Thus ended fourteen months of desperate revolt against the Tsar; the first twelve belonged to the whole people, the last two to the Marxists. Altogether, the troops throughout the Empire had been called out more than 2,500 different times. In these battles between the people and the troops, fourteen thousand had been killed, approximately one thousand had been executed, twenty thousand had been wounded or injured, and seventy thousand had been arrested.
Trotsky's leadership in the final stages of the revolution won him a stiff sentence from the Tsar's court. He was convicted of revolutionary violence and exiled to Siberia for an indefinite period. But Trotsky never reached Siberia. He made a daring escape in midwinter and, after traveling four hundred and thirty miles in a deer-sleigh, crossed the Ural Mountains on horseback and then escaped to Finland where he joined Lenin and several other Marxists.
It was while Trotsky was staying in Finland that he carefully worked out his theory of "Perpetual Revolution." This theory advocated a continuous Communist attack on all existing governments until they were overthrown and the dictatorship of the proletariat established. This brought Trotsky into nearly perfect focus with Lenin. Perhaps, without quite realizing it, he had talked himself into becoming a full-fledged Bolshevik.
At this particular time, the Bolshevik movement was at its lowest ebb. The Bolshevik leaders had failed in their promises to force the Tsar to abdicate, and their continuation of the revolution after the October Manifesto had embittered the Tsar to the point where he had practically repudiated the Manifesto. He allowed the people to elect a Duma (people's assembly) but he managed to strip it of all its real powers. The people knew they were being defrauded, but there was no way to enforce the Manifesto without fomenting another revolution, and at the moment this seemed unlikely. Individual groups did continue agitating against the Tsar and his ministers, but most of these, like the Bolshevik leaders, were forced to flee to Western Europe for safety.
To rejuvenate the dwindling influence of the Bolshevik party, Lenin began holding a series of meetings. At one of these conclaves, a new revolutionary figure appeared on the scene. It was Joseph Stalin. Stalin came as an obscure delegate from a small Bolshevik group in Transcaucasia. Lenin immediately recognized him as a true revolutionary member of the peasant class -- a rough, unrelenting, two-listed man of ruthless action. Lenin had a place for such a personality and therefore enlisted Stalin in his service.
This brings us to the third important personality who figured prominently in the revolutionary movement in Russia.
Joseph Stalin, as a young Bolshevik: "To choose one's victim,
to prepare one's plans minutely, to stake an implacable vengeance,
and then go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world."
Background of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin was originally named Djugashvili. He was born December 21, 1879, in the little town of Gori near the border of Turkey. Today the humble wooden house which first sheltered him has been made into a national monument with a marble canopy covering it.
Stalin's father was a shoemaker with an addiction for alcohol which eventually cost him his life. Stalin was only eleven years old when his father died. Thereafter, Stalin's mother washed, scrubbed, sewed, and baked to earn enough money to put Stalin through school. Since his mother wanted him to be a priest, he was enrolled in the nearby theological seminary at Tiflis.
As he learned his way around, Stalin discovered that the seminary was honeycombed with secret societies. Many of them were fostering the atheistic writings of Feuerbach and Bauer and the revolutionary writings of Marx and Engels. Before long Stalin convinced himself that he had a preference for revolution rather than religion and he therefore became vigorously active in the clandestine organizations which existed among the students of the seminary. He continued these activities for nearly three years, but he was finally exposed in May, 1899, and was expelled from the seminary for "lack of religious vocation."
Once he joined the outside world, Stalin spent his full time as a professional Marxist revolutionary. He organized strikes, conducted illegal May Day festivities, and finally fled to Batumi where he became the principal labor agitator for the Social-Democratic party. Eventually he was arrested and after remaining in prison until 1903, he was sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia.
He was still in Siberia when he heard about the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Stalin almost instinctively felt himself to be a hard-core Bolshevik and after successfully escaping from Siberia the following year, he returned to Tiflis and became the leader of the Transcaucasian Bolsheviks. During the Revolution of 1905 he led an abortive revolution in his home province of Georgia and then departed immediately for Finland to attend a Bolshevik conference and make contact with Lenin.
From then on Stalin remained the aide-de-camp to Lenin whom he deeply admired. It was not long before his zeal for the Communist cause began to forcefully manifest itself.
Stalin Engages in Criminal Activities
In the summer of 1907 Joseph Stalin held a secret meeting with Lenin in Berlin. Afterwards he returned to Tiflis and organized a holdup. It was no mere Robin Hood adventure to steal money from the rich, but a major gangster operation with complete disregard for the lives of men, women, and children in Stalin's own home-town.
A powerful bomb was thrown in front of a convoy carrying money from the post office to the Tiflis Branch of the State Bank. The bomb destroyed the horses pulling the carriage, killed several by-standers, and wounded more than fifty children and adults. In the hysteria which followed, the moneybags containing 341,000 rubles (about $170,000) were snatched from the carriage by the bomb-throwers and hurriedly carried away.
The crime reflected such complete disregard for human life that authorities both inside and outside of Russia attempted to run down every possible clue which would disclose the identities of the criminals. Finally, the money was found in the possession of a close associate of Stalin named Maxim Litvinov (the man Stalin later sent to the United States in 1933 to seek U.S. recognition for Soviet Russia). Litvinov and a companion were arrested in Paris by the French authorities when they tried to change the rubles into francs before sending the money on to Lenin. Details of the crime were finally unraveled by the authorities, and the names of original perpetrators were disclosed. Nevertheless, Stalin succeeded in remaining at large for several more years and continued his revolutionary activities.
Stalin as a Union Organizer, Writer and Bolshevik Leader
The years 1907-1913 were pick-and-shovel years for Joseph Stalin. No one could accuse him of being merely an "intellectual Communist" as they sometimes described Lenin. Stalin learned every trick of propaganda, pressure politics, mass communications, strike techniques and labor agitation. Some of his most significant experiences occurred in the highly active industrial district at Baku. There he was assigned to organize tens of thousands of oil well and refinery workers. To do this he set up a triple-system of legal, semi-legal, and totally illegal organizations. He imposed his leadership so completely on the workers in this large industrial center that he was able to organize a powerful industrial soviet (workers' council) dominated from top to bottom by his own loyal Bolshevik colleagues.
Stalin was never very effective as a speaker because of his strong Georgian accent, but between 1907 and 1913, he became proficient as a revolutionary writer. For awhile he edited a Socialist newspaper in Tiflis called Dio (Time) in which he aroused astonishment even among Bolsheviks because of his bitterness in attacking the Mensheviks. In 1910 he went to St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) and wrote for the Social Democrat, the Zvezda (Star), and later for Pravda (Truth). It was in these periodicals that Joseph Djugashvili first became known by his pen name, "Man of Steel," or Stalin.
In 1912 Stalin received special recognition when Lenin broke away completely from the Social Democrats and set up an independent Bolshevik Party. In the new organization Lenin appointed Stalin to the Central Committee.
With the arrival of World War I, Stalin had no particular desire to escape. He told his friends he would relax and enjoy his "vacation" in Siberia since escape might result in his being drafted into the armed services. He wanted no part of military service.
The Role of Russia in World War I
It will be recalled that the year 1914 found all the major nations of Europe flexing their military muscles. It was inevitable that the slightest miscalculation in diplomatic relations might turn loose a churning volcano of human destruction. The spark in the powder keg was the assassination of the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne by a member of a Serbian secret society. This occurred June 28, 1914.
Austria-Hungary had been looking for an excuse to take over Serbia, and therefore her troops began marching in. This angered the Tsar because Serbia was on his own calendar of conquest so he declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany came to the defense of Austria-Hungary and declared war on Russia. At the time France was an ally of Russia, so Germany used this as an excuse to declare war on France. This brought England into the War as an ally of France. Thus the machine of war began to roll.
From the point of view of the Russian Tsar, the First World War did not come as any particular surprise. For years he had been busily preparing for it by building a powerful military machine. Nevertheless, the Russian people were not psychologically prepared for war.
For nearly a decade there had been a growing tension between the people and the Tsar because he had failed to provide them with the constitutional government which he had promised in the October Manifesto of 1905. Of course, when the people were threatened by attack at the outbreak of World War I, they instinctively banded together in the common defense, and Tsar Nicholas promptly took this as an omen that they would support him loyally throughout the conflict.
But within a few months the strain of war began to tell. By 1915 there were widespread complaints, and by 1916 the Tsar's war machine was sputtering and jerking as it bordered on collapse. In three years Russia had mobilized more than 13,000,000 fighting men, but of these approximately 2,000,000 were killed, approximately 4,000,000 were wounded, and 2,500,000 were taken prisoners. For 24 months the news from the front was consistently bad. Russian armies were pushed out of Galicia, Russian Poland, and part of Lithuania, Serbia and the Dardanelles.
When the Ottoman Empire entered the war it cut Russian foreign trade to a trickle and thereby isolated Russia from the arms and munitions of her allies. Replacement troops sent to the front were often so ill-equipped that some of them had to pick up their rifles from dead soldiers along the way. Lack of ammunition often forced commanding officers to restrict the infantry to a daily ration of no more than four shells per gun.
At this juncture the Tsar was warned by the British Ambassador that the whole Eastern Front might collapse if things did not improve. Desertions from the Russian Army] had reached scandalous proportions and the workers and peasants were threatening revolt. Food shortages were growing because the government was buying grain with paper money which was practically worthless. In the cities the cost of living had tripled while wages had risen only slightly.
But the Tsar could not see any reason for alarm. He had ridden out the revolt of 1905; he intended to do the same now. To demonstrate his complete confidence in the situation, he announced that he would go to the front to cheer the troops with his presence.
What he seemed to forget was the fact that conditions among the people were almost identical with those which precipitated the revolution of 1905. It was far too late to cheer the troops with the Tsar's presence Already the reign of the Tsar was doomed. Though he did not know it, Nicholas II was going to lose the throne in a matter of months, and shortly thereafter, his life.
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1. From a letter of Andrew D. White dated at Berlin, November 9, 1885, in the White Collection, Cornell University.
Chapter Six
How Russia Became a Communist World Power
The history of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the twenty years that followed might well be called the modern New Testament of Marxism. The Communists present it as their historic proof that the theories of Marx can be carried out successfully. Interestingly enough, however, some of the strongest proof against Communism is also revealed in this same epic of history. All of the pertinent facts have been brought together in this chapter so that the student might judge for himself.
A review of the following questions may help to identify some of the problems which frequently arise when this period history is discussed:
Who forced the Tsar to abdicate? Where were the Communist leaders at the time? In what way was the Russian revolution of March, 1917, identical with the Russian revolution of 1905? How did Lenin get back into Russia? Why did the German officers want to help him?
When the national elections were held on November 25, 1917, what percentage of the people voted against Lenin's regime?
What was Lenin's motive in taking Russia out of World War I? Why the treaty he signed with the Germans was called "a great catastrophe for Russia"?
What happened when Lenin applied the theories of Marx to the Russian economy? Why did Lenin order the execution of the Tsar and his family?
What were the circumstances which forced Lenin to abandon many of Marx's favorite theories?
Why did Lenin write from his deathbed that he hoped Joseph Stalin would never be allowed to seize power? What was the purpose of Stalin's first Five-Year Plan?
Why did the Communist Party in Russia try to depose Stalin in December 1932? What saved Stalin?
Why did Stalin execute nearly all the leaders of the Communist Party? By 1938, what did Stalin say he was ready to do?
Tsar Nicholas II and his family in their days of power.
At the feet of the empress is the Tsarevitch. Back row: Grand Duchesses
Anastasia, Titiana and Olga; Marie is at her father's left.
The Russian Revolution of March 1917
It was March 8, 1917, when the swelling spirit of revolution in Russia burst its banks and sent a flood of political indignation streaming after the Tsar and his regime. There was comparatively little violence. The feeling of revolt was so universal that as soon as the signal was given, a quarter of a million demonstrators appeared in the streets of the capital. When the masses of demonstrators had taken over the capital, the revolution automatically swept across the Empire.
This revolution was of vast significance to the entire world. It will be recalled that the spring of 1917 was a highly critical stage of World War I. The United States was just getting into the fight, and France, Britain and Italy were almost exhausted. Because the Western Front was barely holding together against the onslaught of Germany and her Central Powers, the collapse of the Eastern Front with its war machine of several million Russians could have meant unequivocal disaster for the Allies.
The Russian revolution also held great significance for Germany. The Kaiser knew that if Russia withdrew from the war the large German forces in the East could be transferred to the West. This would have given him a vastly superior force capable of smashing all resistance.
But the people behind the Russian revolution never intended to allow the Eastern Front to collapse. Their revolt against the Tsar was to save Russia, not destroy her. As soon as the Provisional Government had been set up, it announced an all-out program to create a democratic, constitutional form of government and to press for vigorous continuation of the war. This restored hope to the western Allies. The United States, England, France and Italy immediately recognized the new regime and the hearts of free people everywhere went out to the new star of freedom which seemed to
be rising over the jubilant people of Russia.
As for the Tsar, it was difficult for him to realize just what had happened. At the beginning of the revolution, Nicholas II categorically refused to admit that his government had disintegrated. When the demonstrations first began he dissolved the Duma (the people's assembly) and ordered the troops to disperse the crowds. Within a week, however, his own ministers were urging him to abdicate since his cause was hopeless.
Not until his generals also urged abdication did he finally capitulate. He and his family were then placed under house arrest at the imperial palace outside of Petrograd. Although the people had suffered greatly under his rule, it was not the intention of the Provisional Government to kill the Tsar but to send him and his family to England as soon as war conditions would permit.
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