Social Movements between the Revolutions (February to October in 1917)
1
Until the 1960s, western historians tended to stress the role of the Bolshevik
Party and of particular individuals, such as Lenin or Trotsky; from the 1960s and
especially the 1980s, there was a shift of focus to the urban workers,
undermining the views of a tightly disciplined, elitist Party. Western historians
have been influenced by the writings of anti-Bolshevik commentators, such as
Nikolai Sukhanov (who sided with the Mensheviks in 1917) and the former
Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky. The latter in particular influenced the view
that, without the First World War and the seizure of power by the Bolshevik
Party, tsarist Russia would have evolved along western lines, into a
parliamentary system. This is disputed by historians who question whether
tsarism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was capable of
meeting the demands of modernisation; even whether it was willing to do so.
2
According to Joel Carmichael (A Short History of the Russian Revolution, 1966)
the peasant movement of 1917 was of the profoundest importance for the
Revolution. Graeme Gill (Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution,
1979) wrote that the peasants interpreted the fall of the tsar as signifying the
end to the traditional rule of the landowners and bureaucrats; but that the
Provisional Government placed these traditional power-holders in local
government. Hence the peasants quickly grew disillusioned with the Provisional
Government. Leonard Schapiro (in Revolutionary Russia, edited by R. Pipes,
1968) justified the Government’s refusal to tackle land reform in the situation of
war, but the peasants saw government policy as support for the old landowners.
Gill saw two revolutions in 1917, one in the countryside, the other in Petrograd.
James White, however, writes (The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921, 1994) that
there were close links between the villages and their kinsmen who worked in
the towns, and that the soviets had their basis in the peasant mir, in peasant
collectivism.
3
Orlando Figes (Peasant Russia, Civil War, 1989) shows the importance of the
peasantry for the outcome of the revolution, arguing that the peasant seizure of
land in the Volga countryside and their refusal to send supplies to the cities
provided the basis for the urban revolution. While the Bolsheviks saw
themselves as a party of the urban working class, Lenin did not simply dismiss
the peasantry as a reactionary class, but accepted that no revolution could
succeed without them.
HA Sixth Form Lecture series
Dr Jane McDermid
Thursday 29 November 2007
PTO
4
Leopold Haimson stressed (Slavic Review, 1964) the widespread nature of social
grievances from 1905, and especially 1912-14, which he saw as years of revolutionary
crisis. Robert McKean (St. Petersburg Between the Revolutions, 1990) argued instead
that the strike movement had been dying down before war was declared, and tsarism
had been trying to reform itself, notably under Stolypin. Francis Wcislo (Reforming
Rural Russia, 1990) and Andrew Verner (The Crisis of the Russian Autocracy, 1990)
agree with McKean on Stolypin’s importance, but all three accept that even before his
death in 1911, there were signs of systemic collapse, and that his removal meant the
loss of any reforming impetus.
5
Studies of the working class in Moscow and Petrograd (D.H. Kaiser (ed.), The
Workers’ Revolution in Russia, 1987) show that workers were not simply
manipulated by the Bolsheviks. Stephen Smith’s argument in Red Petrograd
(1983) is that the material basis for reformist trade unionism and craft
consciousness did not exist in Russia, owing to late industrialisation and
political repression, so that there was no chance of reforms within the tsarist
system. The repressive policies of the Provisional Government after the July
Days led to a swift and massive shift of unskilled workers to the Bolsheviks.
6
McKean, however, questions the significance of factory workers, since they
were in a minority among Petersburg’s working class. He insists that the various
socialist factions and the trade unions were unable to offer effective leadership
to the labour protests in 1917. Instead, that role was taken up by the shop-floor
activists.
7
There were more workers in the service sector in 1917 than in the factories,
while there was a huge gulf between skilled and unskilled, with a majority of
women workers among the latter. Apart from the February Revolution, women
tend to be absent from histories of 1917. In practice, they were often in the
forefront of the radicalisation of the labour movement, notably in major strikes in
May and June (McDermid & Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, 2000). Indeed,
the prolonged strike by laundresses in May was seen by the Bolsheviks as an
indication of the rising political consciousness of the working class.
8
Under the Tsar, male workers who were politically active, particularly Bolsheviks
who were anti-war, were drafted and sent to the front, which allowed them to
spread their views. Evan Mawdsley argues (in Critical Companion to the
Russian Revolution 1914-1921, edited by E. Acton, 1997) that while most
soldiers were patriotic, they were not clear about Russia’s war aims. The old
aristocratic officer corps had lost much of its authority as a result of the
February revolution. By the summer there was widespread disaffection in the
armed forces, especially after the disastrous June offensive. Hospitals reported
an increase in self-inflicted wounds, adding to the growing doubts among the
allies that Russia would be able to continue in the war. Mawdsley pointed out
that committee control, which replaced the old discipline structures from March,
was ‘corrosive of both military effectiveness and political reliability’. By October,
he concludes: ‘the Russian armed forces were apparently incapable of largescale combat operations, and they could not be used to implement the will of
the government. Governments would have to fend off challenges by political
means, or they would go under, and that is what happened to Kerensky’.
HA Sixth Form Lecture series
Dr Jane McDermid
Thursday 29 November 2007