Russian Revolution

The Background 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicholas II, a despotic ruler. Like all other kings, he lived in great luxury and comfort. The nobles and the landlords were also rich and led extremely comfortable life, while the ordinary people who were mostly peasants led miserable lives. They grew very little on their small plot of land and had to pay heavy taxes. People in the cities were worse. They had to work in factories for long hours and were not paid regularly. They lived in slums.

Soon people began to demand a change. They thought that the only way to improve their condition was to bring about a change. They started to believe that they needed to overthrow the Tsar’s rule and bring a more just government. They organized themselves under the leadership of Lenin and called themselves Bolsheviks.

Lenin

Lenin was born in 1870 in a small town by the River Volga. His brother Alexander was a revolutionary and was executed by the Tsar’s government. Lenin was inspired by the American and French Revolutions and above all by the ideas of Karl Marx.

Karl Marx was a German thinker and philosopher who founded communism. He studied society for a long time and concluded only a handful of rich people inherit all the richness and the resources of a country.  The poor people worked for these rich people. Their wages are so low that they are not able to save anything and are unable to buy any plots of land or set up their own factories. As a result the poor remains poor and the rich remain rich. This is inherited to the next generation.  Marx felt that to solve this problem, all the wealth of a country – its factories, buildings, farms and mines should be owned by all the people of the country.

Lenin settled in the city of St. Petersburg and began to meet factory workers there. He taught them Marx’s ideas and by 1917 communist teaching was spreading fast in Russia. Soon Lenin was banished from the country for protesting against the Tsar.

The Communist Government

In March 1917 riots broke out in many cities against the decision of the Tsar government of joining war in Europe. The Tsar sent soldiers to fight the protesters, but the soldiers joined the fighting masses against the Tsar. The Tsar and his family were arrested and a new temporary government was formed. But this government was a failure and disappointment. It did not reverse anything started by Tsar. Also it decided to pursue with the fighting in the First World War. The people were feeling cheated. Soon the soldiers and the peasants formed groups called Soviets.

When Lenin heard about the formation of Soviets in Russia, he returned from exile and quickly organized a worker’s army along with the Bolshevik Party. The army was called the Red Guard, because of the colour of their uniform. Lenin, along with Trotsky, another revolutionary made plans to overthrow the Provincial Government.

In October 1917 the Red Guards and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provincial government. This incident is called October Revolution in history. Lenin and the Bolsheviks supported the Soviets and set up a new government. This government signed a peace treaty with the Germans and withdrew for the First World War. The new government declared all people to be equal and brought all resources under joint ownership of all Russians. Common Russians were now called comrades, meaning friend in need.