Critically examine the role of political ideas in the Russian Revolution

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Critically examine the role of political ideas in the Russian Revolution.

The first and most important thing to consider about the Russian Revolution of 1917 was that it was a year of upheaval and the revolution itself consisted mainly of two completely separate revolutions, with different agendas, but while they do differ in terms of what they set out to achieve you could look at them as different stages of a larger whole revolution in terms of what they actually achieve. The February revolution served as a means to overthrow the state of autocracy implanted by the Tsar’s and replace it with the new “provisional” government, where the Russian Duma (Parliament) acted as the primary executive, judiciary and legislative body. The arguably more famous of the two revolutions, the one that is commonly referred to when talking about the Russian Revolution was the Bolshevik communist revolution in October 1917 led by Vladimir Lenin. This Revolution brought about the USSR’s (formally Russia) withdrawal from the war and the USSR’s communist philosophy.

The 1917 revolution was of course not the only revolution in Russia, there have been many, one of the most notable being the 1905 Revolution which saw a discontented Russian nation trying to overthrow Nicholas II after a century of discontentment and a failed war against the Japanese. Throughout my essay I will be exploring the political and economic conditions within Russia which led to the outbreak of revolution in each case and examining the political ideology behind the revolutions of 1917. I also wish to examine the effect the political ideas behind the Russian Revolution had on the world stage at the time, examining the fear of communism and how the western world reacted to it.

To examine the political ideas involved the Russian Revolution you must look back over the previous century and understand the level of poverty and discontent felt by the Russian population over the previous century from the loss of the 1853-56 Crimean war to the  ‘Bloody Sunday” massacres of 1905. 19th century and early 20th century Russian had roughly 80% of its population living in poverty as communally organized peasants. The large peasant population feeling neglected in a society which was largely based around agriculture was one of the key elements that enabled the 1917 revolution to take place.

There was dissatisfaction with the status quo and that things weren’t changing, looking back to 1905 very similar conditions existed in Russia when revolution broke out. Nicholas II was in power, Russia has just suffered an embarrassing defeat in an unpopular war against the Japanese and on January 9th 1905 hundreds of factory workers and their families died protesting for a constitution, an idea dismissed by the Tsar as “senseless dreams”. When compared with the 1917 Revolution, set in the midst of WWI, with Nicholas II still in power and Russia still demanding the same rights and change that it wanted 12 years earlier you can see the similarities, although the strikes in Petrograd on the 27th February 1917 saw the military refusing to repeat the atrocities of ‘Bloody Sunday”, an importance difference when considering the success of the 1917 February Revolution. The 1917 Revolution set out to achieve what the 1905 Revolution could not, in the ‘October Manifesto’ Nicholas II promised the people of Russia civil liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and also promised that no law would be introduced without the agreement of the Duma. The reality was these were empty promises, and the Tsar made is so that the Duma couldn’t initiate any legislation of its own accord and peasants were flogged and suppressed at the first sign of rebellion or protest

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One of the primary complaints in the 1917 Russian Revolution was that of the autocracy of the Tsar. From the inception of the role in 1533, where Ivan IV was named as the first Tsar of Russia, the position has been synonymous with terror. While there were several-loved Tsar’s e.g Peter II the great, people are more likely to recognize names like Ivan the terrible and remember the emperor like sovereignty demanded by the Tsar’s. Nicholas II moved Russia from a medieval state of autocracy to a constitutional monarchy (one under which he believed he ruled by divine right) where ...

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