What really happened in 1917?
The 7-8 of November (25 — 26 of October) during the armed uprising overthrew the Provisional Government, the October Revolution, which was of tremendous importance not only for stories Russia, but of all mankind.
The answer to the question of what happened in 1917 for over nine decades has been worrying researchers. To him give the most different, often the most opposite answers. Until recently, the tumor-stricken liberalism of Russia clearly dominated the opinion of the October 25 coup (November 7) as a fatal act of destroying Russian statehood, which in turn led to many dire consequences, such as the collapse of the empire and millions of victims of the Civil War. However, this is notoriously false, although it was actually approved by the Russian media as the only correct point of view. The citizens of Russia were deceptively talking about the consequences of the February Revolution - the horrors of the Civil War, famine, red terror, surplus, camps, rasskazivanii and other terrible results of the 1917 Revolution. In reality, the consequences eclipsed the causes and prerequisites of the October Revolution.
It is necessary to clearly realize that the death of the Russian state became irreversible as early as February - March 1917, when the "Februaryists" organized a coup, which led to the fall of the monarchy, the final power of which was centered on the great power. The Bolsheviks, by virtue of their small number, the almost complete absence in the political, military, and industrial-financial elite of the Russian Empire, were in fact not involved in the February revolution. The empire was destroyed by liberal-democratic Duma politicians (closely associated with the Freemasons and the West), industrialists and financiers, generals, part of the aristocracy, including members of the imperial family.
During the February Revolution, almost all of the most influential Bolsheviks were absent in the capital of the empire. During the First World War, they belonged to the defeatists, naturally, this caused their general condemnation. Prominent Bolsheviks by February 1917 were either in exile in Western Europe and the United States, or in distant exile, not having strong ties with Petrograd. Naturally, in such a situation, talking about the leading role of the Bolshevik Party in the February 1917 revolution of the year and the collapse of the empire is stupid. Of the 29 members and candidate members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (B) elected at the VI Congress (August 1917), not one was in February 1917 in Petrograd. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin, not only did not know about the impending coup, but did not even imagine that it was possible at all (it was believed that the bourgeois revolution in Russia was possible only years through 50).
The mass demonstrations and strikes that began on 23 in February 1917 in the capital were caused by a shortage and unprecedented high cost of food, especially bread in Petrograd. But the shortage of bread, as follows from the research, was artificially organized. Thus, in the study of T. M. Kitanina “War, Bread, Revolution (Food Question in Russia, 1914 - October 1917)”, it is reported that the surplus of bread (excluding consumption and allied supplies) in 1916 was 197 million. pounds. European Russia, together with the army until the harvest of the 1917 of the year, could be supplied with its own bread, without exhausting the remnants of stocks of previous years. The organizers of the February revolution "created" a food crisis (they will destroy the USSR in a similar pattern, creating a deficit in Moscow). The process was well synchronized: in the fall of 1916, the State Duma began strong attacks on the government and immediately collapsed the food supply, which angered the metropolitan population. Similarly, they created a negative attitude towards the authorities in the army. At the fronts and armies constantly experienced a shortage of shells and other supplies, equipment. However, by the year 1917 there were 30 million shells in warehouses - about the same as the total amount spent for 1914-1916. (!) This reserve was then enough for the entire Civil War, when enterprises almost did not work. If we consider the fact that the chief of the Main Artillery Directorate in 1915 - February 1917. A. A. Manikovsky was a freemason and close associate of Kerensky, the situation is becoming very clear.
When the unrest had already begun, the Februarylists did everything to inflate them, not to let them nip in the bud. In fact, the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General M. V. Alekseev, who led the army, not only did not do anything to send 23-27 of February troops to the capital to suppress the rebellion, but, in turn, used unrest in Petrograd to put tough pressure on the emperor . In addition, he created the appearance that the whole army is on the side of the coup.
Emperor Nicholas II could not organize resistance to these putrefactive processes and suppress the February uprising in Petrograd. On March 2, the emperor, under pressure from Duma leaders and the generals, decided to abdicate in favor of his son during the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. Another comparable in significance to this act can be called the famous Order No. 1. This order was issued by the Petrograd Soviet late in the evening on March 1 (March 14), 1917. The order was aimed at the "democratization" of the armed forces: all soldiers of the guard, army, artillery and sailors fleet It was prescribed to create elected committees from representatives of the lower ranks. In fact, on all political issues, military units were now subordinated not to officers, but to their elected committees and the Council. In addition, the order provided that weapons were transferred to the disposal and control of soldiers' committees. This order violated unity of command in the armed forces, led to a sharp drop in discipline and combat effectiveness in the Russian army, which ultimately contributed to its collapse. It must be remembered that this order was issued under the conditions of a grandiose World War, when about 11 million people were under arms in the empire. One of the main authors and editors of Order No. 1, which actually destroyed the Russian imperial army, was lawyer and freemason Nikolai Sokolov.
It should be noted that the order came from the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of Petrograd, essentially All-Russian Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, where the Bolsheviks did not play the leading role until September 1917.
Just a few days after Alexander Kerensky became Minister of War and Navy (5 in May), he issued an “Order for the Army and Navy”, which was very close to the spirit of Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Soviet. He began to be called the "declaration of the rights of a soldier." Subsequently, General Anton Denikin noted that the “declaration of rights” had finally undermined all the foundations of the Russian army. It must be said that Denikin allowed himself to harshly criticize the actions of the Provisional Government on July 16 1917, when speaking in the presence of Kerensky (he was already minister-chairman), he said: “When repeated at every step, the Bolsheviks served as the cause of the collapse of the army, I protesting. This is not true. The army was destroyed by others ... ". The general did not name the names of the perpetrators, but they are already known. According to Denikin: “The military legislation of recent months has collapsed the army” (and “Sokolov and Kerensky were the military legislators).
There were enough people like Sokolov and Kerensky (they were among the leaders of Russian Freemasonry) in the highest circle of Russia to bring Russian statehood to a catastrophe. For a long time the theme of the "Masonic conspiracy" was made to scoff, but now there are many serious studies that show the significant role of Russian Freemasonry in the events of the 1917 Revolution of the year. It can even be said that Russian Freemasonry was the decisive force of February 1917 of the year, since it was able to unite the forces of various parties and movements that appeared on the political scene more or less separately, but were generally focused on the elimination of autocracy. Bonded with an oath to their own and in charge of Western European Freemasonry, these figures, from Octobrists and Cadets to Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, began to perform one task in a disciplined and purposeful manner. Freemasonry cemented all destructive currents into a single force, which destroyed statehood, the army and the social structure of Russia.
On the role of Freemasonry in the February Revolution and subsequent events, the fact that 29 people who served as ministers of the Provisional Government for eight months, 23 were Freemasons, speaks well. We see a similar situation in the second center of power — in the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet — all three members of the presidium — A. F. Kerensky, M. I. Skobelev, and N. S Chkheidze — were Masons. Of the four members of the Secretariat, two were Masons - KA Gvozdev and N. D Sokolov (the other two - KS Grinevich-Schekhter and G. G. Pankov, did not play the primary role). Therefore, in reality, there is no need to talk about the dual power of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, all power in Russia belonged to people who played in the same "team."
The masons, uniting the most diverse political forces, were able to destroy the Russian empire, but they could not create a new state, a “European” Russia (following the example of England or France). Destroyers can not be creators. In addition, they not only failed to create the foundation of a new statehood, but also proved powerless to retain power. The "fevralists", in fact, could not offer any resistance to the new, October, coup.
Russian masons, Westerners of the time, saw in the countries of Western Europe the ideal of a social and political system and measured Russia with purely European standards. It seemed to them that it was enough to destroy autocracy, to “democratize” the country, and Russia would become one of the members of the European club. They believed that the “element” that they woke up by bringing thousands of people to the streets would calm down as soon as they gained power. In Russia, the liberation of the crowd from statehood always leads to the birth of the “Russian revolt” (distemper) - the swamps, razinschina, Pugachevschina, Makhnovshchina, etc. The Russian empire had very serious contradictions, radical breaks, which were constrained by the clutches of autocracy, based on the presence of the sacred the authorities of the tsar and the Russian army, ready to suppress any rebellion with bullets and bayonets (since a small evil is obviously better than a big one). Fevralisty removed these clamps, and the building of the empire collapsed with a crater of chaos.
The Bolsheviks were able to seize power, or rather take the place of the “king of the mountains”, only because there was no real central authority. The Russian revolt, brought to life by the “Februaryists,” meant the elimination of power in general. The Bolsheviks, in essence, did not conquer, did not conquer, but only took the fallen power out of the hands of their predecessors. This fact is confirmed by the almost bloodless October revolution - on both sides there were 6 killed and 50 injured, and the initial triumphant march of Soviet power in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of victims were already caused by the fact that the new government (real, having goals, a program corresponding to the interests of the majority of the population) had to crush the resistance of the “fevralists”, “whites”, interventionists, “greens” (bandits of all stripes), religious separatists like Basmach, eliminate the consequences of "Russian rebellion." At the same time, the Bolsheviks had to solve the task of not only building a new vertical of power, but also of the horizontal direction - in fact, they had to solve the task of rebuilding the empire, mastering the giant space of Northern Eurasia. The collapse of statehood after February naturally also caused the collapse of this state (we observed this in 1991, when the collapse of Soviet statehood led to the automatic death of the USSR). The Bolsheviks (their “patriotic” wing) had to solve the colossal task of restoring the “one and indivisible” Great Russia.
Suffice it to recall how quickly the process of disintegration of the territory of Russia, which they had been building for centuries, was going. Under the Provisional Government, Finland, which had spontaneously emerged in Ukraine, the Central Rada, seceded, in the summer of 1917, announced autonomy and the formation of its government. In September, the North Caucasus began to secede, the "United Government of the South-Eastern Union of Cossack Forces, the Highlanders of the Caucasus, and the free peoples of the steppes" was established in Ekaterinodar. In November, the South Caucasus began to separate: the “Transcaucasian Commissariat” was founded in Tiflis; December - Bessarabia (Moldavia) and Lithuania. The processes of decomposition went like an avalanche. Some regions, provinces and even counties declared their “independence”. The formation of “independent states” inevitably led to bloody interethnic conflicts, especially in the Caucasus. Russian people who found themselves in “independent” state formations lost ground, they fell into the position of “foreigners” who were deprived of many rights subjected to discrimination. National councils and the press conducted a campaign of “de-Russification”, narrating about “occupation”, “slavery”, violence ”,“ seas of blood ”,“ cruelties of tsarism ”, etc. Naturally, for all this ( or greatly exaggerated), the Russians had to answer.
It is very important to understand that this catastrophic collapse of the state was caused by February, although it is clear that the processes of decomposition were going on after the October revolution. The Bolsheviks did not yet have the power, the strength or the resources to restore unity. The process of unification had to be carried out with “fire and sword”. Interestingly, both the Reds and the Whites fought against various “independent” authorities.
The revolt covered not only the national regions, but also the Russian provinces proper. Sources count hundreds of uprisings by month through the entire Civil War of the 1917-1922. In fact, it is difficult to find a province or county, where there were no uprisings and protests of the population against any government. The Soviet historian E. V. Illeritskaya noted that by November 1917, 91,2% of the counties were swept by the agrarian movement, which developed into a peasant war. The punitive policy of the Provisional Government did not bring any success; soldiers increasingly refused to punish the peasants for their arbitrariness and crimes. Thus, under the Democratic Provisional Government, the peasant revolt had already taken on an almost universal character (even before the policy of "war communism" of the Council of People's Commissars and the brutal actions of white governments).
The people tasted “freedom” and acted in principle against any authority. After the destruction of the statehood that had developed over the centuries, the people clearly did not want any authorities, “taxes” and “recruitment”. The Westernizers, who destroyed the Russian statehood, did not understand this (the smartest partially realized only after defeat and long life in emigration) that the very existence of Great Russia is possible only if there is a strong and tough state power. The power of the European type in Russia is unsuitable (this applies to modern Russia).
For a long time, the Bolsheviks "by submitting an application for power" were busy not at all building socialism and communism, but rather restoring state institutions, fighting for the consolidation of power and its retention. The period of “war communism” is this intense struggle. The Bolsheviks fought for the future united Russia, restored its statehood (in its own way). It is difficult for us to imagine the whole burden of this struggle, there was a battle for the future of Northern Eurasia. The question was the existence of thousands of years of Russian civilization. The Bolsheviks (except for the wing of the "internationalist Trotskyists") objectively fought for its restoration of Great Russia, its statehood. It is very characteristic that having won the civil war. having established more or less order, in 1921, the Bolsheviks switched to the New Economic Policy (NEP), which in effect returned Russia to the previous economic fundamentals (even foreign capital was allowed). They were able to start building socialism in the country only at the end of the 1920s, after a certain stabilization.
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