Dimitri’s Reviews > The Russian Revolution > Status Update

Nicolas like Louis XVI tought he was facing a rebellion not a revolution. He believed disorder could be quelled by force.
The Duma saw only themselves as capable of restoring order, but their political consessions had the opposite effect of transforming by 1 March the mutiny into a national contest between Duma & Petrograd Soviet.. with an irrelevant Tsar.

(Alltough) February Revolt is often depicted as a worker revolt it's important to emphasise that it was first & foremost a mutiny of peasant soldiers whom the authorities had billeted in overcrowded facilities in the Empire capital city. LIke kindling wood near a powder keg, these reservists born in the 1880s carried in their bones 3 centuries of serfdom, obeying only as long as there was mandatory punishment.

Time was running out in late '16: the opposition felt they were racing against the clock, the question was no longer if but when and IN WHAT FORM a revolution would occur, from above as a coup d'état directed by themselves or from below as a spontaneous and uncontrollable mass revolt.

Thus in the midst of war a new Russia was quietly taking shape within the semi patrimonal state, resembling the vigorous growing of saplings in the shade of an old decaying forest. The participation of citizens without rank in government institutions & the introduction of worker representatives into industrial management were symptom of a silent revolution, effectively to meet actual needs instead of utopian visions.

The court and its bureaucracy both civilian and military were determined not to allow "society" to profit from the war to enhance its political influence. Deep in their hearts the entourage continued to regard Russia as the dynasty's private domain & to treat every manifestation of patriotic concern on the part of the population as "meddling".

The socialists thus entered the First & Second Duma for the explicit purpose of sabotaging legislative work & disseminating revolutionary propaganda under the protection of parliamentary immunity. A new electoral law favored the propertied classes by using assets rather than legal status as the criterion of franchise, in the Russian tradition of integrating every independent institution into the state system.

The agrarian unrest of 1905-06 had 2 consequences. Henceforth the Muzhik no longer looked to the Tsar to give him the land he coveted, but to the Duma and the liberal & radical parties. Second, the peasants of Central Russia succeeded in smoking out many landlords who, frightened of the assault on their property, disposed of their estates & cleared out. The peasantry was now the largest purchaser of land.

Thus before a Marxist movement had emerged, the theories of its founders were interpreted, with their sanction, when applied to an autocratic regime in an agrarian country, to mean a revolution brought about, not by the inevitable social consequences of mature capitalism, but by terror and coup d'etat.

The Russian liberals found leverage with the Tsar in this threat, but it was a gross miscalculation in the end.

The emergence of the People's Will (1879) marks a watershed in the history of the Russian revolution. For one, It established violence as a legitimate instrument of politics, enlightenment & persuasion were rejected as futile & even counterproductive. But even more important was the arrogation by the revolutionary intelligentia of the right to decide what was good for the people....

The critical factor in the underdevelopment of a durable & functional village structure, the reason for this fluidity was, as in the case of the household, the absence of traditions of primogeniture. [?]