preface
When mentioning the "October Revolution" in Russia, the first thing that catches the mind is Chairman Mao Zedong's sentence that "the October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China with the sound of a cannon", and then there will be a simulated picture of "a warship shelling a palace", saying that the "simulation" is because I have never been to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, let alone seen the "Aurora" Figure. The seemingly well-known "October Revolution" could not withstand detailed self-questioning, and at one time there was a false impression that the revolution lacked careful organization and was hasty and accidental. This article answers ten questions to help you understand the "October Revolution".
· The cruiser Aurora, which is now moored on the banks of the Neva River in St. Petersburg
· Who did the October Revolution overthrow? ·
I believe that some people still think that the "October Revolution" overthrew the dictatorship of the Tsar of the Russian Empire, but this is not the case. This misconception may stem from the deep impression that the Tsar's family was brutally executed en masse by the Bolshevik secret police, using machine guns.
· The family of the last Tsar, Nicholas II
The corrupt rule of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, coupled with Russia's deep involvement in the First World War, the call for "peace, bread, war" in the country has become louder and louder, and the revolutionary struggle has intensified. In February 1917, a large-scale armed uprising broke out in St. Petersburg and won a victory, known in history as the "February Revolution".
On 15 March, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, and his brother Archduke Mikhail refused to accept the throne, ending Romanov rule once and for all. It can be seen that the purpose of the "February Revolution" was more to overthrow the corrupt rule of Nicholas II than to overthrow the monarchy.
Subsequently, the Tsar's family was transferred to Tobolsk in Siberia, and after the October Revolution, to Yekaterinburg, where they were killed in July of the following year.
· Historical photographs of the "February Revolution"
At this time, there were two main forces in Russia vying for dominion, the State Duma Committee established by the bourgeois coalition landlords in the former government State Duma, and the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in Petrograd. Eventually the State Duma Committee, in conjunction with the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, formed a bourgeois Provisional Government, but the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies grew stronger and stronger, effectively creating a situation in which two regimes coexisted.
The "October Revolution" was a revolution in which the Soviets overthrew the bourgeois Provisional Government, and it was more of a "coup" than a "revolution", so the "October Revolution" was originally called the "October Coup".
· What does "Soviet" mean? ·
"Soviet" in Russian originally means "conference", is a common term, the state council in the Tsarist Russia period was called "State Soviet", the word was first introduced to China when it was also directly translated "Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies Soviet" as "Labor Association". With the victory of the "October Revolution", especially the establishment of the "Soviet" countries, "Soviet" gradually evolved into a proper noun for the organization of proletarian power, which was also transliterated in China.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the workers of the Arapayevsk factory in the Urals first established the "Soviet of Workers' Deputies" as the organizational body leading the workers' strikes and uprisings, which were dissolved with the defeat of the revolution.
· Russian revolutionary propaganda poster of 1905-1907 with the words "Soviet" written in the center of the top
During the "February Revolution" of 1917, the "Soviets" were reorganized and established in various localities, and the First Congress of all-Russian Soviets was held in June of that year, in which the "Soviets" played an organizational and leading role and subsequently established proletarian power.
From November 1917 to January 1918, the name of the Soviet was "Soviet of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies", then "Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' and Red Army Deputies", and in 1936 it was changed to "Soviet of Workers' Anderson's Deputies".
· Icon of the Soviet of Deputies
· What is a "Bolshevik"? ·
It is true that "Bolsheviks" means "majority", but it lacks a specific scope. The "Bolsheviks" should be the "majority" of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, corresponding to the "minority" Mensheviks.
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was founded in 1898 as a Marxist workers' party. From March 13 to 15 of that year, the Struggle Associations in Moscow, Kiev and other places, as well as the General Union of Jewish Workers of Russia, announced the founding of the Party at the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in Minsk.
The Second Congress was held in Brussels and London in July and August 1903, and it was at this meeting that a split arose in the Party, and those who supported Lenin received a majority vote called "Bolsheviks"; those who supported Martov and others received a minority vote called "Mensheviks".
· In the front row, Martov is on the right and Lenin on the second from the right
The Sixth Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in Prague in 1912 expelled the Mensheviks from the party and changed the name to "Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)".
At the Seventh All-Russian Congress in 1918, Lenin proposed to change the name of the party to "Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviks)", or "Russian Communist Party (Brazzaville)".
At the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia (Brazzaville) in 1925, the name of the party was changed to "All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", referred to as "United Communist Party (Brazzaville)".
At the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Communist Party of Bulgaria in 1953, the name of the party was finally changed to "Communist Party of the Soviet Union".
· Why didn't it happen in Moscow? ·
Presumably, Moscow was so impressed by the people that some people thought that it had always been the capital of Russia, and the Moscow Kremlin was far more famous than the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, making it seem that the Winter Palace was only a tsar's winter residence. Why did a revolution to overthrow the regime not take place in the capital, but in St. Petersburg, the second largest city?
· Moscow Kremlin
Moscow became the capital of the Muscovite Principality as early as the 13th century. For more than two hundred years from 1240 to 1480, Russia was under Mongol rule, belonging to the Golden Horde and once part of the Yuan Dynasty. The Muscovite Principality gradually united the surrounding territories under Mongol rule, separated from the Golden Horde in 1480, and more than 50 years later, during the reign of Vasily III, a unified Russian state was basically formed, and the capital was in Moscow.
In 1712, Tsar Peter I, the first emperor of the Russian Empire, later known as Peter the Great, devoted himself to the development of maritime trade and the establishment and relocation of the capital to St. Petersburg on the Baltic coast in order to strengthen the navy.
· Peter the Great
For the next two hundred years, St. Petersburg remained the capital of Russia, and the Winter Palace, which was founded in the middle of the 18th century, has always been the official palace of the Tsar, and the temporary government established by the "February Revolution" to overthrow the rule of the Tsar has also been used as the seat of government office.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, because the word "fort" in St. Petersburg was derived from the German pronunciation, Russia, which was at war with Germany, renamed "St. Petersburg" to "Petrograd" in Russian ("Grad" means "city" in Russian).
In March of the following year after the victory of the October Revolution, the new regime moved the capital back to Moscow, taking into account Moscow's strong industrial base. After Lenin's death in 1924, Petrograd was renamed "Leningrad" in honor of this great leader, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the city regained its old name "St. Petersburg".
· Who are the leaders of both sides? ·
The leader of the Soviet side is known to the whole world, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On the side of the Provisional Government, few people know about it, the then Prime Minister, Alexander Vdolovich Kerensky.
· Lenin and Kerensky
If I told you that these two people were friends as children, who would believe it? But this is true, both were born in Simbirsk on the Volga River, Lenin's Great Kerensky was 11 years old, and he was a student of Kerensky's father in middle school.
Lenin once called Kerensky the "little Napoleon", and the two good friends grew up to take completely different paths, but they both came to the top of power and became the most direct political enemies and opponents.
Lenin died in 1924, seven years after the victory of the October Revolution, at the age of 54. Kerensky, on the other hand, went into exile in the United States, died in 1970 at the age of 89, and devoted his life to anti-Soviet power.
· Kerensky in his later years
· What was the course of the revolution? ·
On November 7, 1917 (October 25 in the Russian calendar), more than 200,000 revolutionary soldiers and insurrectionary workers occupied various strategic places such as the post office, telephone office, and railway station from the early morning hours.
At about 6 a.m., Lenin led the Red Guards, soldiers, and civilians to occupy the Palace Bridge, and Provisional Government Prime Minister Kerensky fled in a car from the U.S. Embassy.
· Lenin and his comrades-in-arms on the day of the October Revolution
At 10 a.m., the Revolutionary Military Council circulated Lenin's "Letter to russian Citizens," declaring that the Provisional Government had been overthrown and that power was in the hands of the Soviets. But the remnants of the Provisional Government remained entrenched in the Winter Palace.
At about 6 p.m., revolutionaries surrounded the Winter Palace, and the Provisional Government refused to surrender.
At 9:45 p.m., aurora opened fire to announce the start of the general offensive, and Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers stormed the Winter Palace, clashing fiercely with the garrisoned non-commissioned officer battalion, and by 1:50 a.m. the next day, all the heads of the provisional government except Kerensky were captured.
· A painting showing Lenin's speech that night
At the first session of the Second Congress of Soviets, held on the night of the revolution, Lenin made a speech proclaiming the establishment of the Soviet Socialist Republic and promulgating the first two decrees of the Republic, namely, the "Decree of Peace" (cessation of participation in the First World War) and the "Decree of Agrarianism" (the distribution of land to the labourers free of charge).
Since then, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has been replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
· Is the bloodshed serious? ·
According to some of the early documents of our country, a fierce armed conflict broke out in the Winter Palace on the night of the revolution, and the rebellious soldiers on the Cruiser Aurora bombarded the Winter Palace with shells.
· A painting depicting the armed conflict at the Winter Palace that night
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, some information has been exposed, and some studies have shown that there was no fierce armed conflict on the night of the outbreak of the revolution, and the Aurora was undergoing major repairs at the time, only firing a few empty shells at the Winter Palace. The Hermitage, on the other hand, guarded only one women's battalion and one non-commissioned officer battalion, soon surrendered under the onslaught of the crowd, and the gates of the Hermitage were opened by the Chief of Defense who guarded the Hermitage himself and led the revolutionaries to the place where the heads of the Provisional Government met.
· Photographs of supporters of the Provisional Government inside the Winter Palace that night
Moreover, on the night of the revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee in Petrograd issued the Circular on the Overthrow of the Provisional Government, which stated that "the victory of the revolution was achieved without a drop of blood".
· Why is it a revolution against Capital? ·
This statement cannot be mentioned without mentioning Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, who first proposed that the "October Revolution" was contrary to Capital and wrote an essay entitled "The Revolution Against Capital".
· Antonio Gramsci
He pointed out that Capital proposes that the socialist revolution will take place only after the capitalist productive forces and the relations of production have been fully developed, and after the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have become irreconcilable. Thus, Gramsci argues, "The Bolsheviks repudiated Karl Marx. ”
· The author photographed Marx's tomb in London
Those who hold the same view basically concentrate on three arguments: first, Marx believes that the socialist revolution will take place after the full development of capitalism, and will take the lead in the old capitalist countries of Europe, while the provisional government of Russian capitalism will only take a few months; second, the revolution cannot break out only in a single country, but in many countries at the same time, and Russia has won victory in one country; third, social change must be initiated by a small number of social elites, while Russia is the victory of the social masses.
Obviously, these views are one-sided, and What Capital reveals is the universal truth of the development of human society, and "capital accumulation" brings about "deepening poverty, oppression, enslavement, degradation and exploitation", while in Russia at that time, although there was no high degree of "capital accumulation", "poverty accumulation" reached the culmination of the outbreak of revolution, "the depriver will be deprived", which is completely in line with Capital.
The success of the "October Revolution" is both exceptional and inevitable.
· What happens to key leaders? ·
The main leaders of the "October Revolution", with the exception of Lenin and Stalin, have basically no good end in the days to come.
· Trotsky
Trotsky, then Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, played a leading role in the Military Revolutionary Committee, which organized the armed uprising. He was expelled from the Central Committee in 1927 for opposing Stalin's policies, expelled from the Party at the end of the same year, and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled. He was killed in 1940 by Soviet agents attacked with an ice axe.
· Sverdlov
Sverdlov – Then a member of the Central Committee, responsible for the preparations for the unity of the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution, after the victory of the revolution was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He died of a cold in 1919 at the age of 34.
· Zinoviev
Zinoviev, then a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee, participated in leading the October Revolution, attended the Petrograd Soviet Conference on the day of the uprising, and called for the continuation of the struggle. Later, because of his opposition to Stalin, he was expelled from the Central Committee and the Party in 1927, and in 1936 he was sentenced to death and executed by shooting.
· Kamenev
Kamenev – then a member of the Central Committee, Chairman of the Second Congress of Soviets, and later Chairman of the Central Executive Committee. The main participant in the October Revolution, who opposed Stalin, was expelled from the party in 1934 and sentenced to death and executed in 1936.
· What are the relevant medals and medals? ·
The Soviet Union created the "October Revolution Medal" on October 31, 1967, on the occasion of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the victory of the "October Revolution". Medals may be awarded to citizens of the Usser Union, civilians, armies or groups. Foreign citizens or organizations can also be rewarded. The medal is awarded to those who made major contributions to the SOVIET Union, who were brave in battle, or who forged bonds of friendship with other governments and peoples, and so on.
On 4 November 1967, the Order of the October Revolution, numbered 1 and 2, was awarded the flags of Leningrad and Moscow, respectively. On 22 February 1968, the Aurora was awarded a medal. Some of the original medals were awarded mainly to Soviet leaders and marshals, and a small number to foreign leaders, such as Honecker in East Germany and Tito in Yugoslavia.
· Four-nail edition (left) and five-nail edition (right) Of the October Revolution Medal
The medallion is a three-piece structure made entirely of gold, silver and enamel, with a Su-style pentagon hanging. The lowest layer of the medal is a five-pointed star with silver red enamel, and between the horns is a silver-like glow that emanates outward from the center; the middle layer is a pentagonal window, the interior relief of the Aurora, the upper part of the window is an unfolding red flag, the flag is written in Russian in two lines, the middle and bottom layer are fixed by three rivets; the top layer is at the bottom of the medal, the silver gilded sickle, hammer composed of the party emblem, by one or two rivets fixed to the middle and bottom layer, which also forms two versions of the medal, That is, the four-nail version and the five-nail version. The name of the mint is engraved in the middle of the back of the medal, as well as a hand-engraved number.
In 1977 and 1987, the 60th and 70th anniversaries of the victory of the October Revolution, the Soviet Union issued a commemorative badge with a red flag in its entirety, with Lenin's side portrait embossed on the top and 60 or 70 in the lower left corner, representing the anniversary.
In addition, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia also issued unofficial commemorative medals on the 90th and 100th anniversaries of the October Revolution.