The lessons of the Russian revolution and civil war

These days, historians recall the 100th anniversary of the events related to the civil war in Russia. This war, from which many important conclusions could be drawn. But are they made?

The events of 100 years ago in the studio "Day TV" reflects historian Andrei Fursov.

In the course of the conversation, an important question arises: “What did the peasants actually do when the Reds threshed the whites and the whites threshed the reds?” The question is interesting, especially considering that for the period 1918-1920 the vast majority of the Russian peasantry were by no means determined whose side in this confrontation is occupied and whether it is necessary to switch to any side at all.

While active hostilities were ongoing from Crimea to the Far East, millions of peasants often tried to continue to do what they were used to doing under the previous government - cultivating land and trying to feed their families.

Andrei Fursov recalls the Nekrasov phrase about the reforms of Alexander II as applied to the very idea of ​​the Russian revolution:

Reforms hit the gentleman with one end and the peasant with the other.

An important question raised, how did it turn out that the situation of the late XIX-early XX centuries did not even lead to a revolution, but to a complete reformatting of the socio-political system in the country with multiple geopolitical consequences.

About the Russian revolution, the civil war and their lessons for today:

Comments

[1959ain]

In the USA, 200 years of revolutions and wars, it only nightmares countries all over the world, with wars and revolutions, they hammer into our heads that we would commit suicide, destroying our countries, and they would save us from this fire, robbing us and fed their unemployed. So become a suicide and make a revolution in your country, and feed the unemployed USA

[businessv]

Quote: 1959ain

So become a suicide and make a revolution in your country, and feed the unemployed USA

You famously twisted, colleague! I think there are few people in our country who would love to see this action, not to mention participating in it!

[Grandfather]

The lessons of the Russian revolution and civil war

"what are you dreaming about, cruiser" Aurora "...

[paul3390]

The lessons are simple - the ruling class should not be greyhound and bring people to the pen .. And then after all, when once again they will smear their forehead with green paint - just like 100 years ago, all this type of elite will scream woefully - and we for sho ? Sincerely not understanding - but in fact, for sho .. But the people paid by them will be sooooo well understood ..

[Arlen]

Quote: paul3390

The lessons are simple - the ruling class should not be greyhound and bring people to the pen

That's right. If we look at the reasons leading the country to the Great October Socialist Revolution, then we will see several main reasons, namely:
Reason 1. The agrarian-peasant question. For centuries, the peasantry oppressed by the landowners dreamed of getting rid of the oppression of the landlords. The reforms carried out by the tsarist government did not find a proper response among the peasants;
Reason 2. The political crisis. Complete political powerlessness of the working class and peasantry. The loss of authority by the Provisional Government, which was not able to solve the problems of society;
Reason 3. The arbitrariness of the police and officials.
Reason 4. The fatigue of the people from the protracted war;
Reason 5. The economic crisis. Rising inflation, unemployment, rising prices, the threat of hunger and more;
Stalin in his works wrote:

"... the country continued to languish under the weight of the imperialist war, economic collapse and food devastation. The front was falling apart and spreading. Factories and plants were stopped. Famine was growing in the country. The February revolution with its internal contradictions was clearly insufficient to" save the country. "The Milyukov government - Kerensky was clearly unable to resolve the fundamental issues of the revolution. "

The main objectives of the Revolution were as follows:
a) Building a fair Soviet society;
b) Establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
c) Elimination of human exploitation by man;
d) Equal rights of people in their rights and duties.
The slogan of the Revolution was "All power to the Soviets!"
Stalin in his article "Power of the Soviets" (I am not sure for the title) wrote:

“What is“ Soviet power ”and how does it differ from any other power?
They say that transferring power to the Soviets means forming a “homogeneous” democratic government, organizing a new “cabinet” of “socialist” ministers and, in general, making a “serious change” in the personnel of the Provisional Government. But this is not true. The point here is not at all about replacing some persons of the Provisional Government with others. The point is that the new, revolutionary classes should become the masters of the situation in the country. The point is the transfer of power into the hands of the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry. "

Thanks to the Revolution, the course of history was changed not only in Russia, but throughout the world. The first socialist state was created. The state of workers and peasants. In the new Soviet state, changes have occurred in all areas. The issue of illiteracy was resolved. Fair social conditions were created. Etc.

[paul3390]

If we want at least any decent future for our children, we have no choice but to return Soviet power. And this is true - we once prosrali her, and to return to us. There is nothing to transfer your sins to descendants ..

[carstorm 11]

thanks of course, but let’s do without resurrecting the dead. it will be possible to return it only by force, but I’m not sorry for my children.

[paul3390]

You might think - there is a choice .. Nobody will give the stolen good.

[carstorm 11]

Well, then another war will be and the country will not remain. is that your task

[paul3390]

And yours - to make your children serfs? After all, everything goes to that. We’ll live in the 19th century - but it’s like without a war .. No, there’s definitely nothing left of the country, the bourgeois will sell us with all his giblets ..

[carstorm 11]

what the hell serfs? Why write these nonsense? you live in a free country and do what you want. choose the path yourself in life and go along it. I want the same for my daughters. so that they themselves decide who to be and how to live.

[paul3390]

As for a free country, this is especially ridiculous .. Under capitalism this does not happen ..

But we have built this society not to infringe on personal freedom, but to make the human person feel truly free. We built it for real personal freedom, freedom without quotes. It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal freedom" can be for an unemployed who walks hungry and does not find the use of his labor. Real freedom exists only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some people by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a person does not tremble because tomorrow he may lose his job, home, bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and any other freedom possible.

[carstorm 11]

these slogans are not there) I did not believe in this nonsense and I do not believe it. I did myself and everything that I achieved, too, everything myself. at the same time, I did not shy away from guarding the parking lot or eating doshiraki in order to pay for my studies. so all this certainly sounds beautiful but not for me.

[Stirbjorn]

Quote: paul3390

And yours - to make your children serfs? After all, everything goes to that. We will live in the 19th century - but of the type without a war ..

for sure, and after death we will go to heaven!

[Sergey Olegovich]

Quote: carstorm 11

Well, then another war will be and the country will not remain. is that your task

Why war? Like, you can't come to power without war? You will laugh, but you can, through elections. If everyone comes to the polls, including those who do not go to the polls because “everything was decided there long ago without us” and votes, there will be no war.

[carstorm 11]

can. just do not work out. this is alien to the younger generation and they won’t go for it. which means only by force. I’m talking about the Soviet government that people missed you. he speaks of return and not of coming to her.

[AU Ivanov.]

She never existed in nature, this Soviet power. The Communists ruled, and the people elected were a decoration that never solved anything. It would be more correct to say, not to return, but to create Soviet power.

[paul3390]

Rave. You never lived under the USSR. There were already rights and opportunities to influence the government - in those days it was an order of magnitude more than in the current Russian Federation ..

[carstorm 11]

for example, what?))) what exactly could you influence?)

[ANB]

. what exactly could you influence

I myself could not. By age.
But my mother, when she could not attach me to the garden, brought me to the office of the director of the plant. A week later, I was in the garden.
In the case of some kind of great injustice, any ordinary worker could turn to the city / district committee. If they didn’t help, go to the newspaper. True, for example. Correspondents of central newspapers in the field were feared like fire.

[AU Ivanov.]

Any Council danced to the tune of the district committee, city party committee. Even the candidatures of deputies were coordinated with party bodies. This is an example of democracy.

[paul3390]

I’m saying that you didn’t live under the USSR. Otherwise, they would have known that if needed - a person could go to a deputy in the Council, regional committee, trade union, KNK, write in a newspaper - yes there were a lot of opportunities. And that’s all - really serious, not like a fake .. For under Soviet rule, there was a true rule of law .. And real democracy.

[AU Ivanov.]

Well, yes, as he was born in 1963, he was in lethargy. And I saw the "popular rule" superbly on the whistle from the district committee.

[paul3390]

Either lying, or in lethargy and arrived. For I, like all those who really lived then, have the opposite experience .. Including - on a call from the district committee. I would try there if someone didn’t accept the complaint from the hard worker or had a break .. And after all, there were higher instances of the district committee.

[AU Ivanov.]

Yeah. My mom, who had five of us, had real experience. Upon a request to improve housing conditions, she was told that no one had asked her to give birth so much.

[qQQQ]

Quote: AS Ivanov.

Yeah. My mom, who had five of us, had real experience. Upon a request to improve housing conditions, she was told that no one had asked her to give birth so much.

If you come up with something, then something more real, in the USSR such an answer was simply not acceptable, and at any level of power, because there was a queue of other candidates to any place, any miss and that’s all - changed.

[AU Ivanov.]

Yes of course. I well remember the Komsomol and party leaders looking down on the "gray cattle" Of which, in fact, our power now consists. So, the United Russia is the CPSU today.

[chenia]

Quote: AS Ivanov.

My mom, who had five of us, had real experience.

Enough dandy enough. And what did not give the apartment? Did you live in the basement? You don’t hang noodles on your ears. In this situation, this is a separate turn. Single mother (as I understand it) all the more.
Well, if you don’t write to the queue at all, then yes.
I warn you. I’m more than 10 years older than you, and I know all the subtleties of that time.
Something you do not agree?

[AU Ivanov.]

You tell this to those 40% of Leningraders who lived in communal apartments. They received housing, but only service, from the railway, where his father worked. And not in Leningrad. And without amenities. And grandfather and grandmother - both veterans - order-bearers, have lived almost all their lives in the communal, received a separate one only on the 60th anniversary of the Victory, already in old age.

[ANB]

My mom, who had five of us, had real experience. Upon a request to improve housing conditions, she was told that no one asked her to give birth so much.

I do not believe. Examples of many were before my eyes. Since '89, maybe someone would risk it so to speak.
Before that - it would end very badly for the boss.

[ANB]

I did not have time to read the comment. Sorry for the take.

[ANB]

Even the candidatures of deputies were agreed with the party bodies

But the criminals did not go to the deputies.

[AU Ivanov.]

The tsarist government has already been overthrown. And not by the people, but by the oligarchy, the highest generals and the top officials of the Russian Empire.

[Arlen]

Quite right. As for my quote: "The reforms carried out by the tsarist government ..." then the Provisional Government continued the tsarist reforms in most of the issues related to the reforms.

[paul3390]

Reason 1. The agrarian-peasant question.

Actually - the true creator of the Russian revolution was Alexander II, such as the Liberator. He chose the most moronic and stupid version of the agrarian reform .. That shied away. Inevitably, analogies arise with a no less stupid type of pension reform ... True - we can do it for the better, people will quickly recover and return socialism ..

[Edvid]

The main, programmatic task of the coming to power of the Bolsheviks was the "world revolution". And to achieve their goal, they used Russia "as cannon fodder." When the implementation of this idea failed miserably, they reoriented themselves - they began to implement the plan of "unconditional victory in a single country", i.e. - in Russia...

[bober1982]

Quote: paul3390

And then after all, when once again they will be smear forehead with green

Express yourself in thieves' jargon, here is not a criminal environment.

[paul3390]

This is folklore and not jargon. You need to understand the difference.

[Gene84]

Quote: paul3390

The lessons are simple - the ruling class should not be greyhound and bring people to the pen

Not everyone, not everywhere, and does not always understand the lessons of the revolution. But in some places abroad, it dawned on someone and they learned the lessons that translated Russia into revolution.

[Lamata]

the ruling class was fenced off by its algazazili like the police, the FSB, the prosecutor’s office, the sk, the Rogsguard.

[Cat]

the ruling class fenced off with its algazazils

There are far from being representatives of the ruling class. And they have moms, dads, children and other relatives from whom they somehow protect the parasites?

[Private89]

Power is to blame for any revolution! In a revolutionary situation, the government has 3 paths, either deep reforms, or reaction (tightening the screws), or revolution. If it brings people to a state where a person has a choice, or he and his children go to die in the gateway or change the system that oppresses and destroys him in a revolutionary way, the person knows what he will choose. Capitalism is built on justice, where either you exploit someone or you, where you cannot solve a single problem of ordinary people, since the bourgeois state under this system, acting as a private trader, seeks to maximize profits and proceeds from economic profitability for its elite, and not a public good for all, this system cannot offer anything else, which means that the sword of revolution of Damocles will hang over this system and its apologists.
And I would like to finish with the words from the song of the group Morning in You.
“She comes to us in the darkness of generations,
To the dungeon of days, things and phenomena
And gives hope to all living, that dawn will soon come.
They say that life should be easy.
They say the limit is far.
What should we go with the flow.
What seems to be more important than being.
They say that hearts have cooled
And no one will stand to the end
But she carries a new message
And she is already here. ”

[Narak-zempo]

Damn, stop promoting obscurantists from The Day and the conspiracy theorist Fursov!

[AU Ivanov.]

"Whites come and rob, red ones come and rob ... Well, where should the peasant go!"

[Lamata]

Bury the bread, go to the forest by the summit))) with forks and axes.

[Cat]

"Whites come and rob, red ones come and rob ... Well, where should the peasant go!"

Let them look at the tricolor - there’s a hint in the middle

[Lannan Shi]

The question is interesting, especially when you consider that for the period 1918-1920, the vast majority of the peasantry of Russia did not decide which side to take in this confrontation and whether it is necessary to switch sides.

Oha, oha. And the Bolsheviks formed the five millionth army exclusively from the Martians. The peasants have just decided. They voted for the Bolsheviks with a bayonet. The memories of "prosperous tsarist Russia" and the crunch of buns were painfully fresh.

[AU Ivanov.]

And from whom was the White Army formed? Given that the number of nobles in the Republic of Ingushetia did not exceed 1,5%.

[The popuas]

From people like you Ivanov!

[paul3390]

And they lost. And they will lose again when the seething begins .. For socialism is inevitable, you can’t argue against the laws of social development ..

[qQQQ]

Quote: AS Ivanov.

And from whom was the White Army formed?

She was more small and unreliable, and therefore lost, not a very simple soldier wanted to die for the master.

[AU Ivanov.]

What gentleman? The white movement was against usurpation of power by the Bolsheviks. In Russia, in addition to the RSDLP (b), there were many parties, both right-wing and left-wing, completely undeservedly excluded from the country's political life.

[qQQQ]

Quote: AS Ivanov.

What gentleman?

Barin is a collective image of the capitalist, landowner, etc. The White movement proposed all the same as it was, they simply exchanged the tsar for parliament, the Bolsheviks proposed a completely different idea, which was supported by an absolute majority. The defeat of the database was logical and inevitable.

[Reptiloid]

Quote: Lannan Shi

...... Oha, oha. And the Bolsheviks formed the five millionth army exclusively from the Martians. The peasants have just decided. They voted for the Bolsheviks with a bayonet. The memories of "prosperous Tsarist Russia" and the crunch of buns were painfully fresh.

Well yes! The rolls crunched! Only with whom? How many. in the 19th century there were famine years, which according to the census of 1898, the average life expectancy was 30 years with a small difference between men and women.
Tolstoy wrote "Hunger", where all this is.
Living longer was the privilege of other classes richer. Also from infectious diseases, the% of deaths among the population where they were starving was much higher.

[Lamata]

You carefully read how the army was formed and how many deserters and defectors were.

[knn54]

I didn’t look, but I will express my opinion.
At first, the peasants remained neutral. but when white began to return the landowners sympathy for the monarchists faded.
The peasants of Siberia stood especially where there were no landowners and the revolution did not change their way.
Kolchak's actions - general mobilization, executions of deserters led to massive resistance to the "Supreme".
And since the 20s, the overstated "plans" of the surplus appropriation system led to peasant unrest, which grew into a "small" civil war against Soviet power.

[mat-vey]

Yes, it seems that even Denikin lamented about this, that where to take supporters and sympathizers, if apart from flogging and shooting from the newly returned "owners" there is nothing.

[Private89]

The whites in Siberia, when they came to power, also began to take arrears from the peasants from 1914 to 1918, canceled the 8-hour working day introduced by the Soviets, and prohibited gatherings and strikes. Then the peasants understood who the whites were.

[businessv]

About the Russian revolution, the civil war and their lessons for today:

An interesting program, good, competent presentation, timely direction from the host! I learned a lot of interesting things, thank you very much!

[nikvic46]

Soon everything that really happened in the past will be blabbed, starting with the revolution and the civil war. But to some, even this seemed a little. And so there were such conversations, they say, in German it was not so bad. In the film "Pop" the director and screenwriter decided to show how the priests sowed good in the occupied territory. But all this is at odds with the fact that was actually. "I was baptized twice. Once under Soviet rule. Another time under the Germans. To get Ausweis." - this is the story of a man who lived as a child in the occupation. Now we have already learned to say so bizarrely that every historical transition is depicted as an absolute nightmare. There have been uprisings, and riots, and revolutions. And if it hadn't been for them, perhaps we wouldn't have had to talk about it. This is history.

[Guazdilla]

Literally, the following was said in the video.

Officers and generals of the intelligence staff of the General Staff, who, in fact, organized the February coup hands of the Bolsheviks, and then were deceived by the Bolsheviks. They understood that the country needed to be saved from the chaos into which the interim government was plunging it.

- What is this nonsense in general? The hands of which Bolsheviks? Lenin, who spent almost the whole of March in Switzerland, or Stalin, who arrived in Petrograd from Siberia on March 12?

[paul3390]

Yes, all the Bolsheviks at the beginning of 1917 were 20 thousand for the whole of Russia. Of which the majority either sat or arrived abroad ..

[AU Ivanov.]

It means that they grabbed the authorities after the coup not by rank. There were many parties with interesting programs: the same right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries or Mensheviks — the Plekhanovites.

[ANB]

. There were many parties with interesting programs: the same right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries or Mensheviks — the Plekhanovites.

So these grabbed back in February.
And they brought the country to a pen.
By October, power was already wallowing.
The meetings of the constituent assembly remind me very much of the meetings of the Supreme Council of the 91st model. One chatter.

[fruit_cake]

What do the Bolsheviks generally have to do with February? there were few of them in the councils, and how could they persuade the king to abdicate? they had no access to it

[DMB 75]

The lessons of the Russian revolution and civil war

I think the best lesson is not to bring people to a civil war.

[datur]

the only lesson is to destroy the Anglo-Saxons !!!!

[Stirbjorn]

Quote: datur

the only lesson is to destroy the Anglo-Saxons !!!!

and the freemasons ?!

[Cat]

.. and Chukchi!

[mat-vey]

Sorry, but you can still reptilians ... all human life crap ..

[boris epstein]

"The whites threshed the reds, the reds thrashed the whites, but what exactly were the peasants doing?"
86% were peasants. At the time of the end of the civil war in the Red Army, there were 5,5 million people. About 1,5-1,8 million people passed through the white armies. The composition of the Red Army is a reflection of the percentage population of the country. Consequently, 86% of the personnel of the Red Army are peasants. The ratio of the proletarians and peasants in the white armies and all sorts of small gangs is approximately the same. The nobility and the intelligentsia are small strata that are distributed approximately equally. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of male belligerents are in productive age. Yes, many peasants were engaged in their own agricultural business. But did all of the armies and gangs in the territory of the former Russian Empire have to feed?