Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the early part of the twentieth century Russia lived through three revolutions in the course of 12 years. The workers and peasants who made these revolutions initially conceived of their goals as a liberal (capitalist) democracy to replace the absolute monarchy and agrarian reform to distribute the vast estates of the nobility among the land-hungry peasants. As such, the tasks of the revolution in Russia resembled those carried out by the great French Revolution of 1789–94 . But the problem was that both Russia and the world were very different places in 1917 from France and its world in 1789. In the intervening 125 years capitalism had developed rapidly, creating large-scale industry and a large propertyless working class that depended on the sale of its labor to live. And although Russia lagged behind the West in these developments, it had nevertheless also undergone significant change. Because of this, the revolution in Russia was able ultimately to win only by assuming a more radical character than that in France. It would overthrow not only the monarchy but capitalism too. The roots of this radical transformation lay deep in the country's history and social and political structures. An understanding of Russia's revolutions must begin with an analysis of the nature of the tsarist state, its relation to the social classes that made up Russian society, and the various interests ... log in or subscribe to read full text