20.2 The Russian Revolution: An Overview of Soviet History, 1917 - 1941

In 1914 Germany declared war on Russia in a failed effort to prevent Russia from intervening in the war between Austria and Serbia.  Russian armies, while huge, proved no match against the better-armed and equipped Germans.  Russia had only recently begun to industrialize and its economy was too weak to meet the demands of the war.  Factories were unable to produce enough weapons and munitions.  The Russian railroad system broke down as it was unable to meet urgent needs to move necessary materials and foodstuffs to both the armies at the front and to the industries in the cities. 

            Czar Nicholas II assumed personal command of the Russian armies.  Well-meaning but without any military expertise or experience, he proved inadequate for the job.  While Nicholas was at the front, the government in Petrograd (the new Russian name for St. Petersburg) was guided by his wife, the Czarina Alexandra.  Alexandra herself was under the influence of a peasant mystic named Rasputin who was believed by the royal family to have God-given powers to protect the young Crown Prince Alexis from the complications of hemophilia. Rasputin exploited the situation to his personal advantage until he was murdered by well-meaning nobility in late 1916.  With the death of Rasputin the czarina became despondent, leaving the government without direction.  Russia slipped into anarchy.

The March Revolution and Provisional Government

            In March 1917 demoralized Russian armies were in retreat.  In Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities, food shortages caused rioting. When soldiers sent to restore order refused to fire on the rioters, all discipline broke down. Nicholas, realizing he was king without any authority, returned to Petrograd and abdicated. He and the royal family were placed under protective custody (house arrest) by a new Provisional Government.

            The Provisional Government, made up of moderate socialists and middle class members from the former Duma,[1] failed to solve the chronic problems that led to the Revolution.  Its major mistake was that it kept Russia in the war. As the country further fell into chaos, a new revolutionary force emerged in Petrograd called the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. (Soviet is the Russian word for council.) Led by Marxist socialists under Leon Trotsky, the Soviet challenged the Provisional Government for control of Russia. On this background, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland.  Who was Lenin? 

            Born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, Lenin was the son of an upper middle class government official from Simbirsk.  His early life was comfortable and happy, and he saw himself destined to become a lawyer.  In 1887 his older brother was incidentally involved in a plot to assassinate Czar Alexander III and was put to death on the czar's order.  This event had a profound impact on the young Lenin.  The family's reputation had been stained, and it became impossible for Vladimir to continue his university studies. Distressed and angered by what he saw as the injustice of the czarist regime, he became increasingly committed to the idea of revolution as the only means of enabling reform in Russia.  An avid reader, Vladimir became attracted to the ideas of Karl Marx.  As his revolutionary involvement became more active, he became increasingly convinced that Marx's theories were correct.  He was later able to complete his law study but his revolutionary interest continued.  He moved to St. Petersburg where he worked in a law office. In 1895, exhausted from a bout with pneumonia, Ulyanov traveled to Switzerland partly for recuperation and partly to meet other Russian revolutionaries in exile.  Arrested for carrying illegal literature into Russia on his return to St. Petersburg, he was exiled to Siberia for three years. There he sent for and married his fiancée, Nadezhda Krupskaya, a school teacher whom he had met in St. Petersburg.

            In exile, Lenin, as he then began to call himself, committed himself to the life of a revolutionary.  Following his exile, he took an active interest in the Russian Social Democratic Party, a new, although illegal, political party based on Marxist principles that had been founded by Russian exiles in Switzerland in 1883.  Because the Social Democrats had to operate covertly, their leadership was made up largely of Russian émigrés living in Western Europe.  Their periodic congresses (meetings) took place outside Russia.  Like other Marxist parties, the Russian Social Democrats regarded the revolution as an international movement, part of the dialectical process of history in which all countries were involved.  They recognized that Russia had not yet made the transition from feudalism to capitalism; but with industrialization beginning, it would not be long before there would be a ruling bourgeoisie and an exploited proletariat.  Lenin and Krupskaya left Russia and joined the Russian Marxist expatriates in Europe.

            As editor of the Social Democratic Party's newspaper, Iskra ("Spark"), Lenin published his views on what was necessary for a successful Marxist revolution in Russia.  In 1902 his article titled "What is to be Done" outlined his revolutionary approach.  Because the czarist regime with its police mechanism was so repressive, a successful revolution had to be the result of conspiracy.  A mass democratic movement was not possible.  Democracy, in the communist sense of the word, would be achieved but through the Russian experience of conspiracy.  The party, as the future dictatorship of the proletariat, must be tightly organized and disciplined.  It must be controlled by a central committee of dedicated revolutionaries.  Its leadership must be obeyed without question.  It must organize the workers as a revolutionary force through the formation of workers soviets, councils.  Cooperation with other political parties was not necessary and was to be avoided.  This view of a small group of dedicated and disciplined revolutionaries who would direct and lead the proletariat to the achievement of socialism became the characteristic feature of future communist leadership.  All modern communist parties basically followed this Leninist model.

             At a party congress in London in 1903, the Social Democrats, divided over issues of Marxist interpretation, split into two opposing factions: the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.  Lenin was leader of the Bolsheviks.  Bolshevik is the Russian word for “majority” (Menshevik for “minority”).  Claiming to be acting in the name of the majority of the Russian people, the Bolsheviks, actually a tiny minority of the former Social Democrats, pledged themselves to revolution based on Lenin’s model.

            Lenin was in Switzerland when the war began in 1914.  To Lenin, the war was a struggle among bourgeois capitalist imperialist states seeking to aggrandize themselves.  Huge armies made up of millions of proletarians and peasants were being used as cannon fodder by their self-serving governments.  As the war stalemated into hideous attrition, the very foundations of the capitalist states (including Russia) were being weakened.  This situation caused him to re-think the Marxist view of the inevitability of proletarian revolution.

             Realizing that communism could never come to Russia through constitutional means, Lenin developed the theory that history could be accelerated.  Capitalism was weak in Russia - and now even weaker because of the experience of the war.  Why wait for industrial capitalism to strengthen?  Let the proletarian revolution begin in Russia.  It would then spread to the other industrialized powers whose bourgeois governments were exhausting each other in the war. To be successful, however, the proletarian revolution needed effective leadership.  As seen above, Lenin believed that leadership must be a small centrally-directed, tightly-organized group of disciplined and dedicated revolutionaries committed to the violent seizure of power.  As the war continued, Lenin developed his revolutionary theory and managed to provide direction to a small group of Bolshevik revolutionaries back home in Russia.  Their opportunity for revolution came with the fall of the czar in the spring of 1917.

The Bolshevik  Revolution  

On his return to Petrograd in April, Lenin and the Bolsheviks mounted an effective propaganda campaign to organize Russian workers and soldiers into soviets committed to further revolution.  Their success in this undertaking was due largely to the work of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).  The name “Trotsky” was actually a pseudonym.  His real name was Lev Bronstein and he was the son of a wealthy Jewish farmer from the Ukraine.  His story is much like Lenin’s in that he became a revolutionary, was arrested, and exiled.  He became attracted to the Social Democratic Party and met Lenin in London in 1903.  Unlike Lenin, he remained a Menshevik when the Social Democrats split into opposing factions.  A brilliant intellectual with a talent for organization and direction, Trotsky had been instrumental in forming a workers’ Soviet that challenged the czarist regime in the abortive Revolution of 1905. Following the suppression of the 1905 Soviet, Trotsky was again exiled.  On the outbreak of the 1917 March Revolution, he immediately returned to Russia and organized the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, a revolutionary body that challenged the Provisional Government for control of Russia’s future.  On Lenin’s return to Russia, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and would become the organizer of the revolution.  While Lenin developed the ideological goals of the revolution, Trotsky worked tirelessly organizing Bolshevik soviets in the capital’s military garrisons and among the factory workers. He also devised the plans whereby the city’s key locations (communications, transport, power stations, banks, army headquarters, etc.) could be seized once the word was given.

               In their public pronouncements the Bolsheviks promised the Russian people “land, bread, and peace.”  Their appeal was highly attractive. Russian armies were demoralized and in retreat. In the cities food shortages continued and workers were restless.  Committed to the war, the Provisional Government was powerless to make reforms.  On November 7 Lenin gave the word and the Bolsheviks launched their revolution.  Trotsky’s planning was so effective that the Bolsheviks took control of the capital in a virtually bloodless coup d’état.  The leader of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, fled and took refuge in the American Embassy.  Lenin was named head of the new Marxist state. In 1922 they would rename the former Russian empire the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Soviet Union under Lenin, 1917 - 1924

            Now calling themselves the Communist Party, the Bolsheviks moved their capital back to Moscow and began a severe program of revolutionary socialism called “War Communism.”  All means of production (all business and industry), transportation, land and capital were nationalized - placed under control of the state.  All law, education, the creative arts, news and information services, social organizations, and all forms of cultural expression were to be transformed and directed according to communist ideology.  Religion was outlawed as it was seen as a means whereby the ruling class had exploited the working and peasant classes. Those who opposed the revolution would be ruthlessly prosecuted by the state security police.  Thousands of alleged bourgeois “enemies of the people” were arrested and imprisoned without trial. The former czar and his wife, their four daughters and son were all executed.  The Communist International (Comintern) was created to spread the revolution by encouraging and supporting communist parties in other countries.   Lenin delivered on the promise of peace as Trotsky negotiated a treaty with Germany in early 1918 (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) that ended Russia’s involvement in the war.

            The extremes of the Revolution caused a reactionary backlash and Civil War raged through Russia between 1917 and 1922.  Ably led by Trotsky, the Red Army gradually gained the upper hand against the “White” forces opposed to it.  The “Whites” included former monarchists, czarist army officers, middle class moderates, Mensheviks, Orthodox Church leaders, and peasants and business owners opposed to nationalization.  Opposition to the communist regime virtually disappeared in 1921 when Lenin ended the War Communism policy and allowed the revitalization of some capitalism. Through this New Economic Policy (1921 - 1927), peasants were allowed to own their own lands and small businessmen were permitted private enterprise. Large industries, however, remained under control of the state. The Soviet economy made a rapid recovery.

The Soviet Union under Stalin

            Lenin died in 1924 (Petrograd being renamed Leningrad in his honor) and the Communist Party went through a three year power struggle.  Trotsky was the logical successor, but he was challenged by Josef Stalin.

           Josef Stalin (1879-1953): The name “Stalin” was a pseudonym.  (It means “Steel.”)  His real name was Josef Dzhugashvili and he was the son of a poor shoemaker from Georgia in the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire.  Stalin originally studied theology with the intent of becoming a priest but was attracted to revolution. In 1903 he became a Bolshevik and served the party by robbing banks to raise party funds. He was arrested and exiled to Siberia.  With the outbreak of revolution in 1917 he returned to Petrograd and worked with Lenin and Trotsky in planning the Bolshevik coup.  In 1922 Lenin appointed him general secretary of the Communist Party – then, a management more than a leadership position.  Because this position enabled Stalin to make appointments and promotions, he was able to build up a body of influential Party personnel beholden to him for their careers. While the dynamic Trotsky built a reputation, Stalin built a loyal following. Seemingly introverted, plodding, and secretive, Stalin was highly ambitious and, by calling for the support of all those Communists he had promoted, would successfully engineer his victory at the 1927 Party Congress.  He would rule the USSR until his death in 1953. He was twice married and had several children.  One son would die serving in World War Two.  A daughter, Svetlana (1926-2011), eventually became an American citizen.

            At the Communist Party Congress in 1927, both Trotsky and Stalin presented programs for the Soviet future.  Trotsky called for radical measures to end the New Economic Policy, collectivize agriculture, and rapidly expand Soviet heavy industry through centralized economic planning; all this to be accompanied by active Soviet encouragement of international revolution elsewhere around the globe. Stalin proposed a more conservative approach for building socialism at home.  Calling upon those party functionaries loyal to him, Stalin prevailed. Trotsky was stripped of his party membership and sent into exile.  Abroad he would remain an implacable enemy of Stalin publicly criticizing Stalin for abuse of power.  He would be murdered by Stalinist agents in Mexico in 1940.

            Now master of the Soviet Union, Stalin did exactly what Trotsky had called for!  He launched a massive program to advance industrialization called the Five Year Plan.  To run from 1928 through 1932, the Plan called for rapid industrialization based on a centralized economic plan.  In order to provide the agricultural basis for the new industrial labor force, all land would be collectivized.  The aims of the Plan were to strengthen the country, lay the foundation for a truly proletarian society, and overcome Russian backwardness.  The overall objectives of the Plan were to build up heavy industry and make the Soviet Union equal to its most powerful capitalist enemies.  To achieve the goals of the Plan, a system of centralized planning would be established and directed by Gosplan, the State Planning Commission.  Under Gosplan, all business and industry would be nationalized, the entire Soviet workforce would be mobilized, and agriculture would be collectivized.  

            The collectivization policy ended all private ownership of land.  Peasants would work cooperatively on collective or state farms.  All food production quotas would be set by Gosplan and the collective farms were expected to meet those quotas.  Industrial technology would be applied to agriculture through mechanization – tractors, mechanical planters, and harvesters.  The collective farms would operate machine-tractor stations to produce and maintain this equipment. Through collectivization, the peasants would become an integral part of a socialist society and join the workers in the proletarian march towards communism.

            As was the case when Lenin launched War Communism, there was resistance to collectivization.  This resistance came from a class of wealthy peasants called kulaks who had prospered during the period of the New Economic Policy.  Resenting the loss of their lands, they resisted by burning their crops and killing their livestock.  Stalin responded with the brutal efficiency for which he would come to be known.  He called for “class war” against and “liquidation” of the kulaks and all others opposed to the Plan.  Hundreds of thousands were arrested, imprisoned, exiled to forced labor camps, or executed.

            The Five Year Plan saw the Soviet Union experience tremendous industrial growth.  Between 1928 and 1933 the original goals for production of iron, coal, and oil were achieved.  New railroad systems sped food and materials to the growing industrial centers.  Massive hydroelectric power projects provided needed electricity.  New plants were producing industrial machinery and chemicals.  New technical schools enabled Soviet youngsters to learn valuable skills that opened new opportunities by taking them off the farms and putting them into industry.  Women were encouraged to join the work force, not simply as laborers but as technicians, engineers, and professionals.  Throughout the country huge construction projects were underway, most to be completed in subsequent five year plans.  In terms of overall productivity the Soviet Union moved from fifth to second of the world’s major industrial powers – second only to the United States – and all within five years. Subsequent five year plans would follow.

            What the world did not see was the price in human lives and spirit the Soviets paid for their successes.  The work was hard and exhausting, the hours long, the pay low.  Those who failed to meet their individual production quotas were punished.  Failure to do the job was considered sabotage.  The punishment for failure or resistance was severe – often forced deportation to the prison labor camps of Siberia.  There are no accurate figures for the numbers of people who perished as victims of the first Five Year Plan, but estimates range from at least ten million to possibly fifty million dead.  Beyond the astounding figures of those who died under Stalin’s directive to collectivize and industrialize, was the direct impact on the Soviet future.  The Soviet Union did to a great degree achieve outstanding success in its modernization but in so doing became a totalitarian dictatorship.  

Soviet Totalitarianism  

 How was that totalitarianism manifest?  The plans required the total mobilization of the Soviet people through effective centralization.  There would be no room or opportunity for either individual or group freedom of action if the plans were to succeed.  Therefore, total government control and supervision was absolutely necessary.  The Party would accept only total and unquestioned obedience.  Individualism in any form, criticism, skepticism, or eccentricity was not to be tolerated.  As labor was to be committed to the task at hand, it too must conform and work for the good of the whole.  Independent labor unions were forbidden. 

            To protect the Soviet people from the dangers of incorrect thinking, there would be no freedom of thought, speech, or the press.  No independent news, radio, or cinema production was permitted, and the state-run press and broadcast media must report only what was in the best interests of the people – that is, only what the government wanted the people to read, see, or hear.  Likewise, the visual and performing arts must conform to the Party ideology and serve the policies and programs of the state.  Education and Communist youth groups (such as the Communist Party Youth League or Komsomol) must rigidly indoctrinate young people in the ideals and directions of Marxist-Leninism as they worked to create the "new Soviet man."  The school system would identify the abilities and talents of its students and the state would determine their occupational future based on those qualities.  Emigration was forbidden, and foreign travel was rarely permitted and restricted to a select few.

            Through the state security systems – the Party commissars, the secret police, and the military – the "enemies of the people" would be identified and quickly and efficiently dealt the harsh and unforgiving justice they deserved.  The people themselves were encouraged to denounce and report "class enemies" - even within their own families.  As a model for young children, Soviet grade school textbooks cited the example of 13-year-old Pavlik Morozov.  Knowing his father was illegally hiding grain with the hated kulaks, Morozov reported him to the police. The boy was then murdered by vengeful kulaks, thus making him an honored martyr to the Soviet cause. Pavlik Morozov was a hero sacrificing his own life for the Soviet future.  All "good" children should be like him.

The Purges

            Stalin would rule the USSR until his death in 1953. In the mid-1930s his regime would see the brutal purging of hundreds of alleged “enemies of the people” (some being “Old Bolsheviks,” the revolutionary companions of Lenin) from the Communist Party. 

          The Purges began in 1934. Over the next four years some eight million people would be arrested and accused of "Trotskyism," counterrevolution, foreign espionage, obstructionism, and other "crimes" against the people.  Of these some 800,000 would be executed while millions more would experience the horrors of oblivion in the notorious prison labor camps known as the gulag.  Thus it was that Stalin cleansed the Party and the state of his potential enemies and created a new body of Party-state personnel totally dependent upon him.

          Most of those who were purged were low level Party operatives, intellectuals, writers, bureaucrats, educators, army officers, and those peasants and workers who showed too much independent thinking.  The psychological impact of their arrests was to serve as a warning to others.  The arrests came suddenly.  Without warning the victim was seized at home or work by the secret police, taken to the local security headquarters, speedily "investigated," and forced to sign a fabricated confession of the crime, and summarily sent to the gulag  or shot.  Families of victims were usually not informed of their loved one's fate.  The signed confessions of the victims would, however, be made public as proof of their duplicity.

           The world watched with amazement and shock as the Stalin regime attacked and prosecuted the leading Communists.  Through a series of "show trials" many of the "Old Bolsheviks" who had been Lenin's comrades-in-arms made detailed public confessions of their crimes and treason.  Standing before huge packed courtrooms and in front of radio microphones and movie cameras, the accused made astonishing confessions of being in conspiratorial league with Trotsky or serving the interests of Nazi Germany.  In confession they declared the correctness of Stalin's policies and that they deserved the full punishment of the people's justice.  All were executed.

            The question was: why did these men make these confessions or, better yet, how could they be made to make them?  The confessions were obtained through both physical and mental torture expertly administered by the security police.  Often the "investigations" took months, even years.  The police interrogators were trained to break down their victim's resistance, deprive him of his judgment, rob him of his human dignity, and make him want to confess so that death would save him from continued mental and physical anguish.  The torture was so effectively applied that the victims, when brought to public trial, showed no outward signs of physical abuse.  Several leading Bolsheviks, on learning that they were subject to investigation, committed suicide – thus, through death, denying Stalin the satisfaction of their confession.

            Having purged the Party of his enemies, Stalin, in 1938, turned on the only other force that could threaten his power – the army.  In a repeat of the public trials of the Party leaders, the highest ranking officers were accused of and confessed to conspiring to betray Soviet security to Germany and Japan.  Between 1938 and 1940 some five thousand officers were arrested and sent to the gulag prison camps or shot. This would have a devastating impact later when German armies invaded the USSR in 1941. 

            The Purges had tremendous impact on the Soviet Union.  The older revolutionary generation was effectively removed from power enabling new younger Communists to rise to positions of leadership.  Among the "new Soviet men" were such names as Georgi Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin.  The Purges made the secret police and their gulag system an integral and permanent part of the Soviet dictatorship.  The Purges reinforced the traditional Russian attitude of fatalistic subservience to the state.  The Purges created useful scapegoats upon whom could be thrust the blame for any and all problems or setbacks in the modernization process.  The Purges contributed to developing a useful "siege mentality" that the enemies of the Soviet people were real and threatening.  The preservation and continuation of the Revolution required, therefore, further sacrifice and hard work.  Likewise, the future of the Soviet Union depended more than ever upon Stalin's undisputed leadership.  He had seen the "true colors" of the enemies around him when others had not.  His wisdom and guidance were, therefore, indispensable.  The Purges made Stalin the Soviet state.

The Cult of Personality

            There developed around Stalin a “cult of personality.”  Propaganda would portray Stalin as the brilliant architect of Soviet socialism.  Communist Party philosophy was revised to show his contributions to Marxist ideology, and history texts were rewritten to discredit Trotsky and other Bolshevik turncoats who had betrayed the true revolution. The Soviet ideology was officially identified as Marxist-Leninist- Stalinism.  All public culture (art, music, literature, cinema) was to praise and glorify Stalin.  His picture appeared in every schoolroom and workplace and was prominently displayed alongside those of Marx and Lenin. Streets, ships, factories, and cities (Stalingrad, Stalinabad, Stalinsk) were named for him.  Failure to honor Stalin was to risk severe punishment.  Thus, under the personal glory of Stalin, the people of the Soviet Union endured the travails of a ruthless secret police, censorship, and thought control. 

            There were, however, benefits to being good Soviet citizens.  In return for strict adherence to the Soviet system, the Party provided the people with education (usually good), occupations, housing (usually poor and crowded), hospitalization medical care (usually good), pensions, food and other consumer goods at less than market prices (although in limited quantities), and recreational opportunities.

             Later, as communism spread to other countries after World War Two, the Stalinist system of dictatorship, forced collectivization, and centralized economic planning would become the model.  This would be true in the countries of Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany) made Soviet satellites after the war. Albania was very Stalinist.  Yugoslavia was communist but rejected Stalinism. Stalin ordered Yugoslavia expelled from the Comintern in 1948.  Elsewhere Stalinist-type regimes came to power in North Korea (1948), China (1949), North Vietnam (1954), and Cuba (1959).  Today, the Stalinist type of communism remains “alive” only in North Korea.  The other countries have either modified their communism to make it less authoritarian (especially economically) or rejected communism altogether.

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                             Illustration photos from Wikipedia sources.

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Sources for The Russian Revolution

Brinton, Crane et al. A History of Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, 1960.

Gilbert, Felix. The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present. New York:  Norton, 1970.

Goldston, Robert. The Russian Revolution. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1966.

Kennan, George F. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin.  Boston: Little Brown, 1961.

Langer, William, ed. An Encyclopedia of World History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.

Liebman, Marcel. The Russian Revolution.  New York:  Vintage, 1970.

Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra.  New York: Atheneum, 1967.

Medvedev, Roy.  Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. New York:  Knopf, 1972.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Nettl, J. P. The Soviet Achievement. Norwich, Britain: Harcourt, 1967.

Palmer, Robert et al. A History of the Modern World. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002.

Pauley, Bruce. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century. Wheeling, IL:

Harlan Davidson, 2003.

Shub, David. Lenin. New York: Mentor, 1948.

Volkogonov, Dmitri. Lenin. New York: Free Press, 1994.

[1] The Duma was a parliamentary body established by Nicholas in 1905. Supposedly a legislature, the Duma had very little political power or influence and remained under the direction of the czar’s cabinet ministers.