Russian Revolution

Russian Revolution

The Great October Revolution was one of the most relevant and momentous events of the twentieth century, it was a true revolution that shook the world, where the great leading role of Lenin and his Marxist conception that gave rise to the Bolshevik Party stood out.

Causes

The October Revolution had as a prelude the armed popular insurrection of 1905, which was defeated by the reactionary tsarist forces, but which did not stop the unwavering desires for change, social welfare and peace that the factory workers and the peasants continued to express in large numbers. the streets and fields of all the Russian geography and that despite the brutal repression this continued to grow until unleashing important violent uprisings of the people against the police and soldiers.

The Russian armed forces demoralized by the Tsar’s inability to face the war, by the loss of territories, by the thousands of troops killed in the war and tormented by the suffering of their families beset by hunger, joined the great uprising that it unleashed. the bourgeois democratic Revolution in February 1917, ousting the Tsarist monarchy led by Emperor Nicholas II, the last representative of the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years from power.

In this first stage of the Revolution, a provisional government chaired by General Kerensky was formed, which initially had the support and expectation of the Russian people who demanded the solution to their serious problems with demands such as: the non-participation of Russia in the First War. World (1914-1918); the elimination of overexploitation of workers with 14- and 18-hour workdays with low wages; hunger and food shortages; for justice and freedom for the peasants who lived in the exploitation and oppression of the landlords and who demanded to have their own land.

This bourgeois democratic revolution did not solve the problems raised. This government continued the war, although the people demanded the speedy signing of the peace, they refused to hand over the land of the landlords to the poor peasants, they refused to satisfy the most prevailing demands of the workers and they also opposed solving the discrimination., the oppression and neglect suffered by hundreds of non-Russian nationalities and kept them devoid of rights.

The government in essence, followed the same policy, preserving the entire tsarist apparatus of oppression in the different localities.

Events

The 25 of October of 1917, ^[6] the Bolshevik leader Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), led the uprising in Petrograd, the then capital of Russia, against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

The Red Guard, led by the Bolsheviks, seized the main government buildings before launching a final assault on the Winter Palace during the night of November 7-8. The assault, led by Vladimir Antónov-Ovséyenko, was launched at 21:45 after a volley shot from the Aurora cruiser. The palace was taken around two in the morning of the 8th; November 7 would be officially established as the date of the Revolution.

Consequences

The heroic days of October – as described by the American journalist John Reed – shook the world. A new epoch has opened for humanity. No subsequent event can overshadow the greatness of the Russian Bolsheviks. The 7 of November of 1917was conjugated to the top of the European political intelligentsia with the revolutionary spirit of the Russian working class and the struggle of the peasants for land and rights.

The exploits of 1917 and the years in which Lenin led the process constitute milestones of exemplary and imperishable value in the struggle of the peoples for the conquest of freedom. For years and decades, the communists and the people of the USSR fought colossal battles and made prodigious advances in the economic, social, political, cultural and military fields. In a relatively short historical time, they turned the impoverished and exploited country they inherited into a world power of the first order.

The Russian Revolution was the first to be won by the proletariat, since the French Revolution – bourgeois in character – left intact capitalist private ownership of the means of production as the prevailing economic system. Instead, the Russian Revolution was the tangible proof that the outcasts of the earth needed to be sure that Marx’s dream was not unreal.

The Great October Socialist Revolution opened for Humanity a new era, that of the passage from the theory of scientific socialism to the human practice of socialism.

After the October Revolution

After the victory of the Bolsheviks, according to topschoolsintheusa, Russia suffered a civil war (1918-1922) between the supporters of the Bolshevik revolution (Red Army) and its opponents (White Army), the latter, supported by various foreign powers.

After the triumph of the Red Army, the Soviet Union was established in December 1922 as the union of the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Transcaucasia.

Founding of the Soviet Union

The 29 of December of 1922 a conference of plenipotentiary delegations of Russia, Transcaucasia, Ukraine and Belarus approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

These two documents were confirmed by the first Soviet Congress of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory Petrovsky, and Aleksandr Chervyakov respectively on December 30, 1922. On 1 February as as 1924 the USSR was recognized by the British Empire, which at that time was the first world power.

The intensive restructuring of the country’s economy, industry and politics began from the early days of Soviet power in 1917. One of the most prominent advances was the GOELRO plan, which called for a profound restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification. from the country.

The Plan began in 1920, developing over a period of 10 to 15 years. It included the construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric plants, and the electrification of numerous industrial companies. The Plan became the prototype for the subsequent Five-Year Plan (USSR) practically ending in 1931.