Russian Revolution (1917)

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Stalin, Trotsky, Lenin and Kaganovich all played a major role in the Soviet Union's Red Holocaust during the Russian Revolution.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of political, economic and social upheavals in Russia and their hopeless position in The Great War. It resulted in the overthrow of the Tsar and the Imperial government by a liberal-socialist Russian Provisional Government, followed eight months later by the overthrow of that government by the Soviets, resulting in the establishment of power under the control of the Bolshevik party. This eventually led to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, which lasted until its dissolution in 1991.

February 1917

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The February Revolution (March 1917 in the Gregorian calendar) was focused around Petrograd. Food had become non-existent and people were starving. In the worst winter in living memory, hundreds of railway locomotives' boilers had burst and what were still available took food to the Front, which was also in turmoil. The army garrison in Petrograd were mainly inexperienced conscripts and was psychologically unable to address or contain the growing revolt in the city. Some units deserted or went over to the rioters. The army High Command felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution because so many divisions were at war with the Central Powers hundreds of miles distant.

In the chaos, liberal and socialist members of the Parliament (Duma), under Prince Georgy Lvov (Prime Minister) and Alexander Kerensky (Minister of Justice), formed a Russian Provisional Government. They then sent delegates to Nicholas II, who was at Mohylev, the headquarters for the war front, demanding that he abdicate, which he did, in the Royal train at Pskov on the night of 2 March 1917. The monarchy was not formally abolished but this left the Provisional Government holding all power. The major error of this government was that it announced that the war would continue until final victory.

October 1917

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Vladimir Lenin

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Leon Trotsky

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The February revolution came as a complete surprise to the career revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky. Exiles abroad, they then hurried back to incite a more radical revolution and take over power. Lenin and his entourage returned from Zurich in the infamous Sealed Train then via Scandinavia, with the blessing of the German government who were desperate to get Russia out of the war, which Lenin had promised. He received a tumultuous reception at the Finland Station in St Petersburg just before midnight on April 3 (16 in the Gregorian Calendar) 1917. The Soviets (workers' councils), had been slowly building up their power bases in all the industrial cities, and were planning to take over. The Provision Government was soon out-manoeuvered by the Bolsheviks who had already formed workers militias which now became the Red Guards (precursors to the Red Army). The Mensheviks, another socialist faction, were also fighting for control of the government at this time. Red terrorism and murders became the order of the day. The Netherlands Ambassador at Petrograd also pointed out in his reports that the Bolshevik hierarchy was Jewish. Between October 24-26 (Nov 6-8) the Bolsheviks deposed Kerensky's Provisional Government.

Lenin

In the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government. They appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to ruthlessly quash dissent. The Bolshevik leadership signed a peace treaty at Brest Litovsk with Germany in March 1918 and Russia left The Great War. A civil war now erupted between the Red (Bolsheviks) and White (Royalist-nationalist) factions, which continued for several years, with the Bolsheviks being ultimately victorious. In this way the Revolution paved the way for the USSR with a death toll of some 85 million (see The Black Book of Communism) and a hopeless life in hunger, poverty, humiliation and terror for the vast majority of people. While many initial notable historical events occurred in Moscow and Petrograd, there was also a broadly-based Leftist movement in other cities, among national minorities throughout the former empire, and in the rural areas, where peasants seized and redistributed land.

Leon Trotsky

Trotsky was living in New York City when the February Revolution of 1917 overthrew Tsar Nicholas II. He left New York on March 27, but his ship was intercepted by British naval officials in Canada at Halifax, Nova Scotia and he spent a month detained at Amherst. After initial hesitation, the Russian Provisional Government's Foreign Minister, Pavel Milyukov, was forced to demand that Trotsky be released, and the British government freed Trotsky on April 29. He finally made his way back to Russia arriving on May 4. Upon his return, Trotsky was in substantive agreement with the Bolshevik position, but did not join them right away. Russian social democrats were split into at least six groups and the Bolsheviks were waiting for the next party Congress to determine which factions to merge with. Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organization in St.Petersburg, and became one of its leaders. At the First Congress of Soviets in June, he was elected a member of the first All-Russian Central Executive Committee ("VTsIK") from the Mezhraiontsy faction.

After an unsuccessful pro-Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd, Trotsky was arrested on August 7, 1917, but was released 40 days later in the aftermath of the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by General Lavr Kornilov. The Bolsheviks soon gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and Trotsky was elected Chairman on October 8. He sided with Lenin against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed staging an armed uprising, and he led the efforts to overthrow the Provisional Government now headed by Alexander Kerensky. After the success of the October (November) Soviets' uprising, Trotsky led the efforts to repel a counter-attack by Cossacks under General Pyotr Krasnov, and other troops still loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government, at Gatchina. Allied with Lenin, he successfully defeated attempts by other Bolshevik Central Committee members (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, etc.) to share power with other socialist parties.

By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the second man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin, overshadowing the ambitious Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant over the previous decade, but whose star appeared to be fading. This turnaround led to enmity between the two Bolshevik leaders which lasted until 1926 and did much to destroy them both.

How Liberals paved the way

By 1917, most countries in Europe were either democracies or constitutional monarchies, dominated by plutocratic financial and commercial interests. Whereas other European nations had appeased the liberals, Russia had largely refused to accede to their demands. Their Liberals were irate and confused after having been stymied in Russia for so long notwithstanding their success almost everywhere else in Europe. They began to believe that perhaps the only way to achieve so-called liberal democracy in Russia was to encourage democracy per se by encouraging the Far-Left to co-operate, expecting to be able to contain them, as in other countries, and a liberal democratic republic would emerge once the dust had settled.

The liberals began openly plotting with nihilists, the Far-Left, and even Russophobic elements and threw their much larger resources into the Far-Left Bolsheviks' meager pool of resources [just as liberal corporatists are supporting Political Correctness and Left-wing social changes a century later]. Thus the Bolsheviks ("Bolshevik" means "majority") were able to become a major force in Russia even though they were dominated by Jewish revolutionaries and initially supported by only a tiny number of Russia's population.

Although the Bolsheviks subsequently destroyed the liberal-left Provisional Government, replacing it with their own, the liberals' plan had partially succeeded at the beginning of the reforms back in 1905. The Bolsheviks's seizure of power in 1917 certainly caused massive social upheaval, and it took 74 years to burn itself out. Once it was gone, it was gone for good, and a democratic republic was declared immediately thereafter under Boris Yeltsin.

From another point of view, however, the liberal plan failed. For it can certainly be argued that the three main European successor-states of the Russian Empire: Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, are liberal democracies in name only. (This is certainly true of Belarus.) This is in fact the view of both the western liberal media and their liberal governments in the EU, US, UK, and UN, who have consistently placed these three nations on their various "naughty lists" of "illiberal" and "undemocratic" regimes.

Quotes

Russia is the last rampart and against her the Jews have constructed their final trench. To judge by the course of events, the capitulation of Russia is only a question of time. In that vast empire Judaism will find the fulcrum of Archimedes which will enable it to drag the whole of Western Europe off its hinges once for all. The Jewish spirit of intrigue will bring about a revolution in Russia such as the world has never yet seen. The present situation of Judaism in Russia is such that it has still to fear expulsion, but when it has laid Russia prostrate it will no longer have any attacks to fear. When the Jews have got control of the Russian state they will set about the destruction of the social organisation of Western Europe. This last hour of Europe will arrive at latest in a hundred or a hundred and fifty years.
—Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum, 1879.

Six or eight weeks ago, the Jews [of the United States] would have heeded the call to arms as a duty but with heavy hearts, as they would have known they would be fighting to perpetuate Russian autocracy. But now all that has been changed. Russian democracy has become victorious, and thanks are due to the Jew that the Russian Revolution succeeded.
—Jacob Schiff, to the Jewish League of American Patriots, 3 May 1917.

See also

• Trotskyism
• Cultural Marxism
• Mass killings under Communist regimes

Bibliography

• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1975). American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803295596

External links

• Jews, Bolsheviks and the Murder of Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanov Family
• The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia’s Early Soviet Regime: Behind the Murder of Russia's Imperial Family
• Russian Orthodox Church: Jews May Have Killed Russia's Last Czar Nicholas II In Ritual Murder

References

• Lenin, Vladimir I., What is to be Done?, first published in Germany in 1902,. Reprint by Penguin Books, London, 1989, ISBN: 0-14-018126-1
• Tompkins, Stuart Ramsay, The Russian Intelligentsia: Makers of the Revolutionary State, University of Oklahoma Press, 1957.
• Pearson, Raymond, The Russian Moderates and the Crisis of Tsarism 1914-1917, MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1977, ISBN: 0-333-21924-4.
• Kerensky, Alexander, The Crucifixion of Liberty, Arthur Barker Ltd., London, 1934.
• Anet, Claude, Through the Russian Revolution [the February revolution], Hutchinson & Co., London, 1917
• Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy - The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London, 1996, ISBN 0-224-04162-2

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