known personality in Western Europe long before Lenin. He is described as a handsome, arrogant, anti-social intellectual who sometimes offended his fellow-Marxists because of his flare for elegant clothes. The down-sweep of his nose and moustache won for him the title of “The Young Eagle.”
Now let us return to the swift course of events in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement.
The Russian Revolution of 1905
By 1903 the political situation in Russia had become explosive, Tsar Nicholas II did not realize it, but he was to be the last of the Tsars. As an administrator, he had turned out to be amazingly weak. When he was a young man he had been very pleasant and friendly, and Russian liberals had hoped that after he ascended the throne he would adopt the badly needed reforms which his country required in order to take its place among the progressive nations of the world. But in this they were disappointed. Nicholas II perpetuated the imperialistic policies of his father, Alexander III, and enforced the stringent domestic policies of his grandfather who was assassinated. In fact, to satisfy his own expansive ambitions, Nicholas II plunged Russia into a senseless war with Japan in 1903. Almost immediately he found the Russian forces suffering humiliating defeat.
This Russo-Japanese War lasted a little over two years and as it neared its mortifying conclusion, the economic and political pressure on the Russian people split the seams of the Empire asunder. Government officials were assassinated, mass demonstrations were held, and a general strike was called which eventually idled more than 2,500,000 workers. The Tsar used every form of reprisal available to suppress the uprising, but mass arrests, mass imprisonment, and mass executions failed to stem the tide. The entire population was up in arms; bankers, peasants, professors, and illiterates walked side by side in the demonstration parades.
A typical example of the Tsar’s clumsy maneuvering which brought on the revolution was the Winter Palace Massacre. This event occurred on Sunday, January 22, 1905, when a priest named Father George Gapon led a parade of several thousand unarmed workers to the front of the Winter Palace to present a peaceful petition for the amelioration of labor conditions. As the marchers drew near they could be seen carrying large portraits of Nicholas II which they waved back and forth while lustily singing “God Save the Tsar.” It was a strange scene. The obvious poverty of the workers stood out in vivid contrast to the magnificent splendor of the Tsar’s Winter Palace, which was a large and extravagant structure capable of housing more than 6,500 guests in its richly decorated apartments.
But the Tsar did not come out to welcome them. Instead the marchers found the palace completely surrounded by massed troops. At first the workers were apprehensive about the situation, but they felt reassured when there was no command to disperse. Then suddenly they heard the hoarse shout of a staccato military command. Immediately the Tsar’s troops opened direct fire on the crowd. The withering volley leveled the front ranks to the ground while the remaining marchers trampled one another as they fled in terror trying to escape. The troops continued firing until the crowd completely dispersed. Approximately 500 were killed outright and 3,000 were wounded. This became notorious in Russian history as “Bloody Sunday.”
News of this atrocity spread like a tidal wave across the steppes and plains of Russia. Already the people were bristling with resentment against the burden of the Russo-Japanese War, and this new outrage was sufficient to trigger a universal revolt. At first a few of the people tried to use violence, but generally speaking, the principal method of retaliation was one which paralyzed the Tsar’s wartime economy—the people stopped working. In a matter of months the entire economic machinery of Russia came to a standstill. Factories were closed, stores were empty, newspapers were not printed, dry-goods and fuel were not moved and newly harvested crops were left rotting on the loading docks. For the first time in his career, Tsar Nicholas II was deeply frightened. He abandoned the Russo-Japanese War and agreed to hear the people’s demands.
These consisted of four things:
1. Protection of the individual, allowing freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to form unions.
2. The right of the people of all classes to vote for the Duma (the people’s assembly.)
3. The automatic repeal of any law enacted by the Tsar without the consent of the people’s assembly.
4. The right of the people’s assembly to pass on the legality of any decrees issued by the Tsar.
These demands were set in a document called “The October Manifesto.” This Manifesto clearly illustrates that the masses of the people had no intention of destroying the Tsar, but merely wanted to set up a limited monarchy similar to England. Such a compromise infuriated the Marxists. They wanted the revolution continued until the Tsar was forced to surrender unconditionally and abdicate. Not until then could they set up a Communist dictatorship.
Leon Trotsky, who had hastened to Russia when the uprising started, stood before a crowd of people who were celebrating the Tsar’s acceptance of the Manifesto and tore up a copy of it, declaring that the Manifesto was a betrayal of the revolution. He immediately joined with other Marxists in setting up political machinery to fan the flame of renewed revolutionary activity. This was done primarily by organizing a great many soviets (workers’ councils in the various labor unions). Lenin arrived belatedly in November, 1905, and agreed to join with Trotsky for an “a second revolution.” After sixty days, however, the Marxist movement collapsed. Trotsky was caught and arrested while Lenin fled in the night to safer regions.
Thus ended fourteen months of desperate revolt against the Tsar; the first twelve belonged to the whole people, the last two to the Marxists. Altogether, the troops throughout the Empire had been called out more than 2,500 different times. In these battles between the people and the troops, fourteen thousand had been killed, approximately one thousand had been executed, twenty thousand had been wounded or injured, and seventy thousand had been arrested.
Trotsky’s leadership in the final stages of the revolution won him a stiff sentence from the Tsar’s court. He was convicted of revolutionary violence and exiled to Siberia for an indefinite period. But Trotsky never reached Siberia. He made a daring escape in midwinter and, after traveling four hundred and thirty miles in a deer-sleigh, crossed the Ural Mountains on horseback and then escaped to Finland where he joined Lenin and several other Marxists.
It was while Trotsky was staying in Finland that he carefully worked out his theory of “Perpetual Revolution.” This theory advocated a continuous Communist attack on all existing governments until they were overthrown and the dictatorship of the proletariat established. This brought Trotsky into nearly perfect focus with Lenin. Perhaps, without quite realizing it, he had talked himself into becoming a full-fledged Bolshevik.
At this particular time, the Bolshevik movement was at its lowest ebb. The Bolshevik leaders had failed in their promises to force the Tsar to abdicate, and their continuation of the revolution after the October Manifesto had embittered the Tsar to the point where he had practically repudiated the Manifesto. He allowed the people to elect a Duma (people’s assembly) but he managed to strip it of all its real powers. The people knew they were being defrauded, but there was no way to enforce the Manifesto without fomenting another revolution, and at the moment this seemed unlikely. Individual groups did continue agitating against the Tsar and his ministers, but most of these, like the Bolshevik leaders, were forced to flee to Western Europe for safety.
To rejuvenate the dwindling influence of the Bolshevik party, Lenin began holding a series of meetings. At one of these conclaves, a new revolutionary figure appeared on the scene. It was Joseph Stalin. Stalin came as an obscure delegate from a small Bolshevik group in Transcaucasia. Lenin immediately recognized him as a true revolutionary member of the peasant class—a rough, unrelenting, two-listed man of ruthless action. Lenin had a place for such a personality and therefore enlisted Stalin in his service.
This brings us to the third important personality who figured prominently in the revolutionary movement in Russia.
