We’ve talked about Lenin, Trotsky, and the situation in Russia during and after both
revolutions quite a bit in our regular episodes, and will continue to do so, but who were these
guys?
And how did they end up in their positions of power?
Let’s have a look.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about Lenin, Trotsky, and
the Bolsheviks’ unlikely rise to power.
Leon Trotsky was born Lev Bronstein in what is now Ukraine in 1879.
His father was a wealthy landowner, so Lev had an expensive education and was a model
student.
He was ambivalent toward politics until he met members of the People’s Will party,
a radical organization that was behind Tsar Alexander II’s assassination.
Their beliefs had a romantic effect on Lev, and he abandoned his studies to live in their
revolutionary commune, wearing workers clothing and refusing anything remotely bourgeois,
except his glasses.
He organized workers meetings and started the newspaper “Our Cause”.
This eventually got him arrested in 1898, and he was sentenced to two years prison and
then exile in Siberia.
In prison he shifted toward Marxism, and in Siberia read Lenin’s “The Development
of Capitalism in Russia” and tried to determine if Marxism meant reform or revolution.
To do that, he fled his exile and made his way to London, abandoning his wife and daughters.
He arrived there in October 1902 and went straight to Lenin’s door.
He knocked and was invited inside.
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870 in Simbirsk.
His parents were wealthy conservatives, but his brother was a radical socialist who got
the death sentence for plotting - and failing - to assassinate Tsar Alexander III.
Lenin studied law at Kazan University, but his real interest was the socio-political
theory of Marxism, and he spent his time engaged in discussions about class struggle and the
future of capitalistic society.
Unlike many, he did not believe that agrarian society would lead the inevitable revolution.
He also thought Germany, and its powerful social-democrat movement, was the prime target
for proletarian uprising.
In 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg and illegally printed his first Marxist publications.
Then, financed by his mother, he visited Marxists in Zurich, Paris, and Berlin to discuss their
theories.
Upon his return to Russia he was arrested and sentenced to a three-year exile in Siberia.
In 1900, he left Russia with plans to raise money for a Marxist newspaper called Iskra,
The Spark.
From Switzerland to Munich, and then to London he went, where Trotsky one day knocked on
his door.
Lenin was taken by Trotsky’s fervor and knowledge, and gave him a job on Iskra’s
editorial board, writing political articles and editorials.
The main goal of Iskra’s involvement with the Russian Marxists was to call a Second
Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and to restructure it with Lenin,
and the other editors, at its head.
Lenin was already showing autocratic ambition, which Trotsky did not approve of.
He thought many would fear Lenin’s dictatorial course and strict party discipline, and it
would alienate people on both the left and the right.
The Congress, held the summer of 1903, proved Trotsky right, as the Russian Marxists split
into Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and the Mensheviks, with whom Trotsky sided.
The Mensheviks believed the working classes needed guidance, but not a leader.
The political situation was accelerating rapidly at the time and civil unrest was shaking Russia.
From Finland, Trotsky aimed to agitate the workers into laying down their tools and uniting
to turn St. Pete into a revolutionary camp.
Lenin called for violent revolution.
During the General Strike of October 1905, following Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese
War, the Mensheviks formed the Petrograd Soviet with Trotsky as Vice-Chairman in absentia.
The 1905 revolt had the potential of turning into a socialist revolution, but the liberal
reformers prevailed.
Let’s fast forward to the Russia’s February Revolution in 1917.
If you want to learn more about the situation in Russia between 1905 and 1917, check our
special episode, the link is in the video description.
Anway.
Many socialist organizations could emerge from the shadows and many political figures
could return from exile abroad.
The Mensheviks and the SRs - Socialist Revolutionaries - began taking over the Soviets - councils.
The Mensheviks were the strongest party in the Petrograd Soviet, and they called for
a peace from the world war without annexations.
The Bolsheviks appeared on the scene in March and wanted to radicalize the whole socialist
movement.
So the Mensheviks wanted liberal reform and the Bolsheviks wanted violent revolution,
though they both wanted peace, right?
The failure that summer of the Kerensky Offensive destabilized Alexander Kerensky’s government,
and the political scene was swinging to the left.
Trotsky had joined the Bolsheviks, despite his disagreements with Lenin, and the SRs
started splitting into left and right, with the left SRs allying themselves more and more
with the Bolsheviki.
However, the unsuccessful Bolshevik attempt to take over the government during the July
Days, further divided the socialists.
It also got Lenin branded a traitor and he was forced to flee to Finland since the Kerensky
government wanted him dead.
He left Trotsky in charge.
In September, as we saw, Kerensky made the fatal mistake of arming tens of thousands
of Bolshevik and Left SR supporters to fend of the coup attempt of Lavr Kornilov, and
Lenin began calling to overthrow the government.
By the end of October, the Military Revolutionary Committee was formed, and days later the second
revolution of the year was a fact.
Lenin had a pretty clear vision of what he wanted to achieve and what kind of government
he wanted to lead.
Faced with a choice of joining a coalition with the other socialist parties and being
a minor voice inside a multi-party government, or actively destroying any compromises in
ideology, he chose the latter.
The Bolsheviks were on an all or nothing course.
Without Lenin, they would not have emerged as powerfully as they did.
He was convinced that he was the revolution, and should he fail, the revolution would too.
He was probably right.
However, had Trotsky and the Left SRs not supported Lenin at the crucial moments, the
Bolsheviks may well have been a minor party in a coalition.
And it was Trotsky who organized the takeover of Petrograd while Lenin feared for his life.
But when Trotsky held power, he ceded it to Lenin.
For Trotsky, the revolution was everything, not personal power, and he exchanged power
for acceptance into the Bolshevik ranks.
As for the Brest-Litovsk Treaty...
Okay, new research from unpublished records show that Germany funded Lenin and the Bolsheviks
more than previously believed, and by the end of 1917, Lenin and Germany shared common
interests - dissolving the army and peace on the Eastern Front.
For Germany this is obvious, but for Lenin the army was an element that could be dangerous
in future.
Germany had an interest in Lenin and the Bolsheviks staying in power and may have been Lenin’s
strongest allies, recognizing no other negotiating partners.
Most of the other Russian socialists, though, including Trotsky, disagreed with Lenin’s
desire for peace, but they couldn’t deny that the Russian army pretty much only existed
on paper by then.
But it was pretty much their hands-on agitation and their intense propaganda in November that
sent the army home.
Lenin ignored the calls for the peace to be negotiated in a neutral country.
He thought with all the international socialists, he would not be able to convince his party
of peace.
Many of them believed that the world revolution would emerge if the German workers realized
their leaders had fought the war for territorial gain, so they favored a peace without annexations.
If Germany refused such a peace, then the revolution would begin.
And a revolutionary war might destroy the Bolsheviks in Russia, but it would start a
world revolution.
Trotsky conduced the peace talks, not just as foreign minister, but as someone who had
taken no money from the Germans.
He was told to delay the talks as much as possible since revolution was on the horizon.
In mid January, Germany laid down terms that would take 150,000 square kilometers of Russian
land.
The Petrograd Soviet was mad as hell.
Many voted for war; others walked out.
In the Moscow Soviet, only 13 people supported Lenin, 400 voted for war.
Lenin was losing control, because the idea of betraying the international revolution
drove many into opposition.
Trotsky floated the “neither war nor peace” idea, which might at least buy time to organize
the Red Army.
He got a lot of support.
Lenin then changed his rhetoric.
He no longer spoke of peace, but asked for a respite, arguing that a treaty was just
a piece of paper they could tear up whenever, and war with Germany would come when they
were stronger.
Well, we saw what happened when Germany reignited the eastern front because of the stalled negotiations.
They were virtually unopposed in the field and could march pretty much straight to Moscow
if they continued.
On February 24th, the Russian government voting whether to accept a peace treaty took place.
Many from the left could not vote against their principles; many were seen crying as
they voted for peace, but Lenin got his majority.
But no one wanted their signatures on the treaty; Trotsky threatened to resign.
Finally Grigory Sokolnikov agreed to do it.
Lenin kept the conditions of the treaty a secret until March 7th, when he spoke again.
Russia lost 780,000 square km, 56 million people, 2/3 of coal, iron, and steel production.
40% of the workers, the ideological base, were gone.
But he said that the treaty was the only way to save Russia and their revolution.
In the end, Lenin alienated most of the revolutionary Bolsheviks, provoked an Allied intervention,
and gave Germany huge chunks of territory.
Transcaucasia was lost; Ukraine- the breadbasket- was lost.
If Germany won the world war, Lenin claimed, it would not honor the treaty anyhow and a
revolutionary war would follow.
If Germany lost, then the agreement was void and the Allies would intervene.
Either way, major war was coming and an army needed to be created.
What was already there was famine, starvation, and the beginnings of a civil war.
The history of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviki is immensely complex and hard to grasp sometimes.
We put some of our recommended sources in the video description below, if you buy them
via the links, we get a small cut.
If you want to learn more about Russia before the 1917 Revolution, you can click right here
for our special episode.
Don’t forget to subscribe, see you next time.