Russian Revolution of 1917

French Revolution, American Revolution, Xinhai Chinese Revolution

The Russian Revolution refers to a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, the overthrow of Tsarist autocracy and the creation of the Soviet Union.

The Russian Revolution (March 1917) was a spontaneous popular revolution focused around St Petersburg. The members of the Duma assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government.

The Russian Revolution in October (October Revolution), the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the workers' Soviets, overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd. They appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside.

War, State Collapse, Redistribution: Russian Revolution Revisited - Osinsky, Pavel
Abstract: Most historical narratives of the Bolshevik Revolution prioritize the role of an ideologically driven transformative agency (e.g., the working class, the intelligentsia, the party, Lenin, Stalin and so forth). In contrast to these accounts my study places a primary emphasis on a low institutional capacity and lack of foresight of a power incumbent (i.e., the Provisional Government). The Russian Provisional Government lacked power and failed to implement the policies which were implemented in other countries placed under similar (or even worse) conditions. Instead of the conventional model of “socialism by design” I suggest a model of “socialism by default.”

Rethinking the Significance of Workers' Control in the Russian Revolution
Carmen J. Sirianni, Northeastern University, Boston
Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 6, No. 1, 65-91 (1985)
Drawing upon recent Western and Soviet research, this paper reevaluates workers' control during and after the Russian Revolution. The old dichotomies of anarchic organization from below and authoritarian centralization from above are much too simplistic to capture the complex dynamic that characterized the movement and the tasks of institution-building. Workers' control, while hardly ideal, displayed many very positive characteristics of organization, co-ordination, discipline, maintaining production, as well as democratic control, representation, bargaining and dignity. In addition, although the conditions of revolution and civil war limited democratic possibilities, the potential of workers' control for medium-term development were considerably greater than recognized by Bolshevik ideology, and presented one element in a realistic nonStalinist industrialization strategy in the 1920s and beyond.

The Passionate Legal Debates of the Early Years of the Russian Revolution
Michael Head, University of Western Sydney - Campbelltown Campus
Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. 14, No. 1, January 2001
Abstract: The Russian Revolution of October 1917 marked the first large-scale attempt to fundamentally reorganize economic, social and legal life along egalitarian lines. In relation to legal theory and practice, the revolution launched the boldest experiment of the 20th century, accompanied by passionate, free-ranging and scholarly debates. Lenin's government initially sought to fashion a radically new approach to the state, law and legal theory, with some striking results in the fields such as criminal and family law. Moreover, it attempted to create the conditions for the ultimate fading away ("withering away") of law and the state. These achievements offer insights for the future, notwithstanding the subsequent degeneration under Stalin.

The Russian revolution of 1905 and the Chinese intellectuals - James D. White
Published in: journal Sibirica: Journal of Siberian Studies, Volume 2, Issue 2 October 2002
Abstract: The article examines the reception of the Russian revolutionary movement and the revolution of 1905 by Chinese reformers and revolutionaries. It reveals how events in Russia were refracted through the imperatives of the Chinese political situation and used to support indigenous political attitudes. It also brings to light relationships between Russian, Chinese and Japanese history which are not apparent when these countries are studied individually.

The fiscal background of the Russian revolution - Gregory M. Dempster
European Review of Economic History, 2006, vol. 10, issue 01, pages 35-50
Abstract: This article examines important aspects of the interaction between the fiscal history and political events of tsarist Russia s final years in the light of macroeconomic theories of government budget constraints.

Can We Write the History of the Russian Revolution? A Belated Response to Eric Hobsbawm
Murphy, Kevin J.
Source: Historical Materialism, Volume 15, Number 2, 2007 , pp. 3-19(17)
Abstract: Ten years ago, Eric Hobsbawm presented his Deutscher Lecture on 'Can We Write the History of the Russian Revolution?' This essay argues that Hobsbawm articulated a perspective on the Russian Revolution that was shared by a much wider audience on the Left after the fall of the Soviet Union and that many of these arguments continue to resonate today. Placing the contours of the historiographical discussion of the Russian Revolution within a broader political context, I argue that Hobsbawm has underestimated the extent to which the standard academic accounts intentionally have marginalised Marxist interpretations. Hobsbawm's own ambivalence toward the October Revolution and his lack of clarity on the origins of Stalinism are not supported by the latest empirical research and concede much ground to strident anti-Marxists. Rather than refuting the Marxist classics, new evidence from the archives of the former Soviet Union actually offers substantial support. The renewed academic attacks on the Russian Revolution, including the deliberate omission of evidence that support the Marxist interpretation, should be challenged rather than embraced by socialists.

The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party - Alexander Berkman
The October Revolution was not the legitimate offspring of traditional Marxism. Russia but little resembled a country in which, according to Marx, “the concentration of the means of production and the socialisation of the tools of labor reached the point where they can no longer be contained within their capitalistic shell. The shell bursts. . . .”
In Russia, “the shell” burst unexpectedly. It burst at a stage of low technical and industrial development, when centralisation of the means of production had made little progress. Russia was a country with a badly organised system of transportation, with a weak bourgeoisie and weak proletariat, but with a numerically strong and socially important peasant population. In short, it was a country in which, apparently, there could be no talk of irreconcilable antagonism between the grown industrial labor forces and a fully ripened capitalist system.
But the combination of circumstances in 1917 involved, particularly for Russia, an exceptional state of affairs which. resulted in the catastrophic breakdown of her whole industrial system. “It was easy for Russia”, Lenin justly wrote at the time, “to begin the socialist revolution in the peculiarly unique situation of 1917.”
The specially favorable conditions for the beginning of the socialist revolution were:
1. the possibility of blending the slogans of the Social Revolution with the popular demand for the termination of the imperialistic world war, which had produced great exhaustion and dissatisfaction among the masses;
2. the possibility of remaining, at least for a certain period after quitting the war, outside the sphere of influence of the capitalistic European groups that continued the world war;
3. the opportunity to begin, even during the short time of this respite, the work of internal organisation and to prepare the foundation for revolutionary reconstruction;
4. the exceptionally favorable position of Russia, in case of possible new aggression on the part of West European imperialism, due to her vast territory and insufficient means of communication;
5. the advantages of such a condition in the event of civil war; and
6. the possibility of almost immediately satisfying the fundamental demands of the revolutionary peasantry, notwithstanding the fact that the essentially democratic viewpoint of the agricultural population was entirely different from the socialist program of the “party of the proletariat” which seized the reins of government.
Moreover, revolutionary Russia already had the benefit of a great experience — the experience of 1905, when the Tsarist autocracy succeeded in crushing the revolution for the very reason that the latter strove to be exclusively political and therefore could neither arouse the peasants nor inspire even a considerable part of the proletariat .
The world war, by exposing the complete bankruptcy of constitutional government, served to prepare and quicken the greatest movement of the people — a movement which, by virtue of its very essence, could develop only into a social revolution.

Russian Revolution Bibliography:

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996 (reviewed in Pimlico edition, 1997), 923 pp., ISBN 0–150–24364–X.

Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), xxiv + 944 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, $40.00).

Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Russian Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 455 pp., ISBN 0–691–03278–5.

Edward Acton, William G. Rosenberg and Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, eds., Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914–1921 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 782 pp., ISBN 0–340–61454–4.

Ronald Kowalski, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 269 pp., ISBN 0–415–12437–9.

André Liebich. From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 476 pp., ISBN 0–674–32517–6.

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