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Russian History - Coggle Diagram
Russian History
Lecture Three: Civil War, Party-State and Counter-Revolution, 1917-21
What was the crisis of 1918?
The regime's survival seemed unlikely due to weakness in the countryside.
Nationalist secessionists in borderlands threatened unity.
The ongoing war with Germany led to significant territorial concessions (Brest Litovsk forced them to concede Ukraine).
Anti-Bolshevik forces were organising themselves and raising armies.
The execution of the former tsar and his family in July 1918 stirred controversy.
What were the civil war factions that emerged?
Reds (Bolsheviks)versus Whites (anti-Bolshevik forces).
Whites were fragmented, including conservatives and socialists.
To Lenin and the Bolsheviks, anyone who opposed them was serving the bourgeois cause.
Foreign intervention by Britain, France, the US and Japan aimed to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
Peasant armies (Greens) defended their land whilst Blues were nationalist secessionists.
What did Bolshevik propaganda falsely claim?
There was no alliance between the peasants and the workers as propaganda claimed.
Stalin had to collectivise agriculture (semi-slavery) which took mass violence and the full capacities of the state.
At this moment, the peasants are autonomous agents, not under the influence of other political movements.
What was baffling from a Marxist perspective following the war?
How did the Bolsheviks win the civil war?
Controlled the economic heartlands of Moscow and St Petersburg
The Whites were politically disorganised which worked in their favour
Anti Bolshevik forces looked like representatives of the old order, wanting to restore the monarchy, the empire and land to the gentry.
Shifted the capital to Moscow for strategic advantage
Built a modern standing army and improved their military strategy.
What was the aftermath of the civil war?
Hundreds of thousands of deaths (
800 000
) on the Red side alone, led to famine (5-7 million deaths)
Bolshevik victory in urban centers contrasted with peasant control of the countryside, fate of borderlands remained uncertain.
How did the Bolsheviks establish a Party State system?
Overlapping powers of the party and state, no clear separation. The state was secondary to the party.
Lenin commanded great authority in this time and to many people's surprise, successfully governed.
Inherited to bureaucratic apparatus of the tsarist state.
- Included many bureaucrats/officials: the sociological reality of the revolution differed from the ideological narrative. They eventually became the Communist Party elites.
- The Communist Party evolved from a revolutionary organisation to a parallel state apparatus.
What was the party-state?
The Communist Party and state apparatus became intertwined at the level of personnel and parallel instituions.
But the state was subordinated at all levels.
The Party was primary to the state.
What was the War Communism economy?
Involved the nationalisation of industry and a state monopoly on trade.
Grain confiscations and one-man management tightened state control.
The Red Army led by Trotsky enforced state authority.
What was the Red Terror?
A period of mass terror enforced after an assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918, facilitated by the cheka, secret police. It was a period of mass arrests and executions.
Politics was once again illegal.
Counterrevolutionary: everyone who disagreed with/criticised the regime
Larger and more repressive than the tsarist secret police!
Executions, concentration camps and prisons targeted dissenters.
Estimated up to 200 000 executions occurred between 1918 and 1923.
What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?
Rebellion in Kronstadt demanded power to the Soviets and new elections.
Bolsheviks suppressed the rebellion, branding rebels as counterrevolutionaries.
Revealed discontent with Bolshevik rule and resulted in violent suppression
.
How was Lenin's regime?
Characterised by fear and clamping down on dissent. The only reason he wasn't as harsh as Stalin is because he didn't have use of the same resources. He made widespread use of the secret police, which was larger and more repressive than that of the tsarist era.
Ideological continuity with the tsarist regime in terms of authoritarian rule and repression.
Reflections: Was Lenin better than Stalin?
No - both had rules characterised by repression of dissent and authoritarianism. Western narrative of 'Good Lenin, Bad Stalin', but this isn't true. Lenin would have been just as bad as Stalin if he could have, and caused widespread death and destruction as it was.
Was there continuity or discontinuity with the tsarist regime?
Both -
Continuity in the sense that widespread repression continued, the new party-state inherited the old bureaucratic apparatus of the old regime and many key officials remained the same, as well as the use of the cheka (which was even more repressive than before)
Discontinuity in the sense that there was an ideological shift away from the old regime in favour of socialism, capitalist economic systems were rejected
and the existence of the communist party
.
What is the tragedy of the revolution?
The search of social justice ended in greater injustice.
Lecture One: Imperial Russia and the Challenges of Industrial Modernity
What impact did the Schism have on Russia?
Split of the Orthodox Church from the state, led to Russian society becoming less religious and looking ahead to modernisation attempts instead.
Peter I wanted greater control over the church for state purposes like education and social welfare.
Aimed to modernise Russia and moved the capital to Saint Petersburg.
What do Slavophiles argue?
Believe in preserving traditional Russian institutions like the Orthodox church.
Reject Western materialism and bourgeois culture.
Believe the West is technologically more advanced but Russia is spiritually superior.
Russia has a unique mission and destiny.
Oppose Western hegemony.
What is the parallel debate here amongst Western scholars of Russia?
Debate over whether Russia is European or Asian (Oriental Despotism),
or sui generis.
Was the totalitarian Soviet society a logical outcome of Russian history, a deviation rooted in the Russia tradition, or imported?
What are the foundations of Russian civilisation?
Shared East Slavic language and use of Cyrillic alphabet since the 15th century.
Shared religion: The Orthodox Church
Shift of power to Moscow after the Mongol sacking of Kiev in 1240.
Moscow (Muscovy) styled itself as the 'third Rome' and became the political and religious Orthodox Christian center.
What is autocracy?
Absolute rule of the tsar, derived from Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.
Facilitated resource mobilisation across
a vast expanse of land.
What is serfdom?
Legally tied peasants to the land, forcing them to work for the aristocracy
or state
in exchange for protection.
Peasants lived in communes, collectively owning and redistributing land.
What type of state was the Russian Empire in the 17th/18th century?
A fiscal military state, capable of exerting enormous influence across the expanse of land it occupied
and extracting resources for military power
.
What did Peter the Great do in the Great Northern War (1700-21)?
Adopted a new military strategy.
Built a standing army and navy
A more meritocratic system of civilian and military ranks - 'the table of ranks'.
Reorganisation of the bureaucracy, creation of a central fiscal administration.
Expanded industry and infrastructure.
Invited foreign specialists to transmit European knowledge.
Was this strategy effective?
Yes - Russia won the war.
Renamed the state the Russian Empire.
What was the shock of industrialisation?
Many Western European countries began to industrialise very fast, leading to the Great Divergence. Russia was perceived to be lagging behind as a result and could no longer seriously compete with the technological advancements of the West.
The defeat in the Crimean War was a wake-up call (1853-56)
There were challenges in adapting serfdom and autocracy to industrialisation.*