Chapter 10 Chapter 2 The World Revolution 2

2 The situation in Tsarist Russia is in a mess. Not only is the time ripe for revolution, but it is also exhausted from fighting in the war, and it is on the verge of defeat at any time.Russia finally fell, becoming the first country in Eastern and Central Europe to collapse under the pressure of World War I.The final explosion will happen sooner or later. Everyone knows it, but they don't know the cause of the explosion. When and under what circumstances the fuse will ignite.In fact, until the few weeks before the outbreak of the February Revolution, even Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland at the time, was not sure whether he could see the success of the revolution in this life.At the last moment, the spark that led to the collapse of the tsarist regime was caused by a demonstration by a group of female workers (the day of the demonstration was the March 8th Women's Day later in the Socialist Movement).Another worker at the Putilov Iron Works, known for his tough stance, was ordered to suspend work by the factory because of a dispute with the management.So they united with the women workers to launch a general strike, and the demonstration team crossed the frozen river and marched towards the center of the capital.It's a pity that they don't have much to ask for, and it's just bread.The tsar's troops hesitated at first, but in the end not only refused the order to suppress the masses, but also maintained a friendly atmosphere with the people. Even the Cossack garrison, which had always been loyal to the tsar, refused to open fire on the people.The fragility of the Tsarist regime was fully exposed at this time.After four days of confusion, the army finally mutinied and the tsar abdicated, temporarily taken over by a liberal "provisional government".The Western countries that had made an alliance with Russia at that time inevitably expressed sympathy for the tsar’s abdication, and even extended a helping hand—because they were worried that the tsarist regime might withdraw from the war and sign a separate peace treaty with Germany when the tsarist regime was desperate.This chaos on the streets, with no one to plan and lead, was purely accidental. In just 4 days, it ended a big empire.The more exciting thing is later: the revolution in Russia happened just as it happened, and the people of Petrograd immediately declared that the overthrow of the Tsar was equal to the arrival of freedom, equality and direct democracy in the world.And Lenin's greatest achievement was to reverse this uncontrollable situation and turn the surging anarchy into the power of the Bolsheviks.

The new Russian regime that replaced the tsarist regime was not a pro-Western liberal constitutional regime, and had no intention of fighting Germany.What existed at that time was actually a revolutionary vacuum: on one side was a "provisional government" with no real power; meaning].These "grassroots" political organizations hold considerable real power, at least veto power—but they don't know anything about how this power is used, how to use it, or how it should be used.Various revolutionary party organizations also emerged one after another——Social Democrats (Social Democrats) have two factions: Bolshevik (Bolshevik, which means "big" in Russian, and free translation is "majority"), advocating the dictatorship of the proletariat——Translator's Note ).Menshevik (Menshevik, Russian means "little", paraphrased as "minority", advocates joining forces with the bourgeoisie to carry out liberalization reforms - Translator's Note), in addition to the Social Revolutionaries (Social Revolutionaries, advocating land nationalization , using assassination as a revolutionary means—Translator’s Note), and countless other small leftist groups, one by one, shaking off their former illegal identities and emerging from the ground—these partisan groups are trying their best to win over the Soviets everywhere in order to expand their own camp.But in the beginning, only Lenin had insight.He pointed out that Soviets everywhere could serve as another means of government (Lenin once famously said: "All power belongs to the Soviets.").But as soon as the tsarist regime fell, there were many revolutionary parties and groups with various names, large and small, and the common people couldn't figure out what these various names really meant;They only understand one thing, that is, from now on, they no longer need to obey the orders of authority—even those revolutionary authorities who think they have better knowledge than themselves.

The poor in the city wanted only one thing, and that was bread.As for the workers among them, they hope that their treatment will be improved and their working hours will be reduced.And 80% of the other Russian people depend on farming for a living, and their request is nothing more than land.In addition, regardless of workers and peasants, everyone unanimously hopes to cease the war as soon as possible.But at the beginning, the peasant-based army did not object to the war. What they objected to was the strict military discipline and the poor treatment given to junior sergeants by superiors.So the groups that put forward the slogans "Bread! Peace! Land!" quickly gained great support from the people.Among them, the most effective one was the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin. From a small group of several thousand members in March 1917, it quickly grew into a large party of 250,000 members in the early summer of the same year.During the Cold War, the West had an illusion about Lenin, thinking that his best technique was organizing surprise attacks.Little did they realize that the only real property of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was their ability to recognize and grasp the needs of the masses, to follow them, and to lead them.For example: Lenin discovered that what the small peasant wanted in his heart was actually the opposite of the socialist plan—not the common ownership of land, but the allocation of land to individual family farms.Once this fact was recognized, Lenin did not hesitate to decide that the task of the Bolsheviks was to realize this kind of economic individualism.

Comparing the two, the provisional government only knew how to promulgate laws blindly, and could not see that it had no ability to restrain the obedience of the people of the country.After the revolution, Russian capitalists and managers tried to restore labor order, but they aroused public outrage and stimulated workers to go more extreme. In June 1917, the Provisional Government insisted on another military attack.The army had had enough, so the soldiers from small farmers deserted one after another, returning home without authorization and sharing the fields with the villagers.Wherever the train returning home goes, the flames of revolution will spread there.Although the time for the collapse of the Provisional Government had not yet come, the pace of radicalization in the army and cities continued to accelerate from the summer onwards, and the situation became more and more favorable to the Bolshevik Party.The Socialist Revolutionary Party with a fierce stance, as the successor of the Narodiks, has won the overwhelming support of the small peasant class (see Chapter 9 of "The Age of Capital"), which has increasingly contributed to the emergence of the extreme left.As a result, the Social Revolutionary Party and the Bolsheviks became closer and closer, and after the October Revolution they were in power together for a short period of time.

As a result, the Bolsheviks—actually a workers’ party by its nature—became the majority of major parties in major cities in Russia, especially in the capital Petrograd and the major city Moscow, and their influence in the military expanded rapidly.Under strong pressure from the Bolsheviks, the existence of the Provisional Government became increasingly dim. In August, a royalist general launched a counter-revolutionary coup, and the government had to turn to the revolutionary forces in the capital to deal with it, so its position was even more precarious.The supporters of the Bolshevik Party became more and more excited and extreme, and the trend of seizing power was inevitable.When the last moment came, rather than seizing power, it would be more appropriate to say that the Bolsheviks picked up existing power. On November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks easily captured the Winter Palace (Winter Palace), which was the October Revolution.Regarding the passage of the day, some people once said that when the great Russian director Eisenstein (Eisenstein) made his business card "October" (October) in the future (October 1927), the number of injured people on the shooting scene was probably more than that of the real October Revolution. more casualties.At that time, the provisional government seemed to disappear without a trace, and there was not even half of the people who stayed behind to resist.

From the beginning of the doomed failure of the Provisional Government to the present day, opinions on the October Revolution have been debated, and most of them are misleading.Anti-communist historians often believe that this event was simply a riot or coup planned by Lenin in order to implement his basic anti-democratic stance.But the crux of the problem is not who directed the downfall of the provisional government; it is who should succeed the provisional government after it steps down.In other words, whoever has the ability to take over the job.As early as September, Lenin kept persuading the skeptics in the party. He said that the opportunity is fleeting, and when power comes to the door, if we don’t grasp it well, we will never have our party. The same degree of urgency is Another

This question, Lenin asked himself, and everyone else: Once in power, "Will the Bolsheviks have the ability to continue to maintain this power?" In fact, whoever wants to rule this volcanic revolutionary Russia, what tricks can they do? Woolen cloth?Except for the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin, no party dared to face up to this important task alone-Lenin pointed out in his propaganda pamphlets that not even everyone in the party had his determination.The situation in Petrograd, Moscow, and the Northern Army was optimistic for the Bolsheviks. Should they take advantage of the moment and immediately seize power at this moment?This is really a big question that is indecisive and difficult to answer.But the Germans were already at the gates, approaching the northern border of today's Estonia, only a few miles from the Russian capital.And that provisional government, in a desperate situation, would definitely not hand over power to the Soviets, but would most likely surrender to the German army.Lenin always prepared for the worst in his actions. He believed that if the Bolsheviks did not seize this opportunity, "the voice of real anarchism may be stronger than the momentum of our own party." Lenin made a detailed analysis and finally proposed a big Reason, his comrades must not be dissatisfied: as a revolutionary party, if we ignore the voice of the masses and the opportunity to seize power, then how are we different from non-revolutionaries?

Therefore, the seizure of power itself cannot be debated, and the problem lies in the long-term outlook.Even if the power of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and Moscow could extend to the entire territory of Russia, and they were able to stabilize the regime everywhere, and then fight against anarchy and counter-revolutionary forces, what about the long-term approach?Lenin himself was determined to "transform the Russian Republic into a socialist country" as the first task of the new Soviet government (the so-called Soviet mainly refers to the Bolsheviks).His plan is actually a bet, hoping to use the Russian Revolution to cause revolutions all over the world, at least in Europe.He often said: "Unless the Russian and European bourgeoisie are completely destroyed... how can the victory of socialism come?" go down.Therefore, the new government appealed to the workers to maintain normal production; at the same time, in addition to declaring that its policy goal was to nationalize the banks, and to let the "workers be the masters of the house" and accept the original management class, the new regime had great influence on society. Doctrine does not have much practical action.In fact, since the revolution, all of the above have been implemented, and now it is just stamped and formalized with official approval.Beyond that, the new government has little to say to the people.

And the new regime did hang on, surviving the punishment of the Brest-Lidovsk Peace Treaty with Germany, which itself was defeated a few months later.The Bu-Li Treaty separated Poland, the three Baltic countries, Ukraine (Ukraine), the vast areas of southern and western Russia, and the Transcaucasus region from Russia (in fact, Transcaucasia was no longer under Russian rule at that time. But later Ukraine and Transcaucasus are again Russian territories).Since the Bolsheviks are the center of the world's rebellion, the countries of the Western Entente will naturally not be too polite to it.With the financial support of the Allies, various counter-revolutionary troops (the "White Army") and regimes emerged in Russia.Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Poland, Serbia, Greece, and Romania all marched to Russian land one after another. From 1918 to 1920, the Russian Civil War was extremely bloody and brutal.The war was at its worst, and Soviet Russia was blocked from all its ports except for a small corner of Leningrad that jutted into the Gulf of Finland.Only the central and western part of Russia between the Ural Mountains and the present-day Baltic countries remained, forming a vast closed inland area.The new regime is empty, and the Red Army has been formed in a hurry. What really helped the Communist government the most is actually the problem of "White Russia" itself.The White Russian army is not only clumsy and incompetent, but also internally discordant, and the hostility between the Russian small peasant masses is also deepening.Western powers also have doubts about the reliability of the White Army's loyalty. How to mobilize those soldiers with a strong sense of rebellion to effectively attack the new regime is really worrying.By the end of 1920, the Bolsheviks finally won the final victory in the civil war.

So, to everyone's surprise, Soviet Russia survived a hundred disasters and has since survived.Not only did the Bolshevik party maintain power, its lifespan was even longer than the Paris Commune in 1871 (the Paris Commune was short-lived and only lasted for more than two months. Two months and fifteen days after its own party took power, Lenin pointed out with pride and relief that his regime had outlived the Paris Commune).In fact, the lifespan of the new regime is not limited to this.It has since survived years of crisis and disaster, the German occupation, secessions across the country, counter-revolutionary activities, civil wars, foreign armed intervention, and the Great Famine and economic collapse.Day after day, it has no other way to go, and it only faces two choices of life and death at any time: one is to solve the imminent survival problem;There are many things that need to be decided immediately. Who has the time to consider the long-term consequences and how these decisions will affect the revolution?If you are indecisive right now, I am afraid that even the revolution will be lost, so why worry about the long-term consequences?Soldiers come to block, water comes to cover, and the new revolutionary regime has no choice but to take one step at a time and solve one thing at a time.When the new Soviet Republic stood up again from the ashes of troubles and pains, it found itself farther and farther away from Lenin's ideas in the Finnish Station era.

In any case, this earth-shattering revolution survived after all.There are three reasons why the revolution survived: First, the Communist Party, with more than 600,000 members, has centralized power and strict organization, providing the revolution with an extremely special and powerful tool for nation-building.Regardless of the role of the Communist Party in the revolution, since 1902, Lenin spared no effort to develop and maintain this organizational model, which finally has its own characteristics and status.In the few decades covered by the short 20th century, almost all the revolutionary regimes in the world, big or small, had a little shadow of the Soviet Union.Second, the Communist Party is the only regime that has the will and the power to consolidate Russia as a state.It is precisely because the Communist Party has this strength that those patriotic officers who are politically hostile to it are willing to join the Red Army and serve for it. Otherwise, there would be no Red Army to speak of.For these patriotic Russian military officers, the choice at the time was not that you wanted a free and democratic Russia, but not a socialist Russia. Their focus was on maintaining a complete Russia so that it would not fall into other defeated empires and fall apart. fate.The lessons learned from the past are not far away. There are examples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Historians look back on the past and agree with their ideas.Because of the emergence of the Bolshevik Revolution, the territory of Tsarist Russia did not follow in the footsteps of the previous two empires, and finally maintained the territorial integrity of this multi-ethnic country for 74 years.Third, the revolution gave farmers land.Peasants are the core of agricultural Russia, and they are also the main force of the newly established army. At a critical moment, Russian peasants believe that if the land gentry is allowed to come back to power, the hard-won land may be lost. It is better to stay in the Red Army It is safer to rule. In the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920, the Bolsheviks gained a decisive advantage thanks to the help of peasants.Later facts proved that Russian farmers were a little too optimistic at the beginning.