Russia went reluctantly to war in 1914. Her army was in no condition to face imperial Germany and early enthusiasm for the war waned with a shattering defeat by the Germans at Tannenberg within a month of hostilities commencing. But only the Bolsheviks vehemently opposed the war, the five Bolshevik deputies in the Duma (Parliament) being banished to Siberia. Their leader, Vladimir Ilyrich Lenin (1870–1924), nevertheless saw the defeat of imperial Russia as the surest way of furthering revolutionary goals.

 

Impact of the February Revolution

The longer hostilities lasted, the more incompetent the imperial administration appeared. It was astonished by the revolution in March 1917 (dated as February by the old-style calendar), but then so were its opponents. Power was transferred, by hungry peasants, disenchanted aristocracy and mutinous troops, from Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) (Figure 2) to a provisional government that was intended to be a temporary, caretaker administration until a Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution and appointed a legal government. The first provisional government (there were four in all) fell because of its failure to end the war.

 

Peace and the redistribution of land were closely connected. If Russia left the war, the soldiers (who were mostly peasants in uniform) would descend on the countryside and demand more land; if the peasants were granted land while war continued, the soldiers would desert to seize their portion. The government had also to contend with the emergence of genuinely democratic institutions, the soviets (councils). The most famous of these were in Petrograd and in Moscow, but they sprang up spontaneously everywhere after the revolution. Despite support from the moderate socialists – the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) – the provisional governments were violently opposed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. During July, armed workers and soldiers tried to seize power in Petrograd (Figure 3). Denounced for accepting German money, Lenin was forced to flee to Finland when the demonstrations were unsuccessful. On 22 July, Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970) became premier and tried to restore order in the capital (Figure 4). But Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), a leading figure in the Petrograd soviet, organized armed insurrection under the cover of soviet legitimacy. Lenin slipped back into Russia and on 7 October (25 November, old style) he and his Bolsheviks (Figure 5) swept away Kerensky.

 

Alexander Kerensky played a major role in shaping policies of the provincial governments in 1917. He was a minister in the first two provisional governments, prime minister from July onwards, and after he had suppressed an army revolt in September he also took over as commander-in-chief. His failure to solve the twin problems of land and peace pave the way for Lenin's victory in October.

Demonstrations during the "April Days", 1917, against the war led to the fall of the first provisional government and the resignation of Foreign Minister Milyukov (1859-1943). But Russia's war effort continued, and in the soviets support for the Bolsheviks grew at the expense of the moderates. Calling for peace and a complete transfer of power to the soviets, further demonstrations in June showed the growing influence of the Bolsheviks and the declining support for the provisional government.

 

The October Revolution and after

Some workers hoped that the new Russia would be ruled by the soviets but events soon dictated otherwise. Given their narrow political base (there were fewer than 300,000 Bolsheviks in November 1917), Lenin and his supporters faced widespread opposition on every front. There were those who advocated a revolutionary war to advance socialism in the rest of Europe; there were Bolsheviks who wanted money abolished and a socialist economy overnight; there were the peasants who wanted to be left alone with the land now redistributed; and there were the dispossessed of the former regime.

 

"Comrade Lenin sweeps the world of its rubbish" in this early Soviet cartoon. Peace and land were the two major demands Lenin promised to meet and immediately and seizing power the Bolsheviks put into effect the land policy they had adopted from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Land was later nationalized, but in 1917 most peasants still regarded it as their own. During the civil war grain was forcibly requisitioned to feed the Red Army and the cities. The peasants planted less and there was famine and disease. Finally Lenin capitulated and introduced the New Economic Policy in 1921.

 

The treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 ended the war with Germany; in the summer of the same year civil war broke out between the "Reds" (the Bolsheviks) and the "Whites" (anti-communists). In the autumn, the Allies intervened in an attempt to reestablish the eastern front (Figure 6), and soon began assisting the Whites. Hostilities lasted until the end of 1920 and revealed two victors, the Red Army and the Communist Party. During this time the Bolsheviks murdered the imprisoned tsar and his family. The Reds had the advantage of a claim that they were defending Russia from invasion. The desperate measures needed to secure military victory alienated many workers and peasants. Although desertions from the Red Army were frequent, Trotsky was successful in forging Soviet military might, but democracy fell victim to the needs of the hour. Lenin fashioned a new force to rule the country, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Aided by the feared Cheka (a secret police force), the Party and the military were willing to obey Lenin and his colleagues, while the soviets would not.

 

The bloodshed and exhaustion of seven years of war left Soviet Russia racked by revolt. Lenin gave way to the peasants and in 1921 introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) which temporarily relaxed socialism in favor of some private ownership. The "commanding heights of the economy" stayed in state hands but agriculture, employing 80 percent of the population, was on a market basis. The economy thus gradually recovered under the NEP.

 

The emergence of the new Russia

Soviet Russia had to be satisfied with less territory than the old empire held. The borderlands – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, part of the Ukraine and Bessarabia – were lost. But in the three independent Transcaucasian republics, following the British evacuation of Transcaucasia in December 1919, the way was clear for the Bolsheviks to take over. By April 1921 Transcaucasia was back in the fold thanks to the activities of the Red Army.

 

There remained the problem of succession. Lenin expected Trotsky to succeed him but ultimately Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) proved the more ruthless politician.