The Russian Revolution(s) &

The Rise of Marxism in Russia

1894-1924

1894

Alexander III dies.

His son, Nicholas II, succeeds him as Tsar.

1 March 1898

Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labor Party holds its first congress.

First meeting held in Minsk. All the delegates arrested by Tsarist police after meeting.

17 November 1903

Second RSDLP congress held in exile in Brussels (then London). The Party splits into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

8 February 1904

Russo-Japanese WarJapanese launch surprise torpedo attack on Russian navy at Port Arthur (Manchuria).

3 January 1905

Strike beginning at the Putilov Works in St. Petersburg starts the 1905 Russian Revolution.

9 January 1905

BLOODY SUNDAY

5 September 1905

Treaty of Portsmouth signed ceding some Russian territory to Japan, ending Russo-Japanese War.

17 October 1905

Nicholas II signs the October Manifesto, expanding civil liberties and establishing and empowering the Duma.

23 April 1906

The Fundamental Laws issued, reasserting the autocratic supremacy of the Tsar.

1906 & 1907

Duma Problems—First & Second State Dumas

June-August 1914

28 June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria assassinated

28 July: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia

30 July: Russia mobilizes its army to defend Serbia

1 August: Germany declares war on Russia in defense of Austria-Hungary

WWI German Success on Eastern Front

Horrors on the Front—Medieval Weirdness at Home

16 December, Rasputin murdered by a group of nobles

February 1917—The February Revolution

22 February: Workers at Putilov Plant in Petrograd go on strike

23 February: Series of demonstrations demanding end of autocracy and Russian involvement in WWI

25 February: Battalion sent to Petrograd to end the uprising

26 February: Nicholas II orders dissolution of the 4th Duma and is ignored; decree of establishment of Provisional Government

27 February: Soldiers sent to suppress uprising join the protestors; Menshevik leaders freed from Peter and Paul Fortress; Petrograd Soviet founded

2 March 1917

Nicholas II abdicates throne

July 3-6, “The July Days”

Pro-Bolshevik demonstrations in Petrograd

Put down July 6; Provisional Government orders arrest of Bolshevik leaders

4 September: Under public pressure Bolshevik leaders released from prison

The October Revolution

25 October

Soldiers directed by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet capture the Winter Palace, ending the power of the Provisional Goverment

October Revolution

25 October

Menshevik and moderate Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Party members walk out in protest of 2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets; Lenin elected chairman of Sovnarkom (Council of the People’s Commissars)

26 October

2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets issues Decree on Peace, promising to end Russian involvement in WWI and Decree on Land, approving the taking of land from the nobility

1917-1918

7 December 1917: Cheka established

27 December 1917: Counterrevolutionary Volunteer Army established

15 January 1918: Red Army established

3 March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed, ending Russian participation in WWI

1918-1924

18 July 1918: Nicholas II and rest on royal family executed

1921 Famine

25 October 1922: Fall of Vladivostok marks end of Russian Civil War

21 January 1924: Lenin dies

Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Marxism• Historical Materialism• Dialectics (emphasized by Engels)• Class conflict• Ideological Superstructure (religion, bourgeois

values, justifications for inequality)• Inevitable (but progressive) Collapse of Capitalism• Inevitable (but progressive) Emergence of Socialism

then Communism (the withering away of the state) = the complete liberation of all human beings

Marx on Russia“From the historical point of view the only serious argument put forward in favour of the fatal dissolution of the Russian peasants’ commune is this: By going back a long way communal property of a more or less archaic type may be found throughout Western Europe; everywhere it has disappeared with increasing social progress. Why should it be able to escape the same fate in Russia alone? I reply: because in Russia, thanks to a unique combination of circumstances, the rural commune, still established on a nationwide scale, may gradually detach itself from its primitive features and develop directly as an element of collective production on a nationwide scale. It is precisely thanks to its contemporaneity with capitalist production that it may appropriate the latter’s positive acquisitions without experiencing all its frightful misfortunes.”

From Marx’s Letter to Vera Zasulich

Marxism-Leninism

Marxism plus the idea of a revolutionary vanguard party acting on behalf of the world proletariat.

Bolshevism as Utopian Religious Ideology?

“Bolshevism as a social phenomenon is to be reckoned as a religion, not as an ordinary political movement. The important and effective mental attitudes to the world may be broadly divided into the religious and the scientific. The scientific attitude is tentative and piecemeal, believing what it finds evidence for, and no more. Since Galileo, the scientific attitude has proved itself increasingly capable of ascertaining important facts and laws, which are acknowledged by all competent people regardless of temperament or self-interest or political pressure. Almost all the progress in the world from the earliest times is attributable to science and the scientific temper; almost all the major ills are attributable to religion.

“By a religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. By this definition, Bolshevism is a religion…. Those who accept Bolshevism become impervious to scientific evidence, and commit intellectual suicide. …One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.”

From Bertrand Russell’s The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

“Leaping Ahead” with Comrade Stalin

Utopianisms Left and Right

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Thought Experiment Time

History and randomness: the role of Luck in the story.

(Mis)understanding backwards?

What if the USSR had “won the Cold War”?

What if they sent us “economic advisors” to help our economy recover with “shock therapy”?