act ing-man.co m http://www.acting-man.com/?p=6111 Communism – The Failed Experiment, Part II | January 17, 2011 | Author Pater Tenebrarum Dear Readers, We want to thank all of you who have donated to Acting Man. We are honored by your support. All donations will be used to optimize our services f or you. Should you wish to contribute, press the button below ... An Empire In Disarray – Russia Prior To The Bolshevik Revolution Just as the Marxian theory and ideology must be understood as a product of its time – it was conceived in a time of upheaval that marked the beginning of the end of the monarchies of old Europe, and made use of the statist philosophy of one of these monarchies to establish its scientif ic credentials – so must the actual Bolshevik revolution be seen in the context of its time and place. In hindsight, it almost strikes one as a deplorable 'accident of history', but if Lenin's Bolshevik party had not taken power on November 7 1917, it may well have happened at a later point in time. We will never know f or certain, but it is quite clear that the preconditions that were in place at the time of the revolution were well suited f or its success, even though the Bolsheviks' grip on power was tenuous in the f irst f ew years f ollowing the coup. In order to understand how the Bolsheviks were able to take power, one must look at developments both within and without Russia that ultimately combined to create the ideal environment f or the communist putsch. In the six decades preceding the revolution, the Russian empire became ever more unstable. Being the Czar of Russia meant that one was in one of the world's highest risk occupations – f ollowed closely by the post of Russian minister of the interior, which was at least equally risky. Ironically, the seeds of revolution were initially sown by the enactment of long overdue political ref orms – and a mistake by the czar's censors. The Reformist Czar In 1861, Czar Alexander II f inally ends the serf dom of Russian peasants. This emancipation has long been planned by the counts Michail Speransky, Nikolai Mordvinov and Pavel Kiselyov under Alexander I and Nikolai I's reigns, but is initially shelved in the 1830's due to the resistance of the land-owning nobility. Only Kiselyov lives to f inally see it implemented. What impels Alexander II to take this step is Russia's less than satisf actory perf ormance in the Crimean war. The war brings the backwardness of what is then the last f eudal system in Europe into sharp relief and Alexander hopes that the emancipation of the serf s will lead to the f ormation of a f unctioning market economy and more rapid economic development. As it turns out, the legislation is deeply f lawed. A compromise is struck that is designed to allow the nobility to retain its lavish and costly lif estyle. A complicated compensation scheme is established and the f ormer serf s on private lands f ail to gain enough land to escape their poverty; moreover, they have to repay the state f or the compensation it has paid to landowners. In addition, communal land ownership is established among small peasants, as a result of which small f armers can not dispose of their own small parcels of land, keeping them tied to the land. They can not produce enough to be able to af f ord repayment of the loans received by the government. The nobles in turn have been paid in the f orm of bonds that soon lose much of their value. The lack of education of the rural population proves an additional obstacle to successf ul economic development. In the end, the ref orm f ails to decisively mitigate the social and economic problems of the rural population. In 1872, the f irst f oreign translation of Marx' work 'Das Kapital' appears – in Russia of all places. The czar's censors allow it to be published, as they regard it as a 'strictly scientif ic work'. They don't recognize its potential to f oment resistance to the established power structures and f urther destabilize the political situation. Two years later the f irst socialist 'narodniky' – a movement of idealistic young people inspired by socialistic ideas – swarm f rom the cities to the rural areas to help educate the peasantry, which however does not understand their socialistic doctrines and has little use f or them. Lenin will later publish a paper critical of the narodniky f or their 'misguided romanticism'. One of the f ounders of the short-lived Northern Russian Laborers Association (f ounded in 1878), the carpenter Stepan Khalturin, in 1880 becomes employed at the court of Alexander II. One year earlier, the NRLA has been disbanded by the authorities, upon which Khalturin joins the Narodnaya Volya ('The People's Will'), an underground socialist terror organization. He plants a bomb below the dining room at the Winter Palace, and the czar and his f amily only escape because their guest f or the evening happens to be late. Khalturin thereupon f lees to Moscow and later Odessa. Another assassination attempt on czar Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya f ollows in 1881, and this time it is successf ul. The czar sits in a bullet-proof carriage he has been given by Napoleon III and survives the bomb thrown by the f irst assassin, but there are altogether three assassins armed with bombs in the crowd and as the czar leaves his carriage, the second attempt succeeds. Ironically, Khalturin is executed under orders of czar Alexander III only one year later, af ter his involvement in the assassination of a police general, without being identif ied. He gives his captors a f ake name and they hang him not knowing that he is the man behind the 1880 assassination attempt on Alexander II. Altogether f our assassination attempts were made on Alexander II during his reign, the f irst one in 1866 by the revolutionary Dimitry Karakozov of the Ishutin Society (so named af ter its f ounder Nikolai Ishutin, Karakozov's cousin) and the second one in 1879 by Alexander Soloviev, a f ormer student. The czar's was f ortunate as Soloviev proved very inept at handling a gun, missing in spite of getting of f f ive shots. Ref ormist Czar Alexander II in 1870, the prime of his lif e. He emancipated the serf s, but his land ref orm f ailed to alleviate the economic misery of the peasants. He survived three attempts on his lif e, but the f orth one in 1881 succeeds. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons) Lenin would incidentally later prove a big f an of Khalturin, hanging his photograph next to that of Karl Marx in his of f ice. In 1887, a f atef ul assassination plot on Alexander II's successor czar Alexander III is f oiled. One of the f ive conspirators executed f or it is Lenin's then 21 year old elder brother Alexander Ulyanov. It seems highly likely that Lenin regarded his brother as a role model. Alexander III, a reactionary anti-semitic autocrat, surprisingly manages to die in his bed in 1894, and reportedly asks his son and successor czar Nikolai II to swear that he will retain the Russian monarchy's absolutism. Early socialist revolutionary Stepan Khalturin in the late 1870's, about whom Soviet director Alexander Ivanovsky made a propaganda movie in 1925. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons) The Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905 Throughout 1903, Russia and Japan are negotiating over the status of Korea and Manchuria. Russia has leased Port Arthur, Talienwan and the surrounding waters f rom China to gain a warm water Pacif ic port, as Vladivostok can not be used during the winter. Meanwhile, Russian troops sent to Manchuria during the Boxer rebellion to ostensibly protect railway construction there, are kept hanging around. Japan wants to preserve its inf luence over Korea, regarding it as a vital security buf f er zone. Initially it seems that the two sides should be able to negotiate a settlement, as their positions are not very f ar apart – Russia is to retain its Manchurian presence, while Korea is to essentially become a Japanese protectorate – there are only dif f erences over details. However, Czar Nikolai II (whose of f icial title is 'Emperor and Autocrat over all the Russians') believes that by delaying the negotiations and driving Japan to declare war, he may be able to create an upsurge of Russian patriotism and nationalism in an ef f ort to suppress the increasingly evident revolutionary tendencies. Nikolai reportedly at f irst does not even expect Japan to attack – and in the event of such an attack, he is convinced that Russia will prevail. Both notions prove to be grave miscalculations. For one thing, Nikolai underestimates the logistical dif f iculties of waging war in the Russian f ar East, especially as the Trans-Siberian railway has yet to be f inished. Secondly, in a twist that f oreshadows the dif f iculties Russia will f ace in World War I, the Russian people turn out to be not exactly supportive of war. On the contrary, the war – and the f act that Russia is losing it - provokes an uprising. Nikolai is suddenly f aced with a rising tide of demands f or the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.