The Russian Revolution - Fifty Years After

George F. Kennan

From Foreign Affairs, October 1967

Article preview: first 500 of 7,363 words total.

Summary:  In March 1917, in the third year of the Great War, the political system that had prevailed in Russia for several centuries-namely the Tsarist autocracy-suddenly collapsed. Signs of its disintegration had been mounting ominously for a year or two; the likelihood of its early demise had been widely sensed; yet no one expected it to come just at that moment. For a century in the past, its overthrow had been the dream of liberal and radical oppositionists, some of whom had schemed, worked, even suffered martyrdom, to bring it about. Yet its collapse, when it came, was not the immediate result of any such efforts. It fell because the strains of conducting a prolonged major war, superimposed on more basic weaknesses and problems of adjustment, were simply too much for it.

ITS NATURE AND CONSEQUENCES

In March 1917, in the third year of the Great War, the political system that had prevailed in Russia for several centuries-namely the Tsarist autocracy-suddenly collapsed. Signs of its disintegration had been mounting ominously for a year or two; the likelihood of its early demise had been widely sensed; yet no one expected it to come just at that moment. For a century in the past, its overthrow had been the dream of liberal and radical oppositionists, some of whom had schemed, worked, even suffered martyrdom, to bring it about. Yet its collapse, when it came, was not the immediate result of any such efforts. It fell because the strains of conducting a prolonged major war, superimposed on more basic weaknesses and problems of adjustment, were simply too much for it.

The trouble began when irregularities in the food supply led to street disorders in the capital city. Compared to ones that had occurred in the past, these disorders were not of an unusual or particularly dangerous nature. Nevertheless, the régime proved incapable of controlling them and restoring order. The war had taken its toll of the best units of the old army, with their relatively high morale and good discipline. The garrisons in the neighborhood of the capital, to which appeal had to be taken in the effort to restore order, were now manned by raw and semi-demoralized recruits. They refused their collaboration, disobeyed orders, fraternized with the unruly crowds and declined to support the police. In this development, the hollowness of the authority of the régime was at once revealed. It suddenly became apparent to everyone that "the king was naked"- naked, in this instance, of effective support from any quarter. In the short space of a few days, the monarchy, lacking effective defenders, fell of its own weight.

Even today, a half-century later, it is difficult to assess the meaning of this collapse. Was the Tsarist autocracy so largely an anachronism, were its weaknesses and failures of such gravity, that it was bound to fall in any case at an early date, and did the war merely hasten its end? Or was it Russia's participation in the war that destroyed what would otherwise have been, for the régime, a reasonable chance of adjustment, of adaptation, of survival into another age?

The question is hypothetical. There can of course be no authoritative answer. But it will be useful to glance at some of the background circumstances and, in the first instance, at certain of the more basic weaknesses of the régime.

Russia, at the outset of this century, was still predominantly an agricultural country; yet the agrarian system was unsuitable and inadequate to the needs of the modern age. The régime was well along, by 1914, in the implementation of an extensive program of modernization, designed to shift the weight of agricultural production from the landed estate and the village commune to the small, independent farmer-proprietor. There are many who feel that this was the most promising approach ever taken to the great problems of rural land ownership and of the organization of agricultural production that confronted Russia as the legacy of serfdom. But in 1914 this program was still only partially completed in the ...

End of preview: first 500 of 7,363 words total.