At the end of March, the Cadet minister of foreign affairs, Pavel Miliukov, publicized the Provisional Government’s aims of “liberating” Constantinople, Armenia, northern Persia, and parts of Turkey and Austria. But these same slogans were repeated again and again. The Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority) were the product of a split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903. No single party could claim responsibility for the success of the February Revolution, and the lack of an acknowledged platform or visible leadership has lead to the characterization of the revolution as “spontaneous.” But Trotsky dissects the movement in the chapter “Who Led the February Revolution?” to illuminate the deeper influences that shaped the insurrection. The outbreak of war in 1914 had put a quick halt to a mounting surge of working-class protest throughout Russia, giving way to brief but wild displays of patriotism. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is a long, very complex, and extremely detailed treatment of the remarkably eventful period from February to October of 1917. Russia at the time was at war with Germany as part of an entente or three-country coalition that also included Great Britain and France. Kerensky, now minister of war, with corrupt brilliance summarized the hypocrisy of the petty bourgeois conception of a “defensive” offensive: “You will carry on the points of your bayonets—peace.” From every political side came projections of failure; the offensive clearly was meant to satisfy the Allies and disorganize the left, especially to weaken the fraternization between the Russian and “enemy” troops. However, the aims of the Mensheviks and the reality of the life of the Soviet diverged immediately. This slogan successfully dragged even some of the most dyed-in-the-wool revolutionaries behind it, including some leading Bolsheviks. Without Lenin the crisis, which the opportunist leadership was inevitably bound to produce, would have assumed an extraordinarily sharp and protracted character. The minimum demand: remove Miliukov. The Menshevik paper of June 10 declared, “It is time to brand the Leninists as traitors and betrayers of the revolution.”, After whipping up a sizable hysteria over the prospect of a Bolshevik coup, the soviet banned all demonstrations in Petrograd for three days. At the same hour, and in the same building as the founding of the Provisional Committee, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was convened. masses is customarily represented as an instinctive process, no matter whether they are dealing with an anthill or a beehive. 11 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960), 309–310. He adopted Trotsky’s formulation from 1906 of permanent revolution—that the working class was compelled to lead the bourgeois revolution because of the vacuum left by the decayed bourgeoisie, but in doing so had begun to construct an alternative social order opposed to bourgeois rule. In the early months of World War One the national rulers were able to defuse the class bitterness that had resurfaced in 1912 after years of repression. The common language of Russia’s left was colored by Marxism, “not so much a criticism of capitalist society as an argument for the inevitability of the bourgeois development of the country.” Therefore, the majority “Marxists” (“Compromisers” in Trotsky’s lexicon) saw their role as facilitating the establishment of bourgeois democracy, from which, at some much later date, a real movement for socialism could emerge. THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Leon Trotsky - This is the outstanding Marxist work on the Russian revolution. The lockout not only made the workers favorable to the demand for the control of industry, but even pushed them toward the thought of the necessity of taking the factories into the hands of the state.”. They thought any attempt to pursue an independent working-class path, or to dare to speak of socialism in the near term would doom the revolution. That was one of the most moving scenes of the revolution, now first feeling its power, feeling the unnumbered masses it has aroused, the colossal tasks, the pride in success, the joyful failing of the heart at the thought of the morrow which is to be still more beautiful than today. The so-called leader and master of the Russian Empire had an outlook that “was not broader than that of a minor police official—with this difference, that the latter would have a better knowledge of reality and be less burdened with superstitions.” Most damning are the tsar’s diaries, which chronicle the most tedious banalities of his daily life while Russia convulses. His parents were Jewish farmers. The Compromisers made it possible for the bourgeoisie to assume power after February, and their position within the Soviet Executive Committee allowed them to hold it. The Idea of a Palace Revolution 6. When faced with the question of becoming the sole revolutionary government, the mighty leaders of the soviet replied “We? Leon Trotsky The History of the Russian Revolution VOLUME ONE The Overthrow of Tzarism ONLINE VERSION: Translated by Max Eastman, 1932 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 8083994 ISBN 0913460834 Transcribed for the World Wide Web by John Gowland (Australia), Alphanos Pangas (Greece) and David Walters (United States) 1997 through 2000 At the beginning of July, a new assault, far broader in scope and under more resolution slogans. The Bolsheviks, to be sure, were asserting that the government wanted the war prolonged for the sake of robberies. But the marchers did not themselves enter Tauride Palace to rule a new Russia—the thousands of leaders who produced the revolution returned to the working-class districts and barracks, leaving the halls of power to be occupied by party heads and professional politicians who positioned themselves on the side of the uprising. At the end of October, conquest of power by the Bolsheviks. EBook proofed and reset by Pablo Stern (Britain), 2017, with a new cover inspired by David King's 60th anniversary cover. They were guided by a true national instinct, refracted through the consciousness of men oppressed, deceived, tortured, raised up by revolutionary hope and again thrown back in to the bloody mash. At the level of the shop floor, the worker-cadre fought Menshevism, but in the Tauride Palace, the party center was pulled toward the petty bourgeois slogan of “defense,” and critical support of the Provisional Government. An outline of the key developments of 1917. 2017 … Nor does the myth of the omniscient Central Committee hold; in reality, the party and Lenin were forced to reconsider their fundamental theoretical assumptions about the nature of the revolution because of the logic of the initiatives taken by the working class, including members of their own party. Unbeknownst to the thousands of workers and soldiers who sent delegates to the soviet, members of the Soviet Executive Committee approached the Provisional Committee on March 1 and pressed it to take governmental power into its hands. Thoughts are scientific if they correspond to an objective process and make it possible to influence that process and guide it. He was besides that powerless. We must base ourselves on the consciousness of the masses. They therefore brought the issue before the full Congress of Soviets, then meeting in Petrograd, which approved it. A new edition of Trotsky’s classic is being published by Haymarket Books this year. The Liberals were attempting to continue a war of aggression under the flag of “defending” revolutionary Russia—they even went so far as to claim to be spreading progress and defending national liberation by invading. In confrontations through the day forty protestors were shot. As Trotsky writes in the Preface to the History: "During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Stana dined and took a ride with us. At the first mass meeting soldiers sent their representatives, who were. Leon Trotsky was a leader of the Russian revolution in 1917 and is the author of My Life, The History of the Russian Revolution, and The Revolution Betrayed. In the words of a leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries: “The revolution caught us, the party people of those days, like the foolish virgins of the Bible, napping.” Much of the formal leadership of the left, including the Bolsheviks, was abroad, and the underground organizations had been severely damaged, if not totally shattered, in the right-wing surge that accompanied the opening of the war. Took a walk in a thin shirt and took up paddling again. The first volume is dedicated to the political history of February Revolution and the second to that of October Revolution, with the intention of explaining the relations between these two events. It is thus natural in the February fights the worker-Bolsheviks occupied the leading place. In other words, we were preparing the October Revolution while thinking we were preparing the February.”. The sharpness of the reply is explained by the mood of betrayal: “It had been assumed that, up above, everything was being done to bring peace. But the horsemen, cautiously, in a long ribbon, rode through the corridor just made by the officers…the Cossacks, without openly breaking discipline, failed to force the crowd to disperse, but flowed through it in streams…. But only a small minority of the workers understood that the Bolsheviks were different from other socialist parties…. The following day 25,000–30,000 armed soldiers and workers registered their disagreement. Peasants, and the lower ranks of the middle class, gravitated toward the soviet, as the “masses poured into the soviet as though into the triumphal gates of the revolution. With a self-conscious leadership, the class could move forward to begin constructing a socialist order, based on the spread of revolution to more advanced countries like Germany. Unfortunately they were the hands of Stalin and Kamenev, and they were firmly conservative. Thus it is by no means excluded that a disoriented and split party might have let slip the revolutionary opportunity for many years. But they were just the ones who found the words which no orator could find. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study.” --Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. But his is not the Lenin of Stalinist myth. While many things changed over the months of revolution, these parties stayed true to their chosen allies: the Mensheviks clung at any cost to their liberal bourgeois allies, and the Bolsheviks drew closer to the peasantry through revolutionary action. Few political characters have gotten their comeuppance so fully and so quickly. But even this did not help: standing stock-still in perfect discipline, the Cossacks did not hinder the workers from ‘diving’ under their horses. Trotsky brilliantly captures the tension between the formal leadership in the party center and the party’s broad layer of cadre leading in the streets and localities. Tugan-Baranovsky, an economist who had studied Marx in his youth, a Russian variety of Sombart, wrote on March 10 in the Birzhevoe Vedomosti: “The Turkish revolution consisted in a victorious uprising of the army, prepared and carried out by the leaders of the army; the soldiers were merely obedient executives of the plans of their officers. The soviet represented the sheer force of the mobilized working class and soldiers in their creativity and scope. This blog, updated for the 100th anniversary in 2017, is a summary of the outstanding "History of the Russian Revolution" written by one of its leaders, Leon Trotsky. The Provisional Government found itself caught in a conundrum; with every step toward consolidation or pursuing its own interest, it unleashed the fury of the working class, peasantry, and soldiers, but if it sat idly, the encroachment by the oppressed classes on its power would continue unchecked. Trotsky points as evidence – just from the time he was completing his history in 1932 – to “the Paris Commune, the German and Austrian revolutions of 1918, the Soviet revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria, the Italian revolution of 1919, the German crisis of 1923, the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927, the Spanish revolution of 1931”, to show that “up to now the weakest link in the chain of necessary … Miliukov’s candid exposure of Russia’s ambitions inspired an immediate and red-hot response. 2013, from the on-line version of The History of the Russian Revolution available at the Trotsky Internet Archive. They had every intention of continuing the war and annexing anything they could get their hands on—but they needed to reinvent the rationale for the slaughter. Leon Trotsky(1879 - 1940) was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist who became one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to … The fifth day ended with the collapse of the military’s obedience, the tsar’s abdication, and a mass march to Tauride Palace, which became the new center of power. But no historic class lifts itself from a subject position to a position of rulership suddenly in one night, even though a night of revolution…. This blog contains a summary of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. The world’s largest and most advanced factories existed within a sea of peasants laboring on the land with techniques unchanged for centuries. The conclusion was universal; it welded the masses together and gave them a mighty dynamic force.”. They could not now move forward at all without bumping into this wall erected by themselves, and knocking it over.”. T… They were led by Vladimir Lenin and a group of revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks. The working class leapt from conditions of peasant livelihood directly into the collective urban experience, which included “sharp changes of environment, ties, relations, and a sharp break with the past. The June demonstration was a test of the contending forces in Russia, but a peaceful one. The Death Agony of the Monarchy 7. Ibid., 233. The wavering of the party center in the first days after the revolution was steadied by the return of firm hands to the helm of Pravda. Every two months creates an epoch. The caricature of a party center issuing orders to an obedient, passive membership bears no resemblance to the real history of 1917, when in initial weeks of the revolution militants and worker cadres outpaced the center. Russian Revolution by Unknown Early in October, Trotsky introduced a resolution into the Bolshevik-controlled Petrograd Soviet that called for the formation of a military committee to prepare the “revolutionary defence of Petrograd”. Members of the Bolshevik center argued against this new theory, arguing the democratic revolution had not been completed, and therefore could not move on to a socialist stage. “In reality his ill-luck flowed from the contradictions between those old aims which he inherited from his ancestors and the new historic conditions in which he was placed.”, Russia’s bourgeoisie, who hated the tsar and longed for his wretched court and its superstitions and rituals to be swept away, were paralyzed by fear of a rebellion from below that a palace coup would unleash. The real history defies both the myth of the unity of Lenin and Stalin, and of a monolithic leadership of the Bolsheviks. The soldiers did not want war. This episode has received much attention from both fawning Stalinists and right-wing critics who seek to paint Lenin as the iron hand driving the party. Leon Trotsky was a big part of the Russian Revolution. And in turn the level of self-activity and its direction was shaped by the presence of thousands of worker-cadres of the Bolsheviks. shell-shocked as it were by the insurrection, and still hardly in control of their tongues. Lev Davidovich Bronstein (7 November [ O.S. We do not want the masses to believe us just on our say-so…. Trotsky describes the scene as the soviet delegates viewed the march: The first Bolshevik slogans were met half-laughingly—Tseretelli had so confidently thrown down his challenge the day before. The soldiers felt themselves again deceived. The soldiers turned more decisively to the left, as more proof piled up that the new regime was no different from the old. The Provisional Government was dominated by the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). Almost simultaneously, delegates from the soviet undertook the same project to tell potential protestors to stay away from the Bolshevik demonstration, but were surprised to find themselves unwelcome: “They had assumed the authority of the congress was inviolable, but had run into a stone wall of distrust and hostility…. The illusions that the Compromisers would deliver on the promises of February unwound in the weeks and months leading into the summer. They remained two factions of the same party, more or less united at different periods, until they formally split into two separate parties in 1912. … Of such men, even though they may be illiterate and crude, he is proud; and he wants us to be proud of them. Trotsky was a man that was not afraid of stating his opinion or trying to make a change. May not the cure prove more ruinous than the disease?”, Both the court and the bourgeoisie were held aloft by collaboration with Western capital. Trotsky became involved in Revolutionary work in the late 19th century. At first the bourgeois politicians of the Duma dismissed the massive outpouring of bitterness in the streets, hoping the tsar would smash it. I know the number of years because my elder brother inscribed each of the three volumes with “To Jeff on his 20th birthday”. Neither the soldiers nor the workers would have voluntarily given up their arms. The victory of the Bolsheviks was all the more biting because it “was won on the arena and with the weapons chosen by the enemy.” The most militant workers, regardless of formal party affiliation, were flocking to the Bolshevik slogans and pulling further away from the Compromisers’ influence. But in the workers’ districts, a molecular change was occurring: Workers came to the party committees asking how to transfer their names from the Menshevik Party to the Bolshevik. When the State Duma reopened under the pressure of massive social instability he wrote: “April 14. [For a PDF version of this volume Click Here] Preface 1.

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