Russian Revolution: Genesis of the Soviet Union

The Russian Revolution and the Origin of the Soviet Union

1. Tsarist Russia

1.1 Political, Social, and Economic Structure of Russia

Political Structure

In Russia, political power was held by the tsars, who ruled in an authoritarian and despotic manner. This regime did not allow for public liberties; political protests were harshly repressed, and those who favored new ideas were imprisoned, deported to Siberia, or even executed.

The police and repressive regime led to the emergence of clandestine movements of protest and rebellion. One of these, known as the Intelligentsia, was promoted by a minority of Russian intellectuals who denounced the political, social, and economic backwardness of Russia.

Another dissident movement was Nihilism, which advocated for the total destruction of the Russian tsarist order as the only political solution.

In 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was founded at a conference in Minsk. Within the RSDLP, two clearly defined ideological currents existed:

• The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, who argued that the revolution had to be carried out and led by the workers and peasants.
• The Mensheviks, who argued that a liberal bourgeois revolution should precede a worker-peasant revolution.

Other significant parties involved in the bourgeois revolution of 1917 included:

• The Revolutionary Socialist Party (also known as Eserita), whose leader was Kerensky.
• The Constitutional Democratic Party (also known as the Kadett party).

Social Structure

The majority of inhabitants were peasants who lived in conditions of serfdom. Tsar Alexander II decreed the abolition of serfdom.

This social majority of peasants and workers constituted the lower class. A portion of the population, composed of merchants and professionals, constituted the middle class. Most of the lands were owned by nobles and clerics, who formed the upper class.

Economic Structure

The Russian economic structure was archaic. The industrial sector was small. The main driving force for the country's industrialization was the railways, such as the Trans-Siberian and Transcaspian lines.

Industrial development was centralized around large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.