HIST362 Study Guide

Unit 7: Revolutionary Russia: Marxist Theory and Agrarian Realities

7a. Provide a concise narrative of the Russian revolution of 1905 and 1917

  • Describe Russia's involvement in the Crimean War (1854–56). How did Russia's defeat cause a shift in its European political alliances from 1856–1900?
  • Describe Russia's involvement in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). How did Russia's defeat precipitated the Revolution of 1905? 
  • What were the primary causes of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1917? Describe its political aftermath.
  • Name some additional causes of the Revolution of 1905. How did the conflict and discontent set the stage for the October Revolution in 1917? What was the Duma and why was it ineffective?
  • Describe Russia's involvement in World War I.
  • Define Petrograd soviet, mir, the White Army, the Red Guard, nationalization of industry, command economy, and collectivization.
  • Describe the role of some key figures and groups in the Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicolas I, Alexandra Feodorovna, Grigori Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, Nikolai Bukharin, and Josef Stalin.

Thomas O'Brien details how, in a massive effort to modernize and industrialize their country, the Tsarist regime instituted unpopular policies in the countryside and the urban centers that caused deep resentment among the Russian peasants and workers who had moved to the cities. As in France and Mexico, the lower classes suffered from low pay, food shortages, poor living and working conditions, and were asked to pay more taxes to support expensive military campaigns and the extravagant lifestyle of the wealthy classes. As we saw in Mexico, the Tsarist leaders encouraged foreign investment to achieve rapid industrialization, which would later create anti-foreign sentiment and promoted radical nationalism.

The Russian Revolution occurred in two stages.

During the first stage, liberal movements challenged the monarchy and the Russian tsar following Russia's humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). A major revolutionary fever followed with a series of uncoordinated worker uprisings in major urban centers and peasant uprisings. While Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) created a Duma (Russian legislature) in 1906, O'Brien calls the government an authoritarian constitutional monarchy since it had little control or influence.

The second stage followed Tsar Nicolas II's decision to enter World War I (1914–1917), which led to five million casualties, disease, starvation, and disaster for Russia and its Tsarist regime. In February 2017, Tsar Nicolas II was forced to abdicate due to his inability to lead, but the Duma that replaced him had no experience running a government. Petrograd was torn by strikes by industrial workers, such as a strike at the Putilov Mill, women's demonstrations, food shortages, and general middle class discontent. Local soviets, or workers councils, organized in the cities while groups of peasants claimed the land in the countryside in response to this decentralization.

In November 2017, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), took advantage of the power vacuum and assumed control of Petrograd with the slogan of peace, land for the peasants, and bread. A civil war followed between the communist Red Guard, led by the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Leon Trotsky and the White Army, a disorganized mix of forces who had disparate goals, including those who want to restore the Tsarist regime and support from foreign countries that opposed communism.

By the end of the civil war in 1920, the Bolsheviks had to build a new economic infrastructure of the new Soviet Union. Lenin introduced his New Economic Policy (NEP) which created some stability and instituted limited free market policies, such as land ownership. However, Joseph Stalin eventually won the power struggle that followed Lenin's death in 1924, when Nikolai Bukharin, a supporter of the NEP, was expelled from the Politburo in 1929 and executed in 1938, and Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927 and exiled in 1929.

During the 1930's Stalin nationalized the Soviet economy and reinstituted the authoritarian policies of war communism to create a command economy. He demanded laborers build the heavy industrial base that would create a modern industrialized economy, forced the peasants into mass collective farms which led to millions of deaths during the Great Famine (1932–1933), and provoked a mass migration of millions of peasants to the Russian urban centers (1928–1932). By 1934, Stalin declared the revolution was over.

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7b. Critically evaluate documents produced by the Russian revolutionaries

  • What is the primary message of the Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels?
  • How does Marx describe the role of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat during the changing social and economic context of industrialization?
  • How did the bourgeoisie control the world economy according to Marx?
  • What is the future of different socio-political systems according to Marx?
  • In what ways does Vladimir Lenin's April Theses (1917) depart from the Communist Manifesto?
  • What is Lenin referring to when he talks about the "withering away of the state" and the "dictatorship of the proletariat"?

As with the other revolutions we have studied, the Russian revolutionaries discussed, defended, and revised their ideas through the documents they wrote and shared with their compatriots. 

Their premise for revolution lay in the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In the Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engles argued that class struggle was the basis of human existence and that socialism (and eventually communism) would surpass capitalist society, which would naturally collapse or implode on itself.

Marx and Engels advocated for the creation of a more equitable society with the rise of the proletariat (the laborers or working class) against the bourgeoisie (the wealthy owners of the means of production). This society would support a progressive income tax, abolish inheritances and private property, abolish child labour, support free public education, nationalize transport and communication systems, centralize credit via a national bank, and expand publicly-owned land. Eventually, the state would "wither away" and lead to the creation of a stateless and classless society. 

Lenin, who came to lead the Bolshevik party, wrote The April Theses (1917), an indictment of the Russian provisional government which had taken control after the 1905 revolution. 

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7c. Compare and contrast the Russian and the French revolutions

  • How was pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia in the 1800s similar and different from France in the 1700s?
  • Which social groups in Russia benefited from industrialization during the latter part of the nineteenth century? Which segments were subject to exploitation?
  • How did close ties between the Russian government and the Orthodox Church affect the evolution of Russian politics before 1917?
  • Compare the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the American Bill of Rights in terms of common themes and values.

Both the Russian and French revolutions unseated long-standing monarchies that had governed their respective countries for centuries. The peasant and working classes (the proletariat) rose to demand increased access to the political and economic controls of government. However, while the rising middle class and upper middle class were active participants in the French Revolution, the leaders of the Russian Revolution believed the bourgeoisie was an enemy to their cause.

While the revolutionaries sought to extend natural rights to people who had been denied in the past, the American Bill of Rights aimed to end colonial rule, but did not seek to upend the established social order. Alternatively, the Soviet "The Declaration of the Rights of Toiling and Exploited Peoples", obliterated established social and economic systems such as private property ownership. These three revolutions expose the differences of interpretation over what natural rights included and how they should be protected.

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7d. Explain key arguments of Marxist theory and relate them to the revolutionary events in Russia in 1917

  • How did the bourgeoisie control the world economy according to Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto?
  • Which are the stages of development of the proletariat, according to Marx?
  • How does Marx describe the role of the bourgeoisie and life among the proletariat during the changing social and economic context of industrialization?
  • Define conflict theory.
  • Describe the primary ideas of the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples.

Marx articulated communist theory in terms of a series of historical stages: from feudalism through to the "withering away" of the state. He argued that human society had moved beyond the feudal stage, to a period when the bourgeoisie was exploiting the proletariat, controlling the means of production and paying workers less than their labor was worth. The bourgeoisie would attempt to thwart a worker uprising by pitting different worker groups against each other, using differences in religion, nationality, language, industry, race, and other elements, to prevent the proletariat from seeing their commonality as an oppressed underclass. 

The Bolshevik leaders of the Russian revolution attempted to move beyond this stage and into the next, when the underclass would rise up and seize the means of production, including all private property. In the "Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples", the new Soviet collective did away with private ownership of property and collectivized all industry and farms. Many sociologists categorize Marxist theory as conflict theory, which examines social inequalities in terms of a competition for power and resources. Throughout the long Russian Revolution, Soviet leaders attempted to move human society through the stages of history faster than Marx had predicted. Many argue that Marx would have opposed the authoritarian regime that resulted he had lived to see it.

Review Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (chapters one and two).


Unit 7 Vocabulary

  • Alexandra Feodorovna
  • April Theses
  • Bolsheviks
  • Bourgeoisie
  • Collectivization
  • Command economy
  • Communist Manifesto
  • Conflict theory
  • Crimean War
  • Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples
  • Dictatorship of the proletariat
  • Duma
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Grigori Rasputin
  • Imperial Russia
  • Josef Stalin
  • Karl Marx
  • Leon Trotsky
  • Mensheviks
  • Mir
  • Nationalization of industry
  • Nikolai Bukharin
  • October Revolution
  • Orthodox Church
  • Petrograd soviet
  • Proletariat
  • Red Guard
  • Revolution of 1905
  • Russo-Japanese War
  • Tsar Nicolas I
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • White Army
  • Withering away of the state