REVOLUTION IN ESSENCE, FAILURE IN FORM
In 1922, the Russian civil war ended in the Bolshevik’s favor, but it came at a heavy cost to the newly formed USSR. Cracks began to show immediately within the government as Stalin and Lenin bickered over everything from nationalism to economics. For a federation founded on anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, and a commitment to security, economic freedom, and national development, very few of these effects would be felt. The USSR was not dramatically different from the Russian empire it replaced because it still was dealing with the same issues of civil unrest, economic policy, and regional division.
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One of the first goals of the Bolsheviks was to pull out of the Great War and bring peace to Russia, and though Russia ended their participation in the war, peace was far from realized. With the war at its violent climax in 1917, the socialist revolution and power grab began. The February Revolution was a strike turned political insurrection that ended with the abdication of the emperor and the fall of the old regime. The emperor was replaced by a provisional government set up by the Duma, supplemented with a socialist council of workers. Over the coming months, these groups competed with one another, and Lenin, who viewed the February Revolution as the precursor to a socialist takeover, prepared for the socialist revolution by building Bolshevik influence in Petrograd and Moscow. Anti-war propaganda was some of the most effective marketing to build support for the Bolshevik Party. In October, the Bolsheviks, who had gained the support of the military, stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew the provisional government. The revolution was in full swing, but it brought anything but peace. Russia pulled out of the Great War in the spring of 1918, only to become entrenched in a civil war that would leave 8-15 million dead over the next three years. It turned out that the Bolsheviks had more enemies than they had supporters and the Bolshevik Extraordinary Committee, or the Cheka, was founded to silence dissenters. The Cheka’s first order of business was to execute the entire Romanov family–men, women, children, and even the family’s servants. After several attempts at Lenin’s life, mirroring the brutality of his own party, the Red Terror that would plague the country through the end of the civil war began targeting nobility, bourgeoisie, Cossacks, clergy, and anyone who dared to challenge the Bolsheviks. Within two months, 10,000-15,000 had been executed. The Bolsheviks showed their true colors, and that color was blood red. The violence of the Red Terror extended particularly harshly against the Cossacks, who had been loyal to the autocracy. They continued to be a symbol of the power of the autocracy, and thus challenged the Bolsheviks and had to be eliminated. The Cossacks fought back violently, but were eventually suppressed. The violence which continued at every aspect of Bolshevik control shows that nothing had changed. Russia had been removed from the violence of the Great War, but that had simply been exchanged for the much more destructive and violent nature of a brutal civil war and political executions.
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The next point that shows the USSR was not successful in changing Russia completely, is that the economic policies were not truly socialist in nature. During the civil war, the government implemented a policy known as War Communism to legalize the requisition of resources from peasants including food and horses for the military. War Communism led to a lack of motivation to produce crops and created widespread famine across the country. In 1921, this came to a boiling point as 50,000 peasants united in the Tambov Army under Alexander Antov and rose up against the Bolsheviks. This uprising, along with the Kronstadt sailor strikes, led to the Cheka declaration of total war against the Russian people. War Communism devastated the countryside, and the post civil war world. The New Economic Policy (NEP) opened a market economy for agriculture, entirely counterintuitive to everything for which the Bolsheviks had fought. Lenin, the main advocate for the temporary reintroduction of a markets to revitalize the economy, died in 1924, and its dissenters, namely Stalin and Trotsky, had the NEP completely dissolved by 1928. It became apparent that civilian lives meant very little to the new regime, but without even accomplishing its economic goals, it is difficult to consider it a definite change or improvement from the old autocracy.
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Finally, the USSR remained regionally divided and ruled by a small group as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ morphed into a dictatorship by Stalin. In 1920, still in the thick of civil war back home, Lenin was already looking at expanding the socialist revolution to the East. The First Congress of the Peoples of the East convened to promote the spread of socialism and the creation of a socialist federation between Russia and Asia. At this same time, revolutionary academies, such as the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, spread across the USSR. These institutes were designed to train the next generation of socialist revolutionaries, or socialist missionaries, to lead revolutions in their home countries. Concurrently, Russia’s millions of orphans, a consequence of years of world and civil war, were ushered into educational labor colonies to be trained in communist ideology and encouraged to join the Young Communist League. These three educational tactics for spreading Bolshevik ideals were moderately successful, but like all good things, Stalin found reason for concern. As quickly as efforts were made to spread communism outside of Russia, Stalin became wary of the nationalization of socialism. Stalin’s vision for communism looked a bit more like imperialism, as he thought that all socialist revolutions should be united under Russian influence. In 1923, Stalin cracked down on Muslim National Communism for violating the Bolshevik policy of atheism. The 1926 census further divided the USSR into territories by ethnicity and nationality. This only highlighted differences in the USSR and fostered opposition between groups. The divisions and lack of a coherent plan to unify left the USSR weak and indecisive.
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The USSR was doomed from the beginning as it lacked a central character. The federation was full of contradictions that weakened it and left it unable to provide to any of the improvements on the former regime that it promised. The USSR was still a violent and war-ridden place, the promised socialist economic policies left something to be desired, and the republics were as divided as ever, as was Russia from the rest of the world.