Lenin and the October RevolutionAfter the outbreak of World War I, a second bourgeois-democratic revolution broke out in Russia in February 1917, when the workers of Petrograd took to the streets because of the prolonged war and famine, and the troops sent to suppress it mutinied on the spot. In a matter of days, Tsar Nicholas II lost control of his army and the country. The Tsar was forced to abdicate. A bourgeois provisional government was set up in Petrograd. In the February Revolution, the workers and soldiers were the main force against the Tsar, and the bourgeoisie did not lead this revolution. After the success of the revolution, the workers and soldiers organized their own leading body: the soviets. The bourgeoisie had no power in the soviets. The arms were also in the hands of the soviets of workers and soldiers. The soviets held real power, but there was a provisional government over them. There was a juxtaposition of the bourgeois Provisional Government and the Soviets of Soldiers' Deputies. The Mensheviks were the majority of the soviets. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, suffered repression as a result of the war, but at that time, most of the Bolshevik leaders were still in prison and in exile, with Lenin in Switzerland at this time and Stalin still in exile. The lack of political experience of the mass of workers and peasants led to the leadership of the soviets being stolen by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who supported the bourgeoisie in setting up the Provisional Government. In the soviets elected by the soldiers, who were mainly composed of peasants, the Social Revolutionaries (a petit-bourgeois party), on the other hand, were in the majority, as the Social Revolutionaries had traditionally had more prestige among the peasants. These Mensheviks were second revolution theorists. They believed that Russia was still in the stage of bourgeois-democratic revolution and that it was still necessary to cooperate with the bourgeois Provisional Government for land and democratic reforms. Thus they supported the Provisional Government. The Social Revolutionaries came from the upper echelons of the petty bourgeoisie and they tended to follow the bourgeois Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks also adopted the Menshevik policy of supporting the Provisional Government before Lenin returned to Petrograd. The workers and soldiers did not trust the Provisional Government, but trusted their leaders. The authority of the Provisional Government was based on the support of the Soviet leaders. Lenin called this a "dual regime". The Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie continued to carry on its criminal imperialist wars, to enslave the masses of the working people, and to extinguish the flames of the revolution by all means. On April 17, 1917, Lenin gave a report on "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution" at a meeting of the Bolsheviks, which became known as the "April Program". The April Program established for the Bolsheviks the line of transition from the bourgeois democratic revolution to the socialist revolution and pointed out the future of revolutionary development. It put forward the task of transition from bourgeois democratic revolution to socialist revolution. His arrival revolutionized the Bolshevik policy of supporting the Provisional Government. Lenin's genius lay in the courage to revise impractical theories to meet the challenges of reality. In Russia after the February Revolution, the Provisional Government could not fulfill the task of democratic revolution. The peasants either followed the Provisional Government or supported the dictatorship of the proletariat, who had no independent political program. Either the proletariat seized power and started the socialist revolution in Europe; or the Provisional Government was victorious and buried the fruits of the February Revolution, there was no middle way. The change in Bolshevik policy not only split itself, but also the camps of the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionary Party. A part of the internationalist Mensheviks and left-wing Social Revolutionaries joined the Bolsheviks. All the Regional Unionists under Trotsky also joined the Bolsheviks. The Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie ventured to attack the armies of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires on July 1, in a bid to annihilate the revolution by war. This risky attack was a crushing defeat, with the Russian army losing 60,000 men in ten days. The news of the defeat at the front reached the capital, and the workers and soldiers were in an agitated state. The workers and soldiers of Petrograd and the rest of the revolutionary masses took to the streets on July 16, 1917, demonstrating for the return of all power to the Soviets. The Provisional Government sent troops to carry out a bloody crackdown, in which more than 600 workers were killed or injured. This was the famous July Bloodshed Incident. This massacre made the people further realize that the violence of the revolution must be used to defeat the violence of the counter-revolution. on July 26, a coalition government headed by Kerensky was set up to carry out a total suppression of the workers and the Bolshevik Party, and the White Terror enveloped the whole country. The Bolshevik Party went underground, the juxtaposition of the two regimes came to an end, and the Russian Revolution entered a new phase.
Editing the cruiser Avror
The world-famous cruiser Avror At 21:45 p.m. on November 7, 1917, the night of the 25th day of the 10th month of the Russian calendar. The cruiser "Avror" opened the Great October Revolution of the USSR with the sound of its guns hitting the Winter Palace, thus making it a shining symbol of the October Revolution. "The cruiser Avror was originally a cruiser of the Russian Baltic Fleet, with a length of 124 meters and a breadth of 16.8 meters, and was put into active service in 1903, and in May 1905, it took part in the Battle of Tsushima between Russia and Japan. "Aphrodite" means "dawn" or "light", in Roman mythology, "Aphrodite" is the goddess of the morning. On October 24, 1717 (November 6) all the officers and men of the ship carried out the order of the Revolutionary Military Committee to bring the cruiser Avror to the Nikolaev Bridge (Lieutenant Schmidt's Bridge), and at 10:00 a.m. on November 7 (October 25) Lenin, in the name of the Revolutionary Military Committee, drafted a draft of the "Revolutionary Military Committee". Lenin, in the name of the Revolutionary Military Council, drafted a "Message to the Citizens of Russia", which was broadcast to the whole country from the "Avror". At 21:45 that night, the cruiser Avror shelled the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government, announcing the beginning of the October Revolution. In 1923, the ship was converted to a practice ship. When fascist Germany attacked Leningrad during the Soviet Patriotic War, nine of the ship's main guns were dismantled and deployed on the outskirts of the city to form the "Independent Special Artillery Company of the Baltic Fleet" to hold the defense. The 10th gun, together with its commander and battery, remained on board to face the battle. The cruiser Avror sank in the harbor in a critical situation, but was salvaged later in the war and restored in 1944. Since November 1948, it has been permanently moored on the banks of the Neva River in Leningrad as a monument to the October Revolution and as a branch of the Central Military Museum, where it can be visited and admired. The ship was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1927 and the Order of the October Revolution in 1968.
Edited background
Bolsheviks painted by a Russian artist in 1920
The Tsarist Era
Peter Stolypin came to power from 1907 onwards, and politically relied on iron-fisted policies to uphold the Tsarist dictatorship and brutally suppressed liberals and socialists. Economically, he implemented the policy of oligarchic capitalism and land privatization reforms, which realized the rapid growth of the Russian economy. However, due to the extreme injustice of his predatory privatization reforms, the underclass did not benefit too much from the development of the economy, and on the contrary, a considerable portion of the peasants suffered from the damage of their private property, and the degree of social dissatisfaction rose sharply. Since the Empress of Russia at that time, Alexandra Feodorovna, was a German (the Alexian Countess of Hesse and the Grand Duchy of the Rhine) and had sent a telegram to the front during the war asking the Emperor to declare an armistice, and since the Empress Faction stalwart, Rasputin, had also been strongly opposed to the idea of Russia going to war with Germany in 1914, the result was that Russia's involvement in a series of military defeats against Germany in the aftermath of the First World War caused the Empress Faction to be accused of German espionage by various parties in the country. Germany as spies and the Empress as a slut (in fact, there was no conclusive evidence of either). This led to the targeting of the Romanovs and destroyed the image of the Tsar as a "little father", an image that had remained in the minds of the Russian people for centuries. Grand Duke Vichy Romanov, right-wing member of the Russian Duma Prishkevich, and Yusupov's close friend, First Lieutenant Sukhotin. The assassination brought to the surface the conflicts between the various parties within Russia. In 1917, less than a month after Rasputin's death, the Social Democratic Labor Party (SDP) took the lead in orchestrating an anti-imperialist war demonstration in the capital, Petrograd, calling for the cessation of the war, and the movement went on to expand to Moscow, Baku, and other major cities, gaining the support of the anti-war activists. on March 8, the February Revolution erupted in Petrograd, and with the ouster of Czar Nicholas II and the demise of the Romanov Dynasty, the Tsarist Russian empire collapsed.
The Provisional Government
Lenin
Due to the harsh effects of Stolypin's authoritarian privatization reforms on Russian society, organizations such as the October Party and the Progressive Party, which had once embraced a liberal free economy, clearly lost ground under the wave of the February Revolution. The liberal leftist party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), became the only liberal party with some political appeal because of its leadership of the constitutional democratic movement before the revolution. In contrast, the two major leftist parties in Russia at the time with higher support were the Social Revolutionary Party (SRP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). As the war and the question of peace heated up, the forces quickly split and combined. The Social Democratic Party gradually split into the Mensheviks, who supported populism, and the Bolsheviks, who supported the people's democratic dictatorship. The Social Revolutionary Party (SRP) correspondingly split into the main stream and the left. The mainstream of the SRP agreed with the Mensheviks to continue the war until victory, while the minority of the leftist SRP agreed with the Bolsheviks to call for an armistice and signing of a peace treaty as soon as possible. The Constitutional Democrats, fearing that an uncontrollable anti-war trend in Russia would jeopardize Russia's diplomatic relations with the growing Allied bloc, argued for a slowdown of the democratic process, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the two major parties, the Social Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats. The two parties generally demanded that the Provisional Government start the election of the Constituent Assembly as soon as possible, abolish the Stolypin land reform and withdraw from the First World War. Among them, the Bolsheviks, represented by Lenin, were very vocal. The Bolsheviks encouraged the soldiers at the front to return home and actively propagated constitutional democracy among the people. Lenin also embraced constitutionalism for a time, stating that even if the Bolsheviks were defeated in the election, they would submit to the choice of the masses. On July 1, 1917, the Provisional Government planned an offensive against Germany, which was lost ten days later. After the news of the failure of the offensive, the Bolsheviks again planned an anti-imperialist war demonstration movement to demand an end to the war. The whirlwind was suppressed, leading to war and war on both sides had become inevitable.
Editorial Causes of the Revolution
The Soviet Regime (i) At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian economy was still relatively behind the American capitalist powers. (ii) The people longed for peace. The Russian people had suffered y in the First World War. on July 21, 1917, at 11:00 p.m. or so, the last passenger train left Petrograd's seaside railway station. Among the passengers was a Finnish peasant, who got off at Lazhiv, not far from the Finnish border, and he was Lenin! Lake Lazriv sparkled. Lenin lived in a hut by the lake. The hut had a kitchen: two branches of a tree set up a log on which hung a small pot. In front of the hayloft, cleared out a clearing, put two stumps, one as a table, one as a stool. Lenin wryly called this place "my green office". Here he fought intensely. He read every newspaper published in Petrograd, analyzed the situation of the revolution, and wrote a diatribe of battles to send to the cradle of the revolution to guide the course of the revolution. Late at night, resounding with the sound of wooden oars lapping on the lake, representatives of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party came to Lenin to report on their work and listen to instructions. The campfire on the shores of Lake Lazhriv was particularly bright in the darkness of the night, connecting the destiny of the world proletarian revolution, where Lenin worked hard and forgot to think, and wrote the glorious work of Marxism, "The State and the Revolution", and in the middle of August, the secret agents of the Provisional Government set their sights on the shores of the Lake Lazhriv. 31 August Lenin, in accordance with the instructions of the Central Committee of the Party, dressed as a railroad worker, to avoid the watchful eyes of the reactionary authorities, and then he went to Helsinki, where the Central Committee of the Party of the Bolsheviks was in the middle of the night. Arriving in Helsinki late at night, a room in the first floor of Helsinki's Haganekaia Square was brilliantly lit, and it was already late at night when the rustle of paper and pen rubbing together went on for a long time, as Lenin continued to finish his glorious work. The State and Revolution is a glorious work on the Marxist doctrine of the state, which not only played a great theoretical role in guiding the victory of the October Revolution and the establishment of the first proletarian dictatorship, but also pointed out a bright path for proletarian revolutions all over the world. More than ten million people in the country were dragged off to serve as soldiers, with millions of casualties. Many soldiers at the front had no shoes, and even several men **** with one gun. Large tracts of arable land in the country were deserted, factories closed down, prices soared, and there was such an extreme shortage of food that the capital, Petrograd, could not even buy a loaf of bread one day. (iii) The economic base was weak and the economy was on the verge of collapse. (d) All kinds of social conflicts in the country were intensified as never before, including ethnic conflicts and class conflicts. The Russian people simply fought for "bread".
Edit Famous Battles
Statue of Lenin Petrograd Armed Uprising On November 6, Lenin secretly came to the Smolny Palace, the general headquarters of the Uprising, to personally lead the armed uprising. From the night of November 6 to the morning of November 7, more than 200,000 revolutionary soldiers and insurgent workers quickly seized strategic locations in Petrograd. at 1 a.m. on November 7, the insurgent forces captured the General Post Office, and at 2 a.m. they seized the Baltic Railway Station and the Nikolaevsky Railway Station. Then the lighting circuits of the government buildings were turned off, and the telephone office cut off most of the telephones of the Provisional Government and the Commandant's Office. by about 6 a.m. the Red Guardsmen, soldiers, and sailors had captured the Palace Bridge. With the exception of the areas of Palace Square and Isakievska Square, almost all other areas were in the hands of the insurgents. Kerensky, the Premier of the Provisional Government, fled in a car from the U.S. Embassy, and at 10:00 a.m. the Revolutionary Military Council circulated the "Message to the Citizens of Russia" drafted by Lenin, announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown and that the power had been transferred to the soviets. However, the Provisional Government still resisted, and more than 2,000 officers and cadets continued to occupy the Winter Palace. 5-6 p.m. on November 6, more than 20,000 revolutionary soldiers and Red Guards and nine military vehicles surrounded the Winter Palace. The Revolutionary Military Council issued an ultimatum to the Provisional Government ordering it to surrender at 6:20 p.m. on November 6. After 8:00 p.m., the Revolutionary Military Council issued an ultimatum to the Provisional Government to surrender unconditionally, which was rejected. At 9:45 p.m., the cruiser Avror, anchored on the Neva, opened fire, signaling the general attack. The Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers crossed the barricades with a thunderous "Ula" and rushed towards the Winter Palace. In the stairwells and on the staircases of the Winter Palace, the revolutionary soldiers and workers' Red Guards and the cadets fought a fierce white-knuckle battle, and by 1:50 a.m. on the morning of November 8, all the members of the Provisional Government (with the exception of Kerensky, who escaped) were captured and killed. (except for Kerensky, who escaped) were all captured and finally
captured. The Petrograd Armed Uprising was victorious and the bourgeois Provisional Government was overthrown. The Second All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets Amidst the rumbling of the attack on the Winter Palace, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened at the Smolny Palace, which firstly adopted the "Message to Workers, Soldiers and Peasants" drafted by Lenin, proclaiming that all the power of the localities was to be transferred to the soviets of representatives of the workers, peasants, soldiers and soldiers.On November 8, the Congress adopted the "Decree on Peace" and the "Decree on the Land" drafted by Lenin. The Peace Decree exposed the predatory imperialist wars, reflected the urgent desire of the masses of working people for peace, and suggested that all belligerents should immediately enter into negotiations and conclude a peace treaty without cession of land or reparations. The Land Decree provided for the immediate abolition of land ownership by landlords and the nationalization of all land for the use of working peasants. Finally, the Congress elected the People's Committee, the world's first Soviet government of workers, peasants and soldiers, and Lenin, the great teacher of the proletariat, was elected Chairman of the People's Committee. The People's Committees had various ministries to carry out the various functions of the proletarian state. Stalin was elected People's Commissar for National Affairs and Trotsky People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and in the early morning of November 9, the Congress closed victoriously, announcing the founding of the world's first dictatorship of the proletariat. After the establishment of the Soviet government, it destroyed the old state apparatus, abolished the old government departments, the old courts, the old police, and demobilized the old army. It proceeded to set up People's Committee ministries, People's Courts, Workers' and Peasants' Prosecutor's Offices, Workers' and Peasants' Police, and formed a new Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The old hierarchical system of the Imperial Russian period was abolished, the equal rights of the people of all nationalities in the country were proclaimed, men and women were equal, and all privileges of the Church were abolished; the Soviet regime took over the banks, railroads, and factories. Later, large industries were nationalized, a monopoly of foreign trade was introduced, and the eight-hour workday was introduced, with workers supervising production. The confiscation of the land of landlords, royalty, and monasteries and its distribution to the peasants for cultivation; and the abolition of all foreign debts owed by the Tsar and the bourgeois Provisional Government at the beginning of 1918, which freed the Soviet people from the exploitation of foreign capital. In order to consolidate the revolutionary power, the All-Russian Anti-Revolutionary Committee ("Cheka"), chaired by Dzerzhinsky, was set up to firmly suppress the destructive activities of the counter-revolutionaries. At home, the Bolsheviks had just seized power and were not yet secure. The Russian people were watching the Bolsheviks' foreign policy. Internationally, the people of the world, though disgusted with the imperialist war, could not find a way out of the Great War. Under these circumstances, Lenin foresaw that if Russia withdrew from the war first, it would give an impetus and an example to the peoples of the belligerent countries. The Russian revolution would then find its way out of the European revolution. The wave of revolutions after the war proved Lenin's foresight. The architects of the October Revolution saw the Russian Revolution in internationalist terms. They y understood that the Russian Revolution was an organic component of the world revolution. They understood that revolution against war is the most powerful weapon of the proletariat's war against imperialism.
Edit Far-reaching Significance
Stamps Commemorating the 2nd Anniversary of the October Revolution The October Revolution was the first victorious socialist revolution in the history of mankind, which established the first socialist country under the leadership of the proletariat, opened up a new era of mankind's exploration of the road to socialism, spread Marxism-Leninism all over the world, and shook the capitalist world to its very core. The October Revolution proclaimed to the whole world that a brand new social system had been transformed from an ideal into a reality. For the first time in the history of mankind, it eliminated the unequal society of exploitation and oppression, and attempted for the first time to build a beautiful society of fairness and justice*** with prosperity. The October Revolution dealt a heavy blow to imperialist rule and greatly inspired the international proletarian revolutionary movement and the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. It changed the direction of Russian history, and the path of transforming Russia by socialist means had a great influence on the development of the whole
human society. Mao Zedong wrote in 1949: "The October Revolution, with a bang, sent us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped the advanced elements all over the world and in China to reconsider their problems by using the proletarian cosmology as a tool for observing the destiny of their country. Go the way of the Russians - that is the conclusion."
Edited historical reflections
,. Cheka cooperated with the Ministry of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs in reconnaissance and defense work, fought against all counter-revolutionaries and criminal offenders against public order, and made a significant contribution to the defense of the victorious results of the October Revolution.
Editorial impact
Prevailing views in socialist countries such as the former Soviet Union
As a result of Lenin's promise that he would bring peace to his people after the revolution, Russia withdrew from the First World War after the October Revolution, and Czar Nicholas II was executed by firing squad after this revolution. The revolution caused extreme fear in western society and supported the antagonistic forces in Russia in the hope of stifling the revolution and thus starting a war, Trotsky said that the power of the soviets was established by the civil war, when in fact the power of the Russian **** was not established until after the civil war. The October Revolution was the first victory of the ****ist movement in human history. It gave birth to the first socialist state that claimed to have achieved "proletarian leadership". Marxism-Leninism gained wider influence in the world, and the traditional capitalist world was greatly affected. However, there are those who believe that the revolution was a misinterpretation of Marxism. The October Revolution was the prelude to the international ****productivist movement of the twentieth century, which triggered the subsequent global expansion of socialist movements in various countries, and increased support for the liberation movements of many colonies or semi-colonies. So began the century-long confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Western capitalist countries, which lasted until the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The October Revolution, which succeeded in establishing a socialist state for the first time, is also considered to be the first time that the proletariat came to power and a significant change in human history. The October Revolution also had a significant impact on the social progress of other countries (e.g. China). On November 7, 1917, the day of the outbreak of the October Revolution, Liu Jingren sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peking government, stating: "Recently, the internal strife in Russia has become more intense, and the forces of the Guangyi faction have become more and more powerful, asking for the manipulation of the regime, and for the main peace negotiation, and threatening it with riots! The government is weak and it is difficult to suppress it. The government is weak and it is difficult to suppress them, and I am afraid that change is imminent." As the influence of the October Revolution in Soviet Russia expanded in China, New Youth began to propagate Marxism. Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese ****proletariat, once commented, "The October Revolution, with a bang, sent us Marxism." "The vanguard of the Chinese proletariat, having learned Marxism-Leninism after the October Revolution, established the Chinese ****anist Party."
Differing Views
Some scholars who hold opposing views on the October Revolution believe that the Russian Provisional Government was essentially a government of socialists, such as the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party (RSPR) and the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and not a "bourgeois government". The October Revolution was a violent attack by the Bolsheviks on their main rivals, the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party (RSLP), the Mensheviks, and the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), which forcibly dispersed the socialist-dominated Constituent Assembly, overthrew the democratic constitution, and established the Bolshevik Party's one-party dictatorship. Opponents also point out that there was no violent armed conflict on the Night of the Winter Palace.