The fall of the tsarist autocracy was caused not by a revolutionary vanguard of the working class, the Bolshevik party, a spontaneous mass demonstration of women in March 1917 (Julian calendar February) in Petrograd. Women were protesting against poor food supply. The demonstrations began on the eighth of March, when is international women’s day. However, the protests had nothing to do with it. Local left, the opposition reacted negatively to the demonstration. They turned to the obvious power crisis, when forcibly disperse women refused some elite units. After that Tsar Nicholas II decided to abdicate in favor of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail. But after several hours gave up the throne.
It’s a very strange period of Russian parliamentary democracy with a length of several months, the end of which were laid not in November (in the Gregorian calendar better known as October) revolution, and the dissolution of the legislative Assembly of the new Council after the next has come down to us, “the Guard is tired. Go, gentlemen.” The return of credible parliamentary system, the country waited a few decades. And again, this return — let the democratic system and lasted a little longer than a hundred years ago — turned out to be imaginary.
The woman question Stalin
The beginning of the collapse of the ruled in Russia for 300 years of the Romanov monarchy put demonstration women. However, over the decades the paintings depicting revolutionary events, appeared highly eccentric men-revolutionaries, headed by Lenin. Women portrayed little. Not that they were not among the revolutionaries were Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, and close to Lenin Inessa Armand, which, perhaps, was not so useful, but beautiful. However, Stalin struck them all in one fell swoop. He preferred men’s society, women are relegated to subsidiary importance. Stalin was not the only leader with such an approach in Russia, and not just her.
The leader, far from revolution
From the moment the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin learned that in Russia under the pressure of demonstrations Palo autocracy, he sought an opportunity to return from Swiss exile. He knew that if you do not get to the scene, you will not be able to participate in the struggle for power. His desperate attempts to find out resulted, for example, in the strange idea to go under the guise of a deaf mute with a fake Swedish passport. Near to the future character of the world revolution, to his own happiness, was more practical woman, who considered the idea foolish. It was Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. She reminded Lenin that he always speaks Russian in her sleep, so planned was doomed to failure.
The opportunity to go to Russia came when some Estonian Alexander Keskula first invited the German intelligence to deal with the return of Lenin. So Berlin got the chance to lead Russia out of the war and thus throw the liberated forces from the Eastern front to the Western.
Liked the idea, but the negotiations took several weeks, because Lenin insisted on tough conditions for the return to Russia of three decades of immigrants through Germany he demanded the armored car with a special status to the traveller is not checked.
Nothing nice trip there was because on the train, Lenin demanded that the Bolshevik discipline: travelers slept in shifts and were divided into two categories to use the toilet. The eight days that were required to overcome more than three thousand kilometers, they had to argue about when and who will take up the toilet and Smoking. As aptly noted by one British historian, the conflict unfolded at the level of two critical physiological needs.
The last obstacle would be to check on the Russian border. But the barrier successfully eliminated the Provisional government in Petrograd, which came to the conclusion that a democratic country cannot prevent its citizens in return. Then the Democrats in power also could not imagine that zealots like Lenin in mind only one goal — to use the democratic system to overthrow democracy.
Of course, while the goal of the Bolsheviks was not as obvious as in a few years because, despite the destruction of opponents in the Civil war, a few years after the revolution the Bolsheviks were not ideological unity. It prevailed only after the beginning of Stalin’s dictatorship.
On this era the most and refers to the current Russian government, which links with Stalin camps and tens of millions of victims of the dictatorship, and the rise of the country that was victorious in the Second world war, and then for decades as a superpower, could wrestle with the United States. Hence the phrase Putin that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the XX century.
Revolution money Kaiser
Germany was important to bring Lenin to Russia. But even more important was the subsequent huge financial assistance, which enabled the Bolshevik party to develop and, most importantly, to conduct large-scale campaign in the Newspapers. The October revolution in 1917 finally contributed to the implementation of the initial strategic objectives of the Empire of Wilhelm II to bring Russia out of the war. The Bolshevik government gave Germany and the ‘bonus’: a year after the overthrow of the Tsar, under the pressure of the exhausted front, the Bolsheviks signed the Brest-Litovsk peace Treaty and refused most of the territories in the West.
Apparently, in this lies one of the fundamental reasons that the Kremlin does not want to go back to 1917. And he is not alone: so is the Orthodox Church, which Putin turned into one of the pillars of his regime, Lenin and oppressed because of the connection with the autocracy. Lenin also criticized the fact that he came to power with foreign help and weakened Russia on the world stage.
The problem of history
Modern Russian regime has problems with himself because of the history of their own country. After all, how else to explain that Putin’s government, which has a clear position on any issue (and the Kremlin is skillfully flooding its state-controlled media), does not Express publicly any opinion on the most important national anniversary? Most eloquently about the contradiction shows the embalmed body of the leader of the revolution that happened a hundred years ago, which is still in the Mausoleum on red square in Moscow. In official speeches of the Russian politicians the name of Lenin almost no sounds, and sculptures of Vladimir Lenin are still standing in many cities across the country. His name are many squares, streets and parks. Why the current Russian regime, led by a man brought up under communism, the basic myth which for 70 years was the Great October socialist revolution, eschews her?
The reason for the silence and delay are obvious. Putin’s system is distrust of practically everything that can uncontrollably rise from the bottom. And the tsarist government collapsed a hundred years ago, under pressure from below when the government was unable to meet the basic needs of society — for example, in providing food.
Vladimir Putin is so obsessed with the recent color revolutions that toppled governments in Georgia and Ukraine, cannot allow public discussion about the revolution, which a hundred years ago led to the fall of the autocracy. Similarly, Putin could not understand the universal dislike of the Eastern part of Germany controlled by the Communists, the consequence of which the Russian leader watched with my own eyes, as an officer of the Soviet special services.
The present rulers of Russia do not like to go back to the events of a century ago, although their ritual celebrated entire Soviet era, and their consequences felt by the whole world. A more convenient occasion for celebration, the Russian authorities think the other day — the annexation of the Crimea, which occurred three years ago. The speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin has even offered to hold the next presidential elections that are due already for the fourth time to make Vladimir Putin the President, March 18, when 2014 was signed the Treaty of accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation. The best way to displace the old story is to concoct a new one.
