RISE OF COMMUNISM 1848-1945
While people have always had their own ideas about how best to run a country, you’d be hard pressed to find one more radical than communism. This isn’t just because communism is the wackiest of political ideology, but rather because it hasn’t been around for very long. In thousands of years of recorded history, we’ve seen plenty of ideologies come and go and regardless of whether or not they stuck around, all of them were rigorously tested over a long time. By contrast, it was only in 1848 that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the now (in)famous Communist Manifesto – a pamphlet that would go on to drastically alter the political landscape of the planet. The basic gist of this new proposal was that was that the community in which communism operates would share its output based on what each person contributes and what they need. Private property and natural resources would also become communal and therefore ‘publicly’ owned - pretty interesting idea right? Vladimir Lenin certainly thought so.
Having embraced Marxism to the max, Lenin was a fully fledged revolutionary in waiting. Convinced that capitalism would inevitably give way to this wonderful new idea of communism, he spearheaded the emergence of the Bolshevik party and made every effort to stoke a political revolution. Fortunately for him, Tsarist Russia had long been on its knees and awaiting a knockout blow from somewhere – and WW1 was only too happy to oblige. Having already wreaked chaos everywhere else in Europe, the Great War was the final kick in the nuts for the Russian Empire as it collapsed in a groaning heap of internal strife. At its root, the working class had simply decided that crushing poverty just wasn’t for them and took to the streets in defiance of the Tsar. To be fair to them, Nicholas II had become pretty detached from the suffering of the peasants and failed to reform in time to stop the inevitable. With riots paralysing the country, Nicky was forced into abdication.
This was the February Revolution of 1917 – a chaotic event that saw the Tsar replaced with a provisional government comprised of several parties. That would probably seem like a logical and democratic conclusion to the affair, with most reformers (including the communists) content to think that ‘yeah we didn’t get everything we wanted, but what can you do eh?’ Lenin had an altogether different attitude and instigated the October Revolution later in the same year, which after the two previous revolutions (there was one in 1905 too) must’ve had a distinct ‘broken record’ vibe about it. The resulting insurrection was decisive; putting power squarely in the hands of Lenin and the Bolsheviks (sounds like a rock band, no?). After a small setback called the Russian Civil War (1917-22), the Bolshevik government remerged as the formidable Soviet Union.
So just how was the world going to accept this brand new socialist state? Given that communism was kind of a new trend, you can probably anticipate why the other major players in Europe didn’t roll out the welcome wagon. The early 20th Century was unbelievably fractious and for a government to allow something as quirky as communism through the door was to invite revolution. So everyone basically kept their distance from the weird new kid while Lenin and Stalin used the Red Terror and the Great Purge respectively to eliminate any potential threats to the regime. For despite all the talk of socialism giving power to the people, all it really did was give inordinate power to a select few at the top of the chain. The consequences were truly horrific for many and despite flirting dangerously close with disaster, the Soviet Union would survive WW2 as one of two world superpowers, the other (rather ironically) being capitalist USA.