This paper will analyze how the conditions of late Tsarist Russia created a revolutionary environment for the emerging Left in the Russian Empire. Primary and secondary sources, like letters from key Russian Empirical figures, historical articles, and prominent books of the period, will show the narrative shift in achieving a leftist revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks in the early years of the twentieth century. Narratives shifted throughout the nineteenth century because of the effects of the changing conditions of the Empire on the minds of intellectuals, the peasantry, and revolutionaries. 

The October Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Revolution did not occur in a vacuum. Before it turned into a people’s revolution, revolutionary sentiments and ideas came from all across leftist spaces, both within and outside of the Russian Empire. The first successful socialist revolution in history created a significant win for people across the Russian Empire. The revolution brought higher standards of living, class consciousness, and unity, all of which helped the Soviet Union to prosper. Equally important to the Revolution of 1917, although short-lived, the Revolution of 1905 showcased not just the Bolsheviks' power, but the potential powers of a dictatorship of the proletariat. These developments may help to better analyze nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conditions in Tsarist Russia that crafted a revolutionary vanguard movement. This paved the way for a true popular front. A true popular front means that the majority of the oppressed people within the country rise in opposition to their oppressors.

Pre-Revolutionary Russia had situated itself far behind the rest of Western Europe in almost every facet of the imagination in the nineteenth century. ’Backward’ comes to mind where the vast Russian empire sat on the world stage throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The long-dated feudal conditions of the Middle Ages still plagued Tsarist Russia into the nineteenth century. At the same time, most of the world had plunged head-first into the Industrial Revolution. Trapped under feudal serfdom and lacking significant industry in big cities like Saint Petersburg and Moscow, a hefty majority of the royal subjects in the Empire included the peasantry throughout the nineteenth century. This further setback Russia’s industrial aspirations as they did not naturally have a pool of skilled labor.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the grandfathers of Communism with their The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, ignored the possibility of Russia developing into communism. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, the proletariat did not include the feudal serfs but did include industrial workers. Like the petty bourgeoisie, serfs, despite being a lower economic class, held a similar status from the standpoint of inclusion in the proletariat. Marx and Engels did not see how a state with little to no capital infrastructure and industrial power could evolve toward communism. The Industrial Revolution and modernization of the rest of the world throughout the nineteenth century proved the catalyst for a dictatorship of the proletariat and a communist revolution. Ultimately, Marx and Engels surmised that the bourgeoisie turned into their own grave diggers because the proletariat seizing the means of production, i.e., mass industry, automation, and the wheel of progress would prove inevitable.1 A group of Russian revolutionaries asked Marx on March 12th, 1870 to represent Russia on the General Council of the First International, much to his surprise.2 Only then he began to think about the possibility of communism in Russia seriously. 

 1 Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1848, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf, 21.

2 Isaac Deutscher, “Marx and Russia,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1948, 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/marx-russia.htm#n10, 1.

Both Marx and Engels supported the Narodniks, Russian revolutionaries who ascribed themselves to Populism, and agrarian socialists who believed in the establishment of communes. In a letter to a Russian periodical in 1877, Marx stated that these developments had “the finest chance ever offered by history to any nation” to escape capitalism and to pass from feudalism straight into socialism.3 The Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto, published a year before Marx’s death, in 1882, reflects this change in his views. Marx and Engels were pleased with the abilities of the now-emancipated peasantry to improve their lives, who now ‘owned’ the land they lived on. They posed a question, however: “Can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership?”.4 This depended heavily on the conditions of the late Tsarist Empire, and without understanding the history leading up to Marx and Engels's work, it remains impossible to answer this question contextually.

Living conditions throughout this period were bad. The physical heights of peasants were attributed to the poor conditions they were in. Yet, it also reflected the improvement of conditions for the peasantry throughout the nineteenth century. The mean height of peasants at the time reflects the quality of things like diet, strains of labor (or lack thereof), diseases, economic inequality, and the standard of living for many.5 This information stemmed from the Russian military recording certain attributes in their conscription system. Recruit listings included essential information: age, soslovie (social status), residence, religion, and height.6 With living standards slowly improving in the second half of the nineteenth century, median height increased. Aggregate data from the Saratov Province on the border of modern-day Kazakhstan shows this change. In 1853, the mean height averaged 163.20 centimeters, and by 1892, to 166.10 centimeters.7 Only after the emancipation of serfdom, peasants could move around, quite literally, outside of their land and grasp of landlords.8 This change, albeit slow, did not occur from choice but from the necessity to keep Tsardom alive.

3 Deutscher, 1.

4 Marx and Engels, 5. Obshchina in Russian approximately translates to ‘peasantry’.

Boris Mironov and Brian A’Hearn, “Russian Living Standards under the Tsars: Anthropometric Evidence from the Volga,” The Journal of Economic 5 History 68, no. 3 (2008): 902-03.

6 Mironov and A’Hearn, 907.

7 Mironov and A’Hearn, 913.

 8 Mironov and A’Hearn, 922-923.

The Crimean War of 1854-1856 highlighted many issues that serfdom posed to the Russian Empire. At the beginning of the century, the Empire sat in a much better position of strength than the other world powers. One can see this in how the Russian army compared to Napoleon Bonaparte's army in the first decade of the nineteenth century. This is in stark contrast to the Empire’s stagnant position and defeat in the Crimean War. The five-decade gap and decimation of the Russian Empire’s power on the world stage showed leaders like Tsar Alexander II that emancipation was near. This war showed them chinks in the armor of the great Russian Empire; change needed to happen. The decree of emancipation of serfdom came on February 19th, 1861, with many in the nobility and Tsar Alexander II believing that the problem of peasant revolt had disappeared. The Tsar handed ‘freedom’ to over 23 million people or approximately 34.4 percent of the total Russian population. 

The peasants still had to pay a “legal minimum” to the government based on the amount of land they received. In return, the government would compensate the landlords of the peasants.9 Even after emancipation, the peasants still stood at a disadvantage. Regardless, the advancements made in peasant life and the ability to work for a wage created a stepping stone for the future to come. 

With emancipation and the ability of peasants to join the labor force,  came the slow-growing industrial and transportation job markets. By 1885 and into the early 1890s, wages had increased but stagnated in agricultural markets. These circumstances caused peasants to move to urban areas to find more lucrative jobs. By the late 1890s, one in five residents in the Rostov district within Southern Russia had an internal passport for work purposes. In 1899, the Iur’ev district, another predominantly agricultural area, reported more than 88 percent of households had residents working in non-farming roles, with 44 percent fully working outside of non-agricultural labor roles.10 In both the Rostov and Iur-ev regions, literacy also began to grow due to an expanding educational base. An 1897 national census for these areas found that literacy rates were  61.5 percent for males and 15.0 percent for females in Iur-ev, with 59.0 percent for males and 33.9 percent for females in Rostov.11 These numbers sit vastly lower than the majority of Europe at the time. However, these overall increases ultimately showed promise in developing non-nobility living standards for Russia.

The emergence of better standards of living at the end of the nineteenth century over the beginning left the peasantry in a good position. The ones that Marx initially said could not gain class consciousness slowly but surely transitioned into the proletariat he imagined in his lifetime. Despite these gains in living standards, little to no democratic improvements or outlets existed for the people to be heard, like in the democracies found across Europe at the time.

With change and opportunities that existed for the peasantry, the same arose for Russian intelligentsia and revolutionaries. Dreams to overthrow the current system rose throughout the century, albeit significantly hindered at first. An early Russian intellectual and literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky, denounced the Russian writer Nikolay Gogol in his Letter to Gogol from 1847 by describing the place of a writer in the Russian public.12 Russia had a unique position in the freethinking world. Russian Orthodoxy and staunch autocracy ruled Russia with an iron fist. He outlines the fact that writers like Gogol show promise that Russians must look for a freethinking society.13 Gogol’s latest book at the time, Selected Passages from Correspondence, with Friends, seemed “pernicious” towards Russia because of its apathy towards the ultra-conservative government. Belinksy plainly expresses here his attitude on what Russia really needs in retrospect to the times:

Therefore you failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their strictest possible observance.14

The “dirt and refuse” mentioned shows how the people feel ‘stuck’ in the fruits of their labor.. Yet, at the same time their “salvation” relies on the roots of the “dirt and refuse”.15 Indeed, many people in the Empire held their homeland near and dear to their hearts. Yet, in many instances, people like Belinsky had spoken out because they loved their homeland. Despite the rampant censorship at the time against many intellectuals and political views, Belinsky, in his letter, openly shows his disgust.16 His use of the word “salvation” proves interesting because he sees the inequality of time with a worldly lens. The possibility that the people would lose their chance at salvation could very well happen if Russia did not adapt to the changing intellectual climate. Religion and autocracy alone could not solve this issue. This letter signaled an early call for change, especially with its attack on religion and autocracy in favor of a Westernized standard of living and democracy.

 9 Zenkovsky, 288.

10 Tracy Dennison and Steven Nafziger, “Living Standards in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43, no. 3 (Winter 2013): https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41678708, 407.

11 Dennison and Nafziger, 415-416.

12 V. G. Belinsky, “Letter to N. V. Gogol”, Marxists Internet Archive, 1847, https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky/gogol.htm, 1.

13 Belinsky, 1

14 Belinsky, 1

15 Belinsky, 1

16 Belinsky, 1

Others, like Mikhail Bakunin, tore themselves away from Western ideas and even socialism. Bakunin, once a socialist who broke away into anarchism, believed that the Empire must fall entirely. In a letter from 1869, titled A Few Words to My Young Brothers in Russia, he exclaimed that a “last struggle to the death between the Russia of the people and the State.” needed to occur.17 The pressures of Russian autocracy under various Tsars toward their people had shown Russian anarchists like Bakunin that anything replacing it, even socialism, would not work. He closes this letter by asking young Russians to join forces to organize a free world of workers who would stand for the cause of the people, not the State.18 Bakunin's calls for a united front against the Russian Empire helped highlight the fact that a revolutionary struggle appeared on the horizon, despite subscribing to anarchism.

The notable Vladimir Lenin took the revolutionary spirit leaps and bounds further and his writings show the pinnacle revolutionary narrative for Russia. His 1896 letter, To the Tsarist Government, echoed the growing resentment of the Empire’s emerging working class at the turn of the twentieth century. Written from prison, it responded to the factory workers’ strikes that took place earlier that year in July in Moscow. He did this primarily by heavily rebuking Russia’s Minister of Finance Sergei Witte’s ordinance to factory inspectors and owners. Witte’s ordinance denounced the workers and any socialists involved with them: “the worst enemies of public order.”19 Witte’s ordinance also included guidelines for calming down workers. This included incentives for factory inspectors to lie to workers and say how much they care about them, while in reality not doing anything to assist their standards of work and living.20 Lenin’s main issue had to do with the fact that the Tsarist government only now took concern because socialists had started to assist workers. An active threat to the government, socialist activity transformed into a rash that spread like wildfire to the proletariat. The government had little to no response before this, due to outspoken socialist activity leaving little trace amongst workers.21 Here, Lenin points out the workers’ successes by banding together in a united front: A fine victory! The entire strength of the government, the entire wealth of the capitalists–against thirty thousand peaceful, penniless workers!”22 More than anything, he reflects that the workers have won because they have realized the true political climate of the Empire at the end of the nineteenth century.

17 Mikhail Bakunin, “A Few Words to My Young Brothers in Russia,” The Anarchist Library, 1869, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-a-few-words-to-my-young-brothers-in-russia, 1.

18 Bakunin, 1.

19 Vladimir Lenin, “To the Tsarist Government.”, Marxists Internet Archive, November 1896, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1896/nov/x01.htm, 1.

20 Lenin, 1.

21 Lenin, 1.

22 Lenin, 1. 

In Lenin’s 1902 What Is To Be Done? he discusses the struggles of the time while also giving an outline for the organization of workers and revolutionaries. The purpose of the book, and Lenin at this stage in Russia’s slow transformation, finds itself in the book’s title: a guide for revolution, where to start, and how to get there. He points out that trade union organizations hold great importance because they already have an established working class.23 His discussion throughout the book’s section titled Political Agitation and its Restriction by the Economists helps guide how trade union action by workers can pave the way to social-democratic action. Lenin goes on to explain that Russian Social Democrats need to take on the economic tools of the state and shift them into a political lens.24 In this vein, the notion of revolutions, like that of the French Revolution, evolving from economic strife to political outrage, reigns true.  

National unrest and stirrings of revolution in Russia at the dawn of the twentieth century didn’t just lay on the shoulders of the intelligentsia and revolutionaries. The Revolution of 1905, lasting from January 22nd to June 16th, 1905, highlighted the determination of a new proletariat class. By this point, the Russian peasantry had begun a significant transition into Marx’s definition of the proletariat. This meant an uptick in industrial workers in urban centers like Saint Petersburg or Moscow. The event that led to this took place on January 22nd, 1905, Bloody Sunday. Russian Orthodox priest Georgiǐ Apollonovich Gapon delivered an address at Narva Gate in Saint Petersburg titled St. Petersburg Workingmen's Petition to Tsar Nicholas II. He opens the speech by exclaiming that the Russian people were not people to the Tsar and government, but merely slaves and that life consisted of “eternal hell and torture," for many of them.25 The Workingmen’s Petition, demanding improved conditions and reforms supposedly signed by “125,000 workingmen”, came the day after massive factory worker strikes throughout the city.26 Despite the massacre of innocents that followed on that day, this high number illustrated the fact that the people had had enough.

23 Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Marxists Internet Archive, 1902, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf, 33.

24 Lenin, 35.

25 Georgiǐ Apollonovich Gapon, “St. Petersburg Workingmen’s Petition to Tsar Nicholas II.”, In The Story of My Life, E.P. Dutton & Company, 1906, 257.

26 Gapon, 261.

Image 1. The men of the Regiment shown were the first to declare for the Revolution by refusing to fire upon the people. British Labour Delegation among the Russian Soldiers, 1917, Warwick Digital Collections. Accessed November 22, 2024, https://cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/russian/id/2224

With 12 years between revolutionary events in Russia, by early 1917, even soldiers had started to break away from their loyalties to the Tsar. This came primarily in the form of mutinies and refusing orders, mainly due to Russia’s losing position in the First World War. The photograph above from 1917 exhibits a good representation of just that.27 Even though the photograph has no specific location, it shows the willingness of soldiers in the regiment depicted to not turn on their fellow citizens. Interestingly, soldiers of various rankings, high and low, seen pictured here, concluded that things like disobeying orders had not included lowly privates.28 The fact that British Labour Party delegates traveled to Russia as well, means what transpired in Russia in 1917 caught the attention of outside powers. The documentation of soldiers refusing orders shows its importance on the world stage. 

27 Warwick Digital Collections, British Labour Delegation among the Russian Soldiers, 1917, black and white photograph, Warwick Digital Collections, University of Warwick, Accessed 22 November 2024, https://cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/russian/id/2224

28 Warwick Digital Collections, British Labour Delegation.

Image 2. The painting depicts a Bolshevik revolutionary standing next to the Tsar’s throne in the Winter Palace, symbolizing the triumph of the 1917 October Revolution. Painting by Sergei Lukin, It Has Come to Pass, 1960, The Propaganda Archive. Accessed November 25, 2024, https://propaganda.pictures/archives/tag/winter-palace.  

By October 1917, the whole landscape of Russia had turned on its head. The people finally held power, since the Tsar had abdicated and the government turned into complete shambles. With this came the complete and utter shock of the Russian citizenry of the life of nobility, the Tsar, and the government. The painting displayed above shows a Bolshevik revolutionary soldier staring in awe at Tsar Nicholas II’s throne room after the storming of the Winter Palace.29 Although Sergei Lukin’s painting exists in a commemorative manner, it captures the very emotions of the revolutionaries. Shock and awe, bewilderment, and overwhelming emotion all overtake the breadth of the painting.30 While the soldier in the photo remains unknown, the anonymity reflects a certain feeling to the individual viewing it. 

The feeling Lukin’s painting displays radiates the idea of both individual and communal triumph over the oppressive system of the Tsarist way and the Russian Empire in its entirety. They could very well hail from peasants like in the Urals who, before that time, may have never stepped into a city like Saint Petersburg, let alone a palace; a soldier, who follows direct orders or faces consequences, but rose for the betterment of their comrade siblings; a worker in a factory, who for years put up with the poorest of working conditions. Each one of these types of people had in common the ideas and motivations of class consciousness. The class consciousness of the people did not occur overnight, however. A long road of suffering and development from Tsardom to freedom lay ahead. Calling back to Belinsky’s letter, humanity itself could lead the way to salvation.31 Socialism in Russia allowed humanity to flourish, and the painting embodies the spirit, will, and commitment of the Soviet people from that point in 1917 onward.

Russia and its people found strength and perseverance in a time and place where little external help existed. Forced to do backbreaking work to improve their lives, the Russian people suffered in such an extreme way for so long, unlike the liberal and nationalist conditions in Western Europe in the late nineteenth century. The people themselves changed the course of their history and that of leftism with their own will. The sheer determination and fortitude of the Russian people helped establish the perfect soil to sow the seeds of a burgeoning and prosperous revolution.

29 Sergei Lukin, It Has Come to Pass, 1960, V.I. Lenin Museum, Accessed November 25, 2024, https://propaganda.pictures/archives/tag/winter-palace.

30 Lukin, It Has Come to Pass.

31 Belinsky, 1

Conditions throughout nineteenth-century Russia combined with the evolutionary powers of industrial expansion in the rest of Europe laid the foundation for revolution. Though a slow simmering boil, over time, the people rose in defiance of the bourgeoisie. They began this process with very little. No bourgeois overthrow existed to help create a republic like in France, and no established liberal government to give rights to the people like in America. They spoke and were heard through a full-throated revolution that culminated in shifting the Empire’s narrative from a Tsarist state to a Communist one for years to come.

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References

Primary Sources:

Bakunin, Mikhail. “A Few Words to My Young Brothers in Russia.” The Anarchist Library, 1869. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-a-few-words-to-my-young-brothers-in-russia.

Belinsky, V.G. “Letter to N. V. Gogol.” Marxists Internet Archive, 1847. https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky/gogol.htm.

Gapon, Georgiǐ Apollonovich. “St. Petersburg Workingmen’s Petition to Tsar Nicholas II.” In The Story of My Life, 257–61. E.P. Dutton & Company, 1906.

Lenin, Vladimir. “To the Tsarist Government.” Marxists Internet Archive, November 1896. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1896/nov/x01.htm.

Lukin, Sergei. It Has Come to Pass. 1960, V.I. Lenin Museum. Accessed November 25, 2024. https://propaganda.pictures/archives/tag/winter-palace.

Warwick Digital Collections. British Labour Delegation among the Russian Soldiers, 1917, black and white photograph, Warwick Digital Collections, University of Warwick. Accessed 22 November 2024 https://cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/russian/id/2224

Secondary Sources:

Dennison, Tracy, and Steven Nafziger. “Living Standards in Nineteenth-Century Russia.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43, no. 3 (Winter 2013): 397–441. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41678708.

Deutscher, Issac. “Marx and Russia.” Marxists Internet Archive, 1948. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/marx-russia.htm.

Lenin, Vladimir. What Is To Be Done?. Marxists Internet Archive, 1902. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1848, 68. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

Mironov, Boris and Brian A’Hearn. “Russian Living Standards under the Tsars: Anthropometric Evidence from the Volga.” The Journal of Economic History 68, no. 3 (2008): 900–929. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40056441.

Zenkovsky, Serge A. “The Emancipation of the Serfs in Retrospect.” The Russian Review 20, no. 4 (1961): 280–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/126692.