Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History

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After his arrival in the capital, St Petersburg, in 1893, Lenin moved much closer to the standard Marxist view—that Russia was only at the start of its capitalist stage and that a democratic movement by the workers in alliance with the bourgeoisie was needed to defeat autocracy before a socialist revolution could commence. No more talk of a coup d'état or terror. It was only after the establishment of a ‘bourgeois democracy', granting freedoms of speech and association to the workers, that the second and socialist phase of the revolution could begin. Books: A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891-1924, Natasha’s Dance: a Cultural History of Russia, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the Language and Symbols of 1917, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia The trope directly aforementioned - people's understandings of the microcosmic nature of their own milieus apropos the larger historic forces that played out following the October Revolution - is one that he commits significant wordage to. This establishes in the reader's mind, a genuine commitment to outlining the impact of vicious fluctuations in Soviet policy on the aspirations of entire generations of people; a concern, in that sense, for the primary stakeholders, who under the negligent, megalomania-driven Party leadership, were repeatedly sidelined and deprioritized throughout the regime's existence. In that sense, Figes' insistence on departing from the party-centric approach of prior historiography is a celebration-worthy epistemological break. Bolshevism has abolished private life, wrote Walter Benjamin on a visit to Moscow in 1927. “The bureaucracy, political activity, the press are so powerful that no time remains for interests that do not converge with them. Nor any space.” People were obliged in many ways to live completely public lives. The revolution did not tolerate a ‘private life’ free from public scrutiny. There were no party politics but everything people did in private was ‘political’—from what they read and thought to whether they were violent in the family home—and as such was subject to the censure of the collective. The ultimate aim of the revolution was to create a transparent society in which people would police them selves through mutual surveillance and the denunciation of ‘anti-Soviet’ behaviour.

What were the causes of the Russian Revolution? When and how did it begin? And what was more important in bringing it about - the social grievances of the peasants and the workers, or the political aspirations of the middle class? In this section we will be asking how stable the Tsarist system really was? We will look at the revolutionaries, including Lenin, and ask how much influence they really had? We will also focus on Nicholas II and ask what role he played in his downfall? You will also find some extracts from books, original photographs and videos, and a reading list. RegisterLenin was particularly influenced by the ‘Jacobinism' of the revolutionary theorist Petr Tkachev (1844–86), who in the 1870s had argued for a seizure of power and the establishment of a dictatorship by a disciplined and highly centralized vanguard on the grounds that a social revolution was impossible to achieve by democratic means: the laws of capitalist development meant that the richer peasants would support the status quo. Tkachev insisted that a coup d'état should be carried out as soon as possible, because as yet there was no real social force prepared to side with the government, and to wait would only let one develop. Making the understanding of what are generally perceived to be complex, dexterous historical processes a far more lucid exercise than it has been before, his amalgamation of social, cultural and at times, anthropological perspectives with traditionally dominant economic and political tropes makes his narrative stand out, towering above older canonical historiography of the Bolshevik tenure in its accessibility and multifaceted engagement. It wouldn't be incorrect, therefore, to argue that he succeeds, largely, in achieving the objective of painting a well-shaded landscape of the intensely variant trials and tribulations of the multifarious classes of people affected by the Soviet regime. Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 (Pelican, 2014) draws from several of Figes’ previous books on the Russian Revolution and Soviet history. It argues that - although it changed in form and character - the Russian Revolution should be understood as a single cycle of 100 years, from the famine crisis of 1891 until the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. The Russian Revolution was long expected but came as a surprise in February 1917. None of its 'leaders' expected it to happen how and when it did. Most revolutions are like that. That's what makes them revolutionary.

In 1997 A People's Tragedy was awarded five major literary prizes: the Wolfson History Prize, the NCR Book Award, the W.H. Smith Literary Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award.Figes’s framework is both insightful and convincing. It allows him to focus not only on the major figures but also on the broader social support mobilised during successive revolutionary cycles. At the same time it helps us to understand some of the mysteries of Soviet history – such as why Gorbachev was willing to go so far in undermining the bureaucracies that held the Soviet system together. Only his roots in the Russian revolutionary tradition can explain his radical, seemingly suicidal policies. The famine crisis gave new life to the revolutionary parties, bringing them supporters, not just from the working class, but from a widening range of liberal professionals, students, writers and other members of the intelligentsia—a caste defined by its sense of debt to and commitment to ‘the people'. The key to that commitment was moral: a stance of uncompromising opposition to the autocracy and a willingness to take part in the democratic struggle against it. This book is not just a history; it is an item of history…Orlando Figes has taken the chance to display the very experience of revolution as it affected millions of ordinary Russians.' The famine crisis undermined that view. Partly caused by the tax squeeze on the peasants to pay for industrialization, the crisis suggested that the peasantry was literally dying out, both as a class and a way of life, under the pressures of capitalist development. Marxism alone seemed able to explain the causes of the famine by showing how a capitalist economy created rural poverty. In the 1890s it fast became a national intelligentsia creed. Socialists who had previously wavered in their Marxism were converted to it by the crisis, as they realized that there was no more hope in the Populist faith in the peasantry. Even liberal thinkers such as Petr Struve found their Marxist passions stirred by the famine: it ‘made much more of a Marxist out of me than the reading of Marx's Capital'.11 It plunged me into another world. I learned so much and was carried away by the intelligence and fluidity of the style - a combination which is unbeatable." (Antonia Fraser)