Red October: Difference between revisions

{{Useful Notes}}

{{quote|All revolutions are impossible, until they become inevitable.|'''[[Leon Trotsky]]''' }}

 

The second Russian Revolution of 1917. The one that brought in the Commies. [[The Hunt for Red October|Not a submarine, or a hunt for said submarine.]]

 

When the Romanov dynasty was overthrown in March of 1917 (the February Revolution, since the Russians used the Julian Calender it was still late February in Russia), it was replaced by a Provisional Government. This was intended to stay in power until the election of a Constituent Assembly. They actually tried to elect the Assembly, but the Bolsheviks took over before any votes could be cast to avoid the risk of their rivals, the Socialist Revolutionaries (who had the greater popular support), from forming a legitimate majority government. After they proclaimed themselves in control in November 1917, the Bolsheviks permitted the elections to take place in January of 1918 (and sure enough, the Socialist Revolutionaries won the majority of the vote). However, the assembly was forcibly disbanded by the Bolsheviks, who announced that the people would be represented by the city soviets (where they had majorities).

 

 

It was a big mistake for Emperor Nicholas II to enter WWI. The administration of the Empire was corrupt, the army badly equipped, the people angry and several revolutionary parties (not only the [[Dirty Communists]]) spouting anti-Tsarist rhetoric while organizing against the government. Instead of trying to heal the Empire, the Emperor aggravated the problems by throwing his country into the Great War. The corrupt intendants were making money by stealing from army shipments, the soldiers were freezing in trenches, [[Dying Like Animals]] and becoming even angrier at the Emperor and his government while the dissipated nobles and the unscrupulous merchants were still living luxurious lives - this all angered people further. Finally, they had enough and began to actually listen to the revolutionaries.

And the shit hit the fan. Strikes, mutinies, mass [[Unfriendly Fire|fraggings of officers]] and peasant revolts broke out. Several high-ranking generals and public officials forced the Tsar to abdicate. That is how the Provisional Government came into power. They were going to elect the Constituent Assembly that was intended to decide the fate of post-Imperial Russia. But there were guys that had some other ideas. You guessed right, the Bolsheviks...

 

Meanwhile the [[First World War]] was still going on and the provisional government couldn't decide how to end it. On the one hand it was extremely unpopular, on the other Germany was demanding extremely onerous terms since the Russians had no bargaining power.

 

When Germany saw that the provisional government wasn't pulling Russia out of the war, they made a deal with Lenin, currently in exile in Switzerland. The Germans would let him pass through their territory in a sealed train (so he wouldn't try to foment revolution in Germany), in exchange he would get Russia out of the war. The Germans probably didn't expect him to actually succeed in consolidating power and were just hoping he would cause enough trouble that they could transfer troops to the Western Front.

 

 

Actually, there were several revolutionary parties: the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (a hardline communist Bolshevik one and a social-democratic Menshevik one, RSDLP (b) and RSDLP (m) respectively, thanks to a split in 1905), the Socialist Revolutionaries, and many other smaller parties. The left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left [[S Rs]]) were allies of the Bolsheviks, but the other revolutionary parties were satisfied with the February revolution (except for the anarchists, but they were not really a party of course) and well represented in the Provisional Government. They, and the right-wing parties, formed a loose alliance that later became the White movement.

After the Whites were defeated in fall of 1921, one last revolt occurred at Kronstadt, with mutinous sailors (the same ones who rose up in February 1917, not, as the Bolsheviks claimed, reactionary replacements) calling for free soviets, civil liberties and worker self-management again, as with the factory committees the Bolsheviks smashed. They were massacred by the Red Army under Trotsky. At the same time strikes were occurring in Moscow and Petrograd, also brutally put down. By 1924, all Russia along with most shards of the Empire (with the exception of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, who managed to stay independent) were under Bolshevik control.

 

 

The Civil War-era Russia was a popular setting for later Soviet action movies. These movies were very similar to American Westerns: just take a Western, replace the Injuns or Mexicans with Basmaches (Muslim anti-Bolshevik fighters in Central Asia), the Blue with the Red and the Gray with the White, the prairies with the deserts of Turkestan or steppes of Ukraine, the Peacemakers with Nagant Gas-Seals and Mauser Broomhandles, the Winchesters with Mosin-Nagant rifles, the Gatlings with Maxims, the horses... well, let the horses be horses, and you'll get an Ostern (or "Eastern", as they are known in Russia proper).

The most popular Osterns were ''[[White Sun of the Desert]]'', about a former Red Army Soldier turned [[The Gunslinger|gunslinger]] who travelled homewards through Basmach-infested Turkestan deserts, ''At Home Amongst The Strangers, A Stranger Amongst Friends'' in which a framed CHEKA agent must infiltrate a band of marauders and retrieve several millions in gold, and ''[[The Elusive Avengers]]'', about four young guns opposing the anarchist bandit ataman Burnash and his gang. The concept itself became popular enough to be recognized in a parody where Winchester and Colt as they are coexists with a kolkhoz <ref>...and [[Briefcase Full of Money|safe]] full of [[Ham and Cheese]], in "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T50xjmlDSF4 The Mail Train Robbery]" song.</ref>.

 

{{tropelist|Tropes of the Great October Socialist Revolution (its official name in the USSR) and Russian Civil War:}}

* [[Apocalypse How]]: a Regional Societal Collapse

* [[I Have Your Wife]]: the Bolsheviks made most former Imperial officers (that's the ones who weren't in the White army) work for them by taking their families hostage.

* [[Insistent Terminology]]: The Red Army had "commanders", not officers. "Officer" was a loaded word implying nobility and conviction to the Tsarist patriotic cause.

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters|Loads And Loads Of Factions]]: Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, other revolutionary leftists, anarchists, democrats, monarchists, ethnic nationalists, foreign inteventionists from the Allied and Central Powers, those just trying to fight their way out... Did I omit someone?

** The Greens, local militias attempting to protect their villages from the marauding forces of both sides, along with bandits.

* [[Memetic Mutation]]: one predating the Internet! Vasili Chapayev, a Red division commander who ended up as a popular Russian [[Russian Humour|folk joke]] character.

* [[Montages]]: Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer of the development and use of the montage editing and montage was used prominently in some Soviet films of the 1920s.

[[Category:Useful Notes/Russia]]

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