HPAVC/HPAVC CD-ROM.iso/pc/HOMEWORK.ZIP/HISRUSS.TXT

Text File | 1998-07-25 | 17.5 KB | 199 lines

                       The Russian Revolution    Many historians disagree on the exact start of
                       Russian Revolution, whether it be a date or a time period.  Some
                       place a date in 1916 or 1917, during World War I, when the czarist
                       government faces its biggest crisis and loses power to the
                       Bolsheviks.  Others place it during 1905, when hundreds are killed by
                       the Provisional Government on "Bloody Sunday", and the first soviet
                       is organized.  Others still place it in 1881 when the czar, Alexander
                       II is assassinated.  Some others even place it during 1825, when
                       radicals, called Decembrists, fail to topple Nicholas I and this
                       czarist government.  Several historians argue that the revolution is
                       continuing today, as Russia fights to overcome 500 years of
                       tyrannical czarist rule and ruthless communism.  As Bruce Lockhardt,
                       the British consul-general stationed in Moscow from 1915 to 1917,
                       said, "the [Russian] revolution took place because the patience of
                       the Russian people broke down under a system unparalleled in
                       inefficiency and corruption.  No other nation would have stood the
                       privations which Russia stood for anything like the same length of
                       time."1    Czarist rule began in Russia during the fifteenth century,
                       after Mongol invaders left.  They had spent 300 years of terrorizing
                       and plundering Russia.  The Mongols influence stayed after they left,
                       especially in government ideas.  Russia set up a system of czarist
                       rule, similar to the Mongols, in which an absolute monarch, called a
                       czar, held unlimited power over both the government and church,
                       claiming their rule was sanctioned by God.  Under czarist rule, serfs
                       and minority ethnic groups were treated terribly, especially Jews,
                       who were blamed for all of Russia's problems.  The last czar to be in
                       power, Nicholas II, was the young, naive son of Alexander III, a
                       merciless dictator who, in the aftermath of the assassination of
                       Nicholas I, attempted, by use of the secret police, to stamp out all
                       signs of unrest and protest.  The final attempts to control the
                       dissenting population by terrorism eventually failed.    Vladimir Lenin,
                       whose real name was Vladimir Ulyanov, was a major proponent of
                       Russian history during the revolution and the events following.
                       Lenin witnessed the execution at age seventeen of his brother,
                       Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov, on May 8, 1887, for planning to kill Czar
                       Alexander III.  Upon Alexander's death, Lenin wailed, "I'll make them
                       pay for this!  I swear it"2  Lenin became obsessed with hate for the
                       czar, and vowed to extract revenge for his brother's execution.  This
                       was a vow he fulfill, becoming one of history's greatest leaders and
                       the chief architect of the Russian Revolution.  Lenin was influenced
                       by writers such as Karl Marx and Chernyshevsky, and quickly became a
                       radical writer and proponent of Marxism.  For his actions, he was
                       exiled to Siberia in 1895 for four years.  After his exile, he
                       returned to Russia, and quickly became involved in the Russian
                       Marxist movement.  In 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labor
                       party, the Russian Marxist party supported by Lenin, split into two
                       groups:  The Bolsheviks, who were the majority, and the Mensheviks,
                       the minority.  Mensheviks argued that social change should come
                       slowly and democratically.  The Bolsheviks, who at this point were
                       led by Lenin, wanted to seize power by violent, non-democratic means.
                        At this time, another revolutionary group was growing very quickly
                       in Russia:  the Socialist Revolutionaries.  They were to become a
                       major Marxist rival.  They viewed the peasants as the backbone of a
                       popular uprising against the czar, favored socialism and democracy,
                       and did not mind using terrorism.    Russia had began a nationwide
                       frenzy of industrialization in the 1850's that had taken a severe
                       toll on the population.  For the years leading up to the end of
                       czarist rule and World War I, Russian Peasants were subject to
                       extremely harsh working conditions, constant starvation, physical
                       abuse, and other inhumane treatment.  They were sick and tired of
                       dying and toiling endlessly for no gain.  In 1901 and 1902, many
                       peasant uprisings occurred, fueled by the Social Democrats Marxist
                       propaganda, while the Socialist Revolutionaries continued to
                       assassinate government officials and incite peasants to burn their
                       masters' manor homes.  In February 1904, a war between Russia and
                       Japan broke out.  Trouble had been brewing between Russian and Japan
                       for some time, and the czar saw the war as an opportunity to unite
                       Russia's workers as one Russia and distract them from thoughts of
                       revolution.  Russia was miserably defeated after only 18 months, and
                       this pitted the public against the czar.  "Bloody Sunday", as was
                       called a Sunday uprising on January 22, 1905, when Georgy A. Gapon, a
                       government secret agent turned traitor, led a crowd of 200,200 men,
                       women, and children to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.  These
                       people were tired, hungry, dispirited, and wanted to take their case
                       directly to the czar.  One worker participating cried out:  "You know
                       why we are going.  We are going to the czar for the Truth.  Our life
                       is beyond endurance....Now we must save Russia from the bureaucrats
                       under whose weight we suffer.  They squeeze the sweat and blood out
                       of us.  You know our workers' life.  We live ten families to the
                       room....And so we go to the czar.  If he is our czar, if he loves his
                       people he must listen to us....We go to him with open hearts....It
                       cannot be that he would fire on us."3  When they reached the palace,
                       Cossack soldiers, Russia's elite mounted troops, fired on the crowd.
                       Within minutes, some 300 unarmed demonstrators lay dead, and another
                       700 were wounded.  This attack became a revolutionary battlecry
                       across the country.  Shaken by the violence in his nation, Nicholas
                       allowed the creation of an "Imperial Duma", a sort of Russian
                       congress with elected delegates.  Soon after his August 1905
                       announcement, details surfaced that the seats in the Duma were to be
                       filled only by members of the nobility and middle class.  Again
                       workers revolted, and in October 1905, Russia suffered it's biggest
                       strike in it's history.  Next Nicholas attempted to create a
                       constitutional monarchy, which still gave supreme power to the czar.
                       However, leftist radicals were not satisfied, and on July 21, 1906,
                       Duma representatives met for the first time in St. Petersburg to
                       discuss exerting real law-making power.  Nicholas responded by
                       setting up new election laws which effectively reduced opposition to
                       the czar, and appointed a ruthless prime minister named Stolypin who
                       was responsible for thousands of deaths of radicals until he was
                       assassinated in 1911.    In 1914, Europe was ripe for war.  Nations were
                       divided, armed, and ready for conflict.  The only thing needed to
                       ignite the flames of war was a spark.  It finally came on the morning
                       of June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, then a part of Austria, when a gunman
                       shot and killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of
                       the Austrian empire.  Immediately, Austrian officials accused nearby
                       Serbia of involvement in the assassination plot and threatened war.
                       Russia supported Serbia, while Germany, who supported Austria,
                       declared war on Russia and France.  Some 27 countries in all entered
                       the fray.  Russia was not prepared for modern war.  Its army was
                       poorly trained, its weaponry and military methods old-fashioned, and
                       many of its leaders incompetent or corrupt.  Russia also lacked the
                       resources to sustain a major military effort.  During 1914, Russian
                       losses totalled almost 4 million.  In 1915, German troops were
                       advancing on Moscow, while Russia was retreating and burning
                       everything on its way.  In September of 1915, Nicholas declared
                       himself military commander to escape domestic responsibilities.  When
                       he left, Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, known as the "Mad Monk", took
                       control.  Supernatural occurrences associated with him and his high
                       level of charisma helped him gain power.  He was first discovered by
                       two Montenegrin duchesses who were in Kiev on a religious pilgrimage.
                        The encountered Rasputin in a courtyard, sawing wood, and they
                       engaged in conversation after Rasputin bowed low before them.  The
                       duchesses were entranced, and he quickly became a famous character in
                       Montenegrin circles.  He was introduced to the czar and czarina, and
                       quickly became a favorite of the court circle.  Rasputin was a
                       coarse, crude, scraggly bearded peasant from Siberia whose surname
                       means "the debauched one."  He was a womanizer and semi-alcoholic,
                       and his reputation was that of "a creature of the devil."  One
                       observer said that Rasputin's hypnotic eyes glowed like "two
                       phosphorescent beams of light melting into a great luminous ring."4
                       Earlier, in 1905, when Alexis, the heir to the throne and son of
                       Nicholas, who was a hemophiliac, had a hemorrhage that could not be
                       stopped by doctors, Rasputin came to his rescue and stopped the
                       bleeding.  The royal family became very dependent on Rasputin's
                       seemingly magical powers, and his power increased.  Finally, a small
                       group of Russian nobles decided that Rasputin was out of hand and
                       conspired to murder him.  On New Year's eve, 1916, Rasputin was fed
                       enough poison in his wine to kill several men, which only made him
                       groggy.  He was then shot several times in the heart, and dumped into
                       the Neva river.  This event had little effect on the outcome of
                       Russia's destruction course.  As the violence continued, Russia sank
                       into a downward spiral.  On March 2, 1917, the czar was ordered to
                       give up the throne.  Nicholas consented, and gave it to his brother
                       Mikhail, instead of his son Alexis, who was too incurably ill to take
                       the throne.  However, Mikhail refused to take the throne, and so
                       ended more than three centuries of autocratic rule.  A new
                       Provisional Government was quickly set up, to start a new Russia.    The
                       new government faced the same problems as the czarist regime, if not
                       worse.  The government decided to put off domestic problems until the
                       war ended.  Lenin returned from exile on April 9, 1917, and began
                       campaigning for radical Bolshevik ideals to counter the Provisional
                       Government.  Many anti-war protests and riots sparked by the
                       Bolsheviks occurred.  On November 7, 1917, Lenin staged the Bolshevik
                       revolution.  The Bolsheviks quickly moved in and took the Provisional
                       Government by surprise, storming government buildings and offices,
                       and attacking the Winter Palace.  Lenin seized power, and destroyed
                       all traces of democracy.  Lenin's brutal actions were foreshadowed
                       the night of April 16, 1917, at a Bolshevik gathering.  Lenin
                       unleashed a tirade of criticism and chilly ideals.  "We don't need
                       any parliamentary republic," he thundered.  "We don't any bourgeois
                       democracy!  We don't need any Government except the Soviet of
                       Workers', Soldiers', and Farm-laborers' Deputies."5  The war ended,
                       with Russia facing massive losses in land, resources, and lives.  The
                       Bolsheviks began calling themselves Communists, and terrorized the
                       population.  In April 1918, 30,000 Czechoslovakian soldiers, led by
                       anti-bolsheviks, seiged Russia from all directions.  The Communist
                       army, 5 million strong, defeated the dissenters and wiped out the
                       rest of the civilian dissenters from 1918 to 1921, in a period known
                       as the Red Terror, where as many as 50,000 people were killed.  On
                       the night of July 16, 1919, the former czar Nicholas and his family,
                       including his ailing son Alexis, were brutally murdered.  Finally, in
                       the autumn of 1920, the Red Army beat back the dissenters and
                       declared victory.  The country at this point was in shambles.  Famine
                       roared through the country.  Lenin completely communized the country,
                       which made the peasants situations even worse.  In dire straits in
                       1921, Lenin allowed Russia to return to partial free enterprise.
                       Lenin died in 1924, and to horror of millions and to the joy of other
                       millions.  To some, he was a great leader, hero, and near god.  To
                       others he was a ruthless dictator responsible for millions of
                       innocent deaths.  After Lenin's death, another ruthless dictator,
                       Joseph Stalin, came to power.  Lenin had made it clear that he did
                       not want Stalin to succeed him, as Lenin thought Stalin would be
                       unable to handle such power and would commit the most horrible of
                       crimes if it meant acquiring and maintaining personal power.  In a
                       letter written as his last testament, Lenin warned the party of
                       Stalin's tactics and asked that Stalin be removed as general
                       secretary:  "Comrade Stalin...has concentrated an enormous power in
                       his hand, and I am not sure whether he will always know how to use
                       this power with sufficient caution....Stalin is excessively rude, and
                       this defect...cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of the
                       General Secretary.  Because of this, I propose that the comrades
                       consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this
                       position and by which another man would be selected for it."6  Under
                       Stalin, the nightmare of mass murder and torture was brought upon
                       millions of people accused of dissenting against his regime.  Stalin
                       also transformed Russia into a major nation and superpower.  He set
                       the pace for the future of Russia, in the wake of a tumultuous
                       revolutionary past that stretched back 300 hundred years.