My topic today is the great Russian Revolution of 1917.

First, I want to talk about the collapse of the imperial regime,

the February revolution.

Then, I want to describe the kind of order which followed that revolution,

the establishment of a liberal regime.

And my third topic will be the collapse of that liberal regime,

and the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917.

Of course, there is an enormous literature on the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Given the significance of the event,

this is fully understandable.

There are perhaps as many books written on

the Russian Revolution as there are books on Napoleon.

The general understanding is that there was a revolutionary movement

developing in the course of the 19th century,

in the early 20th century.

And that revolutionary movement carbonated in the great Russian Revolution.

It has always seemed to me

that bringing together the history of the revolutionary movement,

interesting as it is because of the characters who participated in it.

There were really some very picturesque,

and some appealing and some not so appealing characters.

But bringing that together with the great revolution and

somehow seeing this as a cause as somehow

their final accomplishment of the revolutionary movement

is perhaps not really sustainable.

It has always seemed to me that the issue is the collapse of authority.

That is the question,

how can you administer that vast country such as Russia?

At the 20th century and in particular in the middle of a modern war,

because the leaders of the terrorist regime stood for a set of ideas and they governed,

attempted to govern on the basis of those ideas.

And those ideas seemed turned out to be anachronistic in the course of the 20th century.

That's why talking about the people must regain my confidence

is obviously not the 20th century ideology

and the basis for which you can administer a country.

And then, the Liberals took over.

And these were also people with a set of

principles in which they genuinely deeply believed,

and it turned out that the basis of liberal principles.

It was also impossible to administer the country.

Now if we look at the history of the revolution,

the revolutionary era of 1917 in the way which I am proposing,

then we must accept that

the culminating factor was really what followed after the Bolshevik takeover.

When two competing organizations,

two competing set of principles fought against one another,

namely the Bolsheviks and it might come to revolutionaries.

And it was really the Civil War which decided

that the Bolsheviks came up with the set of ideas

whether we like them or not on the basis it was possible to

reestablish authority and administer the country.

So let me then turn to my first topic, the February Revolution.

By the way, we have a difficulty here because Russia up

to February 1918 operated on the basis of an old calendar.

And so February 23rd,

when the demonstrations started in Petrograd,

according to the modern calendar was March 8,

which has had a significant in as much as March 8 is International Women's Day,

which may have something to do with what actually happened.

Well, what did actually happened?

What happened, that the news spread in Petrograd that there was not enough grain,

not enough grain and women came to demonstrate.

And that in itself was not very surprising.

There had been demonstrations before.

But the demonstration grew in size.

Workers from the large industries,

from the large factories of Petrograd, joined the demonstrators.

And two or three days later according to police reports,

150,000 to 200,000 people appeared in the streets of Petrograd.

By the way, the reason that there was not enough grain

was not so much because the country did not produce,

it was that the transportation system

in the course of the war broke down,

and the army, which needed to be supplied with bread,

also took away so much

as there was reason to believe that Petrograd would starve.

Well what was there to do that are ordered

the military governor to disperse the revolutionaries.

Again, so far nothing surprising.

However, two days later,

the soldiers refused to carry out order, joined the demonstrators.

And this is the crucial moment,

because it seems to me the issue

is not that the people did not want to live with the old way

and the overthrow of the regime by searching on to the centers of power.

It is the collapse of authority.

The unwillingness to carry out the order, which was the revolution.

Now, Trotsky who was really a very fine writer

and wrote a very good and worthwhile book on the Russian Revolution,

argues that it was the Bolsheviks who provided the spirit for this revolution.

This is very hard to sustain in as much as in the whole country there were perhaps

20,000 Bolsheviks of which there were about 2000 in Petrograd.

And the idea that women had to be convinced that there is not

enough bread and not enough grain doesn't make much sense.

The demonstrators did not need any convincing.

The demonstrators had reason to demonstrate on their own.

Then why did the soldiers stopped carrying out orders?

The soldiers, basically peasants who made up the great bulk of the Russian army,

were tired of the war.

The spirit which enthused the political class

is not something which the common soldiers share.

The regime which performed so poorly in the course of the war

in terms of organization really made the bulk of the soldier class,

in bulk of the army, to lose confidence in their leaders.

So why the soldiers did not carry out the order is understandable.

So the Tsar,

who was at the headquarters of the army,

ordered new measures, new leaders,

nothing seemed to help.

But the remarkable fact

is that the Tsar was advised by the military high command,

by the leaders of the army to give in.

Now since the great bulk of the Russian officer corps,

of course was monarchist.

Nonetheless, they advised the Tsar to give in because of their belief

that by suppressing the revolution they would

undermine the Army's capability of fighting the foreign enemy.

Now for the soldiers, for the officers,

who fought the war which was not going on for

three years and in the course of which sacrificed

literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of their fellow Russians.

The war had to seem as something very important and they believed that deposing the Tsar,

establishing a different regime,

the army will be able to perform better.

And what is striking with what ease

the Tsarist government,

which lasted for 300 years collapsed.

How easy it was.

In the course of a week,

the Tsarist government was no more.

The Tsar first ask his brother Michael to take the crown.

Michael wisely refused the job,

because he understood that this would not work,

and that was the end.

Tsarism ended with so little bloodshed.

Well, what was there to do?

The kind of political system,

the kind of political authority came into being

is something very unusual and very interesting.

Because after, all the regime in the course of the war,

had two, shall I say enemies.

That is two opposing forces.

One was the liberal intelligentsia.

The liberal intelligentsia which was

substantially represented in the Duma in the Russian parliament.

The Russian parliament was elected before the war.

It was elected on the basis of very restrictive suffrage.

So it did not really represent the Russian people.

It represented a political class in which some liberal figures played major roles.

The last Tsarist government wanted to prolong the Duma.

Indeed the right wing members of the Duma, indeed accepted that.

However, the left wing formed a provisional committee and

that provisional committee transformed itself to be the provisional government.

So these were liberals who became the government

and not because they wanted a revolution not because they

lead the revolution but because power fell into

their hands and they were actually concerned about it.

They were worried about the consequences and they were

also worried about the fact that as liberals they believed

in the constitutional order but in reality they just named themselves to be

ministers without any constitutional authority.

The other center of power and this is something which

needs more explanation were the Soviets.

Now what where the Soviets?

The Soviets nothing to do with Marxism.

Marx had nothing to say about the Soviets.

The Soviets came into existence in the course of the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Quite unforeseen, quite unplanned.

That is a revolutionary situation emerged.

The workers in factories formed committees and these committees

acquired power because they had the ability

to bring people into the streets and demonstrate.

Now the Soviets were dissolved after the failure of the revolution of 1905.

But immediately in February 1917,

March 1917 if you will,

came into existence once again and the Petrograd Soviet which came to be very

quickly and on wealthy body of something

like several thousand delegates from different factories,

had great power because they had

the ability to bring people into the streets and demonstrate.

So this was a political system,

a political order which was by very nature lacked stability.

The provisional government which was quickly recognized by all Allied Powers of Europe,

the Allied Powers of Europe believed that now

Democratic Russia will be able to fight better,

quickly recognized this provisional government had the legal authority.

On the other hand it did not have the power because no power stood behind it.

The Soviets on the other hand had

no authority but it had power because it could bring people to the street.

Now who led the Soviets?

The Soviets were led by socialist political groups,

socialist revolutionaries basically a peasant oriented

party which represented the interest of the really great majority of the Russian people.

And the socialists who were Marxist regarded themselves as Marxists,

who were further divided into two groups.

The Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Mensheviks who as I said were Marxists and

believed in the coming of the revolution but they accepted

the Marxist premise that societies go through definite stages of development.

And Russia, the next political social order

will be a capitalist order and the Russia are not yet ready for a socialist revolution.

The Bolsheviks by contrast were enthused by

the revolutionary spirit and they

did not take that particular Marxist concept so seriously,

but they took seriously is the Marxist spirit of revolution.

And so in that sense they were better revolutionaries.

What happened in the course of the 1917 is one crisis followed another.

Now what were the issues which ultimately brought down the Provisional Government?

Let me stop here for a moment.

The February Revolution

Russian History: from Lenin to Putin

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