The Fall of the Russian Monarchy | The International Context

[Music] what i'm going to talk about is the fall of the monarchy but more broadly than just talking about the events of february 1917 i will try and explain why the monarchy fell in a sort of broad historical context and then say something about the implications of its collapse and i will start the lecture where i will end it in other words with international relations you cannot understand the russian revolution outside the international context you have to remember that in the first so-called russian revolution of 1905 to six the monarchy very nearly collapsed in the winter of 195 to six it was at its most vulnerable in the the months after nicholas ii promised a constitution which is october 1905 and the government's successful dissolution of the first duma in june 1906 if the old regime had collapsed the revolution would certainly have spiraled far to the left quite apart from anything else that is in the nature of revolutions you have to remember though that had it done so had socialists come to power in russia at that time you would most certainly have had european intervention and european intervention of a much more effective nature and scale than what happened in 1919 to 20. it is sheer moonshine to imagine that in peace time the european great powers are going to let russia secede from the international system set itself up as the headquarters of international socialist revolution and repudiate the equivalent in contemporary terms of trillions of dollars of foreign debt spearheading the international counter revolution would have been germany which was always going to be the decisive foreign factor in any russian revolution decisive because it is the neighbor decisive because it has europe's most formidable army decisive too because over and above all the other reasons which i've already mentioned for european intervention the german government would be forced to intervene to rescue the german minority in russia remember in the winter of 1905 the emperor william ii the last kaiser promised representatives of the baltic german community for example that if the monarchy fell the german army would intervene to save german property and german lives in the baltic republic provinces and of course more broadly in the empire and if you had had as you would have had a full-scale european intervention spearheaded by the german army in the winter of 1956 it would certainly have succeeded at least in the short run partly because it would have been far more formidable than what happened in 1990 to 20 partly because the forces of counter-revolution in russia itself were much stronger in 1906 than they were in 1918 or 1917 18. now we'll on to 1917-18 instead and you have a completely different picture germany which in peace time would have been the decisive factor in european intervention on the side of counter-revolution is now doing everything it can to destroy the german or the russian state and push the revolution to the left and of course for entirely legitimate reasons in the context of the world war it is because of the war that russia the bol the new bolshevik regime has essentially a year to put itself on its feet to organize a system of government and to dominate the central geopolitical call of the old russian empire the area in which the great majority of the population most of russia's economic resources or many of them anyway the communications hubs the great arms depots etc it is because the bolsheviks have consolidated their hold on the geopolitical core of the former russian empire that they win the civil war it's not the only reason but it's the main one so again the whole issue of international context is absolutely decisive and you do have to remember that because very often certainly as fought out in academia uh undoubtedly when i first entered the profession the discussion of the revolution could easily turn into an ideological battle between right and left within the western academic and intellectual communities it was actually much more than that it was an international event to a very great extent determined by international forces so that's just a little introduction i will begin the main lecture though again with the international context basically what happens in the century before the collapse of the old regime is that the balance of power in europe swings sharply against russia russia which was the most important factor on the on land in the overthrow of napoleon and is regarded as europe's major military power in 1815 is over the next century becoming relatively weaker relatively less secure vis-a-vis the other leading european powers and that is for a simple reason it is above all to do with the move of the industrial revolution from west to east in europe there's not much the russian government can do about that if you look at most contemporary histories of the origins of the industrial revolution they cite factors over which no russian government had any real control factors such as water communications the close proximity of coal and iron resources population densities these are all factors beyond any government's control in the first three quarters of the 19th century certainly of the russian government what happens though is that russian power as i say is undermined in 1854 to six this becomes evident this is the crimean war russian troops reach the crimea on their feet or by horse in other words with pre-industrial methods of communication the british and french arrive by steamship and by rail alexander ii who comes to the throne in 1855 learns news from the crimea most quickly through the telegraph from paris russian artillery is outraged by british and french rifle muskets it is an absolute clear sign that one end of europe the british and french are fighting moving communicating with the new technology of the industrial revolution and the other side russia is not and it is absolutely clear to all intelligent leaders in russia that if this continues to be the case russia will cease to be a great power in an era of course of imperialism where those large countries which cease to be great powers very often find themselves partitioned the russians or the romanov dynasty in 1700 is one of the four great dynasties imperial dynasties in asia the qing the mughals the safavids and the ottomans the russians are the only ones still going strong in the mid 19th century as a great power but they can see what is happening to the other great dynasties and they're not going to go that way and they make considerable progress in industrial modernization economic modernization by 1914. russia is by then the fourth industrial power in the world after the americans the germans the british and just about the french but it's catching up fast the only european economy which actually is catching up on the united states russia in 1913 replaces the united states as the world's greatest exporter of grains so it's not that no progress is being made but nevertheless there is a very long way to go russia may be the fourth greatest industrial power in the world but in per capita terms its economy and society is at the level of spain or even a bit behind so russia is running in order to maintain its existing position and for other reasons too its existing position in the international context is getting more dangerous and that is fundamentally to do with the fact that whereas in the 18th century russia benefited enormously in its rise to great power status by the fact that it was the only one of the major five european powers which did not have a major great power enemy the british and the french are at loggerheads the austrians and the prussians were at loggerheads russia gains by being able to play everyone against everyone else that changes in the 19th century the british win the napoleonic wars and essentially the anglo-french competition is more or less closed down in 1871 you have german unification in 1879 you have the german austrian alliance russia now faces a huge germanic power block on its western frontier so the the fundamental security threat is becoming more and more acute and to that a russian government has no option but to respond and it does through through this program of rapid modernization beginning with the great reforms of alexander ii after the crimean war moving into rapid industrialization in the 80s and 90s the problem is though that rapid modernization in a society like imperial russia comes at a political cost a cost in terms of political instability you have to remember that in long historical terms the russian empire is a great success as empires measure themselves what was initially in the 15th century a tiny principality right at the eastern periphery of europe of very little power no international respect with no indeed secular high culture by 1914 is one of the world's great empires and it is also not just you know enormous and territorial extent spreading from poland right out to the pacific ocean but it is also making enormous contributions to global high culture whether you're thinking of literature painting or music so it is a success as empires go the problem is how do you turn a successful pre-modern empire into a viable modern polity and that is the issue part of the problem is of course that if you have been successful and if you've been successful for a long time in the way you measure success institutions become rigid ways of doing things become accepted become legitimate and it's difficult to change part of what happens undoubtedly between 1856 and 1914 is that there are you know significant forces for conservatism in russia you know important vested interests which resist fundamental reform of the political system it's also the case though that those who defend the traditional autocratic system have some justice on their side when they argue that autocracy has actually made modernization possible the emancipation of the serfs for instance is an example of how the existence of the absolute monarchy standing outside and above all classes in society did succeed in executing an immensely difficult reform which had all the potential to push peasants and landowners into immense conflict not merely did the autocratic monarchy preserve social order during this reform but actually the peasants got a much better deal than they would have got from some kind of parliamentary regime dominated as it undoubtedly would have been by the landowning class and then again the minister most responsible for rapid industrialization in the 1890s sergey vitter had a point when he argued that only the absolutist monarchy only the authoritarian state could impose rapid industrialization on a society whose dominant elites were agrarian conservative opposed to capitalism very often certainly disruptor of industrialization and whose intelligence here was in sympathy sometimes conservative but more often radical and socialist very seldom liberal capitalist but it is also again undoubtedly the case that some of the attempts some ways idealistic to create a specific russian path towards modernization backfired on the regime i'll give you just one example in already in 1900 the great majority of arable land in russia is owned by peasants the russian landowning gentry and aristocracy owned a far smaller percentage of the land than their british equivalents for instance or indeed of their prussian equivalents the british are the extreme case the aristocracy and gentry in terms of almost monopolizing land ownership but russia is right out at the other extreme uh with about 13 of uh farmland owned by the gentry and aristocracy so it's you know you you shouldn't see this in terms of just blatant exploitation it's it's more complicated than that but most land owned by the peasantry is owned not by individual peasants but by the village community as a whole and is periodically redistributed among families according to their size and needs and their labor force well the russian government sees this as essentially a temporary policy to preserve social order to preserve a sort of pre-modern social security net in these early decades of capitalist industrialization so that all peasants the great majority of the population should still have farms if for instance you know industry goes through a depression etc etc etc it's a it's both a sort of national policy this is a specific russian institution how proud we are of it and in some ways quite an imaginative perception of how you actually tied the community over particularly its poorest elements during these very difficult early decades of industrialization but it failed essentially what happens is that this is putting things pretty crudely but essentially what happens is that the you do not develop as quickly as you might have done a strong individual if you like ruthless rich peasantry which would have been a bulwark of conservatism and of the regime that the big push to develop this rich strong peasant class which of course is so important in germany for instance as a source of social conservatism and political conservatism it only comes after the 1905 revolution so undoubtedly you can make all sorts of specific criticisms of the regime and yet you have to be a bit careful about being too self-confident about this and one of the ways to be cautious is again to make comparisons you know in europe in the early 20th century you have of course the core most developed richest territories britain france the netherlands belgium germany and to some extent sweden then you have a periphery what i call the european second world poorer less stable property less secure states less strong regions less integrated and that means iberia spain and portugal italy the balkans russia in all of these countries as you you know come into the era of mass politics you do have problems in the peripheral europe precisely because society is less developed there is less of a middle class there are huge peasantries you have all the problems of you know the agrarian crisis of the late 19th early 20th century hitting those peasantries and fundamentally the social order property etc etc the elites are quite right to feel less secure russia is not just part of that second europe that periphery it is at its poorer end and actually if you look at the fate of the second europe in the first half of the 20th century virtually nowhere do you get a peaceful transition to anything looking like liberal democracy on the country in the interwar years in virtually this entire area you get dictatorial regimes of the right or of the left so you have to be a bit careful about imagining it's just the stupidity of nicholas ii uh that stops russia from developing in this direction and then again and even more obviously russia is one of the world's great empires in 1914 one of five or six none of them have survived the first world war itself is to a great degree a spin-off of the crisis of empire which is again one of the great themes of 20th century european history in 1914 only 44 roughly of the empire's population are you know you find me any of the great empires which have survived you might say china perhaps but then china after all did not survive without revolution and it certainly did not survive through creating a liberal democratic regime so there are real dilemmas the problem for nicholas ii before 1914 is in some ways a contradictory one in his left ear he has got intelligent senior liberal conservative advisers saying him saying to him your majesty you are now ruling over a population whose educated section whose urban section is as big if not bigger than that of virtually any other european country this is a sophisticated population this is the world of the chagalls and the stravinsky's etc etc this is a world in which you have newspapers with circulations in the hundreds of thousands this is a european modern society you cannot rule it through the institutions of an 18th century absolute monarchy or early 19th century absolute monarchy and they're right you can't and the tensions grow up and the demands for civil rights for political representation for if you like a dignity and status equal to that of their equivalence in the rest of europe are becoming louder and louder and harder and harder to resist but then nicholas has in his right here his more conservative and more authoritarian advisers who say to him look your majesty it's all very well these people talking about this european society to which you've got to concede liberalism and possibly even liberal democracy so they say but the overwhelming majority of the population are not like that they are illiterate or semi-literate peasants and although they do own the overwhelming majority of the land they want the rest and that means expropriating the larger states middle class land ownership you name it you are also ruling a society in which the great majority of the population are not well the majority are not russians you face the possibility of both social and national revolution you are facing the most radical and intransigent revolutionary socialist movement in europe if you begin to dismantle the police state before modernization has created essentially a bourgeois society in russia we are going to collapse and do not believe they say your majesty that if the monarchy collapses you are going to get some liberal constitutional happy european order emerging in russia no the alternative will be firstly anarchy and then some dictatorial regime of the left with at least socialist pretension these people in other words were not necessarily stupid probably the most intelligent document i've ever read uh in the from the last 30 years of imperial russia is actually a secret report put up to nicholas ii by a man called piotr donavo in february 1914. this is the man who as minister of the interior crushed was most responsible for crushing the 1905 revolution he basically says to writes to nicholas ii look we are on the eve of a great european war and that war will come unless we come to terms with germany quickly a european war will be long not short and it will test above all the economic power but also the financial power the communications but above all else the political legitimacy and effectiveness of governments and regimes of all european countries russia is least preserved least prepared to survive such a war and almost undoubtedly we will face a revolution should that revolution come at any time but above all in wartime the result will be some kind of version of revolutionary socialism and actually if you look at what happened in 1914-17 when the war does come it more or less fulfills donald's predictions to the letter the revolution does not occur because the russian army is defeated at the front the russian army is not defeated at the front russia is not like germany in 1918 where the revolution occurs in large part because it is clear that the war has been lost the war was not lost for russia in february 1917 in fact without the revolution russia was bound to be on the side of the victors because once the americans have come in if the eastern front is still there then germany is bound to lose the russian army was inferior to the german but then the british and french armies were also inferior to the german the russian army does well against the austrians it outperforms the british against the turks in the winter of 1916-17 it is tired and it suffered heavy casualties but there is no evidence that the army is going to be unable to perform perfectly effectively in 1917 without a revolution had the war going on to 1918 then the growing economic problems on the home front might have made the russian effort much less effective but then that was true of austria and italy as well in fact i mean if you look at even the french if if france let alone italy had been deprived of the atlantic trade routes cut off from its allies and their supplies neither would have been able to fight the war to the finish russia has the additional problem of course that it's isolated from its main allies so purely military explanations actually don't get you far in understanding why the february revolution happened though it is true that the great defeats of the russian army in 1915 did cause a domestic political crisis but that's another matter economics tell you more about why the revolution came in february 17 than purely military affairs as donovan had predicted the russian economy was very hard-pressed to actually meet the demands of war he had pointed out that the communication system was inadequate it was it is to some extent the decline of the railway system which helps to explain the food shortage which leads immediately to the revolution in petrograd there are also big financial problems as there were always like to be in in a long war and therefore high inflation above all there is the problem that although in some ways russian industry does remarkably well in adapting itself to wartime requirements it cannot simultaneously produce the supplies needed for war the munitions etc and sufficient consumer goods to persuade peasants essentially to sell their drain because they've got nothing to get back for it and with inflation you know they're getting more and more meaningless money and so you do begin to have by the winter of 1617 a crisis in supply as well it's not just the railways it's also that peasants are increasingly unwilling to sell their grain but again if you stand back from things and you look at other wars uh the russian population though squeezed by february 17 by which i mean the urban population the petrograd population the moscow population things were worse obviously in 1941 to five so simply invoking economic crisis is not enough it is the political crisis which brings the regime down and that is again very much as dunawa had predicted essentially between now between the outbreak of war and february 1917 nicholas ii loses almost all legitimacy almost all support within most of the elites including and this is crucial his leading generals he is blamed for all the failures on the home front the difficulties of mobilizing vast russia for this titanic conflict to some extent the criticism is fair there are obvious mistakes made there are obvious uh appointments of incompetent people in some positions they don't exaggerate it is also however the case that trying to mobilize uh enormous russia for the war effort is bound to be very difficult and the liberal opposition in the duma uh essentially exploits all those difficulties for its own purposes again it's worth standing back if you're trying to understand um what is going on compare the russian effort in 1914-17 with either the war against napoleon 1812-14 or stalin's war against hitler the revolution comes when 28 months whatever it is after you know the declaration of about two and a half years uh well two and a half years after napoleon invaded russia in 1812 the russian army has long since been in paris two and a half years after hitler invades the soviet union the war is far from over and there is dreadful suffering and bloodshed still to come but by that time you've had the victories at moscow stalingrad at course there's no doubt who's going to win the end of the war is in sight and of course that does wonders for morale in february 1917 you're still sitting in a trench all right american intervention may be coming over the horizon but this is something in the air it means very you know not much to the morale of soldiers in the trenches the basic truth of the matter is that in other words russia is faced with a uniquely difficult problem in compared to 1812 or 1943 it's having to sustain popular morale across a long war with no end in sight and then you have to remember where the war happened no enemy soldier except as a prisoner of war uh fights on russian soil in 1914-17 when the revolution in february comes the german army is still in latvia uh in bits of bella russia in ukraine and and western ukraine at that nowhere has it touched great russia it's therefore far more difficult to mobilize mass russian nationalism against the kaiser than it is against either napoleon or hitler who penetrated deep into the russian heartland uh and the hitlers of case of course perpetrated appalling barbarities against the russian people in napoleon's case he was seen to be respond well firstly his army did commit appalling crimes against the russian people in its invasion of great russia also moscow burnt down and although probably napoleon was not responsible for that the russians did it themselves that wasn't how things were portrayed to the russian population in 1812 again it brings out the difficulties of mobilizing the population for war it really isn't very easy to persuade a peasant from the backwoods of kasrama or harrison know two thousand three thousand kilometers from the european the border with anywhere else in europe that he's got to go and die in a trench in belarussia for the rights of serbia or for the european balance of power it's obviously much easier to mobilize these people when the enemy is on great russian soil when moscow is threatened or burning so that again is a sort of broader issue when you get actually to the revolution in petrograd itself it's pretty simple what happens i mean there's not much doubt what happens uh you have food shortages which result in big queues you have the enormous influx of refugees from behind the eastern front which creates even worse problems as regards housing you have high inflation with wages often not matching that and then specifically in february you have because of the the temporary crisis over the railway system you literally have long long hues for for basic foods bread etc so the crowds come out and they you know break windows and they come out in the mass and the troops are turned out to confront them and that is always the moment of truth the old regime survived in the winter of 195 to 6 above all because just enough of the army remain just sufficiently loyal to defend the monarchy against the revolution it was a close run thing most of the navy was totally unreliable much of the army was also unreliable it was on a knife edge in 1917 in february it isn't on the knife knife age you've got to remember who the petrograd garrison are the army which trusts the 1905 revolution is dead on the eastern front uh the troops in petrograd are either war casualties were rehabilitated being rehabilitated prior to being sent back to the front all they are newly called up reservists there are far too few officers and of course in petrograd the the garrison is subject to all the rumors which are flooding around in the city about traitors about rasputin about everything which is being thrown at the regime at the time when they mutiny the issue then becomes what are the elites going to do uh essentially the duma elite decides uh in the circumstances perfectly understandably uh that to try and oppose the the popular revolution in petrograd is impossible they have lost all faith in nicholas ii so they attempt to take over and civilize the revolution proclaiming themselves as the provisional government if they had not done that and the generals at the front had been faced by anarchy and petrograd or a takeover by the socialist parties then the generals would have launched the counter-revolution whether it would have succeeded we don't know in just the same way that we don't know uh whether if louis xvi had really committed his troops uh in in june and july 1789 the bulk of the army would have repressed the revolution in paris uh once the generals though are told by the duma leaders that they have petrograd under control the generals decide that it's not worth it trying to stage a counter-revolution above all else the generals are committed to winning the war the last thing they want is civil war in the interior they don't know whether their troops would be reliable if they were sent in to crush what is by now of course not just workers on the streets of petrograd but also much of the garrison and on top of that they've lost confidence in nicholas ii and in his ability to run russia to mobilize the rear for victory so essentially the generals acquiesce initially they hope to preserve the monarchy but they act with acquiesce when in the end first nicholas ii then the grand duke michael his younger brother abdicate and that roughly speaking is the february revolution i mean it's a bit of a whimper you know a dynasty which had ruled for over 300 years essentially falls in the course of a week with barely a shot fired in its defense but the implications of the fall of the monaco are enormous because once you take out the capstone and once you launch all the forces of revolution in russia it is going to be immensely difficult to control them and it is going to be impossible to continue the war and that more or less i mean i know other people are coming along to give lectures later that more or less sums up what what happened in the rest of 1917 but i will now again stand back because i'm sure no one else will do this when they come to talk about the revolution and put things again in the international context you have to remember that among the various scenarios which are often tossed out as regards russia's future you will find you know ideas about the possibilities of moderate socialists holding power some people will be arguing about the possibility of a sort of constitutional system emerging some people will argue about the possibility of trotsky or the right against et cetera et cetera et cetera but there is also the international context again the winter of 1617 that period which includes the petrograd revolution the overthrow of the russian monarchy is crucial for 20th century europe the point is that if the germans had not brought the united states into the first world war on the very eve of the russian revolution taking russia out then the germans would have won the first world war to win the first world war it was not necessary to win outright on the western front all you needed was stalemate on the western front and the defeat of russia in the east that is going to happen uh or you you know it did happen in fact uh the treaty of breslitos the russo-german treaty in march 1918 russia essentially accepts defeat and all the territories gained by russia since the 17th century are lost russia in fact returns more or less to the boundaries it has today but in the different international context the basic point you have to remember is that germany does not need to win on the western front and there is no way that the western allies the british and french are going to defeat germany without the united states or russia then you begin getting a different scenario entirely what actually works out in eastern europe briefly in 1918 and which would certainly have survived for longer possibly for good is the emergence essentially of an informal german empire across the whole of central and eastern europe above all you have the ukrainian issue the point is that in 1914 in 1917 and 1900 russia without ukraine is not a great power ukraine is the key to russian export agriculture ukraine is where most of russian russia's coal and metallurgical industry is concentrated where most of its exploitable iron deposits are to be found take those away russia ceases to be a great power if russia ceases to be a great power then the almost inexorable law of european geopolitics is that germany becomes the dominant force in europe for better or worse you can argue and i think you could make quite a good case that it would be better for the world if the germans had won the first world war but that's a different set of issues what you have you see emerging in 1918 is a picture of german informal empire in eastern europe with ukraine nominally independent but by definition a german satellite no ukrainian state could maintain its independence in the first half of the 20th century except as a german satellite that is partly because ukraine cannot defend itself against russia and no independent russian government of any power will accept ukrainian independence in those days but it is also because internally any independent ukrainian government is weak it will face the opposition of most russians and the russian minority in ukraine is enormous most jews most socialists that's a large number of people and it will also have to reckon with the fact that the bulk of the ukrainian peasantry doesn't really feel ukrainian yet give it two generations the institutions of an independent ukrainian state can create a sense of ukrainian national identity within the peasantry but it'll take time and during that time you can only survive under german protection the point is that germany and ukraine are natural allies because they share the same inevitable enemies one inevitable enemy of ukrainian independence is russia as i've said another is the poles because the ukrainians and poles are at daggers drawn over large areas of galicia for germany on the other hand of course ukraine is perfect because it is the enemy of germany's two enemies in eastern europe russia and poland so you have a very important potential relationship they're building up and one which might might have been one of the key elements in a stable long-lasting german domination of europe whether the germans would have been able to turn military victory into long-lasting empire is a moot point creating long-lasting dominion long-lasting empire is a two or three stage process military victory is only the first and sometimes the easiest political consolidation can be harder napoleon found that to his course the british founded in north america they won the great war against france in 1756 to 63 and then blew it because they failed to consolidate politically and lost all their own american colonies within a generation so let's see i mean if you think of it the british found it pretty hard to consolidate their own empire after winning the first world war they were half forced out of ireland they had to make major concessions to big disturbances in iraq and india etc etc etc so the german position would not have been easy on the other hand you know germany had at its disposal not just military power but also the fact that it was the dose dynamic dynamic economy in europe and the enormous cultural power of german civilization and it did also have potentially very important nationalist allies elsewhere in eastern europe i say that maybe it would have been better had the germans won not because i would welcome the domination of early 20th century europe god help us by ludendorff and his friends but it's the alternatives that you have to look at one of the things again you will seldom be told about the russian revolution is that by undermining the russian war effort and by ensuring that russia was one of the defeated 1917 made a second world war pretty near inevitable the basic point about the first world war was that it was first and foremost a war between the germanic powers and russia for the domination of east central europe it is a huge coincidence that the two major protagonists are both on the side of the defeated the war is won military by the western powers france britain america but it's lost in eastern europe and that for an obvious reason the peace is lost in eastern europe the versailles settlement is created against russia and germany without russia and germany without considering their interests or their views you cannot have a stable european settlement constructed against potentially the two most powerful peoples and states on the continent of europe they are going to tear it up which is exactly what happens in the 1930s if russia had been one of the victors if russia had been at the versailles conference if the franco-russian alliance has survived we wouldn't have had hitler because the russians and french would have stopped it stopped him in his tracks because of 1917 because of russia's defeat because of the huge vacuum which opens up in eastern europe you have a european settlement which is virtually inevitably going to collapse and so in some ways the greatest tragedy of all for the russian people is that the two million russians who died in the first world war died for nothing 1918 was not a peace vessel was not a peace it was a truth and god knows how many soviet citizens mostly russians die in the second world war 10 times maybe 15 times more than in the first war so you know you're not looking at happy events and the revolution to be understood has to be put within that much bigger context otherwise to my mind anyway you both leave out half the tragedy you delude yourself as to what many of the key lessons are and above all you know what are we historians here for if we don't try and tell what seems to us to be the truth good that's all i'll say thank you very much you

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Id: 4HZ_PNVHaDk

Length: 42min 57sec (2577 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021