or labour camps. Most were innocent of the crimes, but no one spoke for them. A large number were forced to make false confessions under torture and were executed . several among them were talented professionals.

Official view of the opposition to collectivisation and the government response

‘From the second half of February of this year, in various regions of the Ukraine …..mass insurrections of the peasantry have taken place, caused by distortions of the Party’s line by a section of the lower ranks of the Party and the Soviet apparatus in the course of the introduction of collectivisation and preparatory work for the spring harvest.

Within a short time, large scale activities from the above-mentioned regions carried over into neighbouring areas- and the most aggressive insurrections have taken place near the border.

The greater part of the peasant insurrections have been linked with outright demands for the return of collectivised stocks of grain, livestock and tools…

Between 1st February and 15th March, 25,000 have been arrested…. 656 have been executed, 3673 have been imprisoned in labour camps and 5580 exiled….’

Report of K.M. Karlson, President of the State Police Administration of the Ukraine

to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, on 19 March 1930.

From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody

This is a letter written by a peasant who did not want to join the collective farm.

To the newspaper Krestianskaia  Gazeta (Peasant Newspaper)

‘.. I am a natural working peasant born in 1879… there are 6 members in my family, my wife was born in 1881, my son is 16, two daughters 19, all three go to school, my sister is 71. From 1932, heavy taxes have been levied on me that I have found impossible. From 1935, local authorities have increased the taxes on me… and I was unable to handle them and all my property was registered:

my horse, cow, calf, sheep with lambs, all my implements, furniture and my reserve of wood for repair of buildings and they sold the lot for the taxes. In 1936, they sold two of my buildings… the kolkhoz bought them. In 1937, of two huts I had, one was sold and one was confiscated ..’

Afanasii Dedorovich Frebenev, an independent cultivator.

From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody.

The Russian Revolution: Extras III

The Russian Revolution: Making a Socialist Society

Making a Socialist Society:

During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what collective work could be.

A process of centralised planning was introduced. Officials assessed how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period. On this basis they made the Five Year Plans. The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’(1927-1932 and 1933-1938).

In 1928 the New Economic Policy was replaced with a Five Year Plan. Stalin argued that 'either we do it, or we are crushed,' as Soviet industry lagged well behind the Western European states in terms of productivity and qality. The Five Year Plans created targets for all sectors of Industry. These were set and monitored by central government with a view to improving the industrial capacity of the Soviet Union. The Industrial targets involved heavy investment in mining and the extraction of raw materials from Russia's vast interior. It required massive movement of workers to sites designated as being primae areas for production of specific items and it meant an end to profit based prodction in factories and on farms. Farming also changed as part of this policy. From 1928 onwards farming was collectivised. This involved closing small holdings and combining them into massive, mechanised farms that were state controled. These should be more efficient, would lead to better education, training and use of technology and were intended to increase productivity and efficiency. Ideologicaly they were also more in line with socialism as the benefits of the new system would be felt by all.

Centralised planning led to economic growth. Industrial production increased (between 1929 and 1933 by 100 per cent in the case of oil, coal and steel). New factory cities came into being. However, rapid construction led to poor working conditions. In the city of Magnitogorsk, the construction of a steel plant was achieved in three years. Workers lived hard lives and the result was 550 stoppages of work in the first year alone. In living quarters, ‘in the wintertime, at 40 degrees below, people had to climb down from the fourth floor and dash across the street in order to go to the toilet’.

An extended schooling system developed, and arrangements were made for factory workers and peasants to enter universities. Crèches were established in factories for the children of women workers. Cheap public health care was provided. Model living quarters were set up for workers. The effect of all this was uneven, though, since government resources were limited.

Socialist Cultivation in a Village in the Ukraine

'A commune was set up using two [confiscated] farms as a base. The commune consisted of thirteen families with a total of seventy persons..... The farm tools taken from the.... farms were turned over to the commune.....The members ate in a communal dining hall and income was divided in accordance with the principles of "cooperative communism". The entire proceeds of the members' labor, as well as all dwellings and facilities belonging to the commune were shared by the commune members'.

Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm (1955).

Dreams and Realities of a Soviet Childhood in 1933

Dear grandfather Kalinin…..

My family is large, there are four children. We don.t have a father- he died, fighting for the worker’s cause, and my mother…. is ailing…. I want to study very much, but I cannot go to school. I had some old boots, but they are completely torn and no one can mend them. My mother is sick, we have no money and no bread, but I want to study very much. …..there stands before us the task of studying, studying and studying. That is what Vladimir Ilich Lenin said. But I have to stop going to school. We have no relatives and there is no one to help us, so I have to go to work in a factory, to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, I am 13, I study well and have no bad reports. I am in Class 5…..

Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker to Kalinin, Soviet President

From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody (Moscow, 1997).
Reference:

http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/gcse/russia/a1_developmentofcommunistrule.htm#.Vh0V9eynJUE

The Russian Revolution: The Civil War

The Civil War:
When the Bolsheviks ordered land redistribution, the Russian army began to break up. Soldiers, mostly peasants, wished to go home for the redistribution and deserted. Non-Bolshevik socialists, liberals and supporters of autocracy condemned the Bolshevik uprising. Their leaders moved to south Russia and organised troops to fight the Bolsheviks (the ‘reds’). During 1918 and 1919, the .greens. (Socialist Revolutionaries) and .whites. (pro-Tsarists) controlled most of the Russian empire. They were backed by French, American, British and Japanese troops . all those forces who were worried at the growth of socialism in Russia. As these troops and the Bolsheviks fought a civil war, looting, banditry and famine became common.

Supporters of private property among .whites. took harsh steps with peasants who had seized land. Such actions led to the loss of popular support for the non-Bolsheviks. By January 1920, the Bolsheviks controlled most of the former Russian empire. They succeeded due to cooperation with non-Russian nationalities and Muslim jadidists. Cooperation did not work where Russian colonists themselves turned Bolshevik. In Khiva, in Central Asia, Bolshevik colonists brutally massacred local nationalists in the name of defending socialism. In this situation, many were confused about what the Bolshevik government represented. Partly to remedy this, most non-Russian nationalities were given political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR) . the state the Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922. But since this was combined with unpopular policies that the Bolsheviks forced the local government to follow - like the harsh discouragement of nomadism (Lifestyle of those who do not live in one place but move from area to area to earn their living)- attempts to win over different nationalities were only partly successful.

Central Asia of the October Revolution: Two Views

M.N.Roy was an Indian revolutionary, a founder of the Mexican Communist Party and prominent Comintern leader in India, China and Europe. He was in Central Asia at the time of the civil war in the 1920s. He wrote:

‘The chieftain was a benevolent old man; his attendant…… a youth who….. spoke Russian….. He had heard of the Revolution, which had overthrown the Tsar and driven away the Generals who conquered the homeland of the Kirgiz. So, the Revolution meant that the Kirgiz were masters of their home again. “Long Live the Revolution” shouted the Kirgiz youth who seemed to be a born Bolshevik. The whole tribe joined’.

M.N.Roy, Memoirs (1964).

‘The Kirghiz welcomed the first revolution (ie February Revolution) with joy and the second revolution with consternation and terror….. [This] first revolution freed them from the oppression of the Tsarist regime and strengthened their hope that… autonomy would be realised. The second revolution (October Revolution) was accompanied by violence, pillage, taxes and the establishment of dictatorial power ….. Once a small group of Tsarist bureaucrats oppressed the Kirghiz. Now the same group of people….. perpetuate the same regime ....’

Kazakh  leader  in  1919,  quoted in Alexander Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay, Les Mouvements Nationaux chez les Musulmans de Russie, (1960).

The Russian Revolution : The Revolution of October 1917

The Revolution of October 1917:

As the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks grew, Lenin feared the Provisional Government would set up a dictatorship. In September, he began discussions for an uprising against the government. Bolshevik supporters in the army, soviets and factories were brought together.

On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power. A Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure. The date of the event was kept a secret. The uprising began on 24 October. Sensing trouble, Prime Minister Kerenskii had left the city to summon troops. At dawn, military men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik newspapers. Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone and telegraph offices and protect the Winter Palace. In a swift response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers. Late in the day, the ship Aurora shelled the Winter Palace. Other vessels sailed down the Neva and took over various military points. By nightfall, the city was under the committee.s control and the ministers had surrendered. At a meeting of the All Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action. Uprisings took place in other cities. There was heavy fighting . especially in Moscow . but by December, the Bolsheviks controlled the Moscow-Petrograd area.

What Changed after October?

The Bolsheviks were totally opposed to private property. Most industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917. This meant that the government took over ownership and management. Land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility. In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of large houses according to family requirements. They banned the use of the old titles of aristocracy. To assert the change, new uniforms were designed for the army and officials, following a clothing competition organised in 1918 . when the Soviet hat (budeonovka) was chosen.

The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). In November 1917, the Bolsheviks conducted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed to gain majority support. In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly. He thought the All Russian Congress of Soviets was more democratic than an assembly elected in uncertain conditions. In March 1918, despite opposition by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk. In the years that followed, the Bolsheviks became the only party to participate in the elections to the All Russian Congress of Soviets, which became the Parliament of the country. Russia became a one-party state. Trade unions were kept under party control. The secret police (called the Cheka first, and later OGPU and NKVD) punished those who criticised the Bolsheviks. Many young writers and artists rallied to the Party because it stood for socialism and for change. After October 1917,

this led to experiments in the arts and architecture. But many became disillusioned because of the censorship the Party encouraged.

The October Revolution and the Russian Countryside: Two Views

News of the revolutionary uprising of October 25, 1917, reached the village the following day and was greeted with enthusiasm; to the peasants it meant free land and an end to the war. ...The day the news arrived, the landowner.s manor house was looted, his stock farms were .requisitioned. and his vast orchard was cut down and sold to the peasants for wood; all his far buildings were torn down and left in ruins while the land was distributed among the peasants who were prepared to live the new Soviet life..

From: Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm

A member of a landowning family wrote to a relative about what happened at the estate:

.The .coup. happened quite painlessly, quietly and peacefully. .The first days were unbearable.. Mikhail Mikhailovich [the estate owner] was calm...The girls also.I must say the chairman behaves correctly and even politely. We were left two cows and two horses. The servants tell them all the time not to bother us. .Let them live. We vouch for their safety and property. We want them treated as humanely as possible...

.There are rumours that several villages are trying to evict the committees and return the estate to Mikhail Mikhailovich. I don.t know if this will happen, or if it.s good for us. But we rejoice that there is a conscience in our people....

From: Serge Schmemann, Echoes of a Native Land. Two Centuries of a Russian Village (1997).

The Russian Revolution : After February

After February:
Army officials, landowners and industrialists were influential in the Provisional Government. But the liberals as well as socialists among them worked towards an elected government. Restrictions on public meetings and associations were removed. ‘Soviet’, like the Petrograd Soviet, were set up everywhere, though no common system of election was followed.

In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile. He and the Bolsheviks had opposed the war since 1914. Now he felt it was time for soviets to take over power. He declared that the war be brought to a close, land be transferred to the peasants, and banks be nationalised. These three demands were Lenin’s ‘April Theses’. He also argued that the Bolshevik Party rename itself the Communist Party to indicate its new radical aims. Most others in the Bolshevik Party were initially surprised by the April Theses. They thought that the time was not yet ripe for a socialist revolution and the Provisional Government needed to be supported. But the developments of the subsequent months changed their attitude. Through the summer the workers’ movement spread. In industrial areas, factory committees were formed which began questioning the way industrialists ran their factories. Trade unions grew in number. Soldiers’ committees were formed in the army. In June, about 500 Soviets sent representatives to an All Russian Congress of Soviets. As the Provisional Government saw its power reduce and Bolshevik influence grow, it decided to take stern measures against the spreading discontent. It resisted attempts by workers to run factories and began arresting leaders. Popular demonstrations staged by the Bolsheviks in July 1917 were sternly repressed. Many Bolshevik leaders had to go into hiding or flee. Meanwhile in the countryside, peasants and their Socialist Revolutionary leaders pressed for a redistribution of land. Land committees were formed to handle this. Encouraged by the Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants seized land between July and September 1917.

Date of the Russian Revolution

Russia followed the Julian calendar until 1 February 1918. The country then changed to the Gregorian calendar, which is followed everywhere today. The Gregorian dates are 13 days ahead of the Julian dates. So by our calendar, the ‘February Revolution’ took place on 12th March and the .October. Revolution took place on 7th November.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution

[a.k.a. The April Theses]

Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26.   Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24, pp. 19-26.
Translated: IsaacsBernard
Transcription: Zodiac
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

This article contains Lenin’s famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, on April 4, 1917.

[Introduction]

The Russian Revolution : The February Revolution in Petrograd

The February Revolution in Petrograd

In the winter of 1917, conditions in the capital, Petrograd, were grim. The layout of the city seemed to emphasise the divisions among its people. The workers’ quarters and factories were located on the right bank of the River Neva. On the left bank were the fashionable areas, the Winter Palace, and official buildings, including the palace where the Duma met. In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in the workers. quarters. The winter was very cold . there had been exceptional frost and heavy snow. Parliamentarians wishing to preserve elected government, were opposed to the Tsar’s desire to dissolve the Duma.

On 22 February, a lockout took place at a factory on the right bank. The next day, workers in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy. In many factories, women led the way to strikes.This came to be called the International Women’s Day. Demonstrating workers crossed from the factory quarters to the centre of the capital - the Nevskii Prospekt. At this stage, no political party was actively organising the movement. As the fashionable quarters and official buildings were surrounded by workers, the government imposed a curfew. Demonstrators dispersed by the evening, but they came back on the 24th and 25th. The government called out the cavalry and police to keep an eye on them.

On Sunday, 25 February, the government suspended the Duma. Politicians spoke out against the measure. Demonstrators returned in force to the streets of the left bank on the 26th. On the 27th, the Police Headquarters were ransacked. The streets thronged with people raising slogans about bread, wages, better hours and democracy. The government tried to control the situation and called out the cavalry once again. However, the cavalry refused to fire on the demonstrators. An officer was shot at the barracks of a regiment and three other regiments mutinied, voting to join the striking workers. By that evening, soldiers and striking workers had gathered to form a ‘soviet’ or ‘council’ in the same building as the Duma met. This was the Petrograd Soviet. The very next day, a delegation went to see the Tsar. Military commanders advised him to abdicate. He followed their advice and abdicated on 2 March. Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a Provisional Government to run the country. Russia.s future would be decided by a constituent assembly, elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage. Petrograd had led the February Revolution that brought down the monarchy in February 1917.

The Russian Revolution :The First World War and the Russian Empire

The First World War and the Russian Empire

In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances . Germany, Austria and Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and Russia (later Italy and Romania). Each country had a global empire and the war was fought outside Europe as well as in Europe. This was the First World War. In Russia, the war was initially popular and people rallied around Tsar Nicholas II. As the war continued, though, the Tsar refused to consult the main parties in the Duma. Support wore thin. Anti-German sentiments ran high, as can be seen in the renaming of St Petersburg -a German name -as Petrograd. The Tsarina Alexandra.s German origins and poor advisers, especially a monk called Rasputin, made the autocracy unpopular.

The First World War on the ‘eastern front’ differed from that on the ‘western front’. In the west, armies fought from trenches stretched along eastern France. In the east, armies moved a good deal and fought battles leaving large casualties. Defeats were shocking and demoralizing. Russia’s armies lost badly in Germany and Austria between 1914 and 1916. There were over 7 million casualties by 1917. As they retreated, the Russian army destroyed crops and buildings to prevent the enemy from being able to live off the land. The destruction of crops and buildings led to over 3 million refugees in Russia. The situation discredited the government and the Tsar. Soldiers did not wish to fight such a war. The war also had a severe impact on industry. Russia’s own industries were few in number and the country was cut off from other suppliers of industrial goods by German control of the Baltic Sea. Industrial equipment disintegrated more rapidly in Russia than elsewhere in Europe. By 1916, railway lines began to break down. Able-bodied men were called up to the war. As a result, there were labour shortages and small workshops producing essentials were shut down. Large supplies of grain were sent to feed the army. For the people in the cities, bread and flour became scarce. By the winter of 1916, riots at bread shops were common.

The Russian Revolution Extars

April Theses:

The April Theses were a series of directives issued by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin upon his return to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), Russia from his exile in Austria via Germany and Finland. The Theses were mostly aimed at fellow Bolsheviks in Russia and returning to Russia from exile. He called for soviets (workers' councils) to take power (as seen in the slogan "all power to the soviets"), denounced liberals and social democrats in the Provisional Government, called for Bolsheviks not to cooperate with the government, and called for new communist policies. The April Theses influenced the July Days and October Revolution in the next months and are identified with Leninism. The April Theses were published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and read by Lenin at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on 16 April 1917 (4 April according to the old Russian Calendar).

Pravda:

Pravda was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was one of the most influential papers in the country. A successor Russian political newspaper is today run by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, however it is greatly smaller in scope and remains obscure. The newspaper began publication in 1912 in the Russian Empire and emerged as a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The newspaper was an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU between 1912 and 1991.

After the dissolution of the USSR, Pravda was sold off by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. As was the fate of many of the Soviet-era enterprises Pravda suffered a downturn and was sold to a Greek business family. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation acquired the newspaper in 1997 and established it as its principal mouthpiece. Pravda is still functioning from the same headquarters on Pravda Street in Moscow where it was published in the Soviet days. During its heyday Pravda was selling millions of copies per day compared to the current print run of just one hundred thousand copies.

During the Cold War, Pravda was well known in the West for its pronouncements as the official voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. (Similarly Izvestia was the official voice of the Soviet government.)

Pravda was closed down for a brief period on July 30, 1996. Some of Pravda‍ '​s journalists established their own English language online newspaper known as Pravda Online. Pravda is witnessing hard times and the number of its staff members and print run has been significantly reduced. During the Soviet era it was a daily newspaper but today it publishes three times a week.

Pravda still operates from the same headquarters at Pravda Street from where journalists used to prepare Pravda everyday during the Soviet era. It operates under the leadership of journalist Boris Komotsky. A function was organized by the CPRF on 5 July 2012 to celebrate the 100 years of Pravda.

The Russian Revolution: People,Places,documents important in the 1905 Revolution

Father Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon (17 February [O.S. 5 February] 1870 — 10 April [O.S.28 March] 1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working class leader before the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon was born February 17, 1870 (o.s.) in the village of Beliki, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine, then part of theRussian Empire. He was the oldest son of a Cossack father and mother who hailed from the local peasantry. Gapon's father, Apollon Fedorovich Gapon, had some formal education and served as an elected village elder and clerk in Beliki. His mother was illiterate but religiously devout and actively raised her son in the norms and traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the age of 23 Gapon took a job in Poltava as a zemstvo statistician, supplementing his income with money earned working as a private tutor. It was in this capacity that he met the daughter of a local merchant in a house in which he was giving private lessons. The family objected to a proposed marriage due to Gapon's limited employment horizons, however, and as a means of overcoming this obstacle he again sought to become a priest. He made an appeal to Bishop Ilarion of Poltava, apologizing for past behavior and promising to fulfill expectations of the church in the future. The bishop was moved by the appeal and interceded with the family, winning the couple permission to marry.

Gapon was placed on the fast track to priesthood, occupying a place as a church psalm reader for a year, followed by a pro forma promotion to deacon for just one day before being made priest of the Poltava cemetery church. Gapon's services were innovative and informal and his church rapidly grew in size, negatively affecting other more formalistic local churches, whose priests lodge complaints against him. Nevertheless, Gapon continued to enjoy the support of the bishop in his position and was largely satisfied with his station in life.

Gapon and his wife had two children in rapid succession, but his wife fell ill following the 1898 birth of the second child, a boy. She died not long afterward and Gapon decided to leave Poltava to make a new life in the capital city of Saint Petersburg. Bishop Ilarion made a strong recommendation to Konstantin Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod, that Gapon be allowed to take the entrance examination to the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy despite his lack of the standard Seminary certificate.

Gapon's status as a student at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, one of the elite theological training institutions of the Orthodox Church, placed him in good graces with the Bishop Nikolai of Taurida, who permitted Gapon to live in a monastery near Sebastopol without having to take monastic vows.

Father Gapon, under the financial support of Colonel Motojiro Akashi of the Imperial Japanese Army organized the Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg, which was also patronized by the Department of the Police and the St. Petersburg Okhrana (secret police). The Assembly's objectives were to defend workers' rights and to elevate their moral and religious status. He was the person to lead the industrial workers to the city of Russia during the year 1905 before bloody Sunday with courage. Only persons of Russian Orthodox denomination were eligible to join its ranks. Soon the organization had twelve branches and 8,000 members, and Gapon tried to expand activities to Kiev and Moscow. Gapon was not simply an obedient instrument of the police; cooperating with them, he tried to realize his own plans.

From the end of 1904, Gapon started to cooperate with radicals who championed the abolition of the Tsar's autocracy.

On January 22 [O.S. January 9] 1905, the day after a general strike burst out in St. Petersburg, Gapon organized a workers' procession to present a petition to the Tsar, which ended tragically (Bloody Sunday 1905). Gapon's life was saved by Pinchas Rutenberg, who took him away from the gunfire. He then became the guest of Maxim Gorky.

Following Bloody Sunday, Gapon anathematized the Tsar and called upon the workers to take action against the regime, but soon after escaped abroad, where he had close ties with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. 

Gapon soon revealed to Rutenberg his contacts with the police and tried to recruit him, too, reasoning that double loyalty is helpful to the workers' cause. However, Rutenberg reported this provocation to his party leaders, Yevno Azef (who was himself a secret police spy) and Boris Savinkov. On March 26, 1906 Gapon arrived to meet Rutenberg in a rented cottage outside St. Petersburg, and after a month he was found there hanged. Rutenberg asserted later that Gapon was condemned by the comrades' court. In reality, three S.R. party combatants overheard their conversation from the next room. After Gapon had repeated his collaboration proposal, Rutenberg called the comrades into the room and left. When he returned, Gapon was dead.

Bloody Wednesday refers to the events of 15 August 1906 in the (Congress) Kingdom of Poland, where the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party (OB PPS) carried out a series of attacks on Russians, primarily police officers and informants. This took place in the context of the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–1907), and represented one of the biggest actions in the history of OB PPS.

"Warszawianka" is a Polish song written some time between 1879 and 1883. The title, a deliberate reference to the earlier song by the same title, could be translated as either "the song of Warsaw" or "the lady of Warsaw". To distinguish between the two, it is often called "Warszawianka 1905 roku" ("Warszawianka of 1905"), after the song became the hymn of demonstrating workers during theRevolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–1907), when 30 workers were shot during the May Day demonstrations in Warsaw in 1905.

The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula  and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea.

Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year. Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, negotiations between Russia and Japan had proved impractical. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian far-east from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur in a surprise attack.

Russia suffered numerous defeats to Japan, but Tsar Nicholas II was convinced that Russia would win and chose to remain engaged in the war; at first, to await the outcomes of certain naval battles, and later to preserve the dignity of Russia by averting a "humiliating peace". The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers. The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japan's recent entry onto the world stage. Scholars continue to debate the historical significance of the war.

Russification is a form of cultural assimilation process during which non-Russian communities, voluntarily or not, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one.

In a historical sense, the term refers to both official and unofficial policies of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia, aimed at Russian domination.

The major areas of Russification are politics and culture. In politics, an element of Russification is assigning Russian nationals to leading administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business and strong influence of the Russian language on national idioms. The shifts in demographics in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered as a form of Russification as well.

Analytically, it is helpful to distinguish Russification, as a process of changing one's ethnic self-label or identity from a non-Russian ethnonym to Russian, from Russianization, the spread of the Russian language, culture, and people into non-Russian cultures and regions, distinct also from Sovietization or the imposition of institutional forms established by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the territory ruled by that party. In this sense, although Russification is usually conflated across Russification, Russianization, and Russian-led Sovietization, each can be considered a distinct process. Russianization and Sovietization, for example, did not automatically lead to Russification – change in language or self-identity of non-Russian peoples to being Russian. Thus, despite long exposure to the Russian language and culture, as well as to Sovietization, at the end of the Soviet era non-Russians were on the verge of becoming a majority of the population in the Soviet Union.

The St. Petersburg workmen's petition to the Tsar, January 22, 1905

The Russian Revolution : Socialism in Russia

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All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914. The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists who respected Marx’s ideas. However, because of government policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation. It set up a newspaper, mobilised workers and organised strikes. Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing land periodically made them natural socialists. So peasants, not workers, would be the main force of the revolution, and Russia could become socialist more quickly than other countries. Socialists were active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century. They formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled for peasants. rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be transferred to peasants. Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist Revolutionaries about peasants. Lenin felt that peasants were not one united group. Some were poor and others rich, some worked as labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers. Given this .differentiation. within them, they could not all be part of a socialist movement.
The party was divided over the strategy of organisation. Vladimir Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive society like Tsarist Russia the party should be disciplined and should control the number and quality of its members. Others (Mensheviks) thought that the party should be open to all (as in Germany).

Alexander Shlyapnikov, a socialist worker of the time, gives us a description of how the meetings were organised:  Propaganda was done in the plants and shops on an individual basis. There were also discussion circles … Legal meetings took place on matters concerning [official issues], but this activity was skilfully integrated into the general struggle for the liberation of the working class. Illegal meetings were … arranged on the spur of the moment but in an organised way during lunch, in evening break, in front of the exit, in the yard or, in establishments with several floors, on the stairs. The most alert workers would form a “plug” in the doorway, and the whole mass piled up in the exit. An agitator would get up right there on the spot. Management would contact the police on the telephone, but the speeches would have already been made and the necessary decision taken by the time they arrived ...’

Alexander Shlyapnikov, On  the  Eve  of 1917.  Reminiscences  from  the Revolutionary Underground.

Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov (August 30, 1885 – September 2, 1937) was a Russian communist revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union leader. He is best remembered as a memoirist of the October Revolution of 1917 and as the leader of one of the primary opposition movements inside the Russian Communist Party during the 1920s.

The Russian Revolution: Economy and Society

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Economy and Society:

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of Russia’s people were agriculturists. About 85 % of the Russian empire’s population earned their living from agriculture. This proportion was higher than in most European countries. For instance, in France and Germany the proportion was between 40 % and 50%. In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as well as for their own needs and Russia were a major exporter of grain.  The government had experimented with laissez faire capitalist policies, but this strategy largely failed to gain traction within the Russian economy until the 1890s. Meanwhile, "agricultural productivity stagnated, while international prices for grain dropped, and Russia’s foreign debt and need for imports grew. War and military preparations continued to consume government revenues. At the same time, the peasant taxpayers' ability to pay was strained to the utmost, leading to widespread famine in 1891."

laissez faire is an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. The phrase laissez-faire is part of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "let (it/them) go", but in this context usually means to "let go".

Labour problem:

In the 1890s, under the minister of finance Sergei Witte (Image: Left), a crash governmental programme was proposed to promote industrialization. His policies included heavy government expenditures for railroad building and operations, subsidies and supporting services for private industrialists, high protective tariffs for Russian industries (especially heavy industry), an increase in exports, currency stabilization, and encouragement of foreign investments. His plan was successful and during the 1890s "Russian industrial growth averaged 8 % per year. Railroad mileage grew from a very substantial base by 40 % between 1892 and 1902."

Industry was found in pockets. Prominent industrial areas were St Petersburg and Moscow. Craftsmen undertook much of the production, but large factories existed alongside craft workshops. Many factories were set up in the 1890s, when Russia’s railway network was extended, and foreign investment in industry increased. Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled. By the 1900s, in some areas factory workers and craftsmen were almost equal in number.

Industrial workers began to feel dissatisfaction with the Tsarist government despite the protective labour laws the government decreed. Some of those laws included the prohibition of children under 12 from working, with the exception of night work in glass factories. Employment of those who were between the ages of 12 and 15 was prohibited on Sundays and holidays. Workers had to be paid in cash at least once a month, and limits were placed on the size and bases of fines for workers who were tardy. Employers were also prohibited from charging workers for the cost of lighting of the shops and plants. Most industry was the private property of industrialists. Government supervised large factories to ensure minimum wages and limited hours of work. But factory inspectors could not prevent rules being broken.

Years	Average annual  strike
1862-69	6
1870-84	20
1885-94	33
1895-1905	176

In craft units and small workshops, the working day was sometimes 15 hours, compared with 10 or 12 hours in factories. Accommodation varied from rooms to dormitories. Workers were a divided social group. Some had strong links with the villages from which they came. Others had settled in cities permanently. Workers were divided by skill. A metalworker of St. Petersburg recalled, ‘Metalworkers considered themselves aristocrats among other workers. Their occupations demanded more training and skill . . . .’ Women made up 31% of the factory labour force by 1914, but they were paid less than men (between half and three-quarters of a man’s wage). Divisions among workers showed themselves in dress and manners too. Some workers formed associations to help members in times of unemployment or financial hardship but such associations were few. Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions. These discontented, radicalized workers became key to the revolution by participating in illegal strikes and revolutionary protests. These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during 1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902. 

Agrarian problem:

Every year thousands of nobles who found themselves in debt either mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold their land to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land holding and mortgaged another third. In the countryside, peasants cultivated most of the land. But the nobility, the crown and the Orthodox Church owned large properties. The government hoped to make peasants — recently emancipated from serfdom — a politically conservative, land-holding class by enacting laws to enable peasants to purchase land from nobility, paying small installments over many decades. The land, known as “allotment land”, would not be owned by individual peasants, but would be owned by the community of peasants; individual peasants would have rights to strips of land that were assigned to them under the open field system. Unfortunately a peasant was unable to sell or mortgage his piece of land so in practice he could not renounce his rights to his land and thus he would be required to pay his share of redemption dues to the village commune. The government had created this plan to ensure the proletarianisation of the peasants would never happen, but the peasants were not given enough land to provide for their needs. "Their earnings were often so small that they could neither buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes and redemption dues they owed the government for their land allotments. As time went on, the situation grew worse. Masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and would sometimes walk hundreds of miles to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence."In the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava in 1902, thousands of them, ignoring restraints and authority, burst out in a rebellious fury that led to extensive destruction of property and looting of noble homes before troops could be brought to subdue and punish them." These violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so they created numerous committees to investigate the causes of these violent outbursts from the peasants. The results of their investigation found that there was no part of the countryside that was prosperous; some parts, especially the fertile areas known as "black-soil region", were in a state of decline.

Like workers, peasants too were divided. They were also deeply religious. But except in a few cases they had no respect for the nobility. Nobles got their power and position through their services to the Tsar, not through local popularity. This was unlike France where, during the French Revolution in Brittany, peasants respected nobles and fought for them. In Russia, peasants wanted the land of the nobles to be given to them. Frequently, they refused to pay rent and even murdered landlords. In 1902, this occurred on a large scale in south Russia. And in 1905, such incidents took place all over Russia. Russian peasants were different from other European peasants in another way. They pooled their land together periodically and their commune (mir) divided it according to the needs of individual families.

The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in parts of western Europe, Russia, Iran and Turkey. Under the open-field system, each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acres each, which were divided into many narrow strips of land. The strips or selions were cultivated by individuals or peasant families, often called tenants or serfs. The holdings of a manor also included woodland and pasture areas for common usage and fields belonging to the lord of the manor and the church. The farmers customarily lived in individual houses in a nucleated village with a much larger manor house and church nearby. The open-field system necessitated co-operation among the inhabitants of the manor.

Chernozem (from Ukrainian: чорнозем, translated as "black soil, dirt or earth") is a black-coloured soil containing a high percentage of humus (7% to 15%), and high percentages of phosphoric acids, phosphorus an dammonia. Chernozem is very fertile and produces a high agricultural yield.

Nationality problem:

Russia was a multi-ethnic empire. Nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected. "European civilization was valued over Asian or African culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and 'true' than other religions."

For generations, Russian Jews had been considered a special problem. "The official view had come to be that they were enemies of Christianity, exploiters of the peasantry, and the fountain head of the revolutionary movement." Like other minorities in Russia, the Jews lived in "miserable and circumscribed lives, forbidden to settle or acquire land outside the cities and towns, legally limited in attendance at secondary school and higher schools, virtually barred from legal professions, denied the right to vote for municipal councilors, and excluded from services in the Navy or the Guards."

Educated class as a problem:

The Minister of the Interior, Plehve, designated the schools as a pressing problem for the government.

Student were taking up problems that were unrelated to their "proper employment", and were taking part in open disorderly displays of defiance and radicalism. This was originally perceived by the government as lack of proper training in patriotism and religion. The government was disturbed by the widespread behavior but felt it could be fixed. In fact, when the official decision to overhaul the whole educational system was finally made, in 1904, and to that end Vladimir Glazov, head of General Staff Academy, was selected as Minister of Education, the students had grown bolder and more resistant than ever.