A History of the World From the 20th to the 21st Century

(Jacob Rumans) #1

an overwhelmingly peasant country. But he
believed, thus squaring these facts with Marx’s
analysis, that the revolution in backward Russia
would not survive without the international
socialist revolution, without the proletarian revo-
lution, especially in neighbouring Germany.
Russia had but provided the spark. The advanced
industrialised West, with its large proletariat
would, so he thought, take over the leadership of
the world revolution. In fact, the Russian crisis
had its immediate cause in the war – not in a
general world crisis of capitalism, but in the
specific failing of Russian autocracy and of the
provisional government to provide for the suc-
cessful economic and military management of
the war. Tsarism first and Kerensky next were
destroyed by inflation, by lack of food in the
towns and by the general hardships inflicted on a
people without an end to war in sight or sustained
victories to show for their immense sacrifices.
The second All-Russian Congress of Soviets
had called for a just and democratic peace without
annexations and indemnities, and had also abol-
ished the landlords’ ownership of land. Bolshevik
propaganda in the army and the lawless state
of the countryside, where the peasants seized
the land, added to Russia’s state of anarchy. The
invading German armies, with their appeal to the
subject nationalities, Ukrainians, Georgians, Poles
and the Baltic peoples, threatened Russia with ter-
ritorial disintegration. Lenin’s insistence on peace
with the Germans at any price appeared suicidal
even to his closest collaborators. Fighting ceased
and armistice negotiations were formally com-
pleted early in December 1917. Meanwhile,
Lenin in November had permitted elections for
the Constituent Assembly to be held. When it
met in January 1918 the Bolsheviks found they
had not obtained a majority. Out of a possible
520 deputies the Bolsheviks had only gained
161, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, with 267


deputies, held an absolute majority. Lenin
now turned his back on this ‘sovereign’ assembly
and the whole democratic process. The assembly
was adjourned and prevented from gathering
again.
Trotsky was sent to negotiate peace terms with
the Germans. At Brest-Litovsk he prevaricated
and made fine speeches. Lenin and the Bolshevik
leaders pinned their hopes on the coming
German revolution, spurred on by revolutionary
propaganda among the German troops. The
Germans lost patience with Trotsky’s intoxication
with his own intellectual brilliance and occupied
large regions of western Russia virtually without
resistance. Trotsky thereby almost destroyed the
revolution in its infancy. On 3 March 1918, the
Russians, on Lenin’s insistence, and overruling
Trotsky’s tactics, accepted the peace terms of
Brest-Litovsk which dispossessed Russia of a large
part of its former empire. Lenin had cajoled and
bullied his colleagues on the Central Committee
into accepting the harsh terms. Then he had to
fight again to achieve its ratification by the
Congress of the Bolshevik Party.
Peace with Germany gave Lenin and the Bol-
sheviks a breathing space, and saved the Bolshevik
revolution. Lenin still confidently expected the
war among the Western nations to turn into the
great civil war and victory for the proletariat. But
meanwhile the revolutionary spark had to be kept
alive. It was now threatened by anarchy and by
civil war from the opponents of the Bolsheviks,
aided by Russia’s former allies, who hoped some-
how to bring it back into the war. In the succeed-
ing years of war and famine, the Russian people
were to suffer even more than they had suffered
during the course of the First World War itself.
But at the end of this period, the first communist
nation was firmly established in a world very
different from the one imagined by Lenin at the
time of revolution.

108 THE GREAT WAR, REVOLUTION AND THE SEARCH FOR STABILITY
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