Russia's Struggle With Modernity 1815-1929 by Nick Shepley

Author:Nick Shepley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Russia, Tsars, Bolsheviks, Revolution, War, Lenin, Stalin
ISBN: 9781783330850
Publisher: Andrews UK limited 2013
Published: 2013-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

The lessons of the Civil War.

The Provisional Government that took over from the collapsed Czarist regime never really stood much of a chance of survival. It lacked any kind of mandate for power and most members had agreed that they had no right to institute any major changes, that these must be brought about by an elected government.

The Provisional Government was a self appointed body of ministers that existed in both competition and cooperation with the new workers representative body, the Petrograd (The new name of St Petersburg from 1914 onwards) Soviet.

The Soviet was an assembly of deputies from the various workers and soldiers Soviets (councils or committees) from across the city, and whilst the proceedings at the Soviet were chaotic, noisy and virtually guaranteed to achieve the bare minimum, the deputies held the trump card over the Provisional Government. They controlled the army.

The first act of the delegates at the Soviet was to pass Soviet Order No 1, which stated that any law the Provisional Government passed would only be workable with their cooperation, and that any time the Soviet viewed a law illegitimate, they were entitled to over rule it, using military force if necessary.

The fundamental issues that plagued Russia, the war, the chronic food shortages in the cities and the fact that the peasants had seized the opportunity presented to them by the collapse of the Czar’s power and had occupied the lands of the nobility across Russia; none of these were likely to be addressed by the Provisional Government.

Prince Lvov was committed to keeping Russia in the war, realising that he had no choice as British and French war loans under wrote much of the Russian economy. Also, there was still a fiercely anti German patriotism evident in Russia, the idea that the sacrifices of so many were simply going to be walked away from was too bitter a pill for many Russians to swallow.

When Lenin returned to Petrograd in April 1917, arriving at the Finland Station, greeted by crowds of supporters and an armoured car, he delivered his ‘April Theses’, supposedly a manifesto for change, but in reality a call for any kind of support the Bolsheviks could get.

He offered ‘Peace, Bread, Land and all power to the Soviets,’ throughout the war he had vociferously attacked the European social democrats from England, France and Germany who had supported the war, not because he was in any way a pacifist, but because the war presented an ideal opportunity to start a class war, to encourage the workers to turn their guns on their masters.

His offer of bread made sense too, the February Revolution had started because of food shortages in the city, but it was his offer of land that seemed out of character.

Lenin had little or no interest in the peasantry, during the 1891-1892 Volga famine, Lenin, a bystander to the tragedy was critical of the Zemstvos efforts to save the lives of the sick and starving peasantry, arguing that the process of trying to

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