SECTION I

EVENTS AND PROCESSES

In Section I, you will read about the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution,
and the rise of Nazism. In different ways all these events were important in the
making of the modern world.

Chapter I is on the French Revolution. Today we often take the ideas of liberty,
EVENTS AND PROCESSES

freedom and equality for granted. But we need to remind ourselves that these ideas
also have a history. By looking at the French Revolution you will read a small part
of that history. The French Revolution led to the end of monarchy in France. A
society based on privileges gave way to a new system of governance. The Declaration
of the Rights of Man during the revolution, announced the coming of a new time.
The idea that all individuals had rights and could claim equality became part of a
new language of politics. These notions of equality and freedom emerged as the central
ideas of a new age; but in different countries they were reinterpreted and rethought
in many different ways. The anti-colonial movements in India and China, Africa and

Revolution
South America, produced ideas that were innovative and original, but they spoke in
a language that gained currency only from the late eighteenth century.

In Chapter II, you will read about the coming of socialism in Europe, and the dramatic
events that forced the ruling monarch, Tsar Nicholas II, to give up power. The Russian
French

Revolution sought to change society in a different way. It raised the question of

economic equality and the well-being of workers and peasants. The chapter will tell
you about the changes that were initiated by the new Soviet government, the problems
The

it faced and the measures it undertook. While Soviet Russia pushed ahead with
industrialisation and mechanisation of agriculture, it denied the rights of citizens
that were essential to the working of a democratic society. The ideals of socialism,

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 however, became part of the anti-colonial movements in different countries. Today
the Soviet Union has broken up and socialism is in crisis but through the twentieth
century it has been a powerful force in the shaping of the contemporary world.

Chapter III will take you to Germany. It will discuss the rise of Hitler and the
politics of Nazism. You will read about the children and women in Nazi Germany,
about schools and concentration camps. You will see how Nazism denied various
minorities a right to live, how it drew upon a long tradition of anti-Jewish feelings
to persecute the Jews, and how it waged a relentless battle against democracy and
socialism. But the story of Nazism’s rise is not only about a few specific events,
about massacres and killings. It is about the working of an elaborate and frightening
system which operated at different levels. Some in India were impressed with the
ideas of Hitler but most watched the rise of Nazism with horror.

The history of the modern world is not simply a story of the unfolding of freedom
and democracy. It has also been a story of violence and tyranny, death and destruction.
India and the Contemporary World

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 Chapter I
The French Revolution
On the morning of 14 July 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of
alarm. The king had commanded troops to move into the city. Rumours
spread that he would soon order the army to open fire upon the citizens.
Some 7,000 men and women gathered in front of the town hall and
decided to form a peoples’ militia. They broke into a number of
government buildings in search of arms.

Finally, a group of several hundred people marched towards the eastern

part of the city and stormed the fortress-prison, the Bastille, where they
hoped to find hoarded ammunition. In the armed fight that followed,

R e v o l u t i o n
the commander of the Bastille was killed and the prisoners released –
though there were only seven of them. Yet the Bastille was hated by all,
because it stood for the despotic power of the king. The fortress was
demolished and its stone fragments were sold in the markets to all
those who wished to keep a souvenir of its destruction.

The days that followed saw more rioting both in Paris and the
countryside. Most people were protesting against the high price of bread.
Much later, when historians looked back upon this time, they saw it as
the beginning of a chain of events that ultimately led to the execution
of the king in France, though most people at the time did not anticipate
this outcome. How and why did this happen?

F rR e ev o l unt i ocn h
T h T eh e French

Fig.1 – Storming of the Bastille.

Soon after the demolition of the Bastille,
artists made prints commemorating the event.

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 1 French Society During the Late Eighteenth Century

In 1774, Louis XVI of the Bourbon family of kings ascended the

throne of France. He was 20 years old and married to the Austrian 1st estate
princess Marie Antoinette. Upon his accession the new king found
Clergy
an empty treasury. Long years of war had drained the financial
resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an
extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles. Under Louis 2nd estate

XVI, France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their Nobility
independence from the common enemy, Britain. The war added more
than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2
3rd estate
billion livres. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge
10 per cent interest on loans. So the French government was obliged Big businessmen,
merchants, court
to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments officials, lawyers etc.
alone. To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining
Peasants and
an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the artisans
state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this measure would not
have sufficed. French society in the eighteenth century was divided Small peasants,
landless labour,
into three estates, and only members of the third estate paid taxes. servants

The society of estates was part of the feudal system that dated back to
the middle ages. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the Fig.2 – A Society of Estates.
society and institutions of France before 1789. Note that within the Third Estate some were
rich and others poor.
Fig. 2 shows how the system of estates in French society was organised.
Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However,
only a small number of them owned the land they cultivated. About
60 per cent of the land was owned by nobles, the Church and other
richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two
estates, that is, the clergy and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by
India and the Contemporary World

birth. The most important of these was exemption from paying taxes to
the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These included
feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged
New words
to render services to the lord – to work in his house and fields – to serve
in the army or to participate in building roads. Livre – Unit of currency in France,
discontinued in 1794
The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes from the peasants,
Clergy – Group of persons invested with
and finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state.
special functions in the church
These included a direct tax, called taille, and a number of indirect taxes
Tithe – A tax levied by the church, comprising
which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco.
one-tenth of the agricultural produce
The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne
Taille – Tax to be paid directly to the state
by the third estate alone.

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 ‘This poor fellow brings everything,
grain, fruits, money, salad. The fat lord
sits there, ready to accept it all. He does
not even care to grace him with a look.’

Activity
Explain why the artist has portrayed the
nobleman as the spider and the peasant
as the fly.

‘The nobleman is the spider,

‘The more the devil has, the more he wants.’
the peasant the fly.’

Fig.3 – The Spider and the Fly.

An anonymous etching.

1.1 The Struggle to Survive Revolution

The population of France rose from about 23 million in 1715 to 28
million in 1789. This led to a rapid increase in the demand for
foodgrains. Production of grains could not keep pace with the
French

demand. So the price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority
rose rapidly. Most workers were employed as labourers in workshops New words
whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace with
Subsistence crisis – An extreme situation where
The

the rise in prices. So the gap between the poor and the rich widened.
Things became worse whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest. the basic means of livelihood are endangered
This led to a subsistence crisis, something that occurred frequently Anonymous – One whose name remains
in France during the Old Regime. unknown

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 1.2 How a Subsistence Crisis Happens

Bad The poorest can no

harvest longer buy bread

Disease
epidemics

Fig.4 – The course of a subsistence crisis.

Activity
Fill in the blank boxes in Fig. 4 with
appropriate terms from among the following:
1.3 A Growing Middle Class Envisages an End to Privileges
Food riots, scarcity of grain, increased
In the past, peasants and workers had participated in revolts against number of deaths, rising food prices,
increasing taxes and food scarcity. But they lacked the means and weaker bodies.
programmes to carry out full-scale measures that would bring about
a change in the social and economic order. This was left to those
groups within the third estate who had become prosperous and had
access to education and new ideas.

The eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of social groups,

India and the Contemporary World

termed the middle class, who earned their wealth through an

expanding overseas trade and from the manufacture of goods such as
woollen and silk textiles that were either exported or bought by the
richer members of society. In addition to merchants and
manufacturers, the third estate included professions such as lawyers
or administrative officials. All of these were educated and believed
that no group in society should be privileged by birth. Rather, a
person’s social position must depend on his merit. These ideas
envisaging a society based on freedom and equal laws and
opportunities for all, were put forward by philosophers such as John
Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Two Treatises of Government,
Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right

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of the monarch. Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a
form of government based on a social contract between people
and their representatives. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu
proposed a division of power within the government between
the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of
government was put into force in the USA, after the thirteen
colonies declared their independence from Britain. The American
constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important
example for political thinkers in France.

The ideas of these philosophers were discussed intensively in salons

and coffee-houses and spread among people through books and
newspapers. These were frequently read aloud in groups for the
benefit of those who could not read and write. The news that
Louis XVI planned to impose further taxes to be able to meet the
expenses of the state generated anger and protest against the system
of privileges.

Source A

Accounts of lived experiences in the Old Regime

1. Georges Danton, who later became active in revolutionary politics, wrote to a friend in
1793, looking back upon the time when he had just completed his studies:
‘I was educated in the residential college of Plessis. There I was in the company of
important men … Once my studies ended, I was left with nothing. I started looking for a
post. It was impossible to find one at the law courts in Paris. The choice of a career in the
army was not open to me as I was not a noble by birth, nor did I have a patron. The
church too could not offer me a refuge. I could not buy an office as I did not possess a
sou. My old friends turned their backs to me … the system had provided us with an
education without however offering a field where our talents could be utilised.’

2. An Englishman, Arthur Young, travelled through France during the years from 1787 to
1789 and wrote detailed descriptions of his journeys. He often commented on what he

Revolution
saw.
Source

‘He who decides to be served and waited upon by slaves, ill-treated slaves at that, must
be fully aware that by doing so he is placing his property and his life in a situation which is
very different from that he would be in, had he chosen the services of free and well-
treated men. And he who chooses to dine to the accompaniment of his victims’ groans,
should not complain if during a riot his daughter gets kidnapped or his son’s throat is slit.’
French

Activity What message is Young trying to convey here? Whom does he mean when he speaks of‘ ‘slaves’?
The

Who is he criticising? What dangers does he sense in the situation of 1787?

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 2 The Outbreak of the Revolution

Louis XVI had to increase taxes for reasons you have learnt in the
previous section. How do you think he could have gone about doing Some important dates
this? In France of the Old Regime the monarch did not have the 1774
Louis XVI becomes king of France, faces
power to impose taxes according to his will alone. Rather he had to empty treasury and growing discontent
call a meeting of the Estates General which would then pass his within society of the Old Regime.
proposals for new taxes. The Estates General was a political body to 1789
Convocation of Estates General, Third
which the three estates sent their representatives. However, the Estate forms National Assembly, the
monarch alone could decide when to call a meeting of this body. The Bastille is stormed, peasant revolts in the
countryside.
last time it was done was in 1614.
1791
A constitution is framed to limit the powers
On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI called together an assembly of the Estates of the king and to guarantee basic rights to
General to pass proposals for new taxes. A resplendent hall in all human beings.
Versailles was prepared to host the delegates. The first and second 1792-93
France becomes a republic, the king is
estates sent 300 representatives each, who were seated in rows facing beheaded.
each other on two sides, while the 600 members of the third estate Overthrow of the Jacobin republic, a
Directory rules France.
had to stand at the back. The third estate was represented by its more
1804
prosperous and educated members. Peasants, artisans and women Napoleon becomes emperor of France,
were denied entry to the assembly. However, their grievances and annexes large parts of Europe.
1815
demands were listed in some 40,000 letters which the representatives Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
had brought with them.

Voting in the Estates General in the past had been conducted according
to the principle that each estate had one vote. This time too Louis
XVI was determined to continue the same practice. But members of
the third estate demanded that voting now be conducted by the
assembly as a whole, where each member would have one vote. This
was one of the democratic principles put forward by philosophers
like Rousseau in his book The Social Contract. When the king rejected
India and the Contemporary World

this proposal, members of the third estate walked out of the assembly
in protest. Activity
The representatives of the third estate viewed themselves as spokesmen
Representatives of the Third Estate take the
for the whole French nation. On 20 June they assembled in the hall oath raising their arms in the direction of
of an indoor tennis court in the grounds of Versailles. They declared Bailly, the President of the Assembly,
themselves a National Assembly and swore not to disperse till they standing on a table in the centre. Do you
had drafted a constitution for France that would limit the powers of think that during the actual event Bailly
the monarch. They were led by Mirabeau and Abbé Sieyès. Mirabeau would have stood with his back to the
was born in a noble family but was convinced of the need to do away assembled deputies? What could have
with a society of feudal privilege. He brought out a journal and been David’s intention in placing Bailly
delivered powerful speeches to the crowds assembled at Versailles. (Fig.5) the way he has done?

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Fig.5 – The Tennis Court Oath.
Preparatory sketch for a large painting by Jacques-Louis David. The painting was intended to be hung in the National Assembly.

Abbé Sieyès, originally a priest, wrote an influential pamphlet called

‘What is the Third Estate’?

While the National Assembly was busy at Versailles drafting a

constitution, the rest of France seethed with turmoil. A severe winter
had meant a bad harvest; the price of bread rose, often bakers exploited
the situation and hoarded supplies. After spending hours in long
queues at the bakery, crowds of angry women stormed into the
shops. At the same time, the king ordered troops to move into Paris.
On 14 July, the agitated crowd stormed and destroyed the Bastille.

In the countryside rumours spread from village to village that the

lords of the manor had hired bands of brigands who were on their
way to destroy the ripe crops. Caught in a frenzy of fear, peasants in

Revolution
several districts seized hoes and pitchforks and attacked chateaux.
Regions not affected by the Great Fear
They looted hoarded grain and burnt down documents containing Areas of agrarian revolt early 1789
Epicentres of main panic movements
records of manorial dues. A large number of nobles fled from their The spread of the Great Fear

homes, many of them migrating to neighbouring countries.

Fig.6 – The spread of the Great Fear.
The map shows how bands of peasants spread
Faced with the power of his revolting subjects, Louis XVI finally from one point to another.
French

accorded recognition to the National Assembly and accepted the

principle that his powers would from now on be checked by a
New words
constitution. On the night of 4 August 1789, the Assembly passed a
The

decree abolishing the feudal system of obligations and taxes. Members Chateau (pl. chateaux) – Castle or stately
of the clergy too were forced to give up their privileges. Tithes were residence belonging to a king or a nobleman
abolished and lands owned by the Church were confiscated. As a Manor – An estate consisting of the lord’s
result, the government acquired assets worth at least 2 billion livres. lands and his mansion

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 2.1 France Becomes a Constitutional Monarchy
The National Assembly completed the draft of the constitution in
1791. Its main object was to limit the powers of the monarch. These
powers instead of being concentrated in the hands of one person,
were now separated and assigned to different institutions – the
legislature, executive and judiciary. This made France a constitutional
monarchy. Fig. 7 explains how the new political system worked.

Judiciary Executive Legislature

CONTROL
Judge King National Assembly (745 members)
VETO

OL VOTE
NTR
CO
Ministers Electors (50,000 men)
V
O
T
E
VOTE
Active citizens: entitled to vote. About 4 million of a
population of 28 million

Passive citizens: no voting rights. About 3 million men

Women, children and youth below 25.

Fig.7 – The Political sytstem under the Constitution of 1791.

India and the Contemporary World

The Constitution of 1791 vested the power to make laws in the

National Assembly, which was indirectly elected. That is, citizens
voted for a group of electors, who in turn chose the Assembly. Not
all citizens, however, had the right to vote. Only men above 25 years
of age who paid taxes equal to at least 3 days of a labourer’s wage
were given the status of active citizens, that is, they were entitled to
vote. The remaining men and all women were classed as passive
citizens. To qualify as an elector and then as a member of the Assembly,
a man had to belong to the highest bracket of taxpayers.

10

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 Fig.8 – The Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen, painted by the artist Le Barbier in
1790. The figure on the right represents France.
The figure on the left symbolises the law.

Source C

The Declaration of Rights of Man and

Citizen
1. Men are born and remain free and equal
in rights.
2. The aim of every political association is
the preservation of the natural and
inalienable rights of man; these are liberty,
property, securi ty and resistance to
oppression.
3. The source of all sovereignty resides in
the nation; no group or individual may
The Constitution began with a Declaration of the Rights of Man
exercise authority that does not come
and Citizen. Rights such as the right to life, freedom of speech, from the people.
freedom of opinion, equality before law, were established as ‘natural 4. Liberty consists of the power to do
and inalienable’ rights, that is, they belonged to each human being whatever is not injurious to others.

by birth and could not be taken away. It was the duty of the state to 5. The law has the right to forbid only
actions that are injurious to society.
protect each citizen’s natural rights.
6. Law is the expression of the general
will. All citizens have the right to participate
in its formation, personally or through their
representatives. All citizens are equal
before it.
Source B
7. No man may be accused, arrested or
detained, except in cases determined by

Revolution
The revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul the law.
Marat commented in his newspaper 11. Every citizen may speak, write and print
L’Ami du peuple (The friend of the freely; he must take responsibility for the
people) on the Constitution drafted by abuse of such liberty in cases determined
the National Assembly: by the law.
‘The task of representing the people 12. For the maintenance of the public
has been given to the rich … the lot of force and for the expenses of
French

the poor and oppressed will never be administration a common tax is

improved by peaceful means alone. Here indispensable; it must be assessed equally
we have absolute proof of how wealth on all citizens in proportion to their means.
influences the law. Yet laws will last only as long as the people
17. Since property is a sacred and inviolable
agree to obey them. And when they have managed to cast off
The

right, no one may be deprived of it, unless

the yoke of the aristocrats, they will do the same to the other
a legally established public necessity
owners of wealth.’
requires it. In that case a just
Source: An extract from the newspaper L’Ami du peuple. compensation must be given in advance.

11

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 Box 1

Reading political symbols

The majority of men and women in the eighteenth century could not read or write. So images and symbols
were frequently used instead of printed words to communicate important ideas. The painting by Le Barbier
(Fig. 8) uses many such symbols to convey the content of the Declaration of Rights. Let us try to read
these symbols.

The broken chain: Chains were used to fetter slaves.

A broken chain stands for the act of becoming free.

The bundle of rods or fasces: One rod

can be easily broken, but not an entire
bundle. Strength lies in unity.

The eye within a triangle radiating light: The all-

seeing eye stands for knowledge. The rays of the sun
will drive away the clouds of ignorance.
India and the Contemporary World

Sceptre: Symbol of royal power.

Snake biting its tail to form a ring: Symbol of

Eternity. A ring has neither beginning nor end.

12

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Red Phrygian cap: Cap worn by a slave
upon becoming free.

Blue-white-red: The
national colours of France.
Activity
1. Identify the symbols in Box 1 which stand
for liberty, equality and fraternity.

2. Explain the meaning of the painting of the

Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen
(Fig. 8) by reading only the symbols.

3. Compare the political rights which the

Constitution of 1791 gave to the citizens
with Articles 1 and 6 of the Declaration
(Source C). Are the two documents
consistent? Do the two documents convey
the same idea?

Revolution
The winged woman:
Personification of the law. 4. Which groups of French society would have
gained from the Constitution of 1791?
Which groups would have had reason to

The Law Tablet: The law is the same for all, be dissatisfied? What developments does
and all are equal before it. Marat (Source B) anticipate in the future?
French

5. Imagine the impact of the events in France

on neighbouring countries such as Prussia,
Austria-Hungary or Spain, all of which were
The

absolute monarchies. How would the kings,

traders, peasants, nobles or members of
the clergy here have reacted to the news of
what was happening in France?

13

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 3 France Abolishes Monarchy and Becomes a Republic

The situation in France continued to be tense during the following years.

Although Louis XVI had signed the Constitution, he entered into secret
negotiations with the King of Prussia. Rulers of other neighbouring
countries too were worried by the developments in France and made
plans to send troops to put down the events that had been taking place
there since the summer of 1789. Before this could happen, the National
Assembly voted in April 1792 to declare war against Prussia and Austria.
Thousands of volunteers thronged from the provinces to join the army.
They saw this as a war of the people against kings and aristocracies all
over Europe. Among the patriotic songs they sang was the Marseillaise,
composed by the poet Roget de L’Isle. It was sung for the first time by
volunteers from Marseilles as they marched into Paris and so got its
name. The Marseillaise is now the national anthem of France.

The revolutionary wars brought losses and economic difficulties

to the people. While the men were away fighting at the front,
women were left to cope with the tasks of earning a living and
looking after their families. Large sections of the population were
convinced that the revolution had to be carried further, as the
Constitution of 1791 gave political rights only to the richer sections
of society. Political clubs became an important rallying point for
people who wished to discuss government policies and plan their
own forms of action. The most successful of these clubs was that of
the Jacobins, which got its name from the former convent of St
Jacob in Paris. Women too, who had been active throughout this
period, formed their own clubs. Section 4 of this chapter will tell
you more about their activities and demands.
India and the Contemporary World

The members of the Jacobin club belonged mainly to the less

prosperous sections of society. They included small shopkeepers,
artisans such as shoemakers, pastry cooks, watch-makers, printers,
as well as servants and daily-wage workers. Their leader was
Maximilian Robespierre. A large group among the Jacobins decided
to start wearing long striped trousers similar to those worn by
dock workers. This was to set themselves apart from the fashionable
sections of society, especially nobles, who wore knee breeches. It

New words

Convent – Building belonging to a community devoted to a

religious life Fig.9 – A sans-culottes couple.

14

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 Fig.10 – Nanine Vallain, Liberty.
This is one of the rare paintings by a woman artist.
The revolutionary events made it possible for
women to train with established painters and to
exhibit their works in the Salon, which was an
exhibition held every two years.
The painting is a female allegory of liberty – that
is, the female form symbolises the idea of freedom.

Activity
Look carefully at the painting and identify the
objects which are political symbols you saw in
Box 1 (broken chain, red cap, fasces, Charter
of the Declaration of Rights). The pyramid
stands for equality, often represented by a
triangle. Use the symbols to interpret the
painting. Describe your impressions of the
female figure of liberty.

was a way of proclaiming the end of the power wielded by the

wearers of knee breeches. These Jacobins came to be known as the
sans-culottes, literally meaning ‘those without knee breeches’. Sans-
culottes men wore in addition the red cap that symbolised liberty.
Women however were not allowed to do so.

Revolution
In the summer of 1792 the Jacobins planned an insurrection of a
large number of Parisians who were angered by the short supplies
and high prices of food. On the morning of August 10 they stormed
the Palace of the Tuileries, massacred the king’s guards and held
the king himself as hostage for several hours. Later the Assembly
French

voted to imprison the royal family. Elections were held. From now
on all men of 21 years and above, regardless of wealth, got the right
to vote.
The

The newly elected assembly was called the Convention. On

21 September 1792 it abolished the monarchy and declared France
a republic. As you know, a republic is a form of government where
the people elect the government including the head of the

15

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 government. There is no hereditary monarchy. You can try and New words
find out about some other countries that are republics and investigate
when and how they became so. Treason – Betrayal of one’s country or
government
Louis XVI was sentenced to death by a court on the charge of
treason. On 21 January 1793 he was executed publicly at the
Place de la Concorde. The queen Marie Antoinette met with the
same fate shortly after.
3.1 The Reign of Terror
The period from 1793 to 1794 is referred to as the Reign of
Terror. Robespierre followed a policy of severe control and
punishment. All those whom he saw as being ‘enemies’ of the Source D
republic – ex-nobles and clergy, members of other political
parties, even members of his own party who did not agree with What is liberty? Two conflicting views:
his methods – were arrested, imprisoned and then tried by a The revolutionary journalist Camille
revolutionary tribunal. If the court found them ‘guilty’ they Desmoulins wrote the following in 1793. He
was executed shortly after, during the Reign
were guillotined. The guillotine is a device consisting of two
of Terror.
poles and a blade with which a person is beheaded. It was named
‘Some people believe that Liberty is like a
after Dr Guillotin who invented it. child, which needs to go through a phase of
being disciplined before it attains maturity.
Robespierre’s government issued laws placing a maximum ceiling Quite the opposite. Liberty is Happiness,
on wages and prices. Meat and bread were rationed. Peasants Reason, Equality, Justice, it is the Declaration
were forced to transport their grain to the cities and sell it at of Rights … You would like to finish off all
your enemies by guillotining them. Has
prices fixed by the government. The use of more expensive white anyone heard of something more senseless?
flour was forbidden; all citizens were required to eat the pain Would it be possible to bring a single person
d’égalité (equality bread), a loaf made of wholewheat. Equality to the scaffold without making ten more
enemies among his relations and friends?’
was also sought to be practised through forms of speech and
address. Instead of the traditional Monsieur (Sir) and Madame On 7 February 1794,
(Madam) all French men and women were henceforth Citoyen Robespierre made a
speech at the
and Citoyenne (Citizen). Churches were shut down and their
Convention, which was
buildings converted into barracks or offices. then carried by the
newspaper Le Moniteur
India and the Contemporary World

Robespierre pursued his policies so relentlessly that even his Universel . Here is an
supporters began to demand moderation. Finally, he was extract from it:
convicted by a court in July 1794, arrested and on the next day ‘To establish and consolidate democracy, to
sent to the guillotine. achieve the peaceful rule of constitutional
laws, we must first finish the war of liberty
against tyranny …. We must annihilate the
Activity enemies of the republic at home and abroad,
or else we shall perish. In time of Revolution
Compare the views of Desmoulins and Robespierre. How does a democratic government may rely on terror.
each one understand the use of state force? What does Terror is nothing but justice, swift, severe
Robespierre mean by ‘the war of liberty against tyranny’? How and inflexible; … and is used to meet the
does Desmoulins perceive liberty? Refer once more to Source C. most urgent needs of the fatherland. To curb
the enemies of Liberty through terror is the
What did the constitutional laws on the rights of individuals lay
right of the founder of the Republic.’
down? Discuss your views on the subject in class.

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 Fig.11 – The revolutionary government sought to mobilise the loyalty of its subjects through various means – one of
them was the staging of festivals like this one. Symbols from civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome were used to convey
the aura of a hallowed history. The pavilion on the raised platform in the middle carried by classical columns was made of
perishable material that could be dismantled. Describe the groups of people, their clothes, their roles and actions. What
impression of a revolutionary festival does this image convey?

3.2 A Directory Rules France

The fall of the Jacobin government allowed the wealthier middle
classes to seize power. A new constitution was introduced which

Revolution
denied the vote to non-propertied sections of society. It provided
for two elected legislative councils. These then appointed a Directory,
an executive made up of five members. This was meant as a safeguard
against the concentration of power in a one-man executive as under
the Jacobins. However, the Directors often clashed with the legislative
councils, who then sought to dismiss them. The political instability
French

of the Directory paved the way for the rise of a military dictator,
Napoleon Bonaparte.

Through all these changes in the form of government, the ideals of

The

freedom, of equality before the law and of fraternity remained inspiring

ideals that motivated political movements in France and the rest of Europe
during the following century.

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 4 Did Women have a Revolution?

Fig.12 – Parisian women on their way to Versailles.

This print is one of the many pictorial representations of the events of 5 October 1789, when women marched to Versailles
and brought the king back with them to Paris.

From the very beginning women were active participants in the events
which brought about so many important changes in French society.
They hoped that their involvement would pressurise the revolutionary
government to introduce measures to improve their lives. Most
women of the third estate had to work for a living. They worked as Activity
India and the Contemporary World

seamstresses or laundresses, sold flowers, fruits and vegetables at the

Describe the persons represented in
market, or were employed as domestic servants in the houses of
Fig. 12 – their actions, their postures, the
prosperous people. Most women did not have access to education or
objects they are carrying. Look carefully to
job training. Only daughters of nobles or wealthier members of the
see whether all of them come from the
third estate could study at a convent, after which their families
same social group. What symbols has the
arranged a marriage for them. Working women had also to care for
artist included in the image? What do they
their families, that is, cook, fetch water, queue up for bread and stand for? Do the actions of the women
look after the children. Their wages were lower than those of men. reflect traditional ideas of how women
In order to discuss and voice their interests women started their own were expected to behave in public? What
do you think: does the artist sympathise
political clubs and newspapers. About sixty women’s clubs came up
with the women’s activities or is he critical
in different French cities. The Society of Revolutionary and
of them? Discuss your views in the class.
Republican Women was the most famous of them. One of their

18

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main demands was that women enjoy the same political rights as
men. Women were disappointed that the Constitution of 1791 reduced
them to passive citizens. They demanded the right to vote, to be
elected to the Assembly and to hold political office. Only then, they
felt, would their interests be represented in the new government.

In the early years, the revolutionary government did introduce laws

that helped improve the lives of women. Together with the creation
of state schools, schooling was made compulsory for all girls. Their
fathers could no longer force them into marriage against their will.
Marriage was made into a contract entered into freely and registered
under civil law. Divorce was made legal, and could be applied for by
both women and men. Women could now train for jobs, could
become artists or run small businesses.

Women’s struggle for equal political rights, however, continued.

During the Reign of Terror, the new government issued laws ordering
closure of women’s clubs and banning their political activities. Many
prominent women were arrested and a number of them executed.

Women’s movements for voting rights and equal wages continued

through the next two hundred years in many countries of the world.
The fight for the vote was carried out through an international
suffrage movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The example of the political activities of French women
during the revolutionary years was kept alive as an inspiring memory.
It was finally in 1946 that women in France won the right to vote.

Source E

The life of a revolutionary woman – Olympe de Gouges

Revolution
(1748-1793)
Olympe de Gouges was one of the most important of the politically
active women in revolutionary France. She protested against the
Constitution and the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen as
they excluded women from basic rights that each human being was
French

entitled to. So, in 1791, she wrote a Declaration of the Rights of

Woman and Citizen, which she addressed to the Queen and to the
members of the National Assembly, demanding that they act upon
it. In 1793, Olympe de Gouges criticised the Jacobin government
The

for forcibly closing down women’s clubs. She was tried by the
National Convention, which charged her with treason. Soon after
this she was executed.

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 Source F

Some of the basic rights set forth in Olympe de Gouges’

Declaration.
1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights.
2. The goal of all political associations is the preservation of the natural
rights of woman and man: These rights are liberty, property, security,
and above all resistance to oppression.
3. The source of all sovereignty resides in the nation, which is nothing
but the union of woman and man.
4. The law should be the expression of the general will; all female and
male citizens should have a say either personally or by their
representatives in its formulation; it should be the same for all. All
female and male citizens are equally entitled to all honours
and public employment according to their abilities and without any Activity
other distinction than that of their talents.
Compare the manifesto drafted by Olympe de
5. No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained in
Gouges (Source F) with the Declaration of the
cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this rigorous law.
Rights of Man and Citizen (Source C).

Source G

In 1793, the Jacobin politician Chaumette

sought to justify the closure of women’s
clubs on the following grounds:
‘Has Nature entrusted domestic duties to
men? Has she given us breasts to nurture
babies?
No.
India and the Contemporary World

She said to Man:

Be a man. Hunting, agriculture, political duties
Fig.13 – Women queuing up at a bakery. … that is your kingdom.
She said to Woman:
Be a woman … the things of the household,
the sweet duties of motherhood – those
are your tasks.
Activity Shameless are those women, who wish to
become men. Have not duties been fairly
Imagine yourself to be one of the women in Fig. 13. Formulate a
distributed?’
response to the arguments put forward by Chaumette (Source G).

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5 The Abolition of Slavery

One of the most revolutionary social reforms of the Jacobin regime

was the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. The colonies in
the Caribbean – Martinique, Guadeloupe and San Domingo – were
important suppliers of commodities such as tobacco, indigo, sugar
and coffee. But the reluctance of Europeans to go and work in distant
and unfamiliar lands meant a shortage of labour on the plantations.
So this was met by a triangular slave trade between Europe, Africa
and the Americas. The slave trade began in the seventeenth century.
French merchants sailed from the ports of Bordeaux or Nantes to
the African coast, where they bought slaves from local chieftains.
Branded and shackled, the slaves were packed tightly into ships for
the three-month long voyage across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.
There they were sold to plantation owners. The exploitation of slave
labour made it possible to meet the growing demand in European
markets for sugar, coffee, and indigo. Port cities like Bordeaux and
Nantes owed their economic prosperity to the flourishing slave trade.

Throughout the eighteenth century there was little criticism of slavery

in France. The National Assembly held long debates about whether
the rights of man should be extended to all French subjects including
those in the colonies. But it did not pass any laws, fearing opposition
from businessmen whose incomes depended on the slave trade. It
was finally the Convention which in 1794 legislated to free all slaves Fig.14 – The emancipation of slaves.
This print of 1794 describes the emancipation
in the French overseas possessions. This, however, turned out to be of slaves. The tricolour banner on top carries
a short-term measure: ten years later, Napoleon reintroduced slavery. the slogan: ‘The rights of man’. The
inscription below reads: ‘The freedom of the
Plantation owners understood their freedom as including the right unfree’. A French woman prepares to ‘civilise’
to enslave African Negroes in pursuit of their economic interests. the African and American Indian slaves by

Revolution
giving them European clothes to wear.
Slavery was finally abolished in French colonies in 1848.

Activity
New words
Record your impressions of this print
French

Negroes – A term used for the indigenous people of Africa (Fig. 14). Describe the objects lying on the
south of the Sahara. It is a derogatory term not in common use ground. What do they symbolise? What
any longer attitude does the picture express towards
Emancipation – The act of freeing non-European slaves?
The

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 6 The Revolution and Everyday Life

Can politics change the clothes people wear, the language they speak
or the books they read? The years following 1789 in France saw many
such changes in the lives of men, women and children. The
revolutionary governments took it upon themselves to pass laws that
would translate the ideals of liberty and equality into everyday practice.

One important law that came into effect soon after the storming of
the Bastille in the summer of 1789 was the abolition of censorship. In
the Old Regime all written material and cultural activities – books,
newspapers, plays – could be published or performed only after they
had been approved by the censors of the king. Now the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen proclaimed freedom of speech and
expression to be a natural right. Newspapers, pamphlets, books and
printed pictures flooded the towns of France from where they
travelled rapidly into the countryside. They all described and discussed
the events and changes taking place in France. Freedom of the press Activity
also meant that opposing views of events could be expressed. Each
side sought to convince the others of its position through the medium Describe the picture in your own words. What

of print. Plays, songs and festive processions attracted large numbers are the images that the artist has used to
communicate the following ideas: greed,
of people. This was one way they could grasp and identify with ideas
equality, justice, takeover by the state of the
such as liberty or justice that political philosophers wrote about at
assets of the church?
length in texts which only a handful of educated people could read.
India and the Contemporary World

Fig.15 – The patriotic fat-reducing press.

This anonymous print of 1790 seeks to make the idea of justice tangible.

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 Fig.16 - Marat addressing the people. This is a painting by Louis-Leopold Boilly.
Recall what you have learnt about Marat in this chapter. Describe the scene around him. Account for his great popularity.
What kinds of reactions would a painting like this produce among viewers in the Salon?

Conclusion
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France.
He set out to conquer neighbouring European countries, dispossessing
dynasties and creating kingdoms where he placed members of his family.

Revolution
Napoleon saw his role as a moderniser of Europe. He introduced many
laws such as the protection of private property and a uniform system of
weights and measures provided by the decimal system. Initially, many
saw Napoleon as a liberator who would bring freedom for the people.
But soon the Napoleonic armies came to be viewed everywhere as an
French

invading force. He was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Many of his

measures that carried the revolutionary ideas of liberty and modern laws
to other parts of Europe had an impact on people long after Napoleon
had left.
The

The ideas of liberty and democratic rights were the most important
legacy of the French Revolution. These spread from France to the Fig.17 – Napoleon crossing the Alps, painting
rest of Europe during the nineteenth century, where feudal systems by David.

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 were abolished. Colonised peoples reworked the idea of freedom from Box 2
bondage into their movements to create a sovereign nation state. Tipu Raja Rammohan Roy was one of those who
Sultan and Rammohan Roy are two examples of individuals who was inspired by new ideas that were spreading
through Europe at that time. The French
responded to the ideas coming from revolutionary France. Revolution and later, the July Revolution excited
his imagination.
‘He could think and talk of nothing else when he
heard of the July Revolution in France in 1830.
On his way to England at Cape Town he insisted
on visiting frigates (warships) flying the
revolutionary tri-colour flag though he had been
temporarily lamed by an accident.’
Susobhan Sarkar, Notes on the Bengal Renaissance 1946.

Activities

1. Find out more about any one of the revolutionary figures you have read
about in this chapter. Write a short biography of this person.
2. The French Revolution saw the rise of newspapers describing the events of
each day and week. Collect information and pictures on any one event and

Activities
write a newspaper article. You could also conduct an imaginary interview
with important personages such as Mirabeau, Olympe de Gouges or
Robespierre. Work in groups of two or three. Each group could then put up
their articles on a board to produce a wallpaper on the French Revolution.

Questions

1. Describe the circumstances leading to the outbreak of revolutionary protest

in France.
?
India and the Contemporary World

2. Which groups of French society benefited from the revolution? Which

groups were forced to relinquish power? Which sections of society would
have been disappointed with the outcome of the revolution?
3. Describe the legacy of the French Revolution for the peoples of the world
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
4. Draw up a list of democratic rights we enjoy today whose origins could be
traced to the French Revolution.
5. Would you agree with the view that the message of universal rights was
beset with contradictions? Explain.
6. How would you explain the rise of Napoleon?

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Socialism in Europe and

Chapter II
the Russian Revolution
1 The Age of Social Change
In the previous chapter you read about the powerful ideas of freedom
and equality that circulated in Europe after the French Revolution.
The French Revolution opened up the possibility of creating a
dramatic change in the way in which society was structured. As you

Revolution and the Russian Revolution

have read, before the eighteenth century society was broadly divided
into estates and orders and it was the aristocracy and church which
controlled economic and social power. Suddenly, after the revolution,
it seemed possible to change this. In many parts of the world including
Europe and Asia, new ideas about individual rights and who
controlled social power began to be discussed. In India, Raja
Rammohan Roy and Derozio talked of the significance of the French
Revolution, and many others debated the ideas of post-revolutionary
Europe. The developments in the colonies, in turn, reshaped these
ideas of societal change.

Not everyone in Europe, however, wanted a complete transformation

of society. Responses varied from those who accepted that some
change was necessary but wished for a gradual shift, to those who
wanted to restructure society radically. Some were ‘conservatives’,
others were ‘liberals’ or ‘radicals’. What did these terms really mean
in the context of the time? What separated these strands of politics
and what linked them together? We must remember that these terms
do not mean the same thing in all contexts or at all times.

Europe
We will look briefly at some of the important political traditions of
the nineteenth century, and see how they influenced change. Then inthe Russian
we will focus on one historical event in which there was an attempt
at a radical transformation of society. Through the revolution in
Russia, socialism became one of the most significant and powerful
Socialism in Europe and

ideas to shape society in the twentieth century.

Socialism

1.1 Liberals, Radicals and Conservatives

One of the groups which looked to change society were the liberals.
Liberals wanted a nation which tolerated all religions. We should
remember that at this time European states usually discriminated in

25

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 favour of one religion or another (Britain favoured the Church of
England, Austria and Spain favoured the Catholic Church). Liberals
also opposed the uncontrolled power of dynastic rulers. They wanted
to safeguard the rights of individuals against governments. They
argued for a representative, elected parliamentary government, subject
to laws interpreted by a well-trained judiciary that was independent
of rulers and officials. However, they were not ‘democrats’. They
did not believe in universal adult franchise, that is, the right of every
citizen to vote. They felt men of property mainly should have the
vote. They also did not want the vote for women.

In contrast, radicals wanted a nation in which government was based

on the majority of a country’s population. Many supported women’s
suffragette movements. Unlike liberals, they opposed the privileges
of great landowners and wealthy factory owners. They were not
against the existence of private property but disliked concentration
of property in the hands of a few.

Conservatives were opposed to radicals and liberals. After the French

Revolution, however, even conservatives had opened their minds to
the need for change. Earlier, in the eighteenth century, conservatives
had been generally opposed to the idea of change. By the nineteenth
century, they accepted that some change was inevitable but believed
that the past had to be respected and change had to be brought about
through a slow process.

Such differing ideas about societal change clashed during the social
and political turmoil that followed the French Revolution. The
various attempts at revolution and national transformation in the
nineteenth century helped define both the limits and potential of
these political tendencies.
India and the Contemporary World

1.2 Industrial Society and Social Change

These political trends were signs of a new time. It was a time of
profound social and economic changes. It was a time when new cities
came up and new industrialised regions developed, railways expanded
and the Industrial Revolution occurred.

Industrialisation brought men, women and children to factories. Work

hours were often long and wages were poor. Unemployment was
New words
common, particularly during times of low demand for industrial goods.
Housing and sanitation were problems since towns were growing Suffragette movement – A movement to
rapidly. Liberals and radicals searched for solutions to these issues. give women the right to vote.

26

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 Fig.1 – The London poor in the mid-nineteenth century as seen by a
contemporary.
From: Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1861.

Almost all industries were the property of individuals. Liberals and

radicals themselves were often property owners and employers.
Having made their wealth through trade or industrial ventures, they
felt that such effort should be encouraged – that its benefits would

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

be achieved if the workforce in the economy was healthy and citizens
were educated. Opposed to the privileges the old aristocracy had by
birth, they firmly believed in the value of individual effort, labour
and enterprise. If freedom of individuals was ensured, if the poor
could labour, and those with capital could operate without restraint,
they believed that societies would develop. Many working men and
women who wanted changes in the world rallied around liberal and
radical groups and parties in the early nineteenth century.

Some nationalists, liberals and radicals wanted revolutions to put an

end to the kind of governments established in Europe in 1815. In
France, Italy, Germany and Russia, they became revolutionaries and
worked to overthrow existing monarchs. Nationalists talked of
revolutions that would create ‘nations’ where all citizens would have

27

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 equal rights. After 1815, Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian nationalist, conspired
with others to achieve this in Italy. Nationalists elsewhere – including India
– read his writings.

1.3 The Coming of Socialism to Europe

Perhaps one of the most far-reaching visions of how society should be
structured was socialism. By the mid - nineteenth century in Europe, socialism
was a well-known body of ideas that attracted widespread attention.

Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills
of the time. Why? Individuals owned the property that gave employment
but the propertied were concerned only with personal gain and not with
the welfare of those who made the property productive. So if society as a
whole rather than single individuals controlled property, more attention
would be paid to collective social interests. Socialists wanted this change and
campaigned for it.

How could a society without property operate? What would be the basis of
socialist society?

Socialists had different visions of the future. Some believed in the idea of
cooperatives. Robert Owen (1771-1858), a leading English manufacturer,
sought to build a cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana
(USA). Other socialists felt that cooperatives could not be built on a wide
scale only through individual initiative: they demanded that governments
encourage cooperatives. In France, for instance, Louis Blanc (1813-1882)
wanted the government to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist
enterprises. These cooperatives were to be associations of people who
produced goods together and divided the profits according to the work
done by members.
India and the Contemporary World

Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) added other ideas
to this body of arguments. Marx argued that industrial society was ‘capitalist’.
Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists
was produced by workers. The conditions of workers could not improve
as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists. Workers had to
overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property. Marx believed that
to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a
radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled. This
would be a communist society. He was convinced that workers would
Activity
triumph in their conflict with capitalists. A communist society was the natural List two differences between the capitalist

society of the future. and socialist ideas of private property.

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1.4 Support for Socialism
By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread through Europe. To coordinate
their efforts, socialists formed an international body – namely, the
Second International. Activity
Workers in England and Germany began forming associations to Imagine that a meeting has been called in
fight for better living and working conditions. They set up funds to your area to discuss the socialist idea of
help members in times of distress and demanded a reduction of working doing away with private property and
hours and the right to vote. In Germany, these associations worked closely introducing collective ownership. Write the
with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and helped it win parliamentary speech you would make at the meeting if you
seats. By 1905, socialists and trade unionists formed a Labour Party in are:
Britain and a Socialist Party in France. However, till 1914, socialists never Ø a poor labourer working in the fields
succeeded in forming a government in Europe. Represented by strong Ø a medium-level landowner
figures in parliamentary politics, their ideas did shape legislation, but
Ø a house owner
governments continued to be run by conservatives, liberals and radicals.

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

Fig.2 – This is a painting of the Paris Commune of 1871 (From Illustrated London News, 1871). It portrays a scene from the
popular uprising in Paris between March and May 1871. This was a period when the town council (commune) of Paris was
taken over by a ‘peoples’ government’ consisting of workers, ordinary people, professionals, political activists and others.
The uprising emerged against a background of growing discontent against the policies of the French state. The ‘Paris
Commune’ was ultimately crushed by government troops but it was celebrated by Socialists the world over as a prelude to a
socialist revolution.The Paris Commune is also popularly remembered for two important legacies: one, for its association with
the workers’ red flag – that was the flag adopted by the communards ( revolutionaries) in Paris; two, for the ‘Marseillaise’,
originally written as a war song in 1792, it became a symbol of the Commune and of the struggle for liberty.

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 2 The Russian Revolution

In one of the least industrialised of European states this situation was

reversed. Socialists took over the government in Russia through the
October Revolution of 1917. The fall of monarchy in February 1917
and the events of October are normally called the Russian Revolution.

How did this come about? What were the social and political
conditions in Russia when the revolution occurred? To answer these
questions, let us look at Russia a few years before the revolution.

2.1 The Russian Empire in 1914

In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia and its empire. Besides the
territory around Moscow, the Russian empire included current-day
Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, parts of Poland, Ukraine and
Belarus. It stretched to the Pacific and comprised today’s Central
Asian states, as well as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The majority
religion was Russian Orthodox Christianity – which had grown out Fig.3 – Tsar Nicholas II in the White
Hall of the Winter Palace,
of the Greek Orthodox Church – but the empire also included St Petersburg, 1900.
Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Buddhists. Painted by Earnest Lipgart (1847-1932)
India and the Contemporary World

Fig.4 – Europe in 1914.

The map shows the Russian empire and the European countries at war during the First
World War.

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2.2 Economy and Society
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of
Russia’s people were agriculturists. About 85 per cent of the Russian
empire’s population earned their living from agriculture. This
proportion was higher than in most European countries. For instance,
in France and Germany the proportion was between 40 per cent and
50 per cent. In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as
well as for their own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.

Industry was found in pockets. Prominent industrial areas were

St Petersburg and Moscow. Craftsmen undertook much of the
production, but large factories existed alongside craft workshops.
Many factories were set up in the 1890s, when Russia’s railway
network was extended, and foreign investment in industry increased.
Fig.5 – Unemployed peasants in pre-war
Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled. By St Petersburg.
the 1900s, in some areas factory workers and craftsmen were almost Many survived by eating at charitable
kitchens and living in poorhouses.
equal in number.

Most industry was the private property of industrialists. Government

supervised large factories to ensure minimum wages and limited hours
of work. But factory inspectors could not prevent rules being broken.
In craft units and small workshops, the working day was sometimes
15 hours, compared with 10 or 12 hours in factories. Accommodation
varied from rooms to dormitories.

Workers were a divided social group. Some had strong links with
the villages from which they came. Others had settled in cities
permanently. Workers were divided by skill. A metalworker of St.
Petersburg recalled, ‘Metalworkers considered themselves aristocrats
among other workers. Their occupations demanded more training

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

and skill . . . ’ Women made up 31 per cent of the factory labour Fig.6 – Workers sleeping in bunkers in a
dormitory in pre-revolutionary Russia.
force by 1914, but they were paid less than men (between half and
They slept in shifts and could not keep their
three-quarters of a man’s wage). Divisions among workers showed families with them.
themselves in dress and manners too. Some workers formed
associations to help members in times of unemployment or financial
hardship but such associations were few.

Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when
they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions.
These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during
1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902.

In the countryside, peasants cultivated most of the land. But the

nobility, the crown and the Orthodox Church owned large
properties. Like workers, peasants too were divided. They were also

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 deeply religious. But except in a few cases they had no respect for the Source A
nobility. Nobles got their power and position through their services
Alexander Shlyapnikov, a socialist
to the Tsar, not through local popularity. This was unlike France
worker of the time, gives us a description
where, during the French Revolution in Brittany, peasants respected of how the meetings were organised:
nobles and fought for them. In Russia, peasants wanted the land of ‘Propaganda was done in the plants and
the nobles to be given to them. Frequently, they refused to pay rent shops on an individual basis. There were
and even murdered landlords. In 1902, this occurred on a large scale also discussion circles … Legal meetings
took place on matters concerning [official
in south Russia. And in 1905, such incidents took place all issues], but this activity was skilfully
over Russia. integrated into the general struggle for
the liberation of the working class. Illegal
Russian peasants were different from other European peasants in meetings were … arranged on the spur
another way. They pooled their land together periodically and their of the moment but in an organised way
commune (mir) divided it according to the needs of individual families. during lunch, in evening break, in front
of the exit, in the yard or, in
establishments with several floors, on
the stairs. The most alert workers would
2.3 Socialism in Russia
form a “plug” in the doorway, and the
All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914. The Russian whole mass piled up in the exit. An
agitator would get up right there on the
Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists
spot. Management would contact the
who respected Marx’s ideas. However, because of government police on the telephone, but the
policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation. It set up a speeches would have already been
newspaper, mobilised workers and organised strikes. made and the necessary decision taken
by the time they arrived ...’
Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing Alexander Shlyapnikov, On the Eve of
land periodically made them natural socialists. So peasants, not 1917. Reminiscences from the
Revolutionary Underground.
workers, would be the main force of the revolution, and Russia could
become socialist more quickly than other countries. Socialists were
active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century. They
formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled
for peasants’ rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be
transferred to peasants. Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist
Revolutionaries about peasants. Lenin felt that peasants were not
one united group. Some were poor and others rich, some worked as
labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers. Given
India and the Contemporary World

this ‘differentiation’ within them, they could not all be part of a

socialist movement.
The party was divided over the strategy of organisation. Vladimir
Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive
society like Tsarist Russia the party should be disciplined and should
control the number and quality of its members. Others (Mensheviks)
thought that the party should be open to all (as in Germany).

2.4 A Turbulent Time: The 1905 Revolution

Russia was an autocracy. Unlike other European rulers, even at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the Tsar was not subject to

32

Rationalised 2023-24
parliament. Liberals in Russia campaigned to end this state of affairs.
Together with the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries,
they worked with peasants and workers during the revolution of
1905 to demand a constitution. They were supported in the empire
by nationalists (in Poland for instance) and in Muslim-dominated
areas by jadidists who wanted modernised Islam to lead their societies.

The year 1904 was a particularly bad one for Russian workers. Prices
of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 per
cent. The membership of workers’ associations rose dramatically.
When four members of the Assembly of Russian Workers, which
had been formed in 1904, were dismissed at the Putilov Iron Works,
there was a call for industrial action. Over the next few days over
110,000 workers in St Petersburg went on strike demanding a
reduction in the working day to eight hours, an increase in wages
and improvement in working conditions.

When the procession of workers led by Father Gapon reached the

Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks. Over
100 workers were killed and about 300 wounded. The incident,
known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that became known
as the 1905 Revolution. Strikes took place all over the country and
universities closed down when student bodies staged walkouts,
complaining about the lack of civil liberties. Lawyers, doctors,
engineers and other middle-class workers established the Union of
Unions and demanded a constituent assembly.

During the 1905 Revolution, the Tsar allowed the creation of an

elected consultative Parliament or Duma. For a brief while during
the revolution, there existed a large number of trade unions and
factory committees made up of factory workers. After 1905, most

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

committees and unions worked unofficially, since they were declared
illegal. Severe restrictions were placed on political activity. The Tsar Activity
dismissed the first Duma within 75 days and the re-elected second
Why were there revolutionary disturbances in
Duma within three months. He did not want any questioning of his Russia in 1905? What were the demands of
authority or any reduction in his power. He changed the voting revolutionaries?
laws and packed the third Duma with conservative politicians. Liberals
and revolutionaries were kept out.
New words
2.5 The First World War and the Russian Empire Jadidists – Muslim reformers within the
In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances – Germany, Russian empire
Austria and Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and Real wage – Reflects the quantities of
Russia (later Italy and Romania). Each country had a global empire goods which the wages will actually buy.

33

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 and the war was fought outside Europe as well as
in Europe. This was the First World War.

In Russia, the war was initially popular and people

rallied around Tsar Nicholas II. As the war
continued, though, the Tsar refused to consult the
main parties in the Duma. Support wore thin. Anti-
German sentiments ran high, as can be seen in the
renaming of St Petersburg – a German name – as
Petrograd. The Tsarina Alexandra’s German
origins and poor advisers, especially a monk called
Rasputin, made the autocracy unpopular.

The First World War on the ‘eastern front’ differed

from that on the ‘western front’. In the west, armies
fought from trenches stretched along eastern
France. In the east, armies moved a good deal and
fought battles leaving large casualties. Defeats were
shocking and demoralising. Russia’s armies lost
badly in Germany and Austria between 1914 and
1916. There were over 7 million casualties by 1917.
As they retreated, the Russian army destroyed
crops and buildings to prevent the enemy from
being able to live off the land. The destruction of Fig.7 – Russian soldiers during the First
crops and buildings led to over 3 million refugees in Russia. The World War.
The Imperial Russian army came to be known
situation discredited the government and the Tsar. Soldiers did not
as the ‘Russian steam roller’. It was the
wish to fight such a war. largest armed force in the world. When this
army shifted its loyalty and began supporting
The war also had a severe impact on industry. Russia’s own industries the revolutionaries, Tsarist power collapsed.
were few in number and the country was cut off from other suppliers
of industrial goods by German control of the Baltic Sea. Industrial Activity
equipment disintegrated more rapidly in Russia than elsewhere in
India and the Contemporary World

Europe. By 1916, railway lines began to break down. Able-bodied The year is 1916. You are a general in the
Tsar’s army on the eastern front. You are
men were called up to the war. As a result, there were labour shortages
writing a report for the government in
and small workshops producing essentials were shut down. Large
Moscow. In your report suggest what you
supplies of grain were sent to feed the army. For the people in the
think the government should do to improve
cities, bread and flour became scarce. By the winter of 1916, riots at
the situation.
bread shops were common.

34

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3 The February Revolution in Petrograd

In the winter of 1917, conditions in the capital, Petrograd, were grim.

The layout of the city seemed to emphasise the divisions among its
people. The workers’ quarters and factories were located on the right
bank of the River Neva. On the left bank were the fashionable areas,
the Winter Palace, and official buildings, including the palace where
the Duma met. In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in
the workers’ quarters. The winter was very cold – there had been
exceptional frost and heavy snow. Parliamentarians wishing to
preserve elected government, were opposed to the Tsar’s desire to dissolve
the Duma.

On 22 Febr uar y, a lockout took place at a

factory on the right bank. The next day, workers
in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy.
In many factories, women led the way to strikes.
This came to be called the International Women’s
Day. Demonstrating workers crossed from the
factory quarters to the centre of the capital – the
Nevskii Prospekt. At this stage, no political party
was actively organising the movement. As the
fashionable quarters and official buildings were
surrounded by workers, the government imposed
a curfew. Demonstrators dispersed by the evening,
but they came back on the 24th and 25th. The
government called out the cavalry and police to
keep an eye on them.

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

On Sunday, 25 February, the government
suspended the Duma. Politicians spoke out against
the measure. Demonstrators returned in force to
the streets of the left bank on the 26th. On the
27th, the Police Headquarters were ransacked. The
streets thronged with people raising slogans about
bread, wages, better hours and democracy. The
government tried to control the situation and
called out the cavalry once again. However, the
cavalry refused to fire on the demonstrators. An
officer was shot at the barracks of a regiment and
three other regiments mutinied, voting to join the
striking workers. By that evening, soldiers and Fig.8 – The Petrograd Soviet meeting in the Duma, February 1917.

35

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 striking workers had gathered to form a ‘soviet’ or ‘council’ in the
same building as the Duma met. This was the Petrograd Soviet.

The very next day, a delegation went to see the Tsar. Military
commanders advised him to abdicate. He followed their advice and
abdicated on 2 March. Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a
Provisional Government to run the country. Russia’s future would
be decided by a constituent assembly, elected on the basis of universal
adult suffrage. Petrograd had led the February Revolution that
brought down the monarchy in February 1917.

Box 1

Women in the February Revolution

‘Women workers, often ... inspired their male co-workers … At the Lorenz telephone
factory, … Marfa Vasileva almost single handedly called a successful strike. Already that
morning, in celebration of Women’s Day, women workers had presented red bows to the
men … Then Marfa Vasileva, a milling machine operator stopped work and declared an
impromptu strike. The workers on the floor were ready to support her … The foreman
informed the management and sent her a loaf of bread. She took the bread but refused to
go back to work. The administrator asked her again why she refused to work and she
replied, “I cannot be the only one who is satiated when others are hungry”. Women
workers from another section of the factory gathered around Marfa in support and
gradually all the other women ceased working. Soon the men downed their tools as well
and the entire crowd rushed onto the street.’
From: Choi Chatterji, Celebrating Women (2002).

3.1 After February

Army officials, landowners and industrialists were influential in
the Provisional Government. But the liberals as well as socialists
among them worked towards an elected government. Restrictions
on public meetings and associations were removed. ‘Soviets’, like
India and the Contemporary World

the Petrograd Soviet, were set up everywhere, though no common

system of election was followed.

In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to

Russia from his exile. He and the Bolsheviks had opposed the war Activity
since 1914. Now he felt it was time for soviets to take over power. Look again at Source A and Box 1.
He declared that the war be brought to a close, land be transferred
Ø List five changes in the mood of the
to the peasants, and banks be nationalised. These three demands
workers.
were Lenin’s ‘April Theses’. He also argued that the Bolshevik Party
Ø Place yourself in the position of a woman
rename itself the Communist Party to indicate its new radical aims.
who has seen both situations and write
Most others in the Bolshevik Party were initially surprised by the
an account of what has changed.
April Theses. They thought that the time was not yet ripe for a

36

Rationalised 2023-24
socialist revolution and the Provisional Government needed to be
supported. But the developments of the subsequent months changed
their attitude.

Through the summer the workers’ movement spread. In industrial

areas, factory committees were formed which began questioning
the way industrialists ran their factories. Trade unions grew in
number. Soldiers’ committees were formed in the army. In June,
about 500 Soviets sent representatives to an All Russian Congress
of Soviets. As the Provisional Government saw its power reduce
and Bolshevik influence grow, it decided to take stern measures
against the spreading discontent. It resisted attempts by workers
to run factories and began arresting leaders. Popular
demonstrations staged by the Bolsheviks in July 1917 were sternly
repressed. Many Bolshevik leaders had to go into hiding or flee.

Meanwhile in the countryside, peasants and their Socialist

Revolutionary leaders pressed for a redistribution of land. Land Fig.9 – A Bolshevik image of Lenin
addressing workers in April 1917.
committees were formed to handle this. Encouraged by the
Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants seized land between July and
September 1917.

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

Fig.10 – The July Days. A pro-Bolshevik demonstration on 17 July 1917 being fired upon by the army.

37

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 3.2 The Revolution of October 1917 Box 2
As the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Date of the Russian Revolution
Bolsheviks grew, Lenin feared the Provisional Government would Russia followed the Julian calendar until
set up a dictatorship. In September, he began discussions for an 1 February 1918. The country then changed to
uprising against the government. Bolshevik supporters in the army, the Gregorian calendar, which is followed
soviets and factories were brought together. everywhere today. The Gregorian dates are
13 days ahead of the Julian dates. So by our
On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and
calendar, the ‘February’ Revolution took place
the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power. A
on 12th March and the ‘October’ Revolution
Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet
took place on 7th November.
under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure. The date of the event
was kept a secret.

The uprising began on 24 October. Sensing trouble, Prime Minister Some important dates
Kerenskii had left the city to summon troops. At dawn, military
1850s -1880s
men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik Debates over socialism in Russsia.
newspapers. Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone
1898
and telegraph offices and protect the Winter Palace. In a swift Formation of the Russian Social Democratic
response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its Workers Party.
supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers. Late in 1905
the day, the ship Aurora shelled the Winter Palace. Other vessels The Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of
1905.
sailed down the Neva and took over various military points. By
nightfall, the city was under the committee’s control and the 1917
2nd March - Abdication of the Tsar.
ministers had surrendered. At a meeting of the All Russian Congress
24th October - Bolshevik unprising in
of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action. Petrograd.
Uprisings took place in other cities. There was heavy fighting –
1918-20
especially in Moscow – but by December, the Bolsheviks controlled The Civil War.
the Moscow-Petrograd area.
1919
Formation of Comintern.

1929
Beginning of Collectivisation.
India and the Contemporary World

Fig.11 – Lenin (left) and Trotskii (right) with

workers at Petrograd.

38

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4 What Changed after October?

The Bolsheviks were totally opposed to private property. Most

industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917. This meant
that the government took over ownership and management. Land
was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the
land of the nobility. In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of
large houses according to family requirements. They banned the
use of the old titles of aristocracy. To assert the change, new
uniforms were designed for the army and officials, following a
clothing competition organised in 1918 – when the Soviet hat
(budeonovka) was chosen.

The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party

(Bolshevik). In November 1917, the Bolsheviks conducted the
elections to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed to gain
majority support. In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik
measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly. He thought the All
Russian Congress of Soviets was more democratic than an assembly Fig.12 – A soldier wearing the Soviet hat
(budeonovka).
elected in uncertain conditions. In March 1918, despite opposition
by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany
at Brest Litovsk. In the years that
followed, the Bolsheviks became
the only party to participate in the
elections to the All Russian
Congress of Soviets, which became
the Parliament of the country.
Russia became a one-party state.

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

Trade unions were kept under
party control. The secret police
(called the Cheka first, and later
OGPU and NKVD) punished
those who criticised the
Bolsheviks. Many young writers
and artists rallied to the Party
because it stood for socialism and
for change. After October 1917,
this led to experiments in the arts
and architecture. But many became
disillusioned because of the
censorship the Party encouraged. Fig.13 – May Day demonstration in Moscow in 1918.

39

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 Box 3

The October Revolution and the Russian Countryside: Two Views

‘News of the revolutionary uprising of October 25, 1917, reached the village the following day and
was greeted with enthusiasm; to the peasants it meant free land and an end to the war. ...The day
the news arrived, the landowner’s manor house was looted, his stock farms were “requisitioned”
and his vast orchard was cut down and sold to the peasants for wood; all his far buildings were
torn down and left in ruins while the land was distributed among the peasants who were prepared
to live the new Soviet life’.

From: Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm

A member of a landowning family wrote to a relative about what happened at the estate:

‘The “coup” happened quite painlessly, quietly and peacefully. …The first days were unbearable..
Mikhail Mikhailovich [the estate owner] was calm...The girls also…I must say the chairman
behaves correctly and even politely. We were left two cows and two horses. The servants tell them
all the time not to bother us. “Let them live. We vouch for their safety and property. We want them
treated as humanely as possible….”

…There are rumours that several villages are trying to evict the committees and return the estate
to Mikhail Mikhailovich. I don’t know if this will happen, or if it’s good for us. But we rejoice that
there is a conscience in our people...’

From: Serge Schmemann, Echoes of a Native Land. Two Centuries of a Russian Village (1997).

Activity
4.1 The Civil War
Read the two views on the revolution in the
When the Bolsheviks ordered land redistribution, the Russian army countryside. Imagine yourself to be a witness
began to break up. Soldiers, mostly peasants, wished to go home for to the events. Write a short account from the
the redistribution and deserted. Non-Bolshevik socialists, liberals and standpoint of:
supporters of autocracy condemned the Bolshevik uprising. Their Ø an owner of an estate
India and the Contemporary World

leaders moved to south Russia and organised troops to fight the

Ø a small peasant
Bolsheviks (the ‘reds’). During 1918 and 1919, the ‘greens’ (Socialist
Ø a journalist
Revolutionaries) and ‘whites’ (pro-Tsarists) controlled most of the
Russian empire. They were backed by French, American, British
and Japanese troops – all those forces who were worried at the growth
of socialism in Russia. As these troops and the Bolsheviks fought a
civil war, looting, banditry and famine became common.

Supporters of private property among ‘whites’ took harsh steps with

peasants who had seized land. Such actions led to the loss of popular
support for the non-Bolsheviks. By January 1920, the Bolsheviks
controlled most of the former Russian empire. They succeeded due

40

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to cooperation with non-Russian nationalities and Muslim jadidists.
New words
Cooperation did not work where Russian colonists themselves turned
Bolshevik. In Khiva, in Central Asia, Bolshevik colonists brutally Autonomy – The right to govern
massacred local nationalists in the name of defending socialism. In themselves
this situation, many were confused about what the Bolshevik Nomadism – Lifestyle of those who do
government represented. not live in one place but move from area
to area to earn their living
Partly to remedy this, most non-Russian nationalities were given
political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR) – the state the
Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922. But
since this was combined with unpopular policies that the Bolsheviks
forced the local government to follow – like the harsh discouragement
of nomadism – attempts to win over different nationalities were
only partly successful.

Activity
Why did people in Central Asia respond to the Russian Revolution in
different ways?

Source B

Central Asia of the October Revolution: Two Views

M.N.Roy was an Indian revolutionary, a founder of the Mexican Communist Party

and prominent Comintern leader in India, China and Europe. He was in Central
Asia at the time of the civil war in the 1920s. He wrote:
‘The chieftain was a benevolent old man; his attendant … a youth who … spoke
Russian … He had heard of the Revolution, which had overthrown the Tsar and
driven away the Generals who conquered the homeland of the Kirgiz. So, the
Revolution meant that the Kirgiz were masters of their home again. “Long Live the

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

Revolution” shouted the Kirgiz youth who seemed to be a born Bolshevik. The
whole tribe joined.’
M.N.Roy, Memoirs (1964).

‘The Kirghiz welcomed the first revolution (ie February Revolution) with joy and the
second revolution with consternation and terror … [This] first revolution freed them
from the oppression of the Tsarist regime and strengthened their hope that …
autonomy would be realised. The second revolution (October Revolution) was
Source

accompanied by violence, pillage, taxes and the establishment of dictatorial power

… Once a small group of Tsarist bureaucrats oppressed the Kirghiz. Now the same
group of people … perpetuate the same regime ...’
Kazakh leader in 1919, quoted in Alexander Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay,
Les Mouvements Nationaux chez les Musulmans de Russie, (1960).

41

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 4.2 Making a Socialist Society

During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks
nationalised. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had
been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what
collective work could be.

A process of centralised planning was introduced. Officials assessed

how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period.
On this basis they made the Five Year Plans. The government fixed
all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’

Box 4

Socialist Cultivation in a Village in the Ukraine

‘A commune was set up using two [confiscated] farms as a base. The commune
consisted of thirteen families with a total of seventy persons … The farm tools taken
from the … farms were turned over to the commune …The members ate in a communal
dining hall and income was divided in accordance with the principles of “cooperative
communism”. The entire proceeds of the members’ labor, as well as all dwellings and
facilities belonging to the commune were shared by the commune members.’

Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm (1955).

(1927-1932 and 1933-1938). Centralised planning led to economic

growth. Industrial production increased (between 1929 and 1933 by
100 per cent in the case of oil, coal and steel). New factory cities
came into being.

However, rapid construction led to poor working conditions. In

India and the Contemporary World

the city of Magnitogorsk, the construction of a steel plant was achieved

in three years. Workers lived hard lives and the result was 550
stoppages of work in the first year alone. In living quarters, ‘in the
wintertime, at 40 degrees below, people had to climb down from the
fourth floor and dash across the street in order to go to the toilet’.

An extended schooling system developed, and arrangements were

made for factory workers and peasants to enter universities. Crèches
were established in factories for the children of women workers.
Cheap public health care was provided. Model living quarters were
Fig.14 – Factories came to be seen as a
set up for workers. The effect of all this was uneven, though, since symbol of socialism.
This poster states: ‘The smoke from the
government resources were limited.
chimneys is the breathing of Soviet Russia.’

42

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Fig.15 – Children at school in Soviet Russia in the Fig.16 – A child in Magnitogorsk during the
1930s. First Five Year Plan.
They are studying the Soviet economy. He is working for Soviet Russia.

Fig.17 – Factory dining hall in the 1930s.

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

Source C

Dreams and Realities of a Soviet Childhood in 1933

Dear grandfather Kalinin …
My family is large, there are four children. We don’t have a father – he died, fighting
for the worker’s cause, and my mother … is ailing … I want to study very much, but
I cannot go to school. I had some old boots, but they are completely torn and no
one can mend them. My mother is sick, we have no money and no bread, but I want
to study very much. …there stands before us the task of studying, studying and
studying. That is what Vladimir Ilich Lenin said. But I have to stop going to school.
We have no relatives and there is no one to help us, so I have to go to work in a
Source

factory, to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, I am 13, I study well
and have no bad reports. I am in Class 5 …
Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker to Kalinin, Soviet President
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody (Moscow, 1997).

43

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 4.3 Stalinism and Collectivisation
The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to
the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture. By 1927-
1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute
problem of grain supplies. The government fixed prices
at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their
grain to government buyers at these prices.

Stalin, who headed the party after the death of Lenin, introduced
firm emergency measures. He believed that rich peasants and traders
in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices.
Speculation had to be stopped and supplies confiscated.

In 1928, Party members toured the grain-producing areas, supervising

enforced grain collections, and raiding ‘kulaks’ – the name for well-
to-do peasants. As shortages continued, the decision was taken to
collectivise farms. It was argued that grain shortages were partly due
to the small size of holdings. After 1917, land had been given over to
peasants. These small-sized peasant farms could not be modernised.
To develop modern farms, and run them along industrial lines with
Fig.18 – A poster during collectivisation. It
machinery, it was necessary to ‘eliminate kulaks’, take away land
states: ‘We shall strike at the kulak working for
from peasants, and establish state-controlled large farms. the decrease in cultivation.’

What followed was Stalin’s collectivisation programme. From 1929,

the Party forced all peasants to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz).
The bulk of land and implements were transferred to the ownership
of collective farms. Peasants worked on the land, and the kolkhoz
profit was shared. Enraged peasants resisted the authorities and
destroyed their livestock. Between 1929 and 1931, the number of
cattle fell by one-third. Those who resisted collectivisation were
severely punished. Many were deported and exiled. As they resisted
collectivisation, peasants argued that they were not rich and they
India and the Contemporary World

were not against socialism. They merely did not want to work in
collective farms for a variety of reasons. Stalin’s government allowed
some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators
unsympathetically.

In spite of collectivisation, production did not increase immediately.

In fact, the bad harvests of 1930-1933 led to one of most devastating
famines in Soviet history when over 4 million died.

New words

Deported – Forcibly removed from one’s own country.

Fig.19 – Peasant women being gathered to
Exiled – Forced to live away from one’s own country. work in the large collective farms.

44

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Source D

Official view of the opposition to collectivisation and the government response

‘From the second half of February of this year, in various regions of the Ukraine
… mass insurrections of the peasantry have taken place, caused by distortions
of the Party’s line by a section of the lower ranks of the Party and the Soviet
apparatus in the course of the introduction of collectivisation and preparatory
work for the spring harvest.
Within a short time, large scale activities from the above-mentioned regions
carried over into neighbouring areas – and the most aggressive insurrections
have taken place near the border.
The greater part of the peasant insurrections have been linked with outright
demands for the return of collectivised stocks of grain, livestock and tools …
Between 1st February and 15th March, 25,000 have been arrested … 656 have

Source
been executed, 3673 have been imprisoned in labour camps and 5580 exiled …’
Report of K.M. Karlson, President of the State Police Administration of the Ukraine
to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, on 19 March 1930.
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody

Many within the Party criticised the confusion in industrial

production under the Planned Economy and the consequences of
collectivisation. Stalin and his sympathisers charged these critics with
conspiracy against socialism. Accusations were made throughout the
country, and by 1939, over 2 million were in prisons or labour camps.
Most were innocent of the crimes, but no one spoke for them. A
large number were forced to make false confessions under torture
and were executed – several among them were talented professionals.

Source E

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

This is a letter written by a peasant who did not want to join the collective farm.
To the newspaper Krestianskaia Gazeta (Peasant Newspaper)
‘… I am a natural working peasant born in 1879 … there are 6 members in my
family, my wife was born in 1881, my son is 16, two daughters 19, all three go
to school, my sister is 71. From 1932, heavy taxes have been levied on me that
I have found impossible. From 1935, local authorities have increased the taxes
on me … and I was unable to handle them and all my property was registered:
my horse, cow, calf, sheep with lambs, all my implements, furniture and my
Source

reserve of wood for repair of buildings and they sold the lot for the taxes. In
1936, they sold two of my buildings … the kolkhoz bought them. In 1937, of two
huts I had, one was sold and one was confiscated …’
Afanasii Dedorovich Frebenev, an independent cultivator.
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody.

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 5 The Global Influence of the Russian
Revolution and the USSR
Existing socialist parties in Europe did not wholly approve of the
way the Bolsheviks took power – and kept it. However, the possibility
of a workers’ state fired people’s imagination across the world. In
many countries, communist parties were formed – like the
Communist Party of Great Britain. The Bolsheviks encouraged
colonial peoples to follow their experiment. Many non-Russians from
outside the USSR participated in the Conference of the Peoples of
the East (1920) and the Bolshevik-founded Comintern (an international
union of pro-Bolshevik socialist parties). Some received education in
the USSR’s Communist University of the Workers of the East. By
the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had
given socialism a global face and world stature.

Yet by the 1950s it was acknowledged within the country that the
style of government in the USSR was not in keeping with the ideals
of the Russian Revolution. In the world socialist movement too it
was recognised that all was not well in the Soviet Union. A backward
country had become a great power. Its industries and agriculture
had developed and the poor were being fed. But it had denied the
essential freedoms to its citizens and carried out its developmental
projects through repressive policies. By the end of the twentieth
century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist
country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals
still enjoyed respect among its people. But in each country the ideas
of socialism were rethought in a variety of different ways.

Box 5
India and the Contemporary World

Writing about the Russian Revolution in India

Among those the Russian Revolution inspired were many Indians. Several
attended the Communist University. By the mid-1920s the Communist Party was
formed in India. Its members kept in touch with the Soviet Communist Party.
Important Indian political and cultural figures took an interest in the Soviet
experiment and visited Russia, among them Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath
Tagore, who wrote about Soviet Socialism. In India, writings gave impressions of Fig.20 – Special Issue on
Soviet Russia. In Hindi, R.S. Avasthi wrote in 1920-21 Russian Revolution, Lenin, Lenin of the Indo-Soviet
Journal.
His Life and His Thoughts, and later The Red Revolution . S.D. Vidyalankar
Indian communists
wrote The Rebirth of Russia and The Soviet State of Russia. There was much mobilised support for the
that was written in Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. USSR during the Second
World War.

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Source F

An Indian arrives in Soviet Russia in 1920

‘For the first time in our lives, we were seeing Europeans
mixing freely with Asians. On seeing the Russians mingling
freely with the rest of the people of the country we were
convinced that we had come to a land of real equality.
We saw freedom in its true light. In spite of their poverty,
imposed by the counter-revolutionaries and the imperialists,
the people were more jovial and satisfied than ever before.
The revolution had instilled confidence and fearlessness in
them. The real brotherhood of mankind would be seen here
among these people of fifty different nationalities. No
barriers of caste or religion hindered them from mixing freely
with one another. Every soul was transformed into an orator.
One could see a worker, a peasant or a soldier haranguing
like a professional lecturer.’
Shaukat Usmani, Historic Trips of a Revolutionary.

Source G

Rabindranath Tagore wrote from Russia in 1930

‘Moscow appears much less clean than the other
European capitals. None of those hurrying along the
streets look smart. The whole place belongs to the
workers … Here the masses have not in the least been
put in the shade by the gentlemen … those who lived in
the background for ages have come forward in the open Activity
today … I thought of the peasants and workers in my
own country. It all seemed like the work of the Genii in Compare the passages written by Shaukat

Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution

the Arabian Nights. [here] only a decade ago they were Usmani and Rabindranath Tagore. Read
as illiterate, helpless and hungry as our own masses … them in relation to Sources C, D and E.
Who could be more astonished than an unfortunate Indian
like myself to see how they had removed the mountain of Ø What did Indians find impressive about
ignorance and helplessness in these few years’. the USSR ?

Ø What did the writers fail to notice?

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 Activities

1. Imagine that you are a striking worker in 1905 who is being tried in court
for your act of rebellion. Draft the speech you would make in your defence.
Act out your speech for your class.

2. Write the headline and a short news item about the uprising of 24 October
1917 for each of the following newspapers
Ø a Conservative paper in France
Ø a Radical newspaper in Britain
Ø a Bolshevik newspaper in Russia

Activities
3. Imagine that you are a middle-level wheat farmer in Russia after
collectivisation. You have decided to write a letter to Stalin
explaining your objections to collectivisation. What would you write about
the conditions of your life? What do you think would be Stalin’s response
to such a farmer?

Questions
1. What were the social, economic and political conditions in Russia before

?
1905?
2. In what ways was the working population in Russia different from other
countries in Europe, before 1917?
3. Why did the Tsarist autocracy collapse in 1917?
4. Make two lists: one with the main events and the effects of the February
Revolution and the other with the main events and effects of the October
India and the Contemporary World

Revolution. Write a paragraph on who was involved in each, who were the
leaders and what was the impact of each on Soviet history.
5. What were the main changes brought about by the Bolsheviks immediately
after the October Revolution?
6. Write a few lines to show what you know about:
Ø kulaks
Ø the Duma
Ø women workers between 1900 and 1930
Ø the Liberals
Ø Stalin’s collectivisation programme.

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