Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A Pelican Introduction (Pelican Books)

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The famine crisis undermined that view. Partly caused by the tax squeeze on the peasants to pay for industrialization, the crisis suggested that the peasantry was literally dying out, both as a class and a way of life, under the pressures of capitalist development. Marxism alone seemed able to explain the causes of the famine by showing how a capitalist economy created rural poverty. In the 1890s it fast became a national intelligentsia creed. Socialists who had previously wavered in their Marxism were converted to it by the crisis, as they realized that there was no more hope in the Populist faith in the peasantry. Even liberal thinkers such as Petr Struve found their Marxist passions stirred by the famine: it ‘made much more of a Marxist out of me than the reading of Marx's Capital'.11 Quotation from the introduction. Kendall, Bridget (1 September 2022). "The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review – what Putin sees in the past". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 September 2022.

Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes 1905 The First Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes

On 4 December 2008, the St Petersburg offices of the Memorial Society were raided by the police. The entire electronic archive of Memorial in St Petersburg, including the materials collected with Figes for The Whisperers, was confiscated by the authorities. Figes condemned the police raid, accusing the Russian authorities of trying to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime. [46] Figes organised an open protest letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and other Russian leaders, which was signed by several hundred leading academics from across the world. [47] After several court hearings, the materials were finally returned to Memorial in May 2009.Russian History". Brill Publishers. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014 . Retrieved 31 August 2011.

Origins of the Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes Origins of the Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes

In an interview with Andrew Marr in 1997, Figes described himself as "a Labour Party supporter and 'a bit of a Tony Blair man', though he confessed, when it came to the Russian revolution, to being mildly pro- Menshevik." [8] Lenin was particularly influenced by the ‘Jacobinism' of the revolutionary theorist Petr Tkachev (1844–86), who in the 1870s had argued for a seizure of power and the establishment of a dictatorship by a disciplined and highly centralized vanguard on the grounds that a social revolution was impossible to achieve by democratic means: the laws of capitalist development meant that the richer peasants would support the status quo. Tkachev insisted that a coup d'état should be carried out as soon as possible, because as yet there was no real social force prepared to side with the government, and to wait would only let one develop. Figes published The Story of Russia in September 2022. [10] The book is a general history of Russia from the earliest times to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It focuses on the ideas and myths that have structured the Russians' understanding of their history, and explores what Figes calls the "structural continuities" of Russian history, such as the sacralisation of power and patrimonial autocracy. The Guardian described it as "An indispensable survey of more than 1,000 years of history [which] shows how myth and fact mix dangerously in the tales this crucial country tells about itself" [42] A reviewer in The Spectator called it "a saga of multi-millennial identity politics"; Figes argues that no other country has so often changed its origin story, [43] its "[h]istories continuously reconfigured and repurposed to suit its present needs and reimagine its future". [44] Views on Russian politics [ edit ]The tsarist system could not cope with the challenges of urbanization and the development of a modern market-based economy which brought so many democratic changes in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The 1890s were a watershed in this respect. From this decade we can date the emergence of a civil society, a public sphere and ethic, all in opposition to the state. Another strand, exploited through the centuries by successive rulers to enhance their authority, is the idea of spiritual exceptionalism. It was Ivan the Terrible, no less, who adapted Byzantine rituals to create an imperial myth – that the tsar was anointed by church and god, and that Moscow was the Third Rome, the rightful successor and true capital of Christendom after the fall of Rome and Constantinople. Lenin came to Marx already armed with the ideas of the People's Will, the terrorist wing of the Populist movement which had carried out the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Lenin's elder brother, who had belonged to the People's Will, was executed for his participation in the abortive plot to kill Alexander III in 1887. There is a Soviet legend that on hearing of his brother's death Lenin said to his sister Maria: ‘No, we shall not take that road, our road must be different.' The implication is that Lenin was already committed to the Marxist cause—the ‘we' of the quotation—with its theoretical rejection of terror in favour of the organization of the working class. But this is nonsensical (Maria at the time was only nine). And while it may be true that his brother's execution was a catalyst to Lenin's involvement in the revolutionary movement, his first inclination was, like his brother's, towards the People's Will. Lenin's Marxism, which developed slowly after 1889, remained infused with the Jacobin spirit of the terrorists and their belief in the overwhelming importance of the seizure of power. Delving deep, Figes identifies the period 1891 to 1922 as the first movement. The famine of 1891 provided a catalyst for revolutionary change in impoverished 19th-century Russia. Drawing from a widespread sense of oppression and neglect, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik peers were able to build up a power base. Here Russia stood in stark contrast to Europe, where these worker types tended to be the least revolutionary and labour parties representing them were entering parliaments. There were few signs of such a ‘labour aristocracy' emerging in Russia and certainly no parliament to which it could aspire. The print workers were the most likely candidates for such a role. Yet even they stood firmly behind the Marxist and other revolutionary socialist parties. Had they been able to develop their own legal trade unions, the workers might have gone down the path of moderate reform taken by the European labour movements. But the Russian political situation pushed them to extremes. They were forced to rely upon the leadership of the revolutionary underground. To a large extent, then, the workers' revolutionary movement was created by the tsarist government.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History: Written by Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History: Written by

Figes’s framework is both insightful and convincing. It allows him to focus not only on the major figures but also on the broader social support mobilised during successive revolutionary cycles. At the same time it helps us to understand some of the mysteries of Soviet history – such as why Gorbachev was willing to go so far in undermining the bureaucracies that held the Soviet system together. Only his roots in the Russian revolutionary tradition can explain his radical, seemingly suicidal policies.Kendall, Bridget (September 2022). "The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review – what Putin sees in the past". The Guardian. Magnificent and utterly gripping: European identity, culture and commerce through the lives of three remarkable individuals, the book for our times." (Philippe Sands) Dinning, Rachel (30 September 2019). "Orlando Figes on the transformation of Europe". BBC History Extra . Retrieved 2 October 2019. The second generation came of age during Stalin’s “revolution from above” of 1928-32. Enthused by the promise of socialist modernity, they pushed through collectivisation of agriculture and forced industrialisation, while benefiting from the regime’s expansion of education and white-collar jobs. They then matured into the conservative “Brezhnev generation” who became so resistant to change after the 1960s. a b "Four Documentaries – The Tsar's Last Picture Show". BBC. 22 November 2007 . Retrieved 31 August 2011.