A brief look at the specific conditions that developed in Russia giving rise to her class struggle, and the series of peasant revolts that accompanied the expansion of Czarism.

‘The Revolutionary Movement of Russia’s Past’ by M. Prokovski from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 2 No. 91. October 24, 1922.

The Czarist government and its historians maintained the legend that Russia being the most backward country of the world, revolution originated only in the most recent time under the influence of Western ideas. In reality, however, Russia since the 16th century was the most restless, the most revolutionary country Europe. From the middle of the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century every Russian government lived as if upon a volcano.

Only with the beginning of the 19th century had absolutism gained a tolerably firm foothold, precisely at the time when it is stated the revolutionary movement had begun. The revolutionary outbreaks of the first three quarters of the 19th century constituted no serious danger to Czarism. Only on the 1st of March, 1881, when Alexander II was assassinated, was the possibility of a new outbreak recalled, and only in the 20th century there broke forth the new catastrophe which has swept into the glowing abyss not only the last absolute government, but also the bourgeois pseudo-democracy which arose on its ruins.

One fact will suffice to portray the relatively strong revolutionary nature of old Russia. During the period of the disintegration of absolutism and the rise of early capitalism every European country had its peasant revolution–France the Jacquerie, England the rebellion of Wat Taylor, Bohemia the Hussite War, Germany the Great Peasants’ War of the 16th century. Every country had such a revolution.

Russia, however in the corresponding period of her economic development (which with us occurred during the 17th to 18th centuries) passed through four revolutions, three in Greater Russia–the so-called “insurrectory period”, at the beginning of the 17th century, the revolt of Stepan Razin, 1670-1671, and the Pugatchev Insurrection 1773-1774. The first overthrew a number of governments one after the other, the last came near to doing so. Katharine had no more dangerous rival than Pugatchev. Thereupon came the fourth violent and successful revolution in South: Western Russia (in Ukraine 1648 to 1654)—the revolt of Bogdan Chmelnitzki who put an end to the Polish rule in this province. This marked the beginning of the disintegration of old Poland.

What is the explanation of this exceedingly strong revolutionary excitability of the Russian people? Certainly not the national character of the Russians. The “national character” explains nothing, but itself needs explaining.

The revolutionary character of the Russian people is to be explained by the peculiarities of their economic development. In the 14th century, when in Western Europe mercantile capital was already springing into existence, crafts and industries were flourishing and the national state with its bureaucracy, money taxes and standing army arose, Russia remained fast in the midst of feudalism. This was the so-called fief epoch of Russian history.

Under the assaults of European mercantile capital, which had forced its way into this wild country–at first through Novgorod in the shape of the Hensa merchants, then to Moscow in the shape of the Italians who at the end of the 15th century built the Kremlin at Moscow, and finally in the shape of the English who in 1553 discovered the great sea route to Russia via Archangel.

In the 17th century the English were succeeded by the Dutch, the teachers of Peter the Great.

Under the burning rays of this rising sun of capitalism, Russian feudalism melted like snow in the spring. That which in England was the consequence of a slow, continued and persistent struggle in different places, in Russia, rapidly purged by its native capitalism, arose at one stroke throughout the whole country. The open country had no time in which to adapt itself to the new economic regime. The landowner who in Russia more than anywhere else was an instrument of original accumulation, intoxicated with a greed for profits entirely unknown to his grandfather, at times plundered the peasants in the literal sense of the word. Moscow wallowed in luxury whilst the villages became acquainted with hunger. The peasants turned from one land-owner to another and experienced everywhere the same fate. The more passive majority sold themselves as slaves for a piece of bread; the active minority forsook the frontiers of the country and formed free Cossack settlements which were equally dangerous to the neighbors and to the Moscow State.

The collisions between the State and the Cossacks of Eastern Russia were the signal for the first peasant revolution. The newly established state of merchant capitalists was weak and the victory went easily to the Cossacks. The peasants’ revolt grew like wildfire and easily destroyed serfdom which was in its beginnings. The revolt had for its slogan: “Abolish the masters and seize their land”. So ran the proclamations of the peasants’ leader, Bolotnikov.

The mass of large landowners were abolished. But in Great Russia the peasants and Cossacks could not build up anything on the ruins of the feudal state. They had themselves no political ideal besides Czarism. In 1614, the Cossack army won the throne for the old feudal family of the Romanovs who immediately betrayed those who had obtained the throne for them. Under the first Romanovs the peasants were finally enslaved.

The Western Cossacks stood nearer to Europe and were more intelligent The Moscow Czar had to be content for several decades with the role of superior feudal lord of the Ukraine. Gradually however, he acquired possession of it, and the Ukrainian peasants were dominated by the Senior Council of the Cossacks, who turned from leaders of the revolt into a real landowning class.

Razin’s revolt occupied for several months the most important line of commercial communication of the Moscow State–the Volga River. Razin’s movement led to the first conscious peasant revolution. Razin was inspired with a certain tendency to replace the bureaucratic state by a peasants’ republic with a Czar at the head. But the real Czar had an army at his disposal which was well armed and organized according to the best European methods. The Cossack troops had to capitulate before this army. On the 6th of June, 1671, Razin was executed in Moscow. Most of his comrades had been shot down before that time. With the conquest of Astrakhan some months later, the chief commercial routes were again in the hands of the state of commercial capitalists.

The following Cossack and Peasant revolution almost exactly 100 years after Razin’s death, had a still more military bureaucratic character. It is characteristic that the Cossacks did not play the leading role in this revolution. The rebellion was dangerous to absolutism through the participation of the semi-proletarian workers in the Ural mines. The mines formed the industrial basis of Pugatchev who obtained ammunitions from there; but Pugatchev did not succeed in reaching Moscow. An army was mobilized against the rebels which, according to the admission of Catherine had only been used against the strongest foreign enemy. Pugatchev’s troops were defeated and on the 8th of January, 1775, he experienced in Moscow the fate of Razin. The Pugatchev episode was the last Cossack and peasant revolution and the last great mass action in Russia before 1905. After that, serfdom consolidated itself and was only abolished in 1861 under the attack of a new wave of capitalism, coming from the West–industrial capitalism. The expropriations that followed were answered by the peasants in a number of revolts (at least 2000 in the whole of Russia) but it did not come to a general revolution. These revolts, however, were more dangerous for absolutism than the revolt of the bourgeois-liberal Decabrists (December 14th, 1825). The conspiracy of the Decabrists was of great importance for the development of the revolutionary ideology of the Russian intellectuals; in the history of the mass movements of Russia, however, it only occupies a minor position.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1922/v02n091-oct-24-1922-Inprecor.pdf