History UsefulNotes / RedOctober

Lenin's general approach and strategy as a revolutionary and Marxist theorist was internationalist. Marxism and Communism was seen at the time, as a philosophy and objective body of knowledge for bringing about modernization, equality and worldwide peace and prosperity. Many young men and women had been internationalist in TheGayNineties and TheEdwardianEra. When UsefulNotes/WorldWarI broke out, their dismay and disillusionment about nationalism, and the capital classes, was only reinforced and confirmed to the point of fanaticism. The outbreak of the war had discredited in their eyes, conventional liberalism and social democrats (many of whom had willingly supported the war in their respective nations). The only thing that could redeem the war, in Lenin's eyes, was a millennial belief that it should be followed by a new revolution and society that would prevent war, check capitalism, redistribute wealth and likewise end bourgeois nationalism by a world revolution in multiple nations out of solidarity with working men in other nations. For Lenin, a revolution breaking out in Russia had the potential to detonate revolutions in other nations, triggering a revolutionary wave a la UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848.

The economy was reorganized under a policy known to history as War Communism. Rapid nationalization of businesses, seizures of lands and state appropriation of all existing resources. It led in time to runaway inflation and brought the economy to a standstill until Lenin offset it with NEP in UsefulNotes/TheSovietTwenties. The seizures of land and redistribution of the same worked politically however in that it won Bolsheviks peasant support for their cause. The White Army in the regions they governed tended to support the interest of the old landowners and as such vetoed any claims for peasant ownership or support. Both the Whites and the Reds had constituencies that were minorities; the old Tsarist, Militarist Regime and Liberal intelligentsia in the case of the former, and the urban working classes and Left intelligentsia in the case of the latter, and the key group that could tip the balance were the peasants, who swung to the Bolsheviks on the issues of land, even if they didn't especially like them, what with their grain requisitioning and their invasive and radical reorganization of village communities they had no idea of beyond some Marxist theory formulated in exile or in some faraway city like Moscow or Petrograd that few peasants had ever seen; and their brandishing of the same state secret police that the old Tsarist government wielded.

-->--Chris Read, ''The Russian Revolution in Colour''[[note]] TV documentary, 2005, Creator/ChannelFive [[/note]]

Technically, the ''second'' Russian Revolution of 1917, but generally remembered through PopCulturalOsmosis, propaganda, and even actual historical monographs, as '''the''' Russian Revolution, an event which [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore literally changed the world overnight]] and decisively shaped TheTwentiethCentury.

The Great October Socialist Revolution (which is how the Bolsheviks called it back when they were still a thing) was in and of itself, a bloodless seizure of power and state authorities. However the responses to the event, and the context surrounding it, sparked a very bloody Civil War of 1917-21, between the communist 'Reds' and the anti-communist, reactionary and monarchical 'Whites'. In addition to them there were factions such as village-communitarian[[note]] They supported Russia's centuries-long tradition of village-based communes against the Reds because they were a city-based faction that kept trying to kill their non-existent 'oppressive kulak overlords'. Although they supported the Social-Democratic party, they also didn't like the whites' military-led leadership because they'd been part of the old Imperial government (which had always tried to interfere in their affairs and taken far too much of their money in tax and too many of their young men as conscripts only for them never to return) [[/note]], nationalist 'Greens', [[UsefulNotes/PolishSovietWar Poland]], [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and don't forget the anarchist Blacks, the Central Powers (chiefly Germany), the Entente, the Baltic and Caucasian separatists, etc.]] -- who were either allied with the Whites, the Reds, or in-between at various times.

Meanwhile, UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin spent the entire war years in Zurich, alongside other Bolsheviks, and even some Mensheviks, getting increasingly cranky and ornery about missing out on the fun in Russia. The Bolshevik party in Moscow and Petrograd were run by cadres and they remained functioning and operational without their leader, a testament if nothing else, to Lenin's skills as an organizer. Most of the leadership were in exile either in Europe or in jail in Siberia. Lenin eventually decided to make a daring political risk. He negotiated with the German government for help in going into Russia. The train from Zurich had to pass through Germany to reach Petrograd's Finland Station. Making this choice risked compromising him politically as a German agent and collaborator[[note]]And Indeed Russians in the Cold War and modern era often see Lenin as a German agent and saboteur[[/note]]. But this was not unique to him. Other leaders, including Mensheviks made a similar bargain, only the latter did so a month later, with far less publicity [[RefugeInAudacity and far less shamelessness]]. The Germans agreed to let Lenin pass through in a sealed train, either because they thought it could weaken Russia and hasten their victory, or that they didn't actually believe Lenin or the other Bolsheviks and Mensheviks to be a significant enough of a threat. Before Lenin's arrival, various socialist parties agreed to tentatively support the Provisional Government, and there was initial tension between Lenin and other Bolshevik arrivals and the party cadres, after all the latter were the ones in the trenches while their leaders were cooling their heels in Zurich and other hidey-holes. But Lenin's influence and charisma was undeniable, and moreover the Bolsheviks were rapidly BecomingTheBoast and living up to their name. At the start of the February Revolution, they were a party of 24,000. By April, that number became 100,000. By October, 350,000. Their numbers and organization grew while that of their opponents stagnated. Lenin also put forth a platform for taking power, known as the April Theses, and in this he outlined the slogans of "Peace, Land, Bread" and "All power to the Soviets".[[note]]The Bolsheviks had in fact appropriated, on Lenin's insistence, popular slogans used by anarchists like "All power to the Soviets (elected workers' councils)".[[/note]]

The Provisional Government also made the error of failing to clarify their position on the war, which was supremely unpopular. They prolonged the involvement and many of the soldiers were from the same class sympathetic to the growing and developing Bolshevik party. In June, Kerensky encouraged an offensive in Galicia, which became an utter disaster with 200,000 casualties. The Provisional Government [[NotSoDifferent was repeating the mistake of the Tsar's]], diverting issues with military adventurism, and then facing blowback when they failed to win in battle. This setback led to the July Days protest which was a spontaneous protest that even Lenin [[DidntSeeThatComing didn't see coming]], but it provoked a crackdown by the government on the Bolsheviks and sent Lenin into exile again. This damaged their credibility on the Left because they violated their own mandate of granting immunity to political parties and gatherings. On the right, the Provisional Government, faced a military coup by General Lavr Kornilov, who tried to call dibs on power shortly before the Bolsheviks. Fearing a military coup, a spontaneous protest broke out in Petrograd helped by defection and desertion from Kornilov's own contingent. Contrary to popular belief, the Bolsheviks were not involved in this (though they claimed credit later) but this uprising more or less proved that the people were starting to come around to Lenin's way of thinking, i.e. armed uprising, self-government, and that the government in charge was untrustworthy; weak and non-radical alternatives would not work. Lenin by nature disliked populist and spontaneous uprisings feeling that it quickly failed to consolidate and coordinate an organized program and policy, and insisted on leadership by professional revolutionaries. The failure of earlier events and the suppression of the same in Western nations that he had observed in his long years out of Russia, and likewise the 1905 and February 1917 Revolution had seemingly vindicated his views to his fellow revolutionaries. They decided that should the day come when he and his friends get a chance at power, they would not let go of it.

Technically, the ''second'' Russian Revolution of 1917, but generally remembered through PopCulturalOsmosis, propaganda, and even actual historical monographs, as '''the''' Russian Revolution, an event which [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore literally changed the world overnight]] and decisively shaped the 20th Century.

The underground nature of the party meant that members were driven to secrecy, paranoia, suspicion, and were always wary of being persecuted from above or betrayed from below, a mentality that endured well after the party and ideology came to power. The underground party worked with the working-class, who were a minority in Russia in proportion to the peasants. However, the openness of the Marxists and their scientific-political explanations appealed to workers, as did their willingness to welcome them into the party and offer them promotion, which appealed to the desire for upward mobility and respect many of them felt.

The underground nature of the party meant that members were driven to secrecy, paranoia, suspicion, and always wary of being persecuted from above or betrayed from below, a mentality that endured well after the party and ideology came into power. The underground party worked with the working-class, who were a minority in Russia in proportion to the peasants. However, the openness of the Marxists and their scientific-political explanations appealed to workers, as did their willingness to welcome them into the party and offer them promotion, which appealed to the desire for upward mobility and respect many of them felt.

The underground nature of the party meant that members were by nature driven to secrecy, paranoia, suspicion, and always wary of being persecuted from above or betrayed from below, a mentality that needless to say, endured well after the party and ideology came into power. The underground party worked with the working-class who were in fact a minority in Russia in proportion to the peasants, but the openness of the Marxists and their scientific-political explanations appealed to workers as did their willingness to welcome workers into their party and offer them promotion, which appealed to the desire for upward mobility and respect felt by many of them.

Since the abolition of serfdom in 1860 by Tsar Alexander II, the Russian Empire underwent a very complex period of reform-revolt-reaction grappling over such issues as the fact that it was simultaneously an European great power and a backward state that had belatedly escaped feudalism, and belatedly started industrialization and that until 1905, it had no political parties, no centrally elected parliament; still functioning as an ancient autocracy at the dawn of the 20th Century. The arrival of industrialization in Russia in the 1890s brought out the divided contradictory aspects of the society forward. It made the already rich, (the landowning, civil-bureaucrat, aristocrats and intelligentsia), richer but brought no great improvement to the vast majority of the peasant class.

!!Depictions in Fiction