I'm posting the page below as a prime example of a bourgeois historical take on the Russian Revolution.
It's worth examining because it cuts to the heart of the matter -- where does one stand on the greatest event in world history? The October Revolution was the only time in history where the workers consciously took political and industrial power by themselves and for themselves.
Any history that doesn't acknowledge this importance thereby shows its flaws -- it must devise a gloss-over, a makeshift explanation for what this event was, what it was about, and how it came out in the end.
This particular series proclaims its shortcomings openly. It claims that major shifts in world events are due to great leader decision-making. It openly eschews examination of the effects of large-scale historical forces for explaining sudden, dramatic events on the world stage.
It strips Marxism of its potency by putting it in the same category as religion -- it describes the ideology of communism as a worldview -- a subjective thing, like religion. Therefore, according to them, agreement with communism becomes a subjective thing, too -- a matter of "faith".
(Comments follow the text.)
> Lecture Twenty-Three
> Russia and Empire
> Scope: In the 20th century in both Russia and China, democratic revolutions would end in savage tyrannies. The
wisdom of history teaches us that this is not an accident. It was the predictable result of the historical
development of both countries. From its misty origins as a Viking nation until Vladimir Putin, Russia has
never known freedom and democracy in the American sense. Russia was shaped by the heritage of
Byzantium, Orthodox Christianity, and the Mongol conquest. Political and individual freedom were utterly
subordinate to the ideal of a God-chosen absolute ruler, with total power over state and church. Ivan the
Terrible, Peter the Great, and Stalin and his Gulag were all testaments to the propensity of mankind to
choose despotism over freedom.
> Outline
> I. In the past two lectures, we’ve studied empires of faith that provided a comprehensive worldview. For the
British and French, the view was that all people want liberty, equality, and democracy. In the next two lectures,
we’ll explore two more empires of faith: the Russian empire (the Soviet Union) and the Chinese empire of Mao
Tse-tung (Mao Zedong). Both were based on Communism as a worldview.
> II. The father of Communism is Karl Marx, a German. His Communist Manifesto of 1848 called on workers of the
world to unite. By the end of his life, he saw completion of Das Kapital as his great task.
> A. Marx would not have been surprised if a visitor from the future had told him that millions of people would
view his ideas as a revelation of truth, his Das Kapital their Bible.
> B. Marx regarded Das Kapital as a volume of scientific truth, based on what he saw as indisputable laws of
history and economics. Its doctrine is that workers will destroy the capitalism that oppresses them.
> 1. To Marx, every society reflects its economic system, especially its mode of production. Greece and
Rome had slaves and were, thus, slave societies. The Middle Ages had serfs and was a feudal society.
The 18th-century mode of production was based on laborers exploited by capitalists.
> 2. Moved by the world’s suffering, Marx sought salvation in the end of capitalism. In his view, the
capitalist profits by exploiting workers, paying them the lowest possible wages. With plenty of
available workers, the capitalist can cut wages while increasing his profit.
> 3. But Marx believed that, according to the laws of economics, capitalism is self-destroying. He shows
how the growing disparity between a worker’s wages and a capitalist’s profits would force workers to
revolt and destroy capitalism.
> III. Das Kapital shaped the history of the 20th century, of Russia in particular. In 1917, Russia was in a state of near
collapse. The czar’s government had fallen, and the Russian Parliament had proclaimed a constitutional
government based on liberal ideas.
> A. The government felt obligated to stay in World War I, but the Russian army and the Russian people had
had enough. The Russians wanted peace, bread, and a redistribution of land.
> B. On November 7, the Bolsheviks (Communists) were determined to take power. Their leader, Vladimir
Lenin, was a devoted follower of Marx. Lenin believed that Marx was the thinker, but that men of action
must create revolution. Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin urged Lenin on.
> C. The Bolsheviks struck. The leader of the constitutional government, Aleksandr Kerensky, tried but failed
to put down the coup.
> D. From 1918 to 1922, the Bolsheviks under Lenin waged a relentless war of terror against all who opposed
the establishment of Communism. By 1929, Russia was the Soviet Union, ruled by the totalitarian dictator
Stalin.
> E. Russia is a sobering example that freedom is not universally valued. Russia has never wanted freedom,
from its beginnings as a Viking state to today’s Vladimir Putin.
[...]
> ©2007 The Teaching Company. 32
In III-C Kerensky is portrayed as a centrist -- the only truly rational actor there -- since he supports a constitutional government. He is deftly portrayed as the hero who tries but fails to put down the "coup" -- not revolution -- of Lenin's --not of the Bolshevik workers themselves.
In III-B Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, and Lenin are all thrown together, seemingly as compatriots, in 1917. Never mind that Stalin came to be the most horrible dictator in the East, or that he rose to power as a result of the imperialists' crushing of the Bolshevik Revolution.
In III-D Lenin is portrayed as a Stalinist from the start. Lenin's war measures are slandered with a characterization that evokes terrorist or monarchical measures -- the invasion on the revolution by numerous capitalist armies is omitted.
In III-E the "freedom" formulation is used like a magic wand to project an image of a stubborn, impish child onto the character of the entire existing human population -- "freedom" is not "universally valued", according to the author, and the "proof" is that Russia allowed the Bolsheviks to establish totalitarianism. This is a sick, grotesque characterization of the roles of Lenin and Trotsky, and of the revolution itself.
Once humanity has been infantilized in this way the proper stage is set for facilitating a condescending tone of finger-wagging: "Russia has never wanted freedom."
Chris
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