The Russian Revolution Begins

March 8th, 1917

(Note: the picture is AI generated, but the research and writing were carried out by a human, me)

Today 107 years ago, rioting began in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), the capital of imperial Russia, which would, in short order, lead to the downfall of the regime of Czar Nicholas II. The provisional government replacing it was not able to withstand the revolutionary passions of the time, and so in a second revolution that year, the October revolution, the control of Russia fell to the Bolsheviks, who instituted the first constitutionally socialist government in the world which would, after a prolonged civil war, become the Soviet Union in 1922.

The causes of the Russian Revolution are not settled on, most likely it was a combination of factors; which factors are deemed to be most important seem to depend on one’s ideological orientation. But some of these include the longstanding history of serfdom in Russia, i.e. of indentured peasants who by the 19th century were essentially slaves, extreme poverty of the working classes, widespread corruption and inefficiency in the Czarist regime, a number of missteps by Nicholas II which ranged from serious to catastrophic, and the prospect of famine brought on by Russia’s disastrous participation in World War I.

The revolution profoundly reshaped Russian society, but its consequences for the entire world are so stupendous that they become difficult to fully grasp. Already with the treaty of Rapallo of 1922, there began a period of clandestine military cooperation with Germany which would eventually culminate in the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact of 1939, wherein essentially Stalin and Hitler secretly decided to divide up Europe between themselves. Without it, Hitler might not have dared to start World War II. After that war, the worldwide spread of communism as a rival to capitalism would lead to the cold war, characterized by a series of “hot” proxy wars, the nuclear arms race, oppressive puppet regimes around the world on both sides, and a clash of cultures. The reverberations of the Russian revolution can be felt even today, as many contemporary international crises can be traced back to events that have their roots in it.