Mastering Modern World History
Page 58
FURTHER READING
Beasley, W. E., Japanese Imperialism, 1894–1945 (Oxford University Press, 1987).
Beasley, W. E., The Rise of Modern Japan since 1850 (Phoenix, new edition, 2001).
Beevor, A., The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (Phoenix, 2007 edition).
Bolloten, B., The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counter-Revolution (North Carolina University Press, 1991).
Gordon, A., A Modern History of Japan from Tokugawa Times to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2008 edition).
Jansen, M. B., The Making of Modern Japan (Harvard University Press, 2002 edition).
Murphy, R. T., ‘Looking to Game Boy’, London Review of Books (3 January 2002).
Payne, S. G., The Franco Regime, 1936–1975 (Wisconsin University Press, new edition, 2011).
Preston, P., The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (Harper, 2006).
Preston, P., Franco: A Biography (Fontana, 2011 edition).
Quiroga, A., Making Spaniards: Primo de Rivera and the Nationalization of the Masses, 1923–1930 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Storry, R., A History of Modern Japan (Penguin, 1990 edition).
Thomas, H., The Spanish Civil War (Penguin, fourth edition, 2003).
Williams, B., Modern Japan (Longman, 1987).
QUESTIONS
How far would you agree that it was the world economic crisis which caused Japan to fall under military rule in the early 1930s?
‘Japan’s recovery after the Second World War was not without its associated problems.’ How far do you agree with this view?
Explain what changes and problems were experienced by Japan in the years after 1990.
Assess the reasons for the outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936.
How far would you agree that it was mainly help from outside that made the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War possible?
There is a document question about the Spanish Civil War on the website.
Part III
Communism – Rise and Decline
Chapter 16
Russia and the revolutions, 1900–24
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
In the early years of the twentieth century, Russia was in a troubled state. Nicholas II, who was Tsar (emperor) from 1894 until 1917, insisted on ruling as an autocrat (someone who rules a country as he sees fit, without being responsible to a parliament), but had failed to deal adequately with the country’s many problems. Unrest and criticism of the government reached a climax in 1905 with the Russian defeats in the war against Japan (1904–5); there was a general strike and an attempted revolution, which forced Nicholas to make concessions (the October Manifesto). These included the granting of an elected parliament (the Duma). When it became clear that the Duma was ineffective, unrest increased and culminated, after disastrous Russian defeats in the First World War, in two revolutions, both in 1917.
The first revolution (February/March) overthrew the Tsar and set up a moderate provisional government. When this coped no better than the Tsar, it was itself overthrown by a second uprising:
the Bolshevik revolution (October/November).
The new Bolshevik government was shaky at first, and its opponents (known as the Whites) tried to destroy it, causing a bitter civil war (1918–20). Thanks to the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolsheviks (Reds) won the civil war, and, now calling themselves communists, were able to consolidate their power. Lenin began the task of leading Russia to recovery, but he died prematurely in January 1924.
16.1 AFTER 1905: WERE THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1917 INEVITABLE?
(a) Nicholas II tries to stabilize his regime
Nicholas survived the 1905 revolution because:
his opponents were not united;
there was no central leadership (the whole thing having flared up spontaneously);
most of the army remained loyal;
he had been willing to compromise at the critical moment by issuing the October Manifesto, promising concessions. These included allowing an elected parliament (Duma); granting basic civil liberties to the population – freedom of conscience, of speech, of assembly and of association; universal suffrage in elections for the Duma; no law could begin to operate without the approval of the Duma.
The Manifesto appeared to grant many of the demands of the moderate liberal reformers, so that tsarism now had a breathing space in which Nicholas had an excellent opportunity to make a constitutional monarchy work, and to throw himself on the side of the moderate reformers. However, there were other demands not addressed in the Manifesto, for example:
improvements in industrial working conditions and pay;
cancellation of redemption payments – these were annual payments to the government by peasants in return for their freedom and some land, following the abolition of serfdom in 1861: although peasants had received their legal freedom, these compulsory payments had reduced over half the rural population to dire poverty;
an amnesty for political prisoners.
Unfortunately Nicholas seems to have had very little intention of keeping to the spirit of the October Manifesto, having agreed to it only because he had no choice.
The First Duma (1906) was not democratically elected, for although all classes were allowed to vote, the system was rigged so that landowners and the middle classes would be in the majority. Even so, it put forward far-reaching demands such as confiscation of large estates; a genuinely democratic electoral system, and the right of the Duma to approve the Tsar’s ministers; the right to strike and the abolition of the death penalty. This was far too drastic for Nicholas, who had the Duma dispersed by troops after only ten weeks. He was apparently heard to remark that if things continued to go on like this, ‘we should find ourselves close to being a democratic republic. That would be senseless and criminal.’
The Second Duma (1907) suffered the same fate, after which Nicholas changed the voting system, depriving peasants and urban workers of the vote.
The Third Duma (1907–12) and the Fourth Duma (1912–17) were much more conservative and therefore lasted longer. Though on occasion they criticized the government, they had no power, because the Tsar controlled the ministers and the secret police.
Some foreign observers were surprised at the ease with which Nicholas ignored his promises and was able to dismiss the first two Dumas without provoking another general strike. The fact was that the revolutionary impetus had subsided for the time being, and many leaders were either in prison or in exile.
This, together with the improvement in the economy beginning after 1906, has given rise to some controversy about whether or not the 1917 revolutions were inevitable. The traditional liberal view was that although the regime had obvious weaknesses, there were signs that shortly before the First World War broke out, living standards were improving, and that given time, the chances of revolution would have diminished. The strengths were beginning to outweigh the weaknesses, and so the monarchy would probably have survived if Russia had kept out of the war. The Soviet view was that, given the Tsar’s deliberate flouting of his 1905 promises, there was bound to be a revolution sooner or later. The situation was deteriorating again before Russia’s involvement in the First World War; therefore the inevitable completion of the ‘unfinished’ revolution of 1905–6 could not be long delayed.
(b) Strengths of the regime
The government seemed to recover remarkably quickly, with most of its powers intact. Peter Stolypin, prime minister from 1906 to 1911, introduced strict repressive measures, with some 4000 people being executed over the next three years. But he also brought in some reforms and made determined efforts to win over the peasants, believing that, given 20 years of peace, there would be no question of revolution. Redemption payments were abolished and peasants were encouraged to buy their own land; about 2 million had done so by 1916 and another 3.5 million had emigrated to Siberia where they had their own farms. As a result, there emerged a class of comfortably-off p
easants (kulaks) on whom the government could rely for support against revolution, or so Stolypin hoped.
As more factories came under the control of inspectors, there were signs of improving working conditions; as industrial profits increased, the first signs of a more prosperous workforce could be detected. In 1912 a workers’ sickness and accident insurance scheme was introduced.
In 1908 a programme was announced to bring about universal education within ten years; by 1914 an extra 50 000 primary schools had been opened.
At the same time the revolutionary parties seemed to have lost heart; they were short of money, torn by disagreements, and their leaders were still in exile.
(c) Weaknesses of the regime
1 Failure of the land reforms
By 1911 it was becoming clear that Stolypin’s land reforms would not have the desired effect, partly because the peasant population was growing too rapidly (at the rate of 1.5 million a year) for his schemes to cope with, and because farming methods were too inefficient to support the growing population adequately. The assassination of Stolypin in 1911 removed one of the few really able tsarist ministers and perhaps the only man who could have saved the monarchy.
2 Industrial unrest
There was a wave of industrial strikes set off by the shooting of 270 striking gold miners in the Lena goldfields in Siberia (April 1912). In all there were over 2000 separate strikes in that year, 2400 in 1913, and over 4000 in the first seven months of 1914, before war broke out. Whatever improvements had taken place, they were obviously not enough to remove all the pre-1905 grievances.
3 Government repression
There was little relaxation of the government’s repressive policy, as the secret police rooted out revolutionaries among university students and lecturers and deported masses of Jews, thereby ensuring that both groups were firmly anti-tsarist. The situation was particularly dangerous because the government had made the mistake of alienating three of the most important sections in society – peasants, industrial workers and the intelligentsia (educated classes).
4 Revival of the revolutionary parties
As 1912 progressed, the fortunes of the various revolutionary parties, especially the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, revived. Both groups had developed from an earlier movement, the Social Democrat Labour Party, which was Marxist in outlook. Karl Marx (1818–83) was a German Jew whose political ideas were set out in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (Capital) (1867). He believed that economic factors were the real cause of historical change, and that workers (proletariat) were everywhere exploited by capitalists (middle-class bourgeoisie); this means that when a society became fully industrialized, the workers would inevitably rise up against their exploiters and take control themselves, running the country in their own interests. Marx called this ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’. When this point was reached there would be no further need for the ‘state’, which would consequently ‘wither away’.
One of the Social Democrat leaders was Vladimir Lenin, who helped to edit the revolutionary newspaper Iskra (The Spark). It was over an election to the editorial board of Iskra in 1903 that the party had split into Lenin’s supporters, the Bolsheviks (the Russian word for ‘majority’), and the rest, the Mensheviks (minority).
Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted a small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries who would work full-time to bring about revolution; because the industrial workers were in a minority, Lenin believed they must work with the peasants as well, and get them involved in revolutionary activity.
The Mensheviks, on the other hand, were happy to have party membership open to anybody who cared to join; they believed that a revolution could not take place in Russia until the country was fully industrialized and industrial workers were in a big majority over peasants; they had very little faith in co-operation from peasants, who were actually one of the most conservative groups in society. The Mensheviks were the strict Marxists, believing in a proletarian revolution, whereas Lenin was the one moving away from Marxism. In 1912 appeared the new Bolshevik newspaper Pravda (Truth), which was extremely important for publicizing Bolshevik ideas and giving political direction to the already developing strike wave.
The Social Revolutionaries were another revolutionary party; they were not Marxists – they did not approve of increasing industrialization and did not think in terms of a proletarian revolution. After the overthrow of the tsarist regime, they wanted a mainly agrarian society based on peasant communities operating collectively.
5 The royal family discredited
The royal family was discredited by a number of scandals. It was widely suspected that Nicholas himself was a party to the murder of Stolypin, who was shot by a member of the secret police in the Tsar’s presence during a gala performance at the Kiev opera. Nothing was ever proved, but Nicholas and his right-wing supporters were probably not sorry to see the back of Stolypin, who was becoming too liberal for their comfort.
More serious was the royal family’s association with Rasputin, a self-professed ‘holy man’, who made himself indispensable to the Empress Alexandra by his ability to help the ailing heir to the throne, Alexei. This unfortunate child had inherited haemophilia from his mother’s family, and Rasputin was able, on occasion, apparently through hypnosis and prayer, to stop the bleeding when Alexei suffered a haemorrhage. Eventually Rasputin became a real power behind the throne, but attracted public criticism by his drunkenness and his numerous affairs with court ladies. Alexandra preferred to ignore the scandals and the Duma’s request that Rasputin be sent away from the court (1912).
(d) The verdict?
The weight of evidence seems to suggest therefore that events were moving towards some sort of upheaval before the First World War broke out. There was a general strike organized by the Bolsheviks in St Petersburg (the capital) in July 1914 with street demonstrations, shootings and barricades. The strike ended on 15 July, a few days before the war began; the government still controlled the army and the police at this point and might well have been able to hold on to power, but writers such as George Kennan and Leopold Haimson believed that the tsarist regime would have collapsed sooner or later even without the First World War to finish it off. More recently, Sheila Fitzpatrick takes a similar view: ‘The regime was so vulnerable to any kind of jolt or setback that it is hard to imagine that it could have survived long, even without the war.’
On the other hand, some recent historians are more cautious. Christopher Read thinks the overthrow of the monarchy was by no means inevitable, and that the situation in the years immediately before 1914 could have continued indefinitely, provided there was no war. Robert Service agrees: he argues that although Russia was in a condition of ‘general brittleness’, although it was a ‘vulnerable plant, it was not doomed to suffer the root-and-branch revolution of 1917. What made that kind of revolution possible was the protracted, exhausting conflict of the First World War.’ Soviet historians of course continued to argue to the end that revolution was historically inevitable: in their view, the ‘revolutionary upsurge’ was reaching a climax in 1914, and the outbreak of war actually delayed the revolution.
(e) War failures made revolution certain
Historians agree that Russian failures in the war made revolution certain, causing troops and police to mutiny, so that there was nobody left to defend the autocracy. The war revealed the incompetent and corrupt organization and the shortage of equipment. Poor transport organization and distribution meant that arms and ammunition were slow to reach the front; although there was plenty of food in the country, it did not get to the big cities in sufficient quantities, because most of the trains were being monopolized by the military. Bread was scarce and very expensive.
Norman Stone has shown that the Russian army acquitted itself reasonably well, and Brusilov’s 1916 offensive was an impressive success (see Section 2.3(c)). However, Nicholas made the fatal mistake of appointing himself supreme commander (August 1915); his tactical blunde
rs threw away all the advantages won by Brusilov’s offensive, and drew on himself the blame for later defeats, and for the high death rate.
By January 1917, most groups in society were disillusioned with the incompetent way the Tsar was running the war. The aristocracy, the Duma, many industrialists and the army were beginning to turn against Nicholas, feeling that it would be better to sacrifice him to avoid a much worse revolution that might sweep away the whole social structure. General Krimov told a secret meeting of Duma members at the end of 1916: ‘We would welcome the news of a coup d’état. A revolution is imminent and we at the front feel it to be so. If you decide on such an extreme step, we will support you. Clearly there is no other way.’
16.2 THE TWO REVOLUTIONS: FEBRUARY/MARCH AND OCTOBER/ NOVEMBER 1917
The revolutions are still known in Russia as the February and October Revolutions. This is because the Russians were still using the old Julian calendar, which was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of Europe. Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918. The events which the Russians know as the February Revolution began on 23 February 1917 (Julian), which was 8 March outside Russia. When the Bolsheviks took power on 25 October (Julian), it was 7 November elsewhere. In this section, the Julian calendar is used for internal events in Russia, and the Gregorian calendar for international events such as the First World War, until 1 February 1918.
(a) The February Revolution
The first revolution began on 23 February when bread riots broke out in Petrograd (St Petersburg). The rioters were quickly joined by thousands of strikers from a nearby armaments factory. The Tsar sent orders for the troops to use force to end the demonstrations, and 40 people were killed. Soon, however, some of the troops began to refuse to fire at the unarmed crowds and the whole Petrograd garrison mutinied. Mobs seized public buildings, released prisoners from jails and took over police stations and arsenals. The Duma advised Nicholas to set up a constitutional monarchy, but he refused and sent more troops to Petrograd to try to restore order. This convinced the Duma and the generals that Nicholas, who was on his way back to Petrograd, would have to go. Some of his senior generals told Nicholas that the only way to save the monarchy was for him to renounce the throne. On 2 March, in the imperial train standing in a siding near Pskov, the Tsar abdicated in favour of his brother, the Grand Duke Michael. Unfortunately nobody had made sure that Michael would accept the throne, so when he refused, the Russian monarchy came to an end.