Lenin's Revolution

Stuart Andrews

Description

An exciting account and analysis of Lenin's role in the Russian Revolution and the creation of the Soviet system.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Humanities eBooks
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847600547
• Langue: English

Extrait

History Insights General Editor: Martyn Housden

Running Head 1

Lenin’s Revolution

Stuart Andrews

‘History will not forgive us if we do not seize power’

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© Stuart Andrews, 2007

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Published byHumanities-Ebooks.co.uk Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE

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ISBN 978-1-84760-054-7

Lenin’s Revolution

Stuart Andrews

History Insights. Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007

Contents

About the author Preface

BACKGROUND 1.1 The Communist Manifesto 1.2 Student revolutionaries 1.3 Lenin’s early Marxism Chapter 2 The Making of a Bolshevik 2.1 Prison and exile 2.2 Revolution by journalism 2.3 Bolsheviks and Mensheviks 2.4 Russian Robespierre? Chapter 3 Dress Rehearsal 1904–1907 3.1 ‘Bloody Sunday’ 3.2 Organising for revolution 3.3PotemkinMutiny 3.4 Fourth Congress (1906) 3.5 Lenin and the Duma

LENIN’S 1917

Chapter 4 Visions in Exile: 1908−1916 4.1 Bolshevik disagreements 4.2 Deîning the Party line 4.3 Malinovsky—secret agent 4.4 International perspectives 4.5 Opposing patriotism 4.6 Redeîning capitalism

Chapter 5 1917: February Revolution 5.1 Absentee revolutionary 5.2 Duma and Soviet 5.3 Leaving Switzerland 5.4Lettersfrom Afar 5.5 The Finland Station Chapter 6 1917: Towards October 6.1 ‘April Theses’ 6.2 ‘All power to the Soviets’ 6.3 July Days 6.4 Kornilov 6.5 ‘History will not forgive us’ 6.6 Relying on Trotsky Chapter 7 Shaping the Revolution 7.1 Armed vanguard 7.2 Towards Brest-Litovsk 7.3 Constituent Assembly 7.4 Saving the Revolution

ASSESSMENT

Chapter 8 Leninist legacy 8.1 Tradition of Terror 8.2 Red Army 8.3 New Economic Policy: reversing priorities 8.4 Revival of bureaucracy 8.5 One-party government 8.6 Communism: home and abroad. 8.7 Government by propaganda

ADDENDA

Lenin’s Revolutionaries: achecklist Guidance on further study: critical bibliography

Lenin’s Revolution 

About the author

Stuart Andrews is now Librarian of Wells & Mendip Museum, UK, after more than 30 years of teaching. His special interest is the way in which slogans, ‘spin’ and full-blooded propaganda—rather than historical real- ity—shape public perceptions of events. Among his recent publications on this theme areThe British Periodical Press and the French Revolution, 1789–99(Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000) andIrish Rebellion: Protestant po- lemic 1798–1900(Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006). He now focuses on the role of slogan-making in the Bolshevik Revolution. Political theorists (he con- cedes) may not themselves orchestrate revolution, but they can provide a ready-made vocabulary with which to justify it.

Preface

What has become of Lenin’s Russia? What is his relevance in a world where ‘Leningrad’ has reverted to ‘St Petersburg’; where President Yeltsin re-builds Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour; and where President Putin attends the Christmas Eucharist of the Orthodox Church, and commends a religion which ‘unites everyone on the basis of traditional moral values and strengthens the moral principles of society’? Much has changed, but Lenin remains important because the Russian Revolution, no less than the French Revolution, has shaped the modern world. My twenty-îrst century account attempts to view Lenin from a post-1989 perspective. It is written for a Europe without the Berlin Wall, and without the USSR. It adopts a largely narrative approach because in revolutions one thing leads to another—and often in unexpected ways. Lenin himself, as Robert Service remarks, was ‘unexpected’. James Maxton, an earlier biographer of Lenin, spelt out this unexpectedness: ‘He was a plain man who had appeared out of obscurity to meet a need felt keenly by 150 millions of people in the armies of Russia, in the factories and streets of Moscow and Petrograd and in the thousands of villages scattered over the vast plains of Russia.’ Modern scholars focus on those 150 millions—‘the revolution from below’—reected in the title of Orlando Figes’sA People’s Tragedy(1996). But this study returns the focus to the revolution’s leader.  Lenin did not conjure up the grievances of workers, soldiers and peasants that made the Bolshevik’s bloodless October coup possible, but he did express the griev- ances, and prescribe remedies, in slogans that made sense to the masses—or at least to the local activists who motivated them. Besides emphasizing the extraordinary phenomenon of Lenin’s practical political achievements, my study focuses on the persuasive gloss which his writings place on every unexpected turn of events. So there are frequent references to theCollected Worksand to the 1917 writings extracted by Slavoj Zizek inRevolution at the Gates(2002).  For the narrative I have drawn widely on pre-1989 historians, but of course the text makes extensive use of recent scholarship, particularly the two following histori- ographical studies:Critical Compendium to the Russian Revolutionedited by Edward

Lenin’s Revolution 8

Acton (1997) andReinterpreting Revolutionary Russiaedited by Ian Thatcher (2006). Other printed sources are indicated parenthetically in the text—with full bibliographi- cal details provided in ‘Guidance on further study’.  Dates are given as in the modern calendar, though ‘February Revolution’ and ‘October Revolution’ are retained. Transliteration of Russian names follows the style of Acton’s Critical Compendium except for using ‘y’ rather than ‘ii’ for înal endings of surnames. Full names of the various brands of revolutionary socialists featured in Lenin’s Revolution are listed separately.