Russian revolution. A very short introduction

their devotion to the ? Russian people, the Whites failed to forge a concept of the nation with g which peasants and workers could identify. With the Church on their e side, they might have tried to play on the Orthodox faith of the jg majority, yet they proved too hidebound by a militaristic and narrowly 1 elitist ethos to adapt to the world of mass politics. Ironically, it was the internationalist Bolsheviks who tapped into patriotic sentiment, exploiting the Whites' dependence on the Allies to portray them as playthings of foreign capital.

By the end of the civil war the Red Army had become the largest institution of state, enjoying absolute priority in the allocation of resources. In the absence of a numerous or politically reliable proletariat, it became by default the principal social base of the regime. Fighting to defend the socialist motherland, living in collective units, subject to political education, the army proved to be the seeding ground for the cadres who came to staff the apparatus of the party-state in the 1920s. It also proved to be the agency through which the revolution was brought to new areas. Instead of socialism being spread through mobilizing workers, the Bolsheviks came to believe that what

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N. I. Bukharin called 'red intervention'was the best means of furthering socialism. In 1920, without the least embarrassment, the leading Bolshevik, К. В. Radek, could claim: 'We were always for revolutionary war. The bayonet is an essential necessity for introducing communism.'

Nationalism and empire

By October 1917 it looked as though the Russian empire might break up, in the way the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires did, so it was important that the Bolsheviks should have a clear policy on the question of self-determination for the non-Russian peoples. In fact, they were divided on the matter. Lenin was sensitive to the oppression that the non-Russian peoples had experienced under tsarism and believed that they must be given the right to secede from the empire if there was to be any chance of them cooperating with the Russian proletariat in the longer term. The majority did not share his view. In December 1917 the new Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin, expressed the consensus view when he argued that self-determination should be exercised only by the labouring classes, and not by the bourgeoisie. Because they had no firm position, therefore, Bolshevik policy was determined to a large extent by pragmatic considerations.

On 31 December 1917 the Bolsheviks recognized the independence of Finland, something the Provisional Government had been reluctant to do. In the Baltic as a whole, however, they fought movements for national independence since support for soviet power was strong. In Latvia German occupation undermined the Soviets and paved the way for a nationalist government. In Estonia, where Soviets ran many towns, Bolshevik indifference to nationalist sensitivities, combined with failure to expropriate the German barons, strengthened support for the Maa pa ev which repelled the Red Army in early 1919, with assistance from Whites, the British, and Finnish volunteers. By 1920 the Bolsheviks were reconciled to the loss of Estonia and Latvia. In Belorussia and

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Lithuania nationalism was weak and the defeat of Germany left a power vacuum which Poles and Reds sought to fill. After the Germans withdrew, the feeble government in Belorussia collapsed, allowing the Reds to take over. In March 1919 they merged Belorussia with Lithuania to form the Litbel soviet republic. The following month, however, Poland occupied Vilnius, the putative capital of independent Lithuania, reinstated landowners, and made Polish the official language. Nationalism was weak in Lithuania, the population being largely peasant and the small urban population Jewish or Polish, yet nationalists rather adeptly exploited the Soviet-Polish war to gain independence albeit within much reduced borders. By the Treaty of Riga, the Bolsheviks recognized the independence of the Baltic states and of a Poland whose eastern border extended well into Belorussian and Ukrainian-majority territory. Signed in March 1921, the treaty reflected the inability of either Russia or Poland to establish their hegemony in the Baltic in the way ? that Germany once had.

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e The loss of Ukraine was somethinq the Bolsheviks found much harder to .2

jg contemplate. No fewer than nine governments came and went in the 1 space of three years, testifying to the inability of nationalists, Whites, or Reds to enforce control. Caught between the Reds and Whites, the intermittent nationalist governments turned for protection first to Germany, then to the Entente, and finally to Poland. Torn by political division, they found themselves increasingly at odds with a peasantry that looked for protection to the guerrilla bands of Makhno and the other otomany, or chiefs. The civil war devastated Ukraine but had a paradoxical effect on social identities. Ukrainian peasants turned inwards as centralized power broke down, yet their identification with the Ukrainian nation was strengthened as a result of independent statehood. Twice the Bolsheviks gained control of Ukraine and each time their promise of self-determination proved hollow. Only in 1920 after Moscow cleared Russian chauvinists out of leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party did the new Soviet administration seriously address aspirations for self-determination. And in a pattern replicated

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elsewhere, radical nationalists, recognizing that they must settle for less than they would ideally like, accepted the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a framework in which they could work.

Aspirations for Transcaucasian unity proved transient once the Russian

army withdrew from the region in winter 1917-18. As Russian power

receded, so Turkish influence increased, exacerbating ethnic tension,

especially between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Baku. In May this led

to the collapse of the Transcaucasian Sejm and the emergence of three

separate states, all of which were beset by fearsome economic

difficulties, predation by the big powers, and mutual conflict over

territorial boundaries. In Azerbaijan Musavat nationalists enjoyed little

backing from the peasantry and support for soviet power remained-

strong in Baku. Falling oil revenues led to high unemployment and*

rocketing inflation. Independent Armenia, confined to a small^

landlocked territory around Erevan contested by its neighbours, was in ?.

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an even more wretched state, inundated by refugees and wracked byg.

starvation and disease. The Dashnaktsutiun formed a government of|'

national emergency that quickly dropped any pretension to socialism. In^

Georgia, by far the most viable of the three states, the Mensheviks won?>

80% of the popular vote in 1919. Despite the economic chaos, theyg-

carried out land reforms and allowed trade unions and cooperatives to^

ID

operate freely. The one blot on their record was the brutal treatment of |-

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ethnic minorities within Georgia.

Because of its petroleum and mineral resources, the Bolsheviks were determined to regain control of Transcaucasia. In April 1920 the Red Army invaded Azerbaijan and in September Armenia turned to it for help after it became embroiled in war with Turkey. By this stage, many nationalists in both countries saw in their own soviet republics the only viable form of statehood. In Georgia, however, this was not true. In May 1920 Moscow recognized Georgia against the wishes of Georgian communists such as S. Orjonikidze, one of Stalin's most loyal supporters. Yet in January 1921, in contravention of Moscow's orders