The Russian (Communist) Revolution

Documents:

The Russian (Communist) revolution:

From Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin

Documents 1A and 1B: “Bloody Sunday”

On January 22nd, 1905, the infamous “Bloody Sunday” of Russian history occurred. On that day a large group of disaffected Russian steelworkers, students and clergy tried to storm the Winter Palace, the headquarters of the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II (who was actually away at the time). Father GeorgiiGapon, an Orthodox Christian priest, was outraged by industrial and political abuses in Russia. He not only drafted a petition requesting reforms (Doc. 1A), but helped lead a march to present it directly to Tsar Nicholas II himself. The Tsarist troops, seeing the incredible numbers among the crowd, took action in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” which left 130 dead and over 1,000 injured (Doc. 1B). The outrage and nationwide uprisings sparked by this event later led, in October, to the Tsar agreeing to modest reforms, including a Duma (the Russian parliament), but was weak and soon dismantled by the Tsar weeks later. Below, read both the petition he drafted demanding reforms as well as his eyewitness account of the Bloody Sunday massacre.

1A: The St. Petersburg Workmen’s Petition to Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II

~ Father GeorgiiGapon, January 1905

“Sovereign!

We, workers and inhabitants of the city of St. Petersburg,…our wives, children, and helpless old parents, have come to you, Sovereign, to seekjustice and protection. We are impoverished and oppressed, we are burdened with work, andinsulted. We are treated not like humans [but] like slaves who must suffer a bitter fate and keepsilent. And we have suffered, but we only get pushed deeper and deeper into a gulf of misery,ignorance, and lack of rights.

Despotism and arbitrariness are suffocating us, we are gasping for breath. Sovereign, we have nostrength left. We have reached the limit of our patience. We have come to that terrible momentwhen it is better to die than to continue unbearable sufferings. And so we left our work and declared to our employers that we will not return to work until they meet our demands.

We do not ask much; we only want that without which life is hard labor and eternal suffering.Our first request was that our employers discuss our needs together with us. But they refused todo this; they denied us the right to speak about our needs, on the grounds that the law does notprovide us with such a right. Also unlawful were our other requests: to reduce the working day toeight hours; for them to set wages together with us and by agreement with us; to examine ourdisputes with lower-level factory administrators; to increase the wages of unskilled workers andwomen to one ruble per day; to abolish overtime work; to provide medical care attentively andwithout insult; to build shops so that it is possible to work there and not face death from the awfuldrafts, rain and snow.

Our employers and the factory administrators considered all this to be illegal: every one of ourrequests was a crime, and our desire to improve our condition was slanderous insolence.

Sovereign, there are thousands of us here; outwardly we are human beings, but in reality neitherwe nor the Russian people as a whole are provided with any human rights, even the right to speak,to think, to assemble, to discuss our needs, or to take measure to improve our conditions. Theyhave enslaved us and they did so under the protection of your officials, with their aid and withtheir cooperation. They imprison and send into exile any one of us who has the courage to speakon behalf of the interests of the working class and of the people. They punish us for a good heartand a responsive spirit as if for a crime. To pity a down-trodden and tormented person with norights is to commit a grave crime.

The entire working people and the peasants are subjected to the [arbitrariness] of abureaucratic administration composed of embezzlers of public funds and thieves who not onlyhave not concern at all for the interests of the Russian people but who harm those interests. The bureaucratic administration has reduced the country to complete destitution, drawn it into ashameful war (World War One), and brings Russia ever further towards ruin. We, the workers and the people, haveno voice in the expenditure of the enormous sums that are collected from us. We do not even know where the money collected from the impoverished people goes. The people are deprived ofany possibility of expressing its wishes and demands, or of participating in the establishment oftaxes and in their expenditure.Workers are deprived of the possibility of organizing into unionsto defend their interests.

Sovereign! Does all this accord with the law of God, by whose grace you reign? And is itpossible to live under such laws? Would it not be better if we, the toiling people of all Russia,died? Let the capitalists – exploiters of the working class – and the bureaucrats – embezzlers of public funds and the pillagers of the Russian people – live and enjoy themselves.

Sovereign, this is what we face and this is the reason that we have gathered before the walls ofyour palace. Here we seek our last salvation. Do not refuse to come to the aid of your people; leadit out of the grave of poverty, ignorance, and lack of rights; grant it the opportunity to determineits own destiny, and deliver it from them the unbearable yoke of the bureaucrats. Tear down thewall that separates you from your people and let it rule the country together with you. You havebeen placed [on the throne] for the happiness of the people; the bureaucrats, however, snatch thishappiness out of our hands, and it never reaches us; we get only grief and humiliation.

Sovereign, examine our requests attentively and without any anger; they incline not to evil, but tothe good, both for us and for you. Ours is not the voice of insolence but of the realization that wemust get out of a situation that is unbearable for everyone. Russia is too big, her needs are too diverse and many, for her to be ruled only by bureaucrats. We need popular representation; it isnecessary for the people to help itself and to administer itself. After all, only the people knowitsreal needs… Let the capitalist be there, and the worker, and the bureaucrat,and the priest, and the doctor and the teacher. Let everyone, whoever they are, elect theirrepresentatives. Let everyone be free and equal in his voting rights, and to that end order thatelections to the Constituent Assembly be conducted under universal, secret and equal suffrage…

…These, sovereign, are our main needs, about which we have come to you…Give the order, swear to meet these needs, and you will make Russia both happy and glorious,and your name will be fixed in our hearts and the hearts of our posterity for all time. But if you donot give the order, if you do not respond to our prayer, then we shall die here, on this square, infront of your palace. We have nowhere else to go and no reason to. There are only two roads forus, one to freedom and happiness, the other to the grave. Let our lives be sacrificed for sufferingRussia. We do not regret that sacrifice, we embrace it eagerly.

~GeorgiiGapon, priest; Ivan Vasimov, worker.”

1B: Eyewitness Testimony of the “Bloody Sunday” Massacre

~ Father Gapon, January 1905

“We were not more than thirty yards from the soldiers, being separated from them only by the bridge over the Tarakanovskii Canal, which here marks the border of the city, when suddenly, without any warning and withouta moment’s delay, was heard the dry crack of many rifle-shots. I was informed later on that a bugle was blown, but we could not hear it above the singing, and even if we had heard it we should not have known what itmeant.

Vasiliev, with whom I was walking hand in hand, suddenly left hold of my arm and sank upon thesnow. One of the workmen who carried the banners fell also….

I turned rapidly to the crowd and shouted to them to lie down, and I also stretched myself outupon the ground. As we lay thus another volley was fired, and another, and yet another, till it seemed as thoughthe shooting was continuous. The crowd first kneeled and then lay flat down, hiding their heads from the rain ofbullets, while the rear rows of the procession began to run away. The smoke of the fire lay before us like a thincloud, and I felt it stiflingly in my throat….

A little boy of ten years, who was carrying a church lantern, fellpierced by a bullet, but still held the lantern tightly and tried to rise again, when another shot struck him down.Both the smiths who had guarded me were killed, as well as all those who were carrying the icons and banners;and all these emblems now lay scattered on the snow.The soldiers were actually shooting into the courtyards ofthe adjoining houses, where the crowd tried to find refuge and, as I learned afterwards, bullets even struckpersons inside, through the windows.

At last the firing ceased. I stood up with a few others who remained uninjured and looked downat the bodies that lay prostrate around me. I cried to them, ‘Stand up!’ But they lay still. I could not at firstunderstand. Why did they lie there? I looked again, and saw that their arms were stretched out lifelessly, and Isaw the scarlet stain of blood upon the snow. Then I understood. It was horrible. And my Vasiliev lay dead atmy feet.

Horror crept into my heart. The thought flashed through my mind, ‘And this is the work of ourLittle Father, the Tsar.’ Perhaps this anger saved me, for now I knew in very truth that a new chapter wasopened in the book of the history of our people. I stood up, and a little group of workmen gathered round meagain. Looking backward, I saw that our line, though still stretching away into the distance, was broken and thatmany of the people were fleeing. It was in vain that I called to them, and in a moment I stood there, the centerof a few scores of men, trembling with indignation amid the broken ruins of our movement.”

HISTORICAL NOTE: Interestingly, Father Gapon was later found hanged roughly a year after the Bloody Sunday massacre. WHY? Apparently Father Gapon was also secretly a member of the Tsar’s secret police at the time as a way to get information! Initially, Gapon did not want the Tsar overthrown and thought his secret influence could bring real change for Russian factory workers. However, seeing no progress came from the Tsar, Gapon later fully denounced the Tsar, stopped secretly working for Tsar’s police, and joined Soviet revolutionaries (including Vladimir Lenin) to overthrow Tsar Nicolas II. However, when he revealed to Soviet revolutionariesthat he once had double loyaltiesthat included secretly working for the Tsar, the revolutionaries realized they could not trust him and hanged him at a cottage in St. Petersburg in March of 1906.

[Ascher, Abraham. (1988). "Gapon and Bloody Sunday." In his Revolution of 1905, vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.]

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DOCUMENT 2: Tragedy Befalls the Last Russian Tsar

Russian Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his thrown due to increased civil unrest about Russia’s involvement in WW1 and his failure to seriously address other economic and political matters, which then lead to Russia being ruled by the Provisional Government. In October/November of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, an opponent of both the Tsar and the new Provisional Government, led the Bolsheviks (Communists) is a successful coup d’état of Russia. Anti-Bolshevik forces (the White Army) immediately took up arms to oust the Communist regime leading Russia into a brutal civil war. Against this backdrop of political chaos, the Tsar and his family were initially kept as prisoners near St. Petersburg and then transported to the town of Ekaterinburg in the Spring of 1918. The seven members of the imperial family and their servants were confined to a house which had been seized by the Bolsheviks. As the White Army began closing in for an attempted rescue mission, the Tsar’s Bolshevik captors told them they were being moved to a new location in the middle of the night to “protect them.” Below is testimony from Pavel Medvedev, one of the guards watching the royal family on their last day alive.

"In the evening of 16 July, between seven and eight p.m., when the time of my duty had just begun; Commandant Yurovsky, [the head of the execution squad] ordered me to take all the…revolvers from the guards and to bring them to him. I took twelve revolvers from the guards…and brought them to the commandant's office.

Yurovsky said to me, 'We must shoot them all tonight; so notify the guards not to be alarmed if they hear shots.' I understood, therefore, that Yurovsky had it in his mind to shoot the whole of the Tsar's family, as well as the doctor and the servants who lived with them, but I did not ask him where or by whom the decision had been made...At about ten o'clock in the evening in accordance with Yurovsky's order I informed the guards not to be alarmed if they should hear firing.

About midnight Yurovsky woke up the Tsar's family. I do not know if he told them the reason they had been awakened and where they were to be taken, but I positively affirm that it was Yurovsky who entered the room occupied by the Tsar's family. In about an hour the whole of the family, the doctor, the maid and the waiters got up, washed and dressed themselves….

The maid carried a pillow. The Tsar's daughters also brought small pillows with them. One pillow was put on the Empress's chair; another on the heir's (Nicholas II’s son’s) chair. It seemed as if all of them guessed their fate, but not one of them uttered a single sound. At this moment eleven men entered the room: Yurovsky, his assistant, two members of the Extraordinary Commission, and seven Letts [operatives of the infamous Cheka or Secret Police].

Yurovsky ordered me to leave, saying, 'Go on to the street, see if there is anybody there, and wait to see whether the shots have been heard.' I went out to the court, which was enclosed by a fence, but before I got to the street I heard the firing. I returned to the house immediately (only two or three minutes having elapsed) and upon entering the room where the execution had taken place, I saw that all the members of the Tsar's family were lying on the floor with many wounds in their bodies. The blood was running in streams. The doctor, the maid and two waiters had also been shot. When I entered the heirwas still alive and moaned a little. Yurovsky went up and fired two or three more times at him. Then the heir was still."

["The Execution of Tsar Nicholas II, 1918," Eyewitness to History, (2005).]

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Document 3: Excerpts of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

~ by Vladimir Lenin

(Written in 1916; published in mid-1917)

Vladimir IlyichUlyanov, better known as Vladimir (V.I.) Lenin, was one of the leading political figures and successful radical revolutionaries of the 20th century, who masterminded the Bolshevik (Communist) take-over of power in Russia in 1917, and became the first Communist dictator of what would become known as the Soviet Union (now called Russia again). Lenin was expelled from college for his radical Marxist views and even sent into exile, but came back to lead the Bolsheviks to their eventual stranglehold on Russia’s Communist government. Influenced by the anti-capitalist, bourgeoisie-despising writings of Karl Marx, Lenin’s Marxist worldview and analysis of world affairs is clearly evident in this pamphlet below. Specifically, he draws conclusions below about the causes and effects of global capitalism surrounding the events of World War One, and about what can be done to stop it.

…It is proved in the pamphlet that the [first world] war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of booty) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital, etc…

…The building of railways seems to be a simple, natural, democratic, cultural and civilizing enterprise; that is what it is in the opinion of the bourgeois professors who are paid to depict capitalist slavery in bright colors, and in the opinion of petty-bourgeois barbarians. But as a matter of fact the capitalist threads, which in thousands of different intercrossings bind these enterprises with private property in the means of production in general, have converted this railway construction into an instrument for oppressing [hundreds of] millions of people (in the colonies and semi-colonies), that is, more than half the population of the globe that inhabits the dependent countries, as well as the wage-slaves of capitalism in the “civilized” countries.