CH.

2 Socialism and the Russian Revolution (Notes)

1.1 Liberals, Radicals and Conservatives
Liberals:
I. Wanted a nation that tolerated all religions.
II. Were opposed to uncontrolled power of dynastic rulers.
III. Wanted to safeguard rights of individuals.
IV. Wanted representative elected parliamentary government.
V. Did not believe in Adult Franchise.

Radicals-

i. Wanted a government based on majority.

ii. Were opposed to privileges of land owners and wealthy factory owners.
iii. Disliked concentration of power in few hands.
iv. Supported women’s suffragette movements.
Conservatives-
I. Conservatives were opposed to radicals and liberals. After the French revolution
however, conservatives had opened their minds to the need for change, Earlier, in
the eighteenth century.
II. Conservatives had been generally opposed to the idea of change by the nineteenth
century.
III. They accepted that some change was inevitable but believed that the past had to
be respected and change had to be brought about through a slow process.

Meaning of ‘Suffragette Movement’.

A movement to give women the right to vote.

1.2 Industrial Society and Social Change
social and economic changes due to industrialisation-
➢ new cities came up and new industrialised regions developed,
➢ railways expanded and the Industrial Revolution occurred.
➢ Industrialisation brought men, women and children to factories.
➢ Work hours were often long and wages were poor.
➢ Unemployment was common, particularly during times of low demand for industrial
goods.
➢ Housing and sanitation problems since towns were growing rapidly.
Political Changes-
➢ Some nationalists, liberals and radicals wanted revolutions to put an
end to the kind of governments established in Europe in 1815.
➢ In France, Italy, Germany and Russia, they became revolutionaries and
worked to overthrow existing monarchs.
➢ Nationalists talked of revolutions that would create ‘nations’ where all citizens would
have equal rights.
➢ After 1815, Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian nationalist, conspired with others to achieve
this in Italy.

1
1.3 The Coming of Socialism to Europe
Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills
of the time. Why?
➢ Individuals owned the property that gave employment
but the propertied were concerned only with personal gain and not with
the welfare of those who made the property productive.
➢ So, if society as a whole rather than single individuals-controlled property, more
attention would be paid to collective social interests.
➢ Socialists wanted this change and campaigned for it.

How could a society without property operate? What would be the basis of socialist society?
Socialists had different visions of the future. Some believed in the idea of cooperatives.
➢ Robert Owen (1771-1858), a leading English manufacturer, sought to build a
cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana (USA).
➢ Other socialists felt that cooperatives could not be built on a wide scale only through
individual initiative: they demanded that governments encourage cooperatives.
➢ In France, Louis Blanc (1813-1882) wanted the government to encourage cooperatives
and replace capitalist enterprises. These cooperatives were to be associations of people
who produced goods together and divided the profits according to the work done by
members.
➢ Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
❖ Marx argued that industrial society was ‘capitalist’.
❖ Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists
was produced by workers.
❖ The conditions of workers could not improve as long as this profit was
accumulated by private capitalists.
❖ Workers had to overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property.
❖ Marx believed that to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had
to construct a radically socialist society where all property was socially
controlled.
❖ This would be a communist society.
1.4 Support for Socialism
❖ By the 1870s, socialists formed an international body – namely, the
Second International.
❖ Workers in England and Germany began forming associations to fight for better
living and working conditions.
Demands of workers-
• a reduction of working hours and the right to vote.
❖ In Germany, these associations worked closely with the Social Democratic Party
(SPD) and helped it win parliamentary seats.
❖ In Britain- By 1905, socialists and trade unionists formed a Labour Party.
❖ In France- a Socialist Party was formed.

Russian Revolution
. The fall of monarchy in February 1917 and the events of October are normally called the
Russian Revolution.
What were the Political, social and economic conditions in Russia when the revolution
occurred? 2
Political condition-
❖ In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia and its empire.
❖ Besides the territory around Moscow, the Russian empire included current-day
Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, parts of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.
❖ It stretched to the Pacific and comprised today’s Central Asian states, as well as Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan.
❖ The majority religion was Russian Orthodox Christianity – which had grown out of the
Greek Orthodox Church – but the empire also included Catholics, Protestants, Muslims
and Buddhists.
Social condition-
❖ About 85 per cent of the Russian empire’s population earned their living from
agriculture. This proportion was higher than in most European countries.
❖ peasants cultivated most of the land. But the nobility, the crown and the Orthodox
Church owned large properties.
❖ Nobles got their power and position through their services to the Tsar,
❖ For instance, in France and Germany the proportion was between 40 per cent and
50 per cent. In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as well as for their
own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.
❖ Workers were a divided social group. Workers were divided by skill.
❖ Women made up 31 per cent of the factory labour force by 1914, but they were
paid less than
Economic condition-
❖ About 85 per cent of the Russian empire’s population earned their living from
agriculture. Russia was a major exporter of grain.
❖ Industry was found in pockets. Prominent industrial areas were St Petersburg
and Moscow.
❖ Craftsmen undertook much of the production, but large factories existed
alongside craft workshops. Many factories were set up in the 1890s, when
Russia’s railway network was extended, and foreign investment in industry
increased. Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled.
❖ Most industry was the private property of industrialists.
❖ Government supervised large factories to ensure minimum wages and limited
hours of work.
2.3 Socialism in Russia
❖ All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914.
❖ The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists
because of government policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation.
❖ Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing land
periodically made them natural socialists. So, peasants, not workers, would be
the main force of the revolution, and Russia could become socialist more quickly
than other countries.
❖ The Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed in 1900. This party struggled
for peasants’ rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be transferred
to peasants.
❖ Vladimir Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive society
like Tsarist Russia the party should be disciplined and should control the number
and quality of its members.
❖ Others (Mensheviks) thought that the party should be open to all (as in
Germany). 3
 A Turbulent Time: The 1905 Revolution
Cause-
❖ Russia was an autocracy. Unlike the Tsar was not subject to parliament. Liberals
in Russia campaigned to end this state of affairs.
❖ Together with the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries, they worked
with peasants and workers during the revolution of 1905 to demand a
constitution.
❖ They were supported in the empire by nationalists (in Poland for instance) and
in Muslim-dominated areas by jadidists who wanted modernised Islam to lead
their societies.
❖ Prices of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 percent.
The membership of workers’ associations rose dramatically.
❖ When four members of the Assembly of Russian Workers, which had been
formed in 1904, were dismissed at the Putilov Iron Works, there was a call for
industrial action.
❖ workers in St Petersburg went on strike demanding a reduction in the working
day to eight hours, an increase in wages and improvement in working conditions.
Main Event- Bloody Sunday
❖ When the procession of workers led by Father Gapon reached the Winter
Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks.
❖ Over100 workers were killed and about 300 wounded.
❖ The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that became
known as the 1905 Revolution.
❖ Strikes took place all over the country and universities closed down when
student bodies staged walkouts, complaining about the lack of civil liberties.
Lawyers, doctors, engineers and other middle-class workers established the
Union of Unions and demanded a constituent assembly.
Impact of the 1905 Revolution-
❖ The Tsar allowed the creation of an elected consultative Parliament or Duma.
For a brief while during the revolution, there existed a large number of trade
unions and factory committees made up of factory workers.
❖ After 1905, most committees and unions worked unofficially, since they were
declared illegal. Severe restrictions were placed on political activity.
❖ The Tsar dismissed the first Duma within 75 days and the re-elected second
Duma within three months.
2.4 The First World War and the Russian Empire
In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances – Germany, Austria and
Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and
❖ Russia (later Italy and Romania). Each country had a global empire
❖ Duma with conservative politicians. Liberals and revolutionaries were kept out.
and the war was fought outside Europe as well as in Europe. This was the First
World War.
The February Revolution in Petrograd
Causes-
❖ In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in the workers’ quarters.
❖ The winter was very cold – there had been exceptional frost and heavy snow.
Parliamentarians wishing to preserve elected government, were opposed to the Tsar’s
desire to dissolve the Duma.
Events leading to the Revolution-
❖ On 22 February, a lockout took place at a factory on the right bank.
❖ 23 February workers in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy.
❖ In many factories, women led the way to strikes. This came to be called the International
Women’s Day.
❖ 24 February As the fashionable quarters and official buildings were surrounded by
workers, the government imposed a curfew. Demonstrators dispersed by the evening,
but they came back on the 24th and 25th. The government called out the cavalry and
police to keep an eye on them.
❖ On Sunday, 25 February, the government suspended the Duma. Politicians spoke out
against the measure.
❖ On 26 February Demonstrators returned in force to the streets of the left bank.
❖ On the 27th, the Police Headquarters were ransacked. The streets thronged with people
raising slogans about bread, wages, better hours and democracy.
❖ The cavalry refused to fire on the demonstrators. An officer was shot at the barracks of
a regiment and three other regiments mutinied, voting to join the striking workers.
❖ By that evening, soldiers and striking workers had gathered to form a ‘soviet’ or ‘council’
in the same building as the Duma met. This was the Petrograd Soviet.
❖ The very next day, a delegation went to see the Tsar. Military commanders advised him
to abdicate. He followed their advice and abdicated on 2 March.
❖ Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a Provisional Government to run the country.
Russia’s future would be decided by a constituent assembly, elected on the basis of
universal adult suffrage.
❖ Petrograd had led the February Revolution that brought down the monarchy in
February 1917.
Impact of the February Revolution-
❖ Restrictions on public meetings and associations were removed.
❖ ‘Soviets’, like the Petrograd Soviet, were set up everywhere, though no common system
of election was followed.
❖ In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile.
❖ The summer the workers’ movement spread.
❖ In industrial areas, factory committees were formed which began questioning the way
industrialists ran their factories.
❖ Trade unions grew in number.
❖ Soldiers’ committees were formed in the army.
❖ As the Provisional Government saw its power reduce and Bolshevik influence grow, it
decided to take stern measures against the spreading discontent.
❖ Encouraged by the Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants seized land between July and
September 1917.
 What was April Theses?
Lenin declared that the war be brought to a close, land be transferred to the peasants,
and banks be nationalised. These three demands were Lenin’s ‘April Theses’

The Revolution of October 1917

Causes-
As the conflict between the Provisional Government and the
Bolsheviks grew, Lenin feared the Provisional Government would
set up a dictatorship.

Events leading to the revolution-

❖ In September, he began discussions for an uprising against the government. Bolshevik
supporters in the army, soviets and factories were brought together.
❖ On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolshevik Party to
agree to a socialist seizure of power. A Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed
by the Soviet under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure. The date of the event was kept
a secret.
❖ On 24 October- Prime Minister Kerenskii had left the city to summon troops. At dawn,
military men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik newspapers.
❖ Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone and telegraph offices and
protect the Winter Palace.
❖ In a swift response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its supporters to
seize government offices and arrest ministers.
❖ Late in the day, the ship Aurora shelled the Winter Palace. Other vessels sailed down
the Neva and took over various military points.
❖ By nightfall, the city was under the committee’s control and the ministers had
surrendered.
❖ At a meeting of the All -Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved
the Bolshevik action.
❖ Uprisings took place in other cities.
❖ There was heavy fighting – especially in Moscow – but by December, the Bolsheviks
controlled the Moscow-Petrograd area.

What Changed after October?

Impact of the October Revolution-
❖ Opposed to private property.
❖ Most industry and banks were nationalised
❖ Land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the
nobility.
❖ In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of large houses according to family
requirements.
❖ They banned the use of the old titles of aristocracy.
❖ new uniforms were designed for the army and officials,
❖ The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).
❖ Russia became a one-party state.
❖ Trade unions were kept under party control.
 Making a Socialist Society
❖ The Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised.
❖ They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialised.
❖ A process of centralised planning was introduced.
❖ The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’
❖ Centralised planning led to economic growth.
❖ Industrial production increased
❖ New factory cities came into being.
❖ rapid construction led to poor working conditions.
❖ An extended schooling system developed, and arrangements were made for factory
workers and peasants to enter universities.
❖ Crèches were established in factories for the children of women workers.
❖ Cheap public health care was provided.
❖ Model living quarters were set up for workers.
Stalinism and Collectivisation
❖ By 1927-1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute problem of grain supplies.
The government fixed prices at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to
sell their grain to government buyers at these prices.
❖ Stalin, introduced firm emergency measures. He believed that rich peasants and traders
in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices. Speculation had to
be stopped and supplies confiscated.
❖ In 1928, Party members toured the grain-producing areas, supervising enforced grain
collections, and raiding ‘kulaks’ – the name for well to- do peasants.
❖ As shortages continued, the decision was taken to collectivise farms. It was argued that
grain shortages were partly due to the small size of holdings.
❖ After 1917, land had been given over to peasants.
❖ To develop modern farms, and run them along industrial lines with machinery, it was
necessary to ‘eliminate kulaks’, take away land from peasants, and establish state-
controlled large farms.
What followed was Stalin’s collectivisation programme?
❖ From 1929, the Party forced all peasants to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz).
❖ The bulk of land and implements were transferred to the ownership of collective farms.
Peasants worked on the land, and the kolkhoz profit was shared.
❖ Enraged peasants resisted the authorities and destroyed their livestock.
❖ Those who resisted collectivisation were severely punished.
❖ Many were deported and exiled.
❖ Stalin’s government allowed some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators
unsympathetically.
❖ In spite of collectivisation, production did not increase immediately.

The Global Influence of the Russian Revolution and the

USSR
❖ In many countries, communist parties were formed – like the Communist Party of Great
Britain.
❖ The Bolsheviks encouraged colonial peoples to follow their experiment.
❖ Many non-Russians from outside the USSR participated in the Conference of the Peoples
of the East (1920) and the Bolshevik-founded Comintern (an international union of pro-
Bolshevik socialist parties).
❖ Some received education in the USSR’s Communist University of the Workers of the
East.
❖ By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had given socialism a
global face
❖ By the end of the twentieth century, the international reputation of the USSR as a
socialist country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals still enjoyed
respect among its people.
❖ But in each country the ideas of socialism were rethought in a variety of different ways.