The Russian Revolution - A People's Perspective

Today, we finish our three-part series on the traumatic events of the end of the Tsarist regime with the people's perspective of the Russian Revolution.

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Episode 297 - The Russian Revolution – A People’s Perspective

Last time, we covered the life and death of Alexei Navalny. Today, we return to our three-part series on the people's perspective on three tragic events in late Russian history.

The Russian Revolution happened in two parts. One in 1905, whereby Tsar Nicholas II had to deal with growing discontent within his country, partly due to the disastrous Russo-Japanese War and partly due to the general malaise that gripped Russia. While an autocratic leader could have overcome both issues, Nicholas just wasn't up for the job.

The second part, in 1917, was actually itself a two-part event. The first part was Nicholas's abdication, with the second part being the Bolsheviks' overthrow of the Provisional Government in what could only be called sheer luck. Today, we will discuss how the people reacted to these two revolutions.

There are so many interpretations of the Russian Revolution and who was behind it that it would take ten or twelve whole episodes to cover every facet of it. Was it as author Neil Faulkner claims in his book, A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, "…the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and activity from below. It transformed the millions of people who participated in it, inspiring tens of millions who watched." 

Or was it a highly complex, decades-long struggle between 1890 and 1924 that Orlando Figes puts forth in his book A People’s Tragedy? Or was it, as some scholars have claimed, a reaction to the emancipation of the serfs, causing a decline in the gentry class, an increase in a growing disenfranchised middle class, and a depressed peasantry? Or, as I believe, a little bit of all of these? Whatever the actual cause, what did the people feel about this tumultuous period? That is what we will be discussing today.

Of course, the group most affected by the Revolution was the gentry class. Deep down, the wealthier members of Russian society, tied to the Tsarist regime, knew that the way things were going in the years leading up to the 1917 revolution was not right. People like Prince Felix Yusupov, who viewed Rasputin's influence over the Empress as a threat to the country, took action. For the most part, though, the gentry class did little to change the country's direction. My family knew things were going south and left Russia before the Revolution, taking with them their financial assets. This was not the case for those who remained after 1917, as the Bolsheviks appropriated all their bank accounts and physical property, leaving many of them destitute. The only things they could take with them when they decided to leave were those they could carry with them. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 had two distinct phases, the first of which was Nicholas II's abdication. It was a period of hope that the war in Europe and the immense suffering of the Russian soldier could be ended and the economic stresses and strains reversed. The food shortages being felt throughout Russia culminated in a strike by 7,000 women working in the textile industry in Petrograd. This boycott began on February 23, 1917, with a single-worded slogan: "Bread!"

While other chants of "Down with the Tsar" and "Down with the War" were heard, the demand for food was the loudest cry. The Tsarist regime, though, took little note of the anger being expressed. Interior Minister Protopopov wrote in his diary, "In general, nothing very terrible has happened." It was viewed so minimally by the ministers of the Tsar that they didn't even bother to report it to him at his war headquarters in Mogilev. It was to be a significant mistake.

Within two days, the number of protestors in the Russian capital reached over 250,000. By the time Nicholas was made aware of the agitation going on in Petrograd, it was too late. In addition, he made a calculated mistake in reacting to the furor; he demanded that General Sergei Khabalov end the insurrection immediately through whatever means necessary. This order stunned Khabalov, who knew this would not be successful and would only further aggravate the situation.

People like Pavel Sheremetev noted that "Something murky is taking place. There have been gunshots along Nevsky Prospect and in other places, the crowd is growing as are the red flags… But no one knows where our government is at the moment or who is in charge of reestablishing order." He further wrote to his daughter Maria, "Things are very unsettled here in the city, the dissatisfaction is growing, at first people just wanted bread, but now other less clear demands are being made… I cannot get to the Imperial Council since Nevsky Prospect is entirely filled with people, and the street cars have all stopped, and there are no cabs to be had." Pavel had a feeling of dread and despair come over him. He felt that any further provocation of the people would lead to a very dangerous situation. Sheremetev could not have been any more right; things were about to turn ugly.

Over half of the 160,000 troops stationed in Petrograd had turned to the insurgents' side. Most of the others decided to sit on the sidelines. By February 28, Khabalov only had 2,500 men loyal to the Tsar at his disposal. Instead of understanding the situation and trying to diffuse things, Nicholas ordered the troops to crush the rebellion violently. It was too late, and no action was taken. Even the Tsar's own ministers knew the end was at hand, and almost all of them resigned on the evening of the 27th and hightailed it out of town.

Meetings were held by both the right wing and left wing of the opposition to the Tsar. The right side formed the Provisional Committee of Duma Members for the Restoration of Order and Relations with Individuals and Institutions. This was the long and tedious name for the upcoming Provisional Government. On the other side of the fence were the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. With both sides negotiating what a new government would look like, Vladimir Lenin pronounced that Russia was now "the freest country in the world." We all know how that turned out. 

In his book A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner claimed that Lenin was a purveyor of a democratic solution. He argues, somewhat strangely in my humble opinion, three things, "Lenin was a democrat, not a democratic centralist, and that the Bolshevik Party was a mass democratic movement, not a pseudo-revolutionary sect. The Revolution was a mass movement of the people based on participatory democracy, not a coup to set up a dictatorship. Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary movement that destroyed the Bolshevik Party and Soviet Democracy."

By his own admission, Faulkner is a Trotskyist and believes that the Russian Revolution was a pure-hearted event, dismissing many of the autocratic messages that Lenin himself had made. He does believe, and I agree, that the people of Russia wanted a democratic solution to their problems, not one where one autocrat is replaced by another one. As he puts it, "For Revolution is essentially a concentrated expression – concentrated in time and space – of the common people's age-old yearning for freedom, justice, and decency. It is a moment when the drip-drip of partial reform in normal times – always too little, too late – accelerates into a sudden cascade of change, a torrent of transformation, that shakes the world and threatens to turn it upside down.”

I am not a fan of Faulkner's take on Lenin being a democrat. What I do believe is that there was a total disconnect between the wealthy gentry class and the ordinary Russian citizen/peasant. The revolutionary fervor that sprang from that disconnect was heightened by the incredible loss of life during Russia's involvement in World War I. It follows that it was not surprising that the average citizen would back a group as radical as the Bolsheviks when none of their needs were being met, like food and heat, their men were dying by the thousands on the battlefield, and the wealthy flaunted their financial situation in front of those suffering in the winter of 1917.

As Leon Trotsky put it, “The lack of bread and fuel in the capital did not prevent the court jeweler Faberge from boasting that he had never before done such a flourishing business. Lady-in-waiting Vyrubova says that in no other season were such gowns to be seen as in the winter of 1915-16, and never were so many diamonds purchased… Nobody had any fear of spending too much. A continual shower of gold fell from above, ‘Society’ held out its hands and pockets, aristocratic ladies spread their skirts high, everybody splashed about in the bloody mud – bankers, heads of the commissariat, industrialists, ballerinas of the Tsar, and the grand dukes, Orthodox prelates, ladies-in-waiting, liberal deputies, generals of the front and rear, radical lawyers… All came running to grab and gobble, in fear lest the blessed rain should stop. And all rejected with indignation the shameful idea of a premature peace.”

With the abdication of the Tsar, there was a feeling in the streets that things would get better. An air of optimism flowing through the people's hearts began to grip the city of Petrograd in early March 1917. But many in the city at the time were somewhat skeptical. James Stinton Jones, the author of the memoir The Czar Looked Over My Shoulder, wondered whether Russians were ready for the sudden gust of freedom. Maybe it was too new of a concept for them “to understand its uses and to know how to avoid its abuses… The poorer classes of Russia have never been accustomed to having an opinion of their own… Now they find themselves a political factor, they are hopelessly at sea, the prey of the last unscrupulous demagogue they have heard. It will take time for Russia to realize what she wants. There is no cohesion, no common ideal to inspire her people. She is conscious of having killed a dragon; that is all.”

As we know, his warning of being prey to a demagogue was remarkably prescient. One of the reasons he was so skeptical was how things were being run within Petrograd itself. No one was really in charge as this exchange between Duma member Claude Anet and three women when he wanted to make a phone call at the Duma. "Three women guarded the approach to it. 'You cannot telephone,' they said... 'And why?' I asked. 'We are reserving the telephone for public affairs.' 'But who are you?' 'The Telephone Committee.' 'And who appointed you?' 'We appointed ourselves.' Upon which, putting them gently aside, I passed through and telephoned."

Another incident was witnessed by British lithographer Henry Keeling. “A lady in a crowded tramcar in Petrograd… cried out suddenly that she had had her purse stolen. She said it contained fifty rubles and accused a well-dressed young man who happened to be standing behind her of the theft. The latter most earnestly protested his innocence and declared that rather than be called a thief he would give the woman fifty rubles out of his own pocket. Nothing availed him; perhaps they thought he protested too much. He was taken outside and promptly shot. The body of the poor fellow was searched, but no purse was found. The upholders of the integrity of the Russian Republic returned to the tramcar and told the women that she had better make a more careful search. She did so and discovered that the missing purse had slipped through a hole in her pocket into the lining. Nothing could be done for the unfortunate victim of ‘justice’ so they took the only course which seemed to them to meet the case and leading the woman out, shot her also.”

As you can tell, no one was really in charge. The Tsar and his administration had always told the people what to do, but now, there was no one to help them make the right decisions. The Russian people never had the need to govern themselves. This was a perfect opening for someone like Lenin and the Bolsheviks to step into. 

As winter turned to spring and summer, none of the people's real needs were being met. They overwhelmingly wanted out of the war. They wanted food and order, and the Provisional Government didn't give them any of that. But it was to get worse. The summer of 1917 saw a deadly outbreak of cholera and dysentery as the sanitation departments of many of the major cities collapsed. 

Instead of focusing on the people's needs and wants, the Provisional Government decided to press harder in the war. On June 16, President Alexander Kerensky ordered a massive artillery attack on the enemy lines in Galicia. It failed to accomplish anything substantial. As Helen Rappaport puts it in her book Caught in the Revolution, “With the so-called Kerensky Offensive, the Provisional Government had shot its last bolt.

By July, Petrograd was in a state of anarchy. The main form of transportation around the city had stopped operating. Driving a car was hazardous, as soldiers would commandeer anybody's vehicle they encountered. If the driver hesitated or resisted, they could pay with their lives. 

Tensions ran high between all members of Russian society. One incident recalled by an American embassy employee remembered this: "The Cossacks and Soldiers had a terrible fight just one block from the embassy. The Cossacks as you know always fight on horseback. They made a charge on the soldiers who was in the middle of the street with machine guns and cannons. My oh my what a slaughter. After 30 minutes of fighting, I counted in half a block 28 dead horses. When the Cossacks made their charge the soldiers began to pump the machine guns and you could see men and horses falling on all sides."

As you can tell, the chaos within a large city like Petrograd was at an all-time high. This was replicated throughout the Russian countryside. Peasants, long oppressed by the gentry class and the government, rose up in arms, destroying anything in its way, especially anything that reminded them of the upper class. This made it very easy for a group like the Bolsheviks to gain traction. 

Writing to the Foreign Office in London, Sir George Buchanan made this observation: "The Bolsheviks, who form a compact minority, have alone a definite political program. They are more active and better organized than any other group, and until they and the ideas which they represent are finally squashed, the country will remain a prey to anarchy and disorder… If the Government are not strong enough to put down the Bolsheviks by force, at the risk of breaking altogether with the Soviet, the only alternative will be a Bolshevik government."

What the ordinary Russian needed was hope, they needed to fell that someone cared about their plight and would bring justice and normalcy back to the country. Leighton Rogers heard this promise from Trotsky when he paraphrased a speech given by him. "Comrades, in a few weeks, a week, a few days, we are going to rise from our slavery to the capitalistic Kerensky government, the tool of the British and French Imperialists, and tear power from their hands. We shall do this for you, so that you may be free men as the Revolution meant you to be. You must support the Soviets because we shall give you: first, peace; second, bread; third, land. Yes, we shall take all the land from the rich and divide it among the peasants; and we shall reduce the hours of work, my comrades of the factories, to four, at double the wages you now receive. And you will see the criminal of the old regime and of the autocratic Kerensky government punished, along with the property-owning capitalists who have enslaved you and the peasants. So support us, comrades, and add you voices to our war cry of 'Long Live the international proletariat and the Russian Revolution!' Workers of the world, unite; you have only your chains to lose!"

Rogers, deep down, knew this was all a bunch of lies. But he also knew that the Bolsheviks were gaining popularity every day. One of the ways they did this was to rile up anger at the foreigners in the cities. They blamed them for all of their problems. There were roaming bands of thugs and agitators who would attack anyone who looked non-Russian. 

That feeling led Harold Williams to write about life in post-Revolution Russia in January 1918, published in the Daily Chronicle, a British newspaper. "I cannot tell you all the brutalities, the fierce excesses, that are ravaging Russia from end to end and more ruthlessly than any invading army. Horrors pall on us – robbery, plunder, and the cruelest forms of murder are grown a part of the very atmosphere we live in. It is worse than Tsarism… The Bolsheviks do not profess to encourage any illusions as to their real nature. They treat the bourgeoisie of all countries with equal contempt; they glory in all violence directed against the ruling classes, they despise laws and decencies that they consider effete, they trample on the arts and refinements of life. It is nothing to them if in the throes of the great upheaval the world relapses into barbarism.”

In 1918, the average Russian had hope that the coming Bolshevik rule would lead to a better life for them, but, alas, this was not to be the case. The Russian Civil War, with all of its violence, death, famine, and destruction, followed by the Red Terror post-war and Stalin's Great Purges, made the hopes and dreams of a fairer society disappear. This hope came back with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but that, too, was to fail miserably. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Join me next time when we will cover one of the most iconic structures and places in Russian and Soviet history, the Kremlin.

So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba za Vinyamineya.