Title: Revolutionary Russia
Rating: 4 Stars
This is the second time that I’ve used this blog title. The first time was when I wrote my thoughts on the great Soviet prison novel, Darkness at Noon (read it here if you’re interested). It may or may not be true, but allegedly this phrase was posted over the entrance of a Soviet gulag. If true, it’s unclear to me if this statement was meant to be ironic or was truly the belief of some gulag commandant.
I haven’t read a lot of Russian / Soviet history. This book served as a good introduction to the Soviet years.
When people think of the Russian Revolution, usually they think about the events in 1917, or if they reach a bit further back, to the first uprisings in 1905. It is Figes’ thesis that the entire century of 1891 to 1991 was essentially a period of revolutionary upheaval.
He breaks up this century into three phases. The first phase, starting in 1891, was the rise of the revolutionary movement, the overthrow of the Tsar, and the installation of Lenin’s first Bolshevik government. The second phase was essentially the period of Stalin. The last phase started with Khrushchev’s secret speech describing Stalin’s crimes and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Figes starts in 1891 because that’s when a Russian famine strikes. As is typical for Tsar Nicholas II (to be clear, a man that apparently didn’t really want all that much to be Tsar so kind of made a botch of it at every step), he handled it poorly. His administration tried to pretend that it didn’t exist and tried to censor newspapers. In response to the famine, a number of public committees were started. This small start gave people a voice in government and they issued demands to the Tsar. Whenever challenged, the Tsar would fall back on his autocratic default and refuse the demands. This led to the development of the first generation of Bolshevik leaders.
Russia’s disastrous defeat in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War provided another opportunity for the revolution. Although the Tsar survived that, the revolutionary organization was growing and learning. Moving on from a disaster to a catastrophe, Russia’s performance in World War I was enough to force the Tsar to abdicate. There was still hope for a democratic government in Russia, but once Germany smuggled Lenin in the sealed train car, the Bolsheviks were able to bring out the workers and military units sympathetic to their cause to overrun the legislative body and to assume power.
By no means secure in power, a civil war between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (Tsar supporters) now started. By the time that settled, Lenin was ready to rebuild the Russian economy via the New Economic Policy (NEP). It was showing signs of progress when Lenin suffered a series of strokes that left him virtually incapacitated and would later kill him.
Concerned with Stalin’s ruthlessness, Lenin left a final statement recommending that Stalin not be given power. However, Stalin was able to outmaneuver his opponents and assume power.
Indeed Stalin proved to be ruthless. He abandoned the NEP and instituted brutal five year plans instead. Millions of peasants starved to death to meet his quotas. Nearly the entire generation of the old Bolsheviks, seen as threats, were either exiled or, more likely, executed. Entire communities were subject to a quota system of arrests. The gulag system, imprisoning millions, was initiated. Liquidating nearly the entire senior military staff proved disastrous when Germany invaded.
After Stalin’s death and Khrushchev was deposed, the Soviet bureaucracy became sclerotic. There seemed to be no optimism for the future. During Brezhnev’s time in power, people in rural Russia began spending a third of their income on vodka. In response, the central government raised taxes on vodka to increase their revenue. This struck me as symptomatic of that era.
Gorbachev was a true believer in Lenin and socialism. When he came to power, he thought that the combination of perestroika and glasnost would throw open the shuttered Soviet bureaucracy and bring in fresh ideas and energy. Instead, this openness exposed to all how truly rotten the entire system was and hastened its collapse.
Figes believes that this entire period is revolutionary because, during all three phases, the Soviets were intent on defending and furthering socialism abroad. At different times they had different ideas of how to bring this about, but they never deviated from this mission. Even in the midst of Stalin’s purges, there was an underpinning theory that his actions were protecting the fragile Soviet state against outsider threats and stratagems.
One obvious fact that is true across the entire century is the Russian population capacity for suffering. During each phase, under each leader, the Russian people suffered from purges, starvation, deprivation, and suffering. It’s a tragedy to witness a country’s government treat their citizenry so poorly.
One thing that amuses me when reading a history that’s more than a few years old is how current events render some of their statements obsolete. It discusses how Russia has become a much weaker power in the world. That is true. It then states that Russia is no longer an aggressive state and that it does not start foreign wars. Well, that statement didn’t age quite as well.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is so much in the news, I was interested in how Ukraine would appear in these pages. I’ve written before how, during World War I, Tsar Nicholas II refused to countenance discussions of Ukrainian independence because he thought of Ukrainians as Russians. That was also one of the justifications that Putin used for his invasion of Ukraine.
In these pages, it’s pretty clear that Ukrainians, from the initial start of the Russian Revolution, considered themselves independent. Lenin and his successors, just like the Tsar, seem to refused to believe in an independent Ukraine. In 1991, when Gorbachev was trying to keep the USSR as a central government over a group of otherwise sovereign nations, it was Ukraine that cast the deciding vote refusing to join the USSR. It, along with two other nations, were instrumental in bringing about the end of the USSR.
It seems clear that Ukraine is bent upon independence and that any Russian leader that assumes otherwise is ultimately doomed to failure. I guess time will tell.
dorkenstein 