“The Rising Spirit of Revolution: 1905-1917” - Mark D. Steinberg

so much thanks to Hillsdale College thanks to my Bell for inviting me mostly thank you all for coming could see everything alright good so historians tell stories probably more than anything else is what they do and the thing about the stories historians tell is they tend to try to make the past make sense have some order have some direction have some purpose a whole lot more order direction and purpose than it had for anybody living through history at the time maybe even history itself and one of the things about stories as stories have beginnings in the history of the Russian Revolution could be started in a lot of different places but I'm gonna start in a particularly dramatic place maybe some would say really the beginning of the Russian Revolution this first massive social political upheaval the first one in Russian history anything like it in modern Russian history which is in 1905 it began on a cold Sunday in January in the capital of the Russian Empire st. Petersburg with a huge March by thousands of workers and their families toward the Winter Palace carrying a petition for the Tsar for nicholas ii their main complaints you can see some of these words from the actual petition itself they complained about despotism they complained about arbitrary power they complained about their suffering and their lack of rights they already had this language of rights and they didn't blame the Tsar they blame bureaucrats and capitalist exploiters and their main demand and this speaks just to what Matt Bell was just saying their main demand was basically to be treated as human beings and they used the word human rights long before we're used to thinking of it part of politics and what did this mean human rights to them you can see some of the language it meant specifically freedom and viability of the person freedom of speech impressed s' of assembly of conscience and the practice of religion that's from the petition it also meant a constitutional and electoral political system it meant suffer universal secret and equal suffrage it meant legalization of all forms of Association including trade unions managers unions the right of strike and state intervention to improve working and living conditions and reduce poverty as they said until poverty is reduced how can we live like human beings now I don't need to tell you when you look at that list of demands and look at that vocabulary clearly the Russian Revolution if the 1905 didn't start in 1905 that language draws deeply on Russian traditions I wouldn't have to I could tell you a whole history of those ideas in Russia but obviously on Western ideas as well however while this is already a set of ideas that play in Russia with deep roots in European and American history they were very aware of the American Revolution and its principles there was another opposing history of ideas that articulated by the Russian monarchy which called itself an autocracy and and its many supporters this was a tradition of course exemplified by bizarre the last Tsar he didn't know it yet but the Tsar who ruled in 1905 Nicholas the second there's a lot of things I could tell you about him but the one is very telling the very moment he came to the throne which was in 1894 after his father died he invited representatives of society to come and meet with him and he warned them they're all standing there representing various social classes and groups and he said I know that there are people among you who were talking about the rights of citizens who were talking about the rights of democratic participation through elections in government and I want to tell you their senseless dreams senseless dreams you can see they all went away with their tails between their legs and did a lot of thinking after that and in fact throughout Nicholas the seconds reign he articulated a political ideology that reflected these sorts of ideas he believed these were deeply rooted in Russian tradition which is to summarize basically a view of the political order as based on a mystical bond of love between the ruler and his people which formal institutions got in the way of that laws got in the way of nothing should stand between this sort of almost mystical bond you can see this image up here is Nikolas sending off troops to the russo-japanese war another catastrophe that often sparked revolution and he was full of emotion every time he did this when people they got down on their knees and there was a real sense of see my people love me why do I need a parliament why do we need elections but back to the streets of 1905 January 9th on the Russian calendar 13 days behind the European calendar this procession to the Tsar which I mentioned which one might say potentially could fit his model of the people coming to to speak to him although the demands didn't sound like his ideology this ended when troops met the marchers in various parts of the city and fired on them killing hundreds wounding many more this day January 9th 1905 became known as Bloody Sunday and it sparked a revolution protest meetings for months marches for months demonstrations strikes by everybody students were on strike professors were on strike not to mention workers proliferation of civic organizations and it used to be to get have an organization a trade union a society a club you had to ask the government for permission in 1905 people said why let's just do it so they by direct action created all sorts of organizations without permission special organizations electoral bodies representing workers in in cities like sort of worker Parliament's were formed and they called them councils and the Russian word for counsel is Soviet that's where we get the Russian word Soviet as became the Soviet Union they also had a free press not because there what there had been censorship they simply decided to print whatever they want say whatever they want without asking permission this was sort of a taneous movement of creating liberty on the streets right from below and even peasants began to get involved especially trying to get more land for their lives to restore some sort of peace and legitimacy to his government nicholas ii issued a manifesto in October 1905 literally on October 17th that's a picture of what happens when he issues this manifesto his minister said you've really got to do this later he said I'm sorry I listened to them but this was a joyous moment for this society he promised a parliament it's called to be called the Duma still called the Duma or again after communism to represent all classes of the population that could have the power to approve or reject laws supervise the legality of everything the government did with the exception of the Tsar he could still do what he wanted and as you see these lines from the quote granting to the population so he's he's adopting this language the unshakeable foundations of civic civil freedom based on the principles of genuine and viability of the person and freedom of conscience speech assembly an association familiar language to all of us now was officially adopted by the Tsar it had a long history of welling up in Russia this was as this picture suggests welcomed with people flew poured into the streets these days became known as the days of freedom in Russian history but also people were making more demands they were still demonstrations there were still strikes partly because people didn't trust Nicholas given everything he had said before this didn't sound like him but also because they thought this is a good start let's go even further now the years that followed 1906 2fort until the war were very complicated and again I'm a lot one could tell complicated in part because Nicholas started taking away some of the things he agreed to in the October manifesto the most common way historians talk about those years after the 1905 revolution before World War one and the Russian 1917 revolution is what historians like to call the optimist pessimist that's what we often teach in classrooms to help capture what the basic choices were and in a nutshell this was basically was Russia as a result of the changes of 1905 moving toward becoming a normal civil society with degrees of participation and freedom that was solving some of people's discontent and there's lots of evidence that it was or was Russia hurdling inescapably towards some new crisis some revolution possibly even without the war and there's plenty of evidence that it was part of the argument for optimists is give Russia enough time the Prime Minister even said that and Russia will become a normal society if we can avoid a war and war is what's said to have short-circuited that progress one could debate one way or the other about this what's important of course is that the war did come and hence we can't know what would have happened without world war one there is Nicholas and Alexandra standing on the balcony of the Winter Palace on 20th July 1914 on the Russian calendar the day that war was started that Russia entered the war and the square is full of people singing god save the Tsar another moving moment for him this war was a catastrophe it Russia suffered unparalleled human losses a disintegrating economy with a lack of food in the cities became the most symbolic an aggravating sign hence famous for long bread lines clearly the war shaped what happened in 1917 though it's worth saying no one expected the 1917 revolution not bizarre not Lenin not other socialists not people in the streets it happened unexpectedly though that's something you're going to hear about it in a moment it began with strikes and protests over food shortages this was in late February 1917 together with a gigantic march of women on International Women's Day March 8 on our calendar late February on theirs march of women of which many were demanding bread the Czar made the same mistake he made once before he said in this time of war we can't have people out on the streets demonstrating send the troops out and tell him to go home and if they don't go home shoot them he's at the front at this point and he thinks that you know this is important they go out on the troops they go out into the streets there are lots of people there they won't go home so the troops shoot and then they go back to their barracks and the people go back to their homes and everything changes this isn't 1905 the people go back out under the streets and say forget it let them shoot us again we are not giving up we've suffered too much we've waited too long but the troops who go back to the garrison and they talk about it say we can't shoot at our people and they come out on the street with red ribbons tied to their bayonets they're handing their guns to everybody this mutiny is what ultimately led the Czar's generals his ministers to say you need a bigger concession than last time this time you need to abdicate it's the only way no one believes you anymore and he does he advocates in favor of his brother and his brother said that's the last thing in the world I would want is to be Tsar in this part in this crisis so one might say no one no one takes picks up picks up the dropped crown what you get instead are two bodies neither of which have any what good legitimacy one is a few members of the of the parliament the Duma decide to form a provisional government they call a provisional because they didn't nobody elected them you see their pictures that's the Cabinet of Ministers meanwhile workers create soviets again joined by soldiers so they're called worker and soldier soviets later as peasants actually send delegates to a national body and that you see them at the bottom these two bodies are constantly competing and coexisting it was known as dual power wasn't sure who was actually in charge that seven months that followed from February to October was a series of political crises mostly over the war which was still going on and still terrible mostly over the economic problems the economy the lack of food people are still wanting bread and one of the signs of how frustrated people were here you see one of the many many demonstrations oh it says on the banner it says this is in June it says peace to the whole world all power to the people all land to the people and then on the right it says down with the capitalist ministers it was assumed they're all bourgeoisie and capitalists that's what was always said that became like an insult to just use those words they were mostly liberals some of them were even one of them was even a history professor bourgeois capitalists what can I say one of the signs of how frustrated people were getting by October is that in those Soviets that you saw the picture of which were constantly sending new delegates and having new elections and they elected they tended to choose a bunch of intellectuals as their leaders but they voted them and they knew which party by September it was decided in most Soviets around the country by election to choose Bolsheviks to run the place to be heads representing the Soviets people were actually voting for Bolsheviks why they didn't read Lenin what they knew was the Bolsheviks had the best slogan around and they were frustrated and the slogan you've probably heard was peace you see part of it in that banner piece in other words let's get us out of this war bread provide us food solve the problem of the disintegrating economy land you see that also slogan there in other words let the peasants have more land actually let them take all the land they work they're working it might as well own it and this really key idea all power to the Soviets in other words let's get rid of dual power let's just have the Soviets the elected bodies of workers peasants and soldiers be the new government and it's really important to know and remember that when the Bolsheviks Trotsky and Lenin and others organized an armed seizure of power and it was it's been called a coup d'etat and in effect it it was they made it clear they're not seizing power for the Bolshevik Party they would have never gotten anywhere if they said that they said this is on November 7th on the run our calendar October 25th on theirs they said the revolution that they were making was for Soviet power and those Soviets included represents of all the lot sort of liberal and mostly left-wing socialist parties all right that's the story that's all you need right that's the typical history story it's all I think I've told it correctly that's history as offense but I want to go deeper into the spirit of the time into people's experience this is obviously very difficult we can't go back we can't be there I wasn't there I'm too I'm old but not that old you know to find out we I want my goal is to how can we hear their voices and get some sense of what they were saying and feeling and fortunately revolutions everybody's observed before are like Bacchanalia zuv words people just can't stop talking and fortunately some of that talk ends up in newspapers or memoirs which is what I can read so now I want to back up again back to 1905 to see if we can go deeper under the skin of what's happening one of the best-known Russian newspapers in 1905 Moscow paper called the Russian word ruski Slovo which identified itself as the people's paper it reflected the the experience of as they like to say the man on the street here's how they describe the mood right after Bloody Sunday when the country it's not Bloody Sunday it's that upheaval that I've described that sort of creating freedom in everyday life and you see some of the words it's the dawn of a new life the country standing on the eve of its liberation on the boundary between impenetrable darkness and a bright luminous and spacious future a historic time of renewal rebirth Renaissance this is sort of the language that they're using now this may sound totally overwrought over the top hyperbolic and it was because that's actually what revolutions tend to sound like to send a feel like after the October manifesto the sense of history happening in a very exciting way was felt even more strongly again some lines from some of the newspapers just right after October and note some of this today begins a new life they keep using that word Russian history has gone on to a new path throughout the centuries of Russia's servile existence we've never known a stronger happier moment newness was all over this thing people said talked about new life a new beginning a time of creating even new people were being born in the midst of all that with a renewed spirit and at the heart and soul of these feelings you can see is the idea of freedom probably the most widely spoken word at the time and in fact freedom and this is important to understand for Russians in 1905 and again in 1917 sort of worked for all the other work words it combined a lot of things in one word Russia and more words from the time one columnist declared was finally joining the common family of bold people's advancing toward freedom and happiness the road would not be easy they said this was a fight to death between two great giants the new life with its freedom and freshness and the old one decrepit and all this is a quote decrepit and ulcerous but still able to bite sharply in its final convulsions this was the a historic battle between darkness and light between freedom and slavery this is how people felt about these events and most said but we know how it's good in because good always wins freedom will always win freedom of thought speech person indeed they like to say liberty equality fraternity they know where that came from the French Revolution they're all talking in this because they feel this isn't just Russia this is part of a universal human struggle for freedom and happiness now this new and miraculous this freedom was understood in very practical terms to be free you need a proper representative government you need free speech and assembly you need the rule of law you need ending poverty you need avoiding war remember they were also at war again this is 1905 but it was also perhaps even more freedom was understood as some spiritual as something emotional it was a treasure these are their words bought with blood and tears it was a star it was one of my favorite metaphors a star glimpsed through the Narron narrow prison window of oppression they thought they feel like they're living in a prison and they can look out and see that star that's what freedom is it's a comet it's a meteor it's rays of light it's burning flames it's fresh wine they're just like constantly trying to find what is the right word to capture the spirit of what this represented and then come the years after 1905 and everybody agrees these were depressing times beyond the actual conditions of love what was happening because people expected so much and got so relatively little also society was full of problems crime and violence and suicide was very widespread and whenever anybody talked about what's the public mood and they loved talking about the public mood in newspapers they always said it's dark it's depressed it's melancholy and one of the most interesting ways to see the mood of this of these years this is now 1906 to 1914 is New Year's Day editorials or essays New Year's is New Year's Day is a great time you think about what has passed you think about what's to come it's it's the classic moment to think about the future and also the sort of passage of time and there are just here's just some quotes from some of the New Year's Day editorials in these years before the war and after 1905 the old has been destroyed but there's no new yet time has shattered the foundations for hope how many times has the specter of happiness deceived us they and they there's this New Year's greeting when you meet somebody on the street on New Year's Day you say you this phrase that you can that you can see somewhere there well anyway for a new year for new happiness this was always the phrase that's how you greet somebody and editorialists commented that was nice you wished it last year we didn't get it it's just wishes because as one writer said who happened to be a psychiatrist to reality doesn't bring happiness and you can see more quotes like this all they get it was said is bitterness and disillusionment and that is probably the captures the mood in these years of yeah progress but very disappointing no sense of happiness or freedom then comes World War one which surprisingly is great it feels good yes we're gonna fight against the Kaiser and the Kaiser hates freedom he also hates Russians and even though he's a relative but they didn't worry about that you know Germany it was seen this is just like the worst of Russia it's not a free country therefore if we're fighting against Germany we're must be fighting for freedom or as you see in this world war one poster for truth and justice Pravda you all know the word Pravda from the used to be the Communist Party newspaper prompt is a word that means both truth and justice it's a very special type of truth and frankly people were full of hope you can see this quote even a year into the war full of hope of renewal of salvation to the country of people coming together but it doesn't last the war gets worse and worse and that hope yet again is shattered more bitterness more disillusionment and the real troubling thing is however dark things were during world war as the war went on however frustrated people were they it wasn't going to be reported in the press the way it had been in the years before nobody's talking about how depressed people are there don't matter how happy everybody is because so they had the seething frustration had to be out of sight because of wartime censorship and then comes 1917 right after the Tsar's overthrown yet again if they declare these to be the days of freedom they love that phrase and people acted on the streets just like they did after the October manifesto they acted like this was some sort of religious holiday like some sort of miracle had just happened poured into the streets people are embracing each other they're kissing strangers here's from a memoir by a writer viktor shklovsky is his name he said it was just like Easter a joyous naive disorderly Carnival Paradise or an eighteen year old woman who was working in a Moscow Factory in 1917 also recalled this time she said the revolution felt like seemed like a wonderful holiday we were happy not that they're getting happiness through the revolution that revolutionary moment felt how like happiness we felt like adults for the first time for the first time we felt completely free indeed these were Russians said at the time this was the springtime of freedom and everybody is talking in these terms some of these quotes here on March 3rd the very day after the Tsar abdicates a woman named Maria up across Gaia she's a physician described her sense of the moment in simple words she said Russia has suddenly turned a new page in her history and inscribed on it freedom exactly like people were saying in 1905 newspapers tried and they never could to capture the mood of what was happening of history as it was experienced right then at that moment here's a quote from a kopeck means a penny kopeck newspaper so very cheap popular paper and part of the quote is up here but you have to hear it it's just it's just amazing this is typical of how people talk to the time the dazzling Sun appear this is like four days after the Tsar has abdicated foul mists were dispersed great Russia stirred the long-suffering people arose the nightmare yoke fell freedom and Happiness forward hoorah hoorah hoorah with a thunderous roar the thousand voice cry of the people cheer a student orator from end to end a carried excited voices every face is tense gestures bold and free people admire the red flags fluttering above their heads they look around they gather in large crowds share impressions of the new and the unexpected people embrace kiss congratulate one another throw themselves greedily at every proclamation they read loudly abrupt agitated Li from mouth to mouth passes the long-awaited joyous news freedom freedom freedom tears glisten in the eyes of many uncontainable wild joy you can read the papers at the time and you'll see similar essays constantly springtime of resurrection springtime of renewal springtime of freedom these are the phrases you'd hear the Russian Revolution appeared so unexpectedly like at once said like oxygen to a dying man and I could quote many many articles like that a great joy a sacred time a time of resurrection short phrases capital letters on every word exclamation points all seem to be needed to express the sense of what hope because nothing much had happened except the Tsar had fallen and troops didn't fight some new government they knew nothing about had taken power hope is what's being articulated here for freedom you can hear all the religious language it's it was everywhere even on people who thought of themselves as Marxist used it these are postcards Easter of 1917 people are handing out postcards it's a popular thing with Easter greetings happens to be right after in in April and these combine all the politics it's like all mushed up here you've got a worker and a soldier right that's the Soviet on the one on the left behind is a Rising Sun with the words Christ is risen that's the greeting on Easter you say to people Christ is risen and people greet you back saying verily he has risen that's part of this thing and below on a big red Easter egg it's a red Easter egg of course long live the Republic or on the other side same thing Christ has written the freedom of Russia this is how people thought and there was a deeply spiritual sacred quality of all this meanwhile nicholas ii has a very different mood at this point though also deeply rooted in religion in morality in ideas and feelings he writes to hit letters he's at the front still he writes it as diary he writes in letters back his wife in those days leading up to his abdication but after all this chaos in the streets and he wrote things like it's a shame and a disgrace what is going on especially that soldiers are participating in those disorders it is nothing but treachery cowardice and deceit those are his words that people are telling him he oughta advocate his own generals are saying he should advocate nothing but treachery cowardice and deceit and after he came down from power after he was held in arrest under arrest and under house arrest he constantly kept looking around and saying freedom is a scary thing be careful because freedom without order is catastrophe freedom without morality is catastrophe without moral responsibility the country is going to fall apart people say it's one of the cliches that Nicholas ii was stupid he was not stupid and he was not preoccupied just with his wife and his son he had a very clear ideological vision it was different than what was unfolding in the streets again freedom was the dominant motif everybody's talking about freedom and what's interesting is you can hear in this language freedom as it was understood was ubiquitous but it was also ambiguous what did it mean so many things it stood for everything and in a weird way Russians were participating in a sort of worldwide debate about what is freedom and I'm conscious that this is at Hillsdale College where I'm talking about this where among places colleges in the country it is a particular important theme here Russians were aware of a lot of the debates and they were take they were arguing about it partly it's the debate over negative freedom or Liberty and positive freedom as it happens there are two words in Russian for this is freedom Liberty from constraints is freedom or Liberty emancipating justice does it free you but create conditions that are just it's freedom about freeing individuals to pursue happiness or is it about freedom as the guarantee of happiness the actual conditions that ensure people are happy is it about individual or inner freedom is it about freedom realized in a new society now political philosophers especially those who studied the Russian Revolution but also more broadly in particular I'm thinking of the great historian of Russia and political philosopher Azad isaiah berlin berlin warned very clearly not always about the Russian Revolution about confusing what he called Liberty with her sisters equality and fraternity as in the slogan of the French Revolution those are her sisters they're not the same as Liberty he said it's a very dangerous mistake he wrote this in his essay some of you know two concepts of Liberty Liberty from 1958 to conflate the freedom that emancipates the individual from external control that allows an active life and pursuit of freedom and freedom that itself promotes happiness by changing society for the better however whatever you feel about the the the theoretical nature of those definitions for better or worse in the history of most revolutions in the world this conflation of Liberty and her sisters is exactly what people were doing all the time whether it was good or not this is how they understood this we see this very strongly in 1917 people kept insisting freedom could not exist without changing society without greater equality without fraternity to use those phrase without her sisters this meant freedom meant you've got to solve the material problems how could people be free they kept saying if we're soldiers being sent off to war to die against their will how can you be free if you're standing in bread lines and there's not enough food how can you be free when you can't afford things because of the terrible inflation how could you be free if you're a peasant and don't control the land you work on but have to pay somebody rent for it how can you be free if you don't have education to understand what freedom is for many I would say most at least lower-class Russians workers soldiers peasants the vast majority of the population this wasn't confused conflating liberty and her sisters they were sisters they depended on one another they were bonded freedom depended on all those things in particular as in the Bolshevik slogan peace bread and land that was what freedom meant now I know that in the course of the seminar you we will be talking about many of the brutalities in the name of freedom in the name of justice in the name of fraternity that was the result of the Bolshevik Revolution Matt mentioned some of those this includes the execution of nicholas ii not just him his family his servants his children everybody it includes enormous amount of repressions against anybody declared to be an enemy of the revolution an enemy of the people terror and Russians were very happy to use the word terror and frankly even many ordinary Russians began to think that what they fought for was not being realized to give just one example of this they were kur all we know is his name is f Petrof we don't even know his first name he wrote to the head of the Soviet government in January of 1918 so this is very early the worst is yet to come he wrote to the Soviet government and after the closing of an elected body called the Constituent Assembly there'd been a natural national election all the parties got although all the socialist parties got to run votes were tallied it was a very fair election probably the first really truly fair Universe election in Russia only the bourgeoisie was left out but that was they were happy about that but guess what the Bolsheviks lost the socialist revolutionary party a different party won so the Bolsheviks sent in troops and said thank you history's moved on you're done and people took to the streets and protested this outraged a lot of people and you get statements like this one how long this is written by a worker to the Bolshevik government how long are you aggressors to going to go on crucifying freedom you're imposters you imposters have the nerve to call yourselves a worker peasant government you're selling out and betraying you're killing off everything holy you're against popular power get out of here and go back to where you came from he doesn't say where that is we demand you give us back the Constituent Assembly all power must belong to the people remember that's what the Revolution was all power to the people to the Soviets we don't trust any party members down with all the parties long live the Constituent Assembly eternal memory to the memory to the fallen and curses on the tyrants whoever they are now we know how things turned out much worse than even Petrov could have imagined and in that in light of how things turned out it's very easy to forget or dismiss is sort of historically moot because it turned out differently the ideas and emotions that I have been describing the spirit of the Russian Revolution especially the belief in the possibility of a new beginning that so many people talked about considering frankly how things turned out it's very easy to just be pessimistic about history conclude that the only smart people understand that existence is never gonna turn out happy existence is basically a melancholy affair that recognizes that we will long for freedom and will long for justice and will long for happiness just illusions in all to human world that's the easy answer and maybe even the right answer but I think the Russian Revolution at its best authors account a counter argument the argument of the willingness of so many people they knew what they were up against to go out into the streets in 1905 and 1917 to create new institutions to talk in a language you've heard about thinking maybe history could go in a different way maybe the really new is possible and one might say well they were just wrong and so I want to conclude in a very in a weird way which is to say there are philosophers important ones lots of them who actually know what happened in the Russian Revolution they these are I'm thinking of three in particular who studied the Russian Revolution who were very distressed by its outcome in fact they're writing after world war two they know how bad his he can be how many disappointments and terrors the 20th century brought all three were refugees from Nazi Germany to made it to America one had to commit suicide because he was captured and held while trying to leave for America there three of them very briefly one is this man Ernst block after he came to the United States from Nazi Germany he wrote a three-volume gigantic study with a very simple title the principle of hope is an absolutely unreadable gigantic thing that looks at every aspect of anything that's happened anywhere in every culture in the world to show one thing human beings have an impulse toward not only hope but actually toward him believing the world could be different and here's one line from an interview we actually gave in 1964 saying friends the ocean of possibility is much greater than our customary land of reality that the possible is greater than we can imagine or somebody who probably will know Hana our it wrote an essay very famous in 1961 it was published called on the meanings of freedom and she says something very similar and I think that also speaks to the Russian case freedom is a miracle that is something which could not be expected you heard how often the Russian Revolution was unexpected they said that in fact she said every new beginning in human history breaks into the world as an infinite in probability and yet it is precisely this infinitely improbable which actually constitutes the very texture of everything we call real because our very existence of the humanity of our planet is as she said based on a chain of miracles the likelihood we even exist as a miracle therefore it's right she said it's the most natural and realistic thing for humans to her words look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable to be prepared for and expect miracles in the political realm even though the scales are weighted in favor of disaster freedom it seems to me she's saying very much thinking I think could be applied to the Russian Revolution freedom is not so much that goal that you're trying to achieve it is mostly the act of human will that dares to chance against the odds that you can have a different future or to quote her directly that's my interpretation over to quote her directly the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before which was not given not even as an object of cognition or imagination is the essence of human freedom sorry that's not on the PowerPoint and finally the last one man named Walter Benjamin a friend of blah a friend of Hannah Arendt she played a key role he's the one who committed suicide in promoting his work in the United States in 1940 which is the year he tried to flee Europe and had failed he liked block actually a Marxist a disillusioned Marxist offered a very interesting variation but also I think speaks and this will be my conclusion to the Russian Revolution one of the most famous lines in Marxism whole books have been written about this one phrase you can see it at the top is that a revolution is humanity's leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom there's a very fat book all about what those words mean voltar Benjamin did something really interesting to this he changed it a little bit even though he was writing as a Marxist revolution he said is a leap in the open air of history a leap that offers humanity the chance these are his words to blast open the continuum of history to grass splinters and flashes of what he called messianic time which is time open to the future this is a very important difference for Marx and angles it's all about the destination the utopian kingdom of freedom and we know this vision the kingdom of freedom which is where human will will dominate everything there'll be no necessity can be a very potentially dangerous faith when a powerful group of people believes that that end is so good that any means no matter how brutal are not only justified but in noble by that great and Benjamin emphasized the leap is the important part of thinking about revolution he knew the odds like our enta that are infinitely small they're just splinter he says a possibility for salvation for a miracle but it's the most telling mark of humanity at its best when humans tried to leap to hope to try to turn the wheel of history the meaning of the word revolution we know how they landed they leave they left they landed badly what I'm trying to suggest here though the void through the voices of Russians experiencing their history through the voices of later philosophers who knew very well how badly history could go that there's something useful and valuable for understanding history for understanding the revolution maybe even for thinking about our own lives and our own times to ponder those moments like 1917 and 1905 when Russians dared to leap in the open air of possibility or in Hana Ourense line to try to call something into being that did not exist before thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] questions please raise your hand and the microphone will be brought to you hello I'm from Russian heritage and I know that Christmas and New Year's are special times I'm kind of surprised that all of these things happened on these days when they're supposed to have been Christian good holidays because the church was supposedly very important so I'd like to know why well they didn't happen precisely on those days so of course their different calendar because where Christmas is New Year's for a while so no actual big events happened on exactly those days but they embraced them as times to think especially New Year's which was that's when you get the Christmas tree it's called a New Year's tree actually that was a time everybody thought about what was happening and it's really interesting I didn't read these things what people were saying in New Year's 1917 because they were sounding just like everybody else it's like I don't think it's gonna go well history's never changing nothing will ever be different that's like a month before the Revolution Easter is the biggest holiday in Russia and Easter hell like this is the greatest Easter we've ever had even people who weren't that religious even Jews were going on in the streets saying it feels like Easter that Gaia quoted shklovsky he was Jewish it's like it's Easter you know because Easter is the time of Hope of Resurrection of salvation it became enormous ly important so it was embedded in the excitement of the time very much so and then of course it was banned as holiday maybe for good reason thank you I'm a Russian immigrant so I'm immensely grateful that an institution such as Hillsdale College has gathered such a huge crowd to study such an important event many Russians don't no longer think about it and ponder the significant lessons of it but you are a American historian who specializes in this particular subject and I have a question for you Americans love happy endings Russians are very content being living to show the world how not to live but since you are an American historian my question is if you were to write a happy ending to the Russian Revolution what would it have been thank you so Russians love happy endings so much as you know that the Russian word for a happy ending in movies is happy ending it's actually it's it's they understand that this is an idea that is so American that Havana they call is spoken in English there's no Russian equivalent you know you probably all heard the the line tchau tchau and lie the head of China somebody asked you know what's your judgement of the outcome of the French Revolution and he said too soon to tell and it's a great line but it actually he was apparently talking about 1967 or 68 in the streets and it was not about their actual Russian French Revolution but I think it's a perfect insight and it is really too soon to tell I mean so no one expected 1917 to happen this isn't gonna really directly answer your question but it indirectly no one really knew that it was coming I mean Lenin you know was in exile writing a long book because he thought nothing was happening it was over the Czar didn't see it coming otherwise he would have acted differently same thing with the October Revolution nobody saw these things and the exact same thing was true in the Soviet Union I mean I've been going to the Soviet Union from 1983 the first time constantly since then and have a lot of Soviet friends and I remember going in a long walk it was in 20 no it was in 19 I don't know several years before 1991 and that my friend was saying who I'd known since the eighties you know the Romanov dynasty lasted 300 years so of the Soviet Union there's not a single reason to believe the Soviet Union could fall apart impossible won't happen and it did and frankly political scientists all had mud on their faces in the West cuz nobody could could predict it so rather than offer what would be the happy ending that certainly it hasn't happened yet and I don't personally think that Putin represents the happy ending of getting past communism the happy ending is what people dreamed of the happy ending is what they imagined a society that is both personally free that has Liberty as the Russians call it volume and has this other freedoms laborda and all the richness of freedom as a society that is happy and just and with a relative degree of equality or at least enough prosperity for everyone that's what they've been fighting for and frankly I could I'm a historian of America Arata American historian of Russian but I would say though you can go back at least to the 1790s to 1820s and see this desire they never ever got it the happy ending is fine the unexpected just like Hannah Arendt's said the absolutely the luck the odds our infant is Mille the scales are weighted against it but the happy ending would be they would finally get what they've been wanting for so long and that's that's my vision whenever I go to Russia I sit with my friends and we drink a lot and talk about it could be different maybe it ought to be different maybe it will be thanks hello my name is Vivian I'm from Richmond Indiana I'm a certified gemologist and friend of Hillsdale College Mike I think of what happened in the jewelry industry back in the early nineteen hundreds specifically so much was happening in America that time there the rise of New York City the Art Nouveau things like films were coming too for was was anything that was happening in Western civilization and specifically in the United States was was if part of what these families in Soviet or Russia or thinking of when they were thinking of freedom and liberty and justice were they seen it happen here and think we can have that so there's two sides of that one is especially before 1917 when the press was relatively free relatively there were lots of articles about what life was like in Europe what life was like in the u.s. the thing that Russians noticed mostly was it was a whole lot more prosperous you know for the vast majority of Russians they were frankly quite poor and so that was the thing on the one hand that they noticed is why do we have to be so poor other societies aren't this poor maybe if we didn't have autocracy our economy could thrive in the 1970s and 80s they said maybe if we didn't have communism we wouldn't be so for you know they also knew what life was like in the West so yeah it absolutely had that influence the other side is this ideological one and you can you know it's like all it's one of the reasons I I quoted so often from before the Revolution from during the Revolution that language is clearly shaped by something other than just well it's it's almost become part of Russian thinking if you look at intellectuals most Russians didn't know where a lot of it came from but they knew the world believed in freedom the world believed in justice the world believed in the in viability of the inviolability of the person in electoral rights women's suffrage was one of the things being demanded in 1917 because they knew didn't exist anywhere but they knew that it was a demand around the world so they're very aware of being part of this sort of global but mostly Western ideology of freedom and justice and democratic participation all those words democracy freedom justice of course had Russian equivalents not democracy that was they borrowed that from from the Latin but they were very aware that they what they were fighting for hence liberty equality and fraternity was deeply rooted in what others were thinking and Russians had a tendency to think these that's because their universal truths they are as we might say self-evident and I think they're very aware in the early 19th century intellectuals were very fond of the American Revolution they liked it a lot they followed these people I saw a little Statute of Thomas Paine he was a big favorite out there they knew Thomas Jefferson they knew all of this stuff also Rousseau in Voltaire another so yeah this was Russia's not an island it's happening it's connected to the world and this shapes what people do and still today I can't call on people so she's the microphones I'm charge yeah a tree callous fat did there were lots of intellectuals behind the 9070 revolution all over Europe and Russia apparently they did study what happened in America or founding fathers the Federalist Papers mm-hmm they didn't make anything out of it they would do what they did make anything out of it they didn't learn from him not only dead now in America we had burned send us and the snowflakes that's our future he would like to think so but I don't so you know it's interesting when ideas are present so let me use the illustration of 1917 just to focus in on what is a hundred years ago and that group the provisional government right that you that you saw a picture of some of them were industrialists some of them were lawyers some of them one of them was a college professor he was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they had these ideas yes they knew all about the Western ideas they knew about law they were very attached to the rule of law they knew what citizenship meant they knew what democratic participation was remember one of the first things they did when they came to powers they said finally Russia as it happens is allied with the good people in this war just by chance and we are allied with France we're allied with England and well it took till 1917 - they were allied to the u.s. that can't we came late they were very conscious of our ideas and also being part of that world they tried to create a very democratic little society I mean if you look at what the provisional government did these are those people the intellectuals who know these traditions they created all sorts of freedoms they created extensive civil rights they gave people rights to form unions so many changes they even began land reform they began to protect workers rights this was progressive what we would call progressive liberal democracy and they were liberals they call themselves liberals but they believed individual liberty wasn't enough yeah I don't was decided it was just as well did they make something of it they made a lot of it they just had a couple of big problems one was World War one there wouldn't have been a revolution without the war but the war is what doomed the provisional government there was no way they could realize this if they couldn't get the country out of the war because people believe not that the war itself was bad though people were dying but the war was destroying the economy and so the circumstances were tear and I am a historian so I only can tell you what happened not what could have happened but my whole talk in some ways was full of that awareness that other things could have happened they made a few mistakes but basically they were visionaries about what it could have been like so there's another happy ending imagine if somehow America entered the war in 1917 it ended two weeks later because it was over the Germans said forget it we're not fighting anymore and the world was at peace in February or March of 1917 and the provisional government was this is totally counterfactual that there's a happy ending the provisional government stayed in power the Soviet was there they were like a interest group they were the Liberals were very sensitive to social needs of the population it could have been that we would have had a republic of Russia that was relatively free and democratic and participating in all the world of today would probably be a member of the European Union by now so they did try to make something of those ideas circumstances were horrible or as Hanan and said the scales are tilted in favor of disaster that was not a propitious time to create a really democratic free society and that's frankly a tragedy if it were me I would say that was the result that should have been allowed to play itself out seven months it's not very long for that liberal social democratic experiment so yeah I give them credit for making an attempt more question thank you so much for coming you mentioned this idea of a frustration among the Russian people that constituted this rising spirit of revolution do you think that this inevitably led to violent political change or do you think that there's something that perhaps tsar nicholas ii could have done to mitigate or channeled that into a more peaceable form of political change in russia and if so what would that have been yeah well so now it's getting personal because I've written a lot about it about nicholas ii and i've read everything he's ever written and I've delved into his life he was not stupid but he made some very stupid mistakes so I think in 1905 he could have agreed to continue what he had promised but he didn't because he had this ideology he couldn't get out of so he made a mistake then he made a mistake in 1917 when simply saying once again go into the tell people to go home he didn't understand to be sure he was getting very bad advice from his wife among others who understood even less and you know it was a real it was another mistake I mean he had really he had made so many errors it's not surprising how it ended the violence though frankly the provisional government could have tried to get out of the war I don't think they could have gotten out of the war it's too hard they were lied with with countries so things had become so angry people were so frustrated by the time the provisional government fell that the only way to have avoided violence at that point is for the other side let's call them the other side right the liberals the monarchists the United States who sent troops to help out the white so-called white side if they just said well we're not particularly fond of Lenin but you know every country should have be Celt have you know the right to determine its own face fate the sort of wilsonian idea right just let them go their own way but of course this was the really the beginnings of what became the great combat and of course fear of Bolshevism who had already been rising so no the country armed and helped the white army there was a civil war and to be sure the Bolsheviks were not against fighting a civil war they thought in the the fires of this righteous battle society would be better they were very good at justifying violence as virtue the whites just said we got to do it because these are evil people violence itself is in virtue just our causes Bolsheviks actually made the argument that they were that the the killing itself became virtuous so I think there was just too many conditions that led to the violent outcome that said in 1921 history turned again they created a new policy they started allowing modest capitalism they gave people a lot more freedoms the early 20s it seems like a whole other possibility and the violence was over until Stalin and then it all starts again in a very different way I actually don't think there's anything inevitable about once it was settled in 1921 that one had to have the violence of Stalinism nothing is inevitable each case has its own contingents in shape unfortunately huh no that's right scales are tilted in favor of disaster and that's and Russians what might say are unlucky things kept going wrong [Applause]

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 22,880

Rating: 4.6751742 out of 5

Keywords: communism, soviets, russia, soviet communism, ussr

Id: YBmJlJj7V08

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2017