We’re going to continue with the Russian Revolution.
This is the main event of the Bolshevik Revolution, or the Communist Revolution of October 1917.
Again, this all starts with Vladimir Lenin.
The exiles that had been thrown out of the country by the czar began to return to Russia
– intellectuals, Marxists, revolutionaries.
Lenin rapidly becomes the leader of these various exiles that are returning.
Lenin himself, of course, was a brilliant student.
He earned a law degree.
His older brother was executed, apparently he had taken part in a conspiracy to kill
Czar Alexander III in 1887, and Lenin took this very personally and I think made it his
life’s goal to overthrow the czar and then once becoming indoctrinated in communist ideology,
to establish a communist country in Russia.
Lenin spent a good part of his life either in prison or in exile – again, the czar’s
police and the czar’s tactics in dealing with these troublemakers.
Lenin, of course, is a prolific writer and pamphleteer.
I’ve already talked about the German high command taking him back to Russia during the
Great War to cause havoc and mischief, and of course, this worked.
Lenin unites various factions of the Bolshevik party.
He publishes his campaign slogan; it’s very simple – peace; land; and bread.
Peace – Lenin is going to withdraw Russia from the war if he takes power.
Land – He’s going to redistribute land to the peasantry.
And bread – We’re going to have a successful harvest and we’re going to bring the soldiers
home that work this land and we’re going to have a successful harvest and survive these
series of catastrophes.
Lenin proclaims a struggle against Kerensky and the provisional government.
He has no interest in cooperating with what he regards as a bourgeois, right-wing faction
that needs to be removed just as much as the czar.
Lenin issues a proclamation announcing the fall of the provisional government.
He also, I believe it’s Lenin that publishes the Treaty of Constantinople, whereby the
British and the French had encouraged further Russian participation in the Great War, in
exchange the Russians would have an opportunity perhaps to take what they had long coveted,
the Bosporus and Dardanelles, there in Turkey – giving the Russian navy an outlet to the
Mediterranean, and then of course, to the open seas.
Lenin is going to make a treaty; we mentioned it, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding that
huge swath of Western territory to the Germans.
He nationalizes all the banks, all the industry.
He encourages the soldiers to come home, to join the communes, to participate in the harvest.
Now this next part I call, Leon Trotsky and the Bloodless Takeover.
Leon Trotsky – one of the key figures in the Russian Revolution, there are three that
you should know – Vladimir Lenin; Leon Trotsky; and Josef Stalin.
So we’ll talk about Trotsky here for a moment.
Trotsky, like Lenin, spent a good portion of his life in prison or in exile.
He joins the Bolshevik party and returns – he’s one of those returning exiles – to Russia
in July 1917.
He’s Lenin’s chief lieutenant.
He’s chairman of the military revolutionary committee, and he founds the Red Army.
Trotsky, of course, after Lenin’s death Trotsky will be in competition for the top
job with Josef Stalin, and these two will vie for power in the 1920s.
By 1929, Stalin has consolidated his grip on power and will exile Trotsky.
And then in one of the strangest twists of the 20th century, Trotsky is actually in Mexico
City in 1940 and he’s writing his biography of Stalin.
He’s at his desk working on this biography, which is very entertaining by the way, when
one of Stalin’s agents enters Trotsky’s quarters and hits him in the head with a pick
axe.
Trotsky will die from these wounds.
Can you imagine?
You’re writing the biography of the man whose agent murders you.
So let’s back up again for a minute.
Let’s go back to the Revolution.
We have chaos in Russia, even though Lenin has established the Bolshevik party in charge,
there is chaos and confusion.
Let’s talk about the civil war and war communism for a moment.
The enemies of the Bolsheviks, the so-called white, the white armies, or the X-ed tsarist
generals and their troops; their allied troops in Russia as well trying to contain this Bolshevik
virus, not let it out of the country.
The allies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks or the industrial workers obviously, many of
the peasants, the Red Army founded by Leon Trotsky – Russia is beset with enemies.
The Japanese are attacking in the West.
There’s a Czechoslovakian division in the country.
There are United States troops; French and British troops in the North; Pols in the West
seeking to expand their territory at Russia’s expense.
But most Russians rally to defend Mother Russia against all these various invaders.
Now war communism refers to the economic policy during this time of chaos.
In 1918, 1920, ’21, there are forced grain requisitions from the peasants.
In other words, the Red Army goes into the countryside and takes the grain from the peasants.
Merciless executions of enemies, both real and perceived.
The Bolshevik leadership is surrounded by enemies – in their minds.
Siege mentality among the leadership.
Czar Nicholas and his family are infamously executed by the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks did not want him to remain alive as a symbol of resistance or opposition
to the Bolshevik Revolution, and of course, the Soviet Union survives this civil war and
this chaos, these invasions, and prevails in the end.
Now, the last part of this lecture – I call it the encore.
This is the Revolution from above.
So we’re in the 20’s now.
Lenin is dead; I believe he dies in ’24.
He has a series of strokes.
Trotsky is less and less a major play and will finally be exiled in 1929.
So this is Stalin’s government.
Again, there’s a threat of famine unless grain is being grown, because of the chaos
of the ‘20s.
The peasants, of course, will hide their grain, or they’ll hoard it, or they will sell it
on the open market, or even burn it, to keep it out of the bureaucrat’s hands.
Now earlier, when Lenin was still alive, this war communism, this requisitioning, forced
requisitioning of grain, did not solve the problem.
So Lenin came up with what’s called the New Economic Policy.
This ends the forced requisitioning of grain; it allows the peasants a free hand in growing
and marketing their grain.
This was very controversial, obviously, because it allows a sort of creeping capitalism back
into the countryside, but this creeping capitalism at least encourages the peasants to grow grain.
So the New Economic Policy, although it is controversial, does settle the country down
a bit.
Let’s talk about Stalin in a little more detail.
He lived from 1879 to 1953.
He is one of the major figures of the 20th century by any reckoning.
He was born in Georgia in the Caucuses, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
He was educated at a theological seminary; he was going to be a priest.
He comes from a lower, very humble background.
I believe his father was a shoemaker or a shoe cobbler or something.
So he begins his education at the seminary but he rapidly moves from Christianity to
Marxism and becomes a dedicated revolutionary.
In 1899, Stalin is expelled for his subversive activities.
He’s arrested numerous times, sent to the gulag in Siberia and Central Asia a number
of times.
Stalin, I believe I read he organized bank robberies to help finance radical parties
in Russia, including Lenin.
He supported Lenin in the October Revolution.
He was a commissar, a high-ranking commissar, during the civil war.
In particular, I remember that war against Poland in 1919-1920.
Stalin was up to his neck in that.
In 1922, Stalin is appointed general secretary of the Bolshevik party.
This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but Stalin turns this position into the key source
of authority and power in the Soviet Union.
As general secretary, Stalin knows everyone and has his fingers in every conceivable endeavor
that’s going on, and in this way he consolidates his power increasingly through the 1920s.
Stalin promotes what he calls socialism in one country; this is in opposition to Leon
Trotsky’s permanent revolution.
These of course, are the two, Lenin’s two chief lieutenants who are vying for power
in the 1920s after Lenin’s death.
Socialism in one country – Stalin says, hey, let’s make it work here first – in
Russia – and perhaps later we can expand it into Europe.
Trotsky wants a permanent revolution; continue to push for revolution I Europe now, and of
course, Stalin prevails.
Now the key part of this portion of the lecture, of course, I mentioned it was the Revolution
from above, and this is of course, Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture.
So let’s talk about collectivization.
The peasant societies organized into thousands of communes.
This peasant grain, of course, is essential for the urban workers for foreign trade, for
industrialization.
The peasants obviously resist the Bolsheviks, we’ve mentioned this many times.
The peasants withhold their grain.
I’ll give you some more reasons why.
If there’s no grain, perhaps state bureaucrats will not come to the village and harass them.
Again, there’s nothing to buy even if you sell the grain, the rubles that you get in
exchange are worthless, and of course, a series of poor harvests means that the peasants themselves
need the grain as opposed to shipping it to the cities or giving it up to the Red Army.
For the elite, you’ve got this - for Stalin, you’ve got this preoccupation with modernization.
Stalin sees the Soviet Union encircled by enemies, both in the East and with Japan,
and the West with perhaps Germany or perhaps some of the other capitalist countries, and
he is determined to industrialize and prepare the Soviet Union for future and potential
wars.
So to industrialize, of course, we have to take the grain.
So the peasants are now organizing to collective farms.
This causes mass famine, especially in Ukraine.
You can see why Ukrainians today are so resentful of the Russians.
I’m sure the Ukrainians have not forgotten collectivization.
We’ll show you a picture here of a Ukrainian family who are starving and have turned to
cannibalism for food.
You can see children lying broiled in front of the parents.
I forget the numbers exactly, and these numbers have been debated over the years.
I think they used to talk about a really high estimate of more than ten million, and now
I think the estimates have come down a bit.
But nevertheless, this is a disaster in Ukraine and other portions of Southern Russia, this
collectivization of agriculture.
The government supplies farm implements and tractors and other things to make agriculture
a success, but they also take the grain and starve the locals.
There is also this other group here in this collectivization process that are used as
scapegoats.
These are called the kulaks.
These are portrayed by the Bolsheviks as rich, capitalist peasants.
In reality, I think it’s anybody that owns a wheelbarrow can be labeled a kulak and then
exiled or executed.
So the peasants are brought under the control of the state for the first time in all of
Russian history and Stalin accomplishes this through brute force.
This is the Revolution from above.
Now draw some conclusions – Russian society is really two societies – a small, elite,
urban society in the cities and then the vast peasantry in the countryside, a society almost
continually at war for a couple of generations.
We have Crimea; we have Japan; we have the Great War; we have the civil war; the war
with Poland; the war with the invading allies in 1918; and then of course, you have the
internecine squabbles between Stalin and Trotsky.
First communist states established and it prevails, it survives in spite of numerous
attempts to kill it.
So I’m going to stop there with the Russian Revolution.
This is a lot of information.
Our earlier lecture on those enduring themes of Russian history should help you here and
sort of tie this material together.
And I’m going to stop there.
Thank you.