reflection

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The Second Russian Revolution of 1917 Lenin & the Bolsheviks

In April 1917, the American President Woodrow Wilson praised the first Russian Revolution of that year – he did not know that there would be a second Russian Revolution later in 1917. Wilson praised the first Russian Revolution of 1917 because it led to a provisional government which instituted reforms in Russian politics. Wilson thought this first Russian Revolution in early 1917 signaled the spread of democratic ideas. Remember, Wilson’s goal in entering the United States into World War I (1914-18) was to lead a democratic transformation of world politics – “to make the world safe for democracy.” Vladimir Lenin was a Russian revolutionary socialist. He rejected Wilson’s idea of spreading democracy. And he rejected the first Russian Revolution of 1917. Remember, Lenin’s goal in withdrawing Russia from World War I was to lead a socialist transformation of world politics – “the victory of socialism” Lenin called his trained revolutionaries Bolsheviks. As we saw in the last lecture, Lenin and the Bolsheviks used slogans about democracy. They said “it is through us” that the people speak; “it is through us” that society will achieve “democracy for the poor, democracy for the people.” Yet as we also saw in the last lecture, Lenin’s revolutionary socialists did not want

• free speech and a free press

• political parties, campaigns, and elections

• due process Lenin’s revolutionary socialists did not view individuals as possessing individual rights like free speech, peaceful assembly, and due process. They thought the idea of individuals possessing individual rights was outdated. They thus called it a “bourgeois” or “capitalist” way of thinking. They viewed the idea of

• an individual having an individual right to free speech as a “capitalist” idea

• a free press as a “capitalist” press

• due process as “capitalist” legal thinking

• political parties and elections as “capitalist” democracy The Bolsheviks viewed these ideas of a democracy with individual rights as requiring too much discussion and compromise, and preventing the immediate achievement of social justice. Revolutionary socialists like Lenin insisted that individuals should be viewed not as individuals with individual rights, but as members of groups. And there were only two groups in society – oppressor and oppressed. There is no way, Lenin argued, for these two groups peacefully to co- exist in society. One was going to oppress the other. Lenin and the Bolsheviks claimed to speak

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for the oppressed “people.” They sought to seize power and crush the “capitalist” and bourgeois” oppressors. They planned to seize power in a second Russian Revolution of 1917. What was required for this second Russian Revolution, Lenin believed, was the energy and passion to create a more just society now, to pursue social justice without compromise or hesitation. The Bolsheviks promised “liberation” from oppression and the creation of a new socialist society. Liberation for the Bolsheviks meant

• increasing the power of the State

• outlawing political parties

• ending “capitalist” rights like freedom of speech, press, assembly, and due process

• outlawing freedom of religion since revolutionary socialism is an atheist ideology. Through the summer 1917, the Bolsheviks planned for a second Russian Revolution. They planned to overthrow Russia’s provisional government – the one Wilson praised – and establish a socialist State in its place.

• In planning for this second revolution, the Bolsheviks had to compete with other socialist revolutionary parties in Russia. Two other revolutionary parties were the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.

• The Bolsheviks thus not only sought a second Russian Revolution in 1917, but they also wanted to make sure that their party was the one that seized power, not other socialist parties.

After a failed attempt in July, the Bolsheviks seized power in the fall 1917 – the famous October Revolution (by the Russian calendar). At first, some members of other socialist parties wanted to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. But shortly after seizing power, the Bolsheviks

• outlawed all other political parties and arrested their leaders

• shut down the free press and banned free speech

• described these “capitalist” rights as obstacles to creating the new socialist society In fact, Lenin and the Bolsheviks created policies which were similar to the Jacobins’ policies during the French Revolution back in the 1790s. Lenin had studied the Jacobins. He liked how they had used violence and terror to promote their vision of progress.

• For the Jacobins, progress meant creating a society with a General Will.

• For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, progress meant building a socialist society.

• Both groups viewed themselves as pursuing social justice. The Jacobins’ General Will and the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary Socialism shared this in common: Both thought social justice requires people to commit themselves to a larger collective purpose – to put a new vision of society ahead of their own individual rights. Let’s think this through. The Jacobins and the Bolsheviks believed the following:

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• Individuals could not find fulfilment and meaning by focusing on their private lives. They could not find fulfilment and meaning by

o exercising individual rights

o pursuing their own self-interest or personal improvement

o developing relationships in family, business, or religion.

• Rather, people could only find fulfillment and meaning by being “liberated” from focusing on their personal lives. “Liberation” meant surrendering individual rights and fully committing oneself – one’s talents, skills, and resources – to building a new kind of society.

• Remember, this fully committing oneself to a new society is what the Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau meant by “freedom.” He said people being “forced to obey” the General Will meant they were being “forced to be free.”

• Lenin and the Bolsheviks further developed this kind of thinking about “liberating” people from focusing on their personal lives and instead serving a larger project of social justice.

With these ideas in mind, let’s now consider what the Bolsheviks did after they seized power in the second Russian Revolution of 1917. Let’s look at the Bolsheviks’ policies to bring liberation to the Russian people.

Bolshevik Political Policy Bolshevik political policies included

1. creating secret police 2. building concentration camps 3. holding show trials

4. creating the U.S.S.R. – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Secret Police – the Bolsheviks developed a secret police force called the CHEKA to spy on the Russian people. The word CHEKA was short for The All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.

• The purpose of the CHEKA was to criminalize political opposition to the Bolsheviks. Think about this.

o In a real democratic system, multiple political parties compete. The party which wins an election possess political power until the next election.

o But members of the losing party maintain their individual rights of free speech, free press, freedom of assembly, etc. Members of the losing party do not become criminals simply because they oppose the party in power.

o In contrast, the Bolsheviks criminalized their political opponents. This is what they meant by “democracy for the poor, democracy for the people.” The Bolsheviks characterized anyone who opposed them as criminals.

• The point of the CHEKA was to find individuals who opposed the Bolshevik vision of social justice.

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• Once these individuals were found, they were labeled “counter-revolutionaries” and arrested – just like the Jacobins had labelled their political opponents “counter- revolutionaries” during the French Revolution.

• The crime of “counter-revolutionaries” was opposing or even questioning the Bolsheviks’ plans for building the better future of socialism.

Concentration Camps – the Bolsheviks created a system of concentration camps. This is where they sent counter-revolutionaries found by the CHEKA. They built an elaborate system of concentration camps known as the Gulag.

• Note: the Bolsheviks built their concentration camps before Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party later developed concentration camps in the 1930s and ’40s, mostly during World War II.

• The Bolsheviks’ system of camps was fully exposed to the world in the 1970s with the publication and translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago.

Show Trials – the Bolsheviks developed “show trials” to put counter-revolutionaries on trial. These “show trials” were not real trials with due process for the accused. Remember, due process was one of those “capitalist” rights the Bolsheviks rejected.

• In a real trial, the accused is presumed innocent. The prosecutor – the government – has to persuade a jury with evidence that the accused is guilty.

• A “show trial” is the opposite. The accused is assumed to be guilty at the start. The trial’s purpose is not to prove with evidence that the accused is guilty. Rather, the purpose of a show trial is to “show” the rest of the population what happens if you oppose or even question the Bolsheviks promise of building a socialist society.

• Show trials were a means of terror, striking fear in the hearts of the Russian people. These trials “showed” you what would happen if you criticized the Bolsheviks version of social justice.

In addition, the Bolsheviks also began to create the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – U.S.S.R. This was a “union” (or empire) of socialist countries led by Russia. Though not created all at once, this Union would eventually include 15 socialist countries throughout Eurasia. The U.S.S.R lasted from 1922 to 1991, when it collapsed because the Soviet socialist economy had failed.

Bolshevik Cultural Policy Revolutionary socialism promotes atheism because people are supposed to seek redemption in building the socialist society, not in religion. “Every religious idea, every idea of God,” Lenin declared, “is unutterable vileness.” Yet the vast majority of the Russian people had been Christian for centuries – members of the Russian Orthodox Church. As revolutionary socialist, the Bolsheviks thought progress required “liberation” from many inherited traditions. They thought it was necessary to get rid of traditions from the past in order

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to build the better future. The idea was that traditions which were inherited from the past and which people continued to practice stood in the way of creating a more just society. We’ve already seen this idea of “liberation” from the past in how the Bolsheviks criticized real democracy with free speech, elections, due process, etc. The Bolsheviks rejected this form of democracy as old and outdated, and sought to replace it with their newer version of “democracy for the people.” The Bolsheviks also sought “liberation” from other inherited traditions such as religious traditions. The Bolsheviks began a campaign to crush Christian belief in Russia, including destroying churches and confiscating church property. Again, the Bolsheviks thought it was necessary to get rid of inherited religious beliefs in order to build a better, more just society.

Bolshevik Economic Policy Revolutionary socialism includes the “public” ownership of the economy. In practice, this means government ownership of the economy. This was an essential part of 20th century socialism – to abolish private property laws and turn private property into government property. After seizing power in late 1917, the Bolshevik government began taking over private companies. They said this would “liberate” workers from capitalism and create a classless society. In practice, though, the “classless society” meant government elites ruling over a mass population whose members have been stripped of their individual rights. The Bolsheviks began putting these ideas into practice by doing the following:

• nationalize energy companies – government takes over and owns energy companies such as coal, oil, and electricity companies

• nationalize transportation companies – government takes over and owns railroad companies

• national durable goods companies – government takes over and owns steel, iron, rubber companies, etc.

• nationalize banks – government takes over and owns banks

• nationalize land:

o Originally, the Bolsheviks encouraged Russian peasants to seize land from the Russian aristocracy. As the peasants seized the land, many of them hoped to own the land as private property.

o But after several years, the Bolsheviks began to seize the land from the peasants. They transformed the peasants’ private property into “public” property in the name of creating a classless society.

o In reality the idea of this classless society meant government elites ruling over a mass population stripped of individual rights. The peasants still worked the land and had to

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produce agricultural products, but the land and the products were owned by the Bolshevik government.

o Some peasants opposed the Bolsheviks policy of nationalizing the land. Peasants in Ukraine, which became part of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, resisted the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, now lead by Joseph Stalin, punished these peasants by closing the Ukrainian border to prevent food from entering the country. They also disrupted the distribution of food already in the country. The result is called the Holodomor Genocide or the Terror Famine. About 6 million Ukrainians starved to death in the winter of 1932-33. This was an intentional famine imposed by Stalin and the Bolsheviks as punishment for resisting Bolshevik policy. Some who survived did so by resorting to cannibalism, eating the victims of starvation.

o New York Times reporter Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Price for denying the Terror Famine was happening as it was happening. Read that again. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize not for exposing the Terror Famine, but for denying it. Many Western intellectuals like Duranty believed the Bolsheviks’ rhetoric about building a classless society and thus refused to acknowledge Bolshevik atrocities and terror.

From its early years, revolutionary socialism in the Soviet Union produced these kinds of results – secret police, concentration camps, show trials, genocide, and cannibalism. A terrifying record from those who promised to build a more just society. Let’s summarize: Lenin claimed that “progress marches onward” under revolutionary socialism. The Bolsheviks viewed their revolution and their policies as progress, the building of a better society based on social justice – “democracy for the poor, democracy for the people.” Lenin and the Bolsheviks also viewed the second Russian Revolution of 1917 as just a first step in the socialist transformation of world politics. They wanted the socialist revolution to spread beyond Russia to many other nations. Their revolution in Russia was supposed to be a spark which ignited similar revolutions in other counties. In fact, the Bolsheviks actively sought to promote the spread of radical revolution to other countries like Finland, Poland, Italy, France, and Germany in Europe, as well as China in Asia.