Asher Sisneros

Discontent was growing in Russia, and poverty and the Tsar’s incompetence only worsened the issue. A parliament, the Duma, was established in 1905 to Westernize Russia and make it more democratic. Still, Tsar Nicholas II held absolute de facto control over the Russian government. The heavy cost of WW1 continued to mount pressures domestically as the people paid the price of war economically and through blood. By 1918, riots broke out in Petrograd, modern-day St. Petersburg, the then-capital of Russia, and gave rise to the February Revolution. It started with women protesting for bread, but quickly the number of rioters grew and soldiers within Nicholas II’s army defected to join the riots. Nicholas II called on troops from the Western front, but it was fruitless. The Soviets controlled the railroads, and Nicholas II was helpless. Under the advice of his military commanders, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, ending the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty. 

By the end of the February Revolution, the Provisional Government was established and promised to hold elections for a popular assembly. This, however, never happened, and the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky’s leadership accused them of never intending to hold elections. Matters only worsened when Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the Provisional Government, refused to end WW1 and even left Petrograd to “rally” the troops on the front lines. Unfortunately for him, the Russian offensive against Germany was an abysmal failure. Domestic tensions rose during the Kornilov Affair. With more riots breaking out in Petrograd, Kerensky called on the Commander-in-Chief Kornilov to march on Petrograd and put down the riots. Accounts differ on the motives of Kornilov and Kerensky, but Kerensky then instructed him to halt the march on Petrograd, and Kornilov refused. Those favoring Kerensky say he feared Kornilov was planning coup d’etat, and Kornilov’s refusal to stand down affirmed his suspicions; others argue that Kornilov thought that Kerensky’s instructions to stand down were a sign that he was already too late and the Soviets had seized the Winter Palace. Whatever the case, Kornilov did not stand down. In desperation, Kerensky appealed to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks who controlled all of the infrastructure in Russia and forcibly stopped Kornilov. But Kornilov’s defeat was hardly the end of trouble for Kerensky, for the Kornilov Affair only guaranteed his demise. All Russians, all classes, now despised him. First, it was the countryside peasants burdened by his food quotas; then it was the army for accusing General Kornilov of planning a coup. Lenin and the Bolsheviks mobilized, beginning the Bolshevik/October Revolution, and they and their Menshevik allies seized the Winter Palace with almost no resistance. 

With the Provisional Government abolished, elections were held for the Constituent Assembly, but the Bolsheviks were crushed by their more moderate counterparts, and they only received a quarter of the seats in the Assembly. After one day, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party dismissed the Constituent Assembly by force and started the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. Naturally, only Bolsheviks could join, and Lenin became the chairman, while Trotsky became the commander-in-chief. 

To Lenin, his hero Karl Marx was naive about the proletariat’s inevitable uprising. Under Marx’s communist theory, socialism would be the inevitable result of proletarian workers rising up against the bourgeois business owners and overthrowing capitalism, replacing it with a state-controlled economy. Under the socialist system, the government would run the economy on the behalf of the proletariat, and eventually, when the government collapsed—as all governments would eventually, according to Marx—then humanity would enter into the final stage of history: the communist era, an era in which all the means of production would be equally controlled by all the proletariat who lived in total equality. Lenin, however, thought it was naive to expect the proletariat to “inevitably” rise up on their own. To him, the working classes of Russia were complacent, and without inspiration, they would never revolt. Instead, they required an intellectual class to lead them—the Bolsheviks. And true to his word, Lenin did. 

Unfortunately for the people of Russia, Lenin’s government was a disaster. By 1921, the standard of living fell by 2/3rds since 1918; by 1920, large-scale industrial production shrank by more than 3/4ths since 1913; and by 1923, hyperinflation had multiplied prices by a factor of 100 million. Labor became compulsory, factories were totally mismanaged, prices were fixed, and civil war broke out in the countryside. An estimated 5.2 million Russians died during the Russian famine of 1921, and the Soviet Union was crushed domestically. Churches were ransacked for treasures, and when the Pope offered to give Lenin a blank check to cover all the cost so long as he did not destroy the treasures, Lenin ignored him. Unfortunately, those who questioned the effectiveness of Lenin’s regime and communism in general faced persecution by the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, and the firing squad of Trotsky’s Red Army. The entire justice system existed to justify the Bolshevik Party’s actions. Even those who helped overthrow the Provisional Government, like the Mensheviks, were exterminated if they questioned Lenin, and Russia was transformed into a one-party state as the Bolshevik Party took power and renamed itself the Communist Party. Even though Lenin later made free-market concessions in the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 because the situation was so dire, dissident voices were still persecuted. 

Though Lenin died in 1923, Russia was not delivered. Millions were already dead, and Lenin had created a monster that could not be tamed. The Communist Party was not ready to concede defeat, despite the millions of dead citizens scattered across the Soviet Union. Rather, another man would rise and make matters even worse: Joseph Stalin.