Richard Pipes: The Russian Revolution

Richard Pipes’s

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

“Masterful and timely … [Pipes’s] history blends uncannily with today’s … headlines.… A brilliantly focused portrait.”

—Newsweek

“Pipes’s compellingly written account … is … a masterful culmination of his lifelong investigations of the revolutionary period.”

—Newsday

“A truly impressive piece of scholarship … A fascinating treatise, certain to become the basic research text on the subject.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Panoramic … The first attempt in any language to offer a comprehensive study of the Russian Revolution … Pipes is not a mere communicator of facts but a philosopher examining the deeper, broader trends beneath the surface of history.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Like his illustrious predecessor among students of revolutions, Alexis de Tocqueville, Pipes has a broad, sweeping view.… An imposing achievement … His craftsmanship as a writer … serves him well.”

—

Boston Globe

“Pipes is an extremely knowledgeable and careful historian.… This is probably the best overall study of those momentous events … a good, important book.”

—

Cleveland Plain Dealer

ALSO BY RICHARD PIPES

The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–23

(1964)

Struve: Liberal on the Left, 1870–1905

(1970)

Russia under the Old Regime

(1974)

Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905–1944

(1980)

Survival Is Not Enough

(1984)

Russia Observed

(1989)

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1991

Copyright © 1990 by Richard Pipes

Maps copyright © 1990 by Bernhard H. Wagner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1990.

Owing to limitations of space, acknowledgment of permission to reprint previously published material will be found on this page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pipes, Richard.

The Russian Revolution/Richard Pipes.—1st Vintage Books ed.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1990.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78857-3

1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921.

2. Soviet Union—History—Nicholas II, 1894–1917. I. Title.

[DK265.P474 1991]

947.084′I—dc20 91-50008

v3.1

To the victims

CONTENTS

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART ONEThe Agony of the Old Regime

1 1905: The Foreshock

University disturbances of 1899 as beginning of revolution

Plehve and Zubatov

outbreak of Russo-Japanese War, Plehve assassinated and replaced by Mirskii: the great Zemstvo Congress (November 1904

)

“Bloody Sunday

”

tsarism tries moderate reforms

the debacle of Tsushima and talk of a representative body

university turmoil resumes and leads to general strike

Witte advises concessions

emergence of St. Petersburg Soviet

the October Manifesto

Witte forms cabinet and represses radicals; nationwide pogroms

1905 as apogee of Russian liberalism

2 Official Russia

Patrimonialism

Nicholas and Alexandra

the bureaucracy

ministries

conservative and liberal officialdom

economic development undermines autocracy

the army

the gentry

the Orthodox church

3 Rural Russia

Household, village, and commune

land shortage

industrial workers

peasant mentality

peasant attitudes to law and property

changes in peasant mood after 1900

4 The Intelligentsia

Its European origins

sociétés de pensée

socialism as ideology of the intelligentsia

the ideal of a “new man

”

emergence of Russian intelligentsia

revolutionary movement in nineteenth century Russia

the Socialists-Revolutionaries

Russian liberals

5 The Constitutional Experiment

Monarchy and constitutionalism

the Fundamental Laws of 1906

elections to the Duma

the First Duma

Stolypin

Stolypin represses terror

his agrarian reforms

the Second Duma and the electoral law of June 3, 1907

Stolypin’s political difficulties begin

the Western zemstvo crisis

Stolypins murder

assessment of Stolypin

Russia on the eve of World War I

6 Russia at War

Strategic preparations and Russia’s readiness for war

early campaigns: East Prussia and Galicia

Russian debacle in Poland, 1915

changes in government

emergence of the Progressive Bloc and Nicholas’s assumption of high command

bringing society into limited partnership in the war effort

7 Toward the Catastrophe

Inflation

the Brusilov offensive

rise of tension in the country

food crisis

Protopopov

the liberals decide to attack

Duma sessions of November 1916

assassination of Rasputin

last days at Tsarskoe Selo

plots against the Imperial family

8 The February Revolution

Mutiny of Petrograd garrison

the Duma hesitates to claim power

emergence of Petrograd Soviet and of its Executive Committee

Duma and Soviet agree on formation of Provisional Government

Order No. 1

abdication of Nicholas II

Michael refuses the crown

early actions of Provisional Government

Soviet undermines the government

land, Constituent Assembly, and war aims

revolution spreads nationwide

ex-tsar returns to Tsarskoe Selo

extraordinary rapidity of Russia’s breakdown

PART TWOThe Bolsheviks Conquer Russia

9 Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism

Lenin’s early years

Lenin and Social Democracy

his personality

his disenchantment with Social Democracy

emergence of Bolshevism

final split with the Mensheviks

Lenin’s agrarian and nationality programs

financial affairs of the Bolshevik party

the Malinovskii episode

Zimmerwald, Kiental, and connections with enemy agents

10 The Bolshevik Bid for Power

The Bolshevik Party in early 1917