The Russian Revolution(s) & The Rise of Marxism in Russia

1. The Russian Revolution(s) & The Rise of Marxism in Russia 1894-1924

2. 1894 Alexander III dies. His son, Nicholas II, succeeds him as Tsar.

3. 1 March 1898 Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labor Party holds its first congress. First meeting held in Minsk. All the delegates arrested by Tsarist police after meeting.

4. 17 November 1903 Second RSDLP congress held in exile in Brussels (then London). The Party splits into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

5. 8 February 1904 Russo-Japanese War Japanese launch surprise torpedo attack on Russian navy at Port Arthur (Manchuria).

6. 3 January 1905 Strike beginning at the Putilov Works in St. Petersburg starts the 1905 Russian Revolution.

7. 9 January 1905 BLOODY SUNDAY

8. 5 September 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth signed ceding some Russian territory to Japan, ending Russo-Japanese War.

9. 17 October 1905 Nicholas II signs the October Manifesto, expanding civil liberties and establishing and empowering the Duma.

10. 23 April 1906 The Fundamental Laws issued, reasserting the autocratic supremacy of the Tsar.

11. 1906 & 1907 Duma Problems—First & Second State Dumas

12. June-August 1914 28 June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria assassinated 28 July: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia 30 July: Russia mobilizes its army to defend Serbia 1 August: Germany declares war on Russia in defense of Austria-Hungary

13. WWI German Success on Eastern Front

14. Horrors on the Front—Medieval Weirdness at Home 16 December, Rasputin murdered by a group of nobles

15. February 1917—The February Revolution 22 February: Workers at Putilov Plant in Petrograd go on strike 23 February: Series of demonstrations demanding end of autocracy and Russian involvement in WWI 25 February: Battalion sent to Petrograd to end the uprising 26 February: Nicholas II orders dissolution of the 4th Duma and is ignored; decree of establishment of Provisional Government 27 February: Soldiers sent to suppress uprising join the protestors; Menshevik leaders freed from Peter and Paul Fortress; Petrograd Soviet founded

16. 2 March 1917 Nicholas II abdicates throne

17. July 3-6, “The July Days” Pro-Bolshevik demonstrations in Petrograd Put down July 6; Provisional Government orders arrest of Bolshevik leaders 4 September: Under public pressure Bolshevik leaders released from prison

18. The October Revolution 25 October Soldiers directed by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet capture the Winter Palace, ending the power of the Provisional Goverment

19. October Revolution 25 October Menshevik and moderate Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Party members walk out in protest of 2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets; Lenin elected chairman of Sovnarkom (Council of the People’s Commissars)

20. 26 October 2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets issues Decree on Peace, promising to end Russian involvement in WWI and Decree on Land, approving the taking of land from the nobility

21. 1917-1918 7 December 1917: Cheka established 27 December 1917: Counterrevolutionary Volunteer Army established 15 January 1918: Red Army established 3 March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed, ending Russian participation in WWI

22. 1918-1924 18 July 1918: Nicholas II and rest on royal family executed 1921 Famine 25 October 1922: Fall of Vladivostok marks end of Russian Civil War 21 January 1924: Lenin dies

23. Marx Karl Marx (1818-1883)

24. Marxism • Historical Materialism • Dialectics (emphasized by Engels) • Class conflict • Ideological Superstructure (religion, bourgeois values, justifications for inequality) • Inevitable (but progressive) Collapse of Capitalism • Inevitable (but progressive) Emergence of Socialism then Communism (the withering away of the state) = the complete liberation of all human beings

25. Marx on Russia “From the historical point of view the only serious argument put forward in favour of the fatal dissolution of the Russian peasants’ commune is this: By going back a long way communal property of a more or less archaic type may be found throughout Western Europe; everywhere it has disappeared with increasing social progress. Why should it be able to escape the same fate in Russia alone? I reply: because in Russia, thanks to a unique combination of circumstances, the rural commune, still established on a nationwide scale, may gradually detach itself from its primitive features and develop directly as an element of collective production on a nationwide scale. It is precisely thanks to its contemporaneity with capitalist production that it may appropriate the latter’s positive acquisitions without experiencing all its frightful misfortunes.” From Marx’s Letter to Vera Zasulich

26. Marxism-Leninism Marxism plus the idea of a revolutionary vanguard party acting on behalf of the world proletariat.

27. Bolshevism as Utopian Religious Ideology? “Bolshevism as a social phenomenon is to be reckoned as a religion, not as an ordinary political movement. The important and effective mental attitudes to the world may be broadly divided into the religious and the scientific. The scientific attitude is tentative and piecemeal, believing what it finds evidence for, and no more. Since Galileo, the scientific attitude has proved itself increasingly capable of ascertaining important facts and laws, which are acknowledged by all competent people regardless of temperament or self-interest or political pressure. Almost all the progress in the world from the earliest times is attributable to science and the scientific temper; almost all the major ills are attributable to religion. “By a religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. By this definition, Bolshevism is a religion…. Those who accept Bolshevism become impervious to scientific evidence, and commit intellectual suicide. …One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.” From Bertrand Russell’s The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

28. “Leaping Ahead” with Comrade Stalin

29. Utopianisms Left and Right l

30. Thought Experiment Time History and randomness: the role of Luck in the story. (Mis)understanding backwards? What if the USSR had “won the Cold War”? What if they sent us “economic advisors” to help our economy recover with “shock therapy”?