Page 56 - All About History - Issue 26-15

LENIN'S BLOODY REVOLUTION

Trudoviks – 10 seats The Duma was instituted to represent the voices Octobrists – 95 seats
The Labour Group or ‘Trudoviks’ were a The Union of October 17 was a non-
breakaway from the Socialist Revolutionaries, of working people in 1905. As Lenin launched his revolutionary conservative liberal
since the SR had refused to participate in the party looking for compromise and
Duma. They were a moderate socialist party revolution, its seats were occupied as follows: co-operation between the government
(the name ‘Trudovik’ meaning ‘labour’) that and public forces. They were working
grew out of small worker collectives. towards reforms to strengthen the
existing order, not to overthrow it.
Bolsheviks – 15 seats
Lenin’s faction of the
Russian Social Democratic Constitutional
Party was committed Democratic
to the overthrow of the Party – 57 seats
Tsarist autocracy and the Informally known
as the ‘Kadets’,
redistribution of power
to the proletariat. Unlike the Constitutional
Democratic Party
the Mensheviks, the
Bolsheviks still believed were liberals who
had the support of
that a small ruling elite
was necessary. professionals and
academics. They
were committed
to workers’ rights,
through policies like
Progressists – 41 seats the introduction
The Progressive Party of the eight-hour
working day.
consisted of moderate liberals
who believed the time was
right for the bourgeois, not
the proletariat, to assume
control of Russia. Two of the Others (Non-Russian
party’s prominent members National Groups,
would go on to be part of the Centrists, Nationalists,
Provisional Government. Rightists) - 230

events to work themselves out in their own time, concession of forming a nationa
however, various groups intent on forcing the was divided into two houses, th
process started to come into existence. The Social (the upper house) and the Duma
Revolutionary movement grew out of Populism, which would give the proletariat
still intent on establishing a vast mass of worker elected voice. But Nicholas stopp
cooperatives. But the Russian Social Democrats giving the Duma any power: its
were the ones that really ran with Marx’s theories. was to be purely consultative.
Finding that they couldn’t quite agree even among Some reforms were achieved.
themselves, the Social Democrats soon split into education systems were put in p
two factions: the Bolsheviks (meaning ‘the men were changed so that the peasa
of the majority’) and the Mensheviks (meaning landowners if they so chose – ha
‘the men of the minority’). The key figure of so by 1915. In-fighting between t
the Mensheviks was Julius Tsederbaum, who and Mensheviks continued duri
would come to be known as Martov. Central to the former positing the idea tha
Bolshevism was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later swap their underground status f
better known as Lenin. Martov believed in a grass- relationship with the now-legal t
roots democracy where everyone had an equal the latter, viewing the bourgeois
voice. Lenin insisted on the necessity of a small been weakened by recent event
intellectual elite controlling the revolution. full proletarian overhaul of socie
As it turned out, revolution first broke out Then, in 1914, came war, wher
organically in 1905 without either of them being rampant in Russia, crippling tax
directly responsible. On 9 January, a union of and the peasantry were reduced
factory workers demonstrated outside the Winter at a level of subsistence farming
Palace in Saint Petersburg and were fired on by Mensheviks largely supported R
the military, resulting in more than 100 deaths. defending itself against German
A general strike followed; several officials were more radical Bolsheviks, fronted
assassinated, including Tsar Nicholas II’s uncle the vocal Lenin, advocated flipp
Grand Duke Sergei, the governor-general of situation into a civil war of the R
Moscow; peasant revolts broke out in various proletariat against its own gover
provinces; and the crew of the Battleship Potemkin which, if successful, would evolv
mutinied. Tsar Nicholas was persuaded into the revolutionary war across Europe
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