History of the Russian Revolution—Volume 1

 

By Leon Trotsky

Published by Haymarket Books

Reviewed by Steven Halpern

I’ve read many books about the history of the world. In my opinion, Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is not only unique, but highly relevant to the politics of the world today. Why do I say this?

Trotsky was not someone who merely studied Russian history. He was a central leader of the Revolution and dedicated his life to the liberation of the working class. So, why was Trotsky’s analysis so different from the methods used by prominent historians?

Anyone who experienced the so-called educational system in the United States is familiar with the arguments that system exposes students to. The basic argument is that the United States is a great and democratic nation that is unique in the world. Yes, there were some bumps in the road, but the greatness of this country has overcome whatever problems there might have been in the past.

Then, there is the book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This book demystified most of those arguments. The authors Howard Zinn and Adam Hochschild are two authors who also demystified the history of this country. However, Leon Trotsky looked at history from a different perspective.

For Trotsky, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were pioneers of a movement that analyzed the capitalist system and worked to advance a movement to liberate humanity from the ravages of capitalist exploitation. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin continued the work of Marx and Lenin and was the central leader of the Russian Revolution.

The basic Marxist argument is that the essence of the capitalist system is a conflict between capital and labor. The working class has produced literally every commodity that has ever been produced in the world. Yet, for each and every one of those commodities, capitalists took a share of the wealth that was produced. While the capitalists produce nothing, they are the ones who control the environment workers experience on the job every day. 

I’m writing this blog in October and November is the so-called election time of year. This means that everyone is being barraged with claims by capitalist politicians arguing that they are dedicated to supporting our interests. While they make these nonsensical claims, there are 42 million people in the United States who do not have enough food to eat. Yet, there are four individuals who each own over $100 billion in assets. 

So, while politicians spend a lot of money arguing that they are our friends, in reality their priority is to support the interests of the billionaires who never produce any of the goods and services we need or want. In fact. Every penny of their wealth comes from the labor of workers all over the world.

Leon Trotsky understood this profound contradiction. He wasn’t about merely reporting the events of history. Trotsky took the side of workers, farmers, and soldiers. In his reporting the events of the Russian Revolution, he analyzed what was happening from the perspective of the working class and their allies.

Russia before the Revolution

Trotsky believed that it was essential to understand the peculiarities of the reality of Russia before the Revolution. In the East, Russia was made up of a highly underdeveloped region that was influenced by the Asian monarchies of China and Japan. In the West, Russia was influenced by Europe, and there were highly advanced factories that employed thousands of workers in the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

This meant that industrial workers were ruled by a feudal monarch known as the tzar. In the year 1905 the contradictions of this system came to a head. Thousands of workers went on strike, and many demonstrated demanding that the tzar make some basic concessions. The tzar responded by calling out the cavalry known as the Cossacks. That military confrontation led to the murder of hundreds or thousands of workers. 

In the United States we haven’t seen that kind of repression. Yes, police have been known to fire tear gas at demonstrators. In the rebellions in the Black community in the 1960s many people were murdered by the National Guard. However, demonstrations erupted protesting the murders of George Floyd and many others by the police. While the police brutally responded to some of those demonstrations, we didn’t see mass murdered as there was in St. Petersburg in 1905.

While we protest abuses by the police today, vicious abuse by the police in tzarist Russia was routine. Members of the secret police known as the Okhrana routinely attended meetings held by people or organizations that protested the rule of the tzar. By merely saying things that might be interpreted as being critical of the tzar, one could be arrested, convicted in a court, and sent to Siberia. Lenin and Trotsky both served time in Siberia because of their political activities.

Farmers known as peasants routinely lived under the thumbs of the landowners. Those landowners disciplined peasants with a whip known as the knout. It was also legal for a landowners to murder peasants.    

These were some of the reasons for the Russian rebellion of 1905. These were also the years of an international crisis for the capitalist system of the world. Just as there was a rebellion in Russia, rebellions also erupted in China, Mexico, and Iran. 

Then, in 1914 the tzar ordered the Russian military to join in the allied powers in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War. Millions of Russian soldiers would be murdered in that war, more than in any other country. The war also caused widespread famine.

This is how Trotsky described the reality faced by those who lived in the Russian cities. “The standard of living of the city masses oscillated between undernourishment and hunger.”

Faced with these conditions, the Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna gave to her husband the Czar Nicholas II the following advice. “Bring your fist down on the table. Be the boss.” “Everything is getting quiet and better, but the people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, ‘Russia loves to feel the whip. That is their nature.’”

Then, after the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917 The Czar was the one who felt the hand of the working class. As he attempted to flee the capital Petrograd, workers express their outrage at his rule and arrested him.

Then, the new Chairman of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky, offered to take the Czar to Britain where he would be protected. However, the workers who were guarding the Czar refused to release him. How and why did this profound change take place.

The February Revolution

So, here we can begin to see why there was a profound change in the consciousness of the working class, the peasantry, and the rank-and-file soldiers. In the year 1905, Cossacks murdered hundreds of workers who protested the conditions they faced. That effectively put an end to the 1905 rebellion. This is not what happened in February of 1917 in Petrograd.

Trotsky argued against historians who argued that what happened in February of 1917 was a spontaneous uprising. This is what Trotsky had to say.

“The crowd is not only bitter, but audacious. This is because, in spite of the shooting, it keeps its faith in the army. It counts on victory and intends to have it at any cost.” 

Why did Russian workers have so much faith in the army? This is what Trotsky had to say.

“The authorities said that the revolution intoxicated the soldier. The soldier it seemed, on the contrary, that he was sobering up from the opium of the barracks. Thus, the decisive day was prepared—the 27th of February.” 

Out of this atmosphere Trotsky makes the following conclusion.

“But, out of this complicated web of material and psychic forces, one conclusion emerges with irrefutable clarity: the more the soldiers in their mass are convinced that the rebels are really rebelling—that this is not a demonstration after which they will have to go back to the barracks and report, that this is a struggle to the death, that the people may win if they join them, and this winning will not only guarantee impunity but alleviate the lot of all—the more they realize this, the more they are willing to turn aside their bayonets, or go over with them to the people. In other words, the revolutionists can create a break in the soldiers’ mood only if they themselves are actually ready to seize the victory at any price whatever, even the price of blood.
And this highest determination never can, or will, remain unarmed.”

Dual Power

After the February Revolution removed the Czar from power, the ruling forces in the country were the Soviets (workers’ councils) and the Provisional Government. Several political parties that claimed to have a socialist orientation dominated the Soviet. The Bolsheviks were in a small minority. The Provisional Government was dominated by political parties that supported capitalist interests.

The fundamental problem at this time was that while a revolution had been successful, those forces who had power were determined not to make any fundamental change. The war that cost the lives of millions, continued. Famine continued to be a fact of life. There was no redistribution of the land that the peasants were demanding.

However, the capitalists continued to demand that the provisional government support their interests. In fact, Trotsky quoted a capitalist who had the same perspective as the Czarina. He argued, “only a firm hand can save Russia.”  

Trotsky gave this analysis of the reality of the property owners after the February Revolution. “The property holders, deprived of the possibility of using their property, or protecting it, ceased to be the real property holders and became badly frightened philistines who could not give any support to the government for the simple reason that they needed support themselves. They soon began to curse the government for its weakness, but they were only cursing their own fate.”

While the capitalists were demanding that the Provisional Government defend their interests, workers and farmers were demanding, “Peace, Bread, and Land.” Kerensky, who was one of the leaders of the Provisional Government responded to that reality with the following words. “The policies of the revolutionary government ought never to offend anybody unnecessarily.” 

Lenin returns and transforms the revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was living in Switzerland when the revolution erupted in February of 1917. At this time, Germany was at war with Russia and Lenin along with several of his comrades received permission from the German government to travel through enemy lines and return to their homeland. 

Lenin was welcomed by the workers in Petrograd when he arrived in April of 1917. While his organization, the Bolsheviks, were a relatively small party, the workers of the city gave Lenin a resounding welcome. This was based on the fact that while the Bolsheviks were a small Party, they had a consistent record of support for the workers movement. 

At that time, the Bolsheviks had a position that was similar to the other political parties. They believed that Russia needed to go through a capitalist period before socialism would be a possibility. In fact, the leading Bolsheviks argued for a block with parties like the Mensheviks because they believed that their programs were similar.

On his return to Russia, Lenin argued, “the people will turn their weapons against the capitalist exploiters… The Russian Revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!” He also made it clear that he favored an end to the war. 

Stankevich, a supporter of the Provisional Government who listened to Lenin’s speech had this to say. “A man who talks that kind of stupidity is not dangerous. It’s a good thing he has come. Now he is in plain sight…Now he will refute himself.”

Lenin’s ideas were indeed new. Even leading Bolsheviks had been promoting a completely different political course. Many workers who welcomed Lenin would eventually oppose his demand for ending the war. 

Lenin eventually won the Bolsheviks to his political orientation. He argued that what was necessary was to patiently explain. Within just a few months rank and file workers, farmers, and soldiers became ardent defenders of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky summarized this transition with the words, “A revolution teaches, and teaches fast.”

In the following passage Trotsky showed how the Bolsheviks were different from the Mensheviks who claimed to be socialists. “The Bolsheviks took the lead in arresting tzarist officials; The Mensheviks opposed ‘excesses.’ The Bolsheviks energetically undertook the creation of a workers’ militia; the Mensheviks delayed the arming of the workers, not wishing to quarrel with the bourgeoisie.”

Conclusion

These are some the ideas in Trotsky’s first volume of the History of the Russian Revolution. The second and third volumes will concentrate of how the Bolsheviks organized to lead the October 1917 Russian Revolution.

In this first volume there is a considerable amount of information that I believe is relevant to the world today. This book shows how many opponents to the tzar who favored socialism became obstacles to the demands of workers, farmers, and soldiers. 

Today politicians like Bernie Sanders claim to be friends of labor. He has spoken at strikes and demonstrations by workers. 

However, Bernie Sanders is a millionaire, and he didn’t get that money because he is a friend of labor. While he makes statements that appear to be friendly to the aspirations of workers, he never argues for a workers’ government that would work to replace the capitalist system we live with today. The Russian Revolution was a clear example of why that kind of government is necessary.  

Joseph Stalin betrayed the Russian Revolution at a time when that nation was experiencing it most difficult years. Stalin was one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks who favored forming a block with the Mensheviks before Lenin’s return to Petrograd. During the time when Lenin became incapacitated, Stalin continued to support a Menshevik perspective without saying so openly. Eventually he would argue that the thought of Russia supporting the international revolution was “nonsense.” 

Today Vladimir Putin’s horrendous invasion of the Ukraine is just one example of where the politics of Joseph Stalin will lead. Stalin mislead people into believing that he supported the politics of Lenin. Putin makes no such claim and has made it clear that he hates everything Lenin stood for. 

Before I go on to read the second and third volumes of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, I will be reading Adam Hochschild’s new book American Midnight—The Great War, a violent peace, and democracy’s forgotten crisis. This book looked at the unvarnished history of the United States during the same years as the Russian Revolution. By looking at the information in this book, perhaps I can put the Russian Revolution in a bit of an international perspective.