MARCH OF THE TITANS
-

A HISTORY OF THE WHITE
RACE

Chapter 60: The October Revolution: Communism
in Russia

The two uprisings in Imperial
Russia, in March and October 1917, are together known as the Russian Revolution.
After this revolution, the super power known as the Soviet Union was to be
created: it would play a major role in world politics for just over 70 years
before collapsing into itself, racked not only by Communism's inherent economic
contradictions, but also destroyed by ethnic and racial conflict. The two
revolutions are known as the February Revolution and October Revolution by name:
both had tumultuous effects on 20th Century history.

Mounting Crises

The 1917 revolutions were not
however the first attempts to overthrow the Tsar: the 1825 revolt against Tsar
Nicholas 1 and the 1905 revolution, which ended in the Bloody Sunday Massacres
in St. Petersburg, were evidence of a dissatisfaction with the Russian state
going back decades.

Imperialist Russia was one of the
original belligerents in the First World War: by 1917 however, the country had
been defeated in more major battles than it had won. The country was ill
equipped to fight a modern war: the underdeveloped and mismanaged economy,
combined with centuries of autocratic Tsarist rule, created conditions ripe for
revolution.

Above: The Russian Duma,
or parliament, sits in 1915. The Tsar ignored constant advice from the
Duma advising him of serious trouble
brewing.

Despite some limited reforms
being introduced, which saw a highly restricted Duma, or parliament, coming into
being, the Tsar retained virtual absolute power. Warnings issued to him, even by
the upper class dominated Duma, were ignored.

Food shortages were common:
Russian troops were the worst supplied of the war; often going for long periods
without food or basic clothing, yet expected to fight for a system from which
they had long since been alienated. By 1917, serious famine threatened much of
Russia and the pro-reform parties in the Duma had a majority. All the signs were
there that trouble was ahead: all were ignored.

The February Revolution

The deprivations of the war
finally proved too much. By February 1917, large crowds had started to form
daily demonstrations in Petrograd (now called St. Petersburg) protesting against
the food shortages, against the undemocratic Tsar and against the war.

The Duma, while not leading the
protest, was overtly sympathetic to the demands of the workers, with the largest
party in the Duma being the moderate pro-reformist Socialist Workers
Party.

On 23 February, some 90,000 people
gathered for one of the biggest demonstrations yet: the principle demand of that
protest was bread - the simplicity of the demand an indication of how desperate
things had become. Despite police and troops being called in to disperse the
crowd, the masses remained unmoved: most soldiers were in any event sympathetic
with the crowd.

The next day, 24 February,
tensions had risen visibly: half of all Petrograd turned out on strike: hundreds
of thousands of people filled the streets, calling for an end to the Tsar's rule
and for an end to the war which they saw as the Tsar's personal war - a not
wholly inaccurate interpretation. By 25 February, the whole city had been
engulfed in a strike: as the nation's capital, it brought the entire
administration of the country and of the war to a halt.

Above: Tsar Nicholas, his
wife and one of his children. All were to be murdered by the Communists
once the latter party had seized complete
power.

Then the strike turned violent:
several police stations were seized by bands of armed strikers and burned down;
and universal suffrage elections to the first workers councils (called Soviets)
were held in the factories in Petrograd. The pro-reform Socialist Workers Party
easily won the majority votes in these Soviets - which quickly became the de
facto local government bodies, appropriating many duties and responsibilities to
themselves that were normally the preserve of the Tsarist government.

The Army Mutinies

By 26 February, the Tsar called
out the Russian army in Petrograd to suppress the uprising: at first there were
some violent clashes, but soon the troops mutinied and refused to fire on the
workers: the first line of defense for the old order had collapsed under a wave
of disloyalty caused by the Tsar's own short sightedness.

The Tsar then dissolved the
pro-reform Duma: this body obeyed but informally reassembled and elected a
provisional cabinet to run the state: by 27 February, there was virtually
nothing left of the Tsar's administration and the informal Duma was the de facto
government.

Then the army mutinied on a grand
scale: in Petrograd, 150,000 soldiers joined the revolution in one go: together
with the armed workers, the capital was completely seized and the remains of the
Imperialist government driven out. The revolution had claimed some 1,500 lives
up until that stage.

The Petrograd Soviet INITIALLY NOT
COMMUNIST

Despite the Petrograd Soviets
being firmly pro-reform, they were not dominated by the Communists. Together
they elected an overall Soviet for Petrograd, and together with the Duma formed
what was in reality a fairly moderate socialist administration whose first
priority was to organize food supplies and the release of the hundreds of
political prisoners who had been jailed by the Tsarist government.

Both the Duma and the Soviet in
Petrograd also believed in continuing the war against Germany: despite the end
of the war being a demand specifically made by the crowds who had driven the
Tsarist government out of the capital.

GERMANS ALLOW Vladimir Lenin TO ENTER
RUSSIA

Vladimir Illyich Ulynaov, who
later adopted the name of Lenin, was born in 1870 and had become a convinced
revolutionary by the age of 17, when his brother had been executed for his part
in a plot to assassinate the Tsar.

By then already a follower of Karl
Marx, who in 1848 had published the Communist Manifesto in Germany and who had
thereby formalized the ideology of Communism, Lenin was exiled to Siberia by the
Tsarist police for three years from 1887 to 1890.

On his release, he fled to Western
Europe and built up the radical wing of the Russian Communist Party, mainly
through the publication of his famous newspaper "Iskra" (the Spark) from
Switzerland. Lenin returned briefly to Russia in 1905 to take part in the
abortive revolution of that year: When it failed and was suppressed, he fled
once more into exile.

Above: Lenin addresses a
meeting - to his left, Leon Trotsky, the principal organizer of the
Communist Revolution and the real brains behind the creation of the Soviet
Union.

The February revolution of
1917 caught Lenin unprepared: he was still in Switzerland when it broke out. He
immediately made an offer to the German government: if they would give him safe
passage to Russia, he would endeavor to take Russia out of the war. The Germans
agreed to this plan, and along with a tight group of selected revolutionaries,
Lenin was put across the Russian border by the Germans in a secret operation
which involved the Communists hiding in a railway truck. Lenin finally arrived
in Petrograd in April 1917, with his small but tough and trained hard core group
of revolutionaries.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks

Upon Lenin's return, the almost
dormant Communist Party was reactivated and sprang into life: Lenin demanded of
the Petrograd Soviet that they seize land, distribute it to the peasantry; and
end the war. Lenin's Communists, who had been created out of a split at the 1903
Russian Socialist Workers' Party conference (at the time of the split, Lenin had
carried the majority of party delegates with him - they became known as the
"Bolshevists", or "majority", while the remainder were known as the
"Mensheviks", or "minority". These names did not however reflect their support
amongst the population: the Mensheviks, or moderate Socialists, had the most
support, as the few elections that were held in 1917, proved beyond doubt.) Thus
it was that Lenin's demands fell onto Menshevik ears in the Petrograd Soviet and
were ignored.

The Tsar Abdicates

Before Lenin had arrived, the
Soviet in Petrograd had already recognized the Duma as the legitimate government
of Russia: dominated by Mensheviks, the Duma formally took over the
administration of the country as a whole on 28 February. The Tsar, realizing
that the game was up, formally abdicated on 2 March 1917.

The Revolution Spreads

Using the Petrograd revolution as
a model, similar uprisings then occurred throughout Russia: in each case
workers' committees, or Soviets, were created in tandem with civil authorities
created by the Duma. In virtually all cases, the Soviets were dominated by
Mensheviks and all held themselves subservient to the central Menshevik
government.

The provisional government then
disbanded the Tsarist police, repealed all limitations on freedom of opinion,
press, and association, and repealed all laws which discriminated against Jews.
Despite all these moves, the basic structure of the society remained unaltered:
this was exemplified by the determination to continue the war at all costs.

Slowly the workers' Soviets began
to become more radical, and it was not long before the subservience which had
been the characteristic of the first Soviets began to change. After a few months
it became clear that the Duma government only existed because the Soviets
tolerated it: all the actual infrastructure of the state was controlled by the
workers' committees, and the Duma government exercised power in name only.

Before Lenin's return from exile
in April, Bolshevik policy had been formulated by its internal leaders, Lev
Kamenev and Joseph Stalin, the latter of whom favored conditional support of the
Duma, or Provisional Government, and were in the process of making a political
bloc with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin's return to Russia in April
changed that: he was implacably opposed to co-operation with the Menshevik
government and immediately redirected the Bolsheviks into breaking with the
Menshevik government and towards establishing control of the Soviets. In this
way, Lenin wanted to capture power in the country as a whole, and not to share
it with the Mensheviks or others.

Leon Trotsky Returns

Then, Lenin's greatest organizer,
and the man who can quite rightly be called the brains behind the Bolshevik
revolution, Leon Trotsky, arrived back in Russia from America where he had been
in exile since escaping from a Tsarist prison following his arrest during the
abortive 1905 revolution.

Trotsky was to lead the Bolshevik
revolution, and unquestionably without him it would never have occurred.
Trotsky's arrival in May 1917 in Russia, accompanied by a large number of
international Communists, greatly strengthened Lenin in his struggle with the
Mensheviks.

This was primarily because Trotsky
was a brilliant organizer, but also because he brought with him a considerable
amount of money from Jewish sympathizers in the United States, particularly from
the banker Jacob Schiff of the firm Kuhn Loeb & Co. - the latent
anti-Semitism of successive Tsarist governments had made the revolutionary
movement a cause celebre amongst Western Jews.

The Soviets Flex their Muscle

In April, the first serious
confrontation between the Duma government and the Petrograd Soviet occurred: in
that month, the Duma government issued a pronouncement to the Western Allied
powers stating that it would continue the war with Germany and that it fully
intended to annex territories from the defeated Central Powers at the conclusion
of the war.

This pronouncement flew directly
in the face of the Petrograd Soviet's political position on the war: the month
before, in March, it had issued a proclamation calling for the end of the war
and the creation of peace without annexations and reparations.

The Duma government's announcement
immediately led to demonstrations in the streets of Petrograd: the unwillingness
of the Russian masses to continue with the war which had already killed over a
million and a half Russians had been completely underestimated. The Petrograd
Soviet then assumed sole control in the capital city: the Duma government was
summarily ejected and the entire army garrison in Petrograd obeyed the orders
given to it by the Soviet. This marked a sea change: although the Bolsheviks
were still a minority, their policy had in effect been endorsed by the leading
Soviet in the country.

First Congress of Soviets

In June 1917, the Soviets from
around the country gathered in Petrograd for the first all-Russian Congress of
Soviets. It was still heavily dominated by Mensheviks and Duma government
supporters: but cracks were beginning to appear.

The Duma government had failed to
address the major issues facing the country: the lack of food, inflation and
continued reverses on the war front created ever deepening crises for the
government. The Duma government also had not yet held proper democratic
elections, arguing that it was not possible to do so while so much of the
country was still under German occupation.

Then the Congress of Soviets
declared itself in favor of state monopolies of the bread industry and other
essential items, the first socialist reform that had actually been proposed. The
Duma government turned this request down, arguing that the first issue to be
resolved was winning the war, and that all other things would be addressed
afterwards. With policy pronouncements such as this, the Duma government was,
without realizing it, continually alienating the Soviets, upon whom it depended
to stay in power.

Russian Army Discipline Cracks

Then the Menshevik Minister of War
in the Duma government, Alexander Kerensky, compounded the crisis by launching a
major Russian offensive on 16 June 1917: it was an utter failure and discipline
in the Russian army collapsed. Millions of soldiers deserted and flooded back
into the Russian cities to escape the fighting at the front. Alienated, hungry
and angry, they were ideal revolutionary material and the Bolsheviks were able
to engage in mass recruiting led by the extremely able Trotsky.

The July Uprising

News of the defeat at the front
arrived while the Congress of Soviets was still in session: under pressure from
the Petrograd Soviet the congress then issued a demand calling for the abolition
of the Duma and the holding of formal democratic elections on 30 September.

Above: The momentum
builds: Soviet supporters rally in the streets, supported by the
army.

The Petrograd Soviet then
organized a demonstration in support of its demands: the size of the turnout -
estimated to be at least a half million - surprised even the Petrograd Soviet
organizers: an even greater shock was the realization that the majority of the
demonstrators were Bolshevik supporters. The demonstration grew by leaps and
bounds: from 3 to 5 July, the crowd was joined by armed soldiers from the city
garrison and sailors from the nearby naval fortress of Kronstadt.

The mass then descended on the
Tauride Palace, where the Congress of Soviets was in session, demanding that it
take sole power in the country and eject the Duma government for once and for
all.

Bolshevik Leadership

The Bolsheviks naturally assumed
the leadership of this great demonstration: Lenin and Trotsky could be seen up
and down the streets of Petrograd, speaking and whipping up the crowds with
appeals for bread, peace and socialism.

Although the demonstration was
largely non-violent, the executive committee of the Congress of Soviets
denounced it as a counter revolutionary Bolshevik insurrection and summoned
troops from the front to disperse the demonstrators. The troops arrived on 5
July - by which time the majority of the crowd had dispersed. The troops however
made a symbolic gesture by placing themselves under the command of the Congress
of Soviets - effectively ignoring the Duma government.

Kerensky Government

In what was in retrospect an act
of supreme stupidity, the Duma then elected the unpopular Kerensky as prime
minister on 10 July. His disastrous record as minister of war had been the
primary cause of the mass uprising and the break down of the Russian army; now
he was head of a government already struggling to keep control over the
increasingly restless Soviets.

Kerensky then further destroyed
what little support he may have had by postponing the long promised democratic
elections until the end of November. He then finally moved against the
Bolsheviks: Lenin's entry into the country, courtesy of the Germans was exposed
and he was denounced as a German agent: Trotsky was arrested and kept in
detention without trial.

Above: Alexander Kerensky - a failed military leader
and possibly the second most unpopular Russian leader after the Tsar
himself: he fled Russia after the Communists came to power and ended up
running a restaurant in America.

The Kerensky government also
refused to listen to the increasing clamor for economic reform, ignoring all
from the most reasonable demands; to the more outrageous such as the seizure of
all land and the outlawing of private property. In short, Kerensky did nothing,
always a recipe for trouble.

The Kornilov Incident

Convinced that Kerensky could not
cope with the situation, some conservative Russian army elements led by the
newly appointed commander in chief of the army, general Kornilov, then made
plans to occupy Petrograd and dissolve the Soviet in the city. For a while
Kerensky supported the plan, but when he learned that Kornilov intended to
depose the Duma government as well, he warned the Petrograd Soviet and appealed
for their help in stopping Kornilov.

The Petrograd Soviet then
organized the soldiers and workers in the city into armed formations to ward off
the Kornilov invasion: the leadership fell almost immediately to the Bolsheviks.
As Kornilov's army approached the city, they were met by large numbers of
workers and soldiers under the Bolshevist banner, proclaiming friendship and
peace. Kornilov's army dissolved in front of his eyes and he was arrested
without a shot being fired.

The Kornilov fiasco saw the
workers of Petrograd being formally armed: and the Bolsheviks for the first time
won an outright majority on the workers' Soviet in the city. At last they were
the most popular party in the capital of the country. The popularity of the
Bolsheviks then spread to other Soviets around the country: by October, they
dominated the Congress of Soviets as well, in effect meaning that the majority
of workers' organization in the country were under their influence.

Trotsky and the Military Revolutionary Council

Still however, the Duma government
persisted in claiming to be the only legitimate government of the country.
Kerensky tried to break up the armed militancy of the Petrograd soldiers'
garrison by ordering part of them to the war front: they simply refused and the
government was unable to coerce them into doing so.

On 16 October, the Petrograd
Soviet created the "Military Revolutionary Committee for the defense of the
capital against the counter revolution" - with the Bolshevists achieving an
outright majority in the election to head this council. The Mensheviks and
others then refused to participate: full control of all military forces in the
capital city of Russia then fell under the control of the now freed Trotsky.

The October Revolution

As soon as Trotsky had achieved
this important breakthrough, he realized that the time was never better to act
decisively. Under his orders, the Military Revolutionary Council seized all
important government buildings and sites over the night of the 24 -25 October
1917: the October Revolution, which would create the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (the USSR), was launched.

Armed workers, soldiers, and
sailors stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, the headquarters of the Duma
government and physically ejected them from office. The seizure of power was
virtually bloodless.

On 25 October, Trotsky officially
announced the end of the Duma government: many of its ministers were arrested
and Kerensky fled into exile in America. The second Congress of Soviets was held
the next month: it overwhelmingly endorsed the new Bolshevik government.
Trotsky's organizational abilities had achieved the transformation of Russia
into a Bolshevist dominated state within six months of his arrival in the
country.

The New Government - Soviet People's
Commissars

The Congress of Soviets then
adopted a constitution in which supreme authority was vested in the congress
itself. Execution of the decisions of the congress was entrusted to the Soviet
of People's Commissars - a gathering of several hundred regional leaders (the
"commissars") which was made subject to the authority of the Congress of Soviets
and to its Central Executive Committee.

Each of the people's commissars
was the chairman of a commissariat (commission) corresponding to the ministries
of other governments. Lenin was elected head of the Council of People's
Commissars.

The Congress of Soviets then
called upon the new government to immediately end the war and to engage in the
redistribution of land and economic wealth to the masses: this done; the
Congress of Soviets then adjourned. The decisions of the Congress of Soviets on
peace and land evoked widespread support for the new government, and they were
decisive in assuring victory to the Bolsheviks in other cities and in the
provinces.

All banks were nationalized and
all factories placed under the control of local Soviets: in short, the most
extreme tenets of Marxism were implemented with great haste.

The new government then ended the
war with Germany: in terms of the treaty of Brest Litovsk, signed in March 1918,
the Ukraine and other parts of western Russia were ceded to Germany.

Trotsky's Troops Disperse Democratic Government

Above: The Black Hundreds: a
pro-Tsarist militia,  march through the city of Odessa. Violently
anti-Jewish, they were later to form part of the anti-Communist army which
battled the Red Army for supremacy in the aftermath of the October
revolution.

Seemingly safe in their hold on
power, the new government then held the longed for democratic elections. The
results were a rude shock: the Bolsheviks received one of the lowest numbers of
votes. Trotsky refused to accept the outcome: the new parliament was physically
attacked under his orders by troops from the Military Revolutionary Council and
dispersed, never to be heard of again.

From that time on the ideal of a
democratically elected government was simply dropped from the political program
of the Russian Communist Party, and rule by the commissar system continued as if
nothing had happened.

Civil War ERUPTS BETWEEN REDS AND ANTI-COMMUNIST
"WHITES"

Although the Tsarist government
had been universally unpopular, the only democratic election showed that the
Bolsheviks were most certainly not the firm favorites to replace them:
opposition to the Bolsheviks erupted into a civil war that started in 1918,
after the anti-Bolshevik democratically elected parliament was smashed up by
Trotsky.

The Bolsheviks became known as the
Reds - after their flag - and the anti-Bolsheviks gathered together into an
alliance that became known as the Whites. Red and White armies fought several
major battles, the most ferocious in 1920, with isolated battles sputtering on
until 1924.

Above: The devastation of the Russian
civil war upon the Russian and Ukrainian people: a Ukrainian family,
suffering from the emaciating disease typhus, sit by the wreckage of their
house.

Initially the Whites had the
potential to overthrow the Bolshevik dictatorship: however, they destroyed their
chances of getting mass support from the anti-Bolshevik voters by associating
themselves with the Tsar. Faced with a choice between the Bolsheviks or a return
by the Tsar, most Russians stayed neutral, allowing the better armed Reds to
finally wear the Whites down.

The Red Terror

Moving the capital to Moscow, the
Bolsheviks then instituted what became known as the Red Terror - all opponents,
suspected or real - and there were many of them - were arrested and most often
executed in a wave of violence which made even the previous Tsarist system seem
mild.

A secret police and internal
security agency was set up, later to became known as the Cheka, through which
opponents of the state were hunted down. Workers' strikes, peasant uprisings,
and a sailors' revolt known as the Kronstadt Rebellion were quickly crushed.
Victims included the Tsar and his entire family, gunned down and buried
anonymously by Cheka policemen after months in detention.

On 30 December 1922, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally established when the ethnic
territories of the former Russian Empire were united with the Russian Soviet
Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

Chapter
61

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