Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Genetics of Russian Revolution
Genetics of Russian Revolution
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Indian Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Indian Journal of Political Science
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY
VISION, 1825-1917
P.V . Ranade
The word vision normally means the act or power of sensing with
eyes. In a broader sense it means the act or power of anticipating
that which will or may come to be. It may also mean an experience
in which a thing or event appears vividly or credibly to the mind
although not actually present. Vision is thus a part of mental culture.
Vision presupposes forethinking and prognosis. Critical appreciation
of reality and anticipation of desirable direction of events together
make a vision. Revolutionary vision is the inner eye of the mind of
men and women who have bound their lives for the cause of human
liberation. Ideas tempered by passions make a vision. History is an
incessant flow of social movement and this flow which makes human
progression possible is unthinkable without ideas. Though all
thinking is reflection, it is not a neutral carbon copy of external
♦ Prognostics and Praxis are words of Greek origin. Prognostics means predic-
tion, forecast or forethinking; Praxis signifies purposeful arid creative actiyvit.
543
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
544 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 545
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
546 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 547
This very Russian State and society from the 16th century onward
turned out to be the most disturbed segment of humanity. Russians
were actually living on a volcano and beneath their feet lay an abyss,
filled with boiling lava which bursted on a number of occasions.2
Uprising of Stephan Rezin in 1670-71, Pugachev mutiny in 1773, the
Decemberist uprising of 1825, the terror and violence of Norodnic
youth, upheaval of 1905 and finally the February and October
revolutions of 1917 marked the growing linear rhythm of insurgence
in Russian history.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
543 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 549
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
550 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 551
When in 1868 Marx learnt that Das Capital was being printed in
Russia, he confessed a surprise. In a letter to Kugleman he wrote:
"It is an irony of fate that these very Russians with whom I have
quarreled for twenty five years, have turned out to be my patrons...
Russians always run after the most extreme ideas that the West has to
offer".6 In 1881 in a letter to a young Russian Marxist, Vera Zasulich,
4 This aspect of Marx's philosophy of history has been very ably discussed by
Horowitz, David: IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTION (London, Allen Lane)
1969.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
552 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 553
1871
1875
1877
Marx To F. A. Sorge
This time the revolution begins in the East, hitherto „the unbroken
bullvvařk and reserve army of counter-revolution...
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
554 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
/ 884
1885
Suppose these people imagine they can seize power, what harm does
it do ? ... people who boasted that they made a revolution have
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 555
always seen the day after that they had no idea what they were
doing, that the revolution made did not in the least resemble the
one they intended to make. That is what Hegel calls the irony of
history, an irony which few historical personalities escape...
Neva's banks that skirted the city of Petersburg had been rocked
several times by the eruption of revolutionary zeal of Russian youth.
When on 25th October 1917 (old style) a cruiser named Aurora fired
the salvoes and announced the dawn of a successful proletarian revo-
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
556 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 557
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
558 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
10 Masaryk, TG: THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA Vol.1, (London, George, Allen &
Unwin 1919, p. 100
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-19 17 559
"Some say earth is the common property of the entire human race and
not of private owners. It cannot therefore be divided among a few
men to the exclusion of others.. .Others object that work is at the origin
of all property and that the man who cultivates the land, farms its
different products must have exclusive right of possession."
Pestel then seeks to reconcile these two extreme positions. He
envisages an agrarian system in Russia that would incorporate the
wisdom of both positions. His scheme proposed to integrate the right
to life contained in the first theory with the right of earning reward
contained in the second one. Pestel proposed the motto : "We must
consider granting the necessity of life to every one ; at the same time
we must create plenty".1* In his scheme of agrarian reorganisation
Pestel proposed to divide the land in each district into two parts. The
first of these would constitute common land, and the other would
consist of private land. Common land would belong collectively to
the entire community of each district. Private land would belong either
to the sta£e or to private persons -to create plenty. Pestel proposed to
link the re-distribution of landed property with the traditional Russian
custom called obschina whereby common lands were periodically
redistributed in Russian villages. The obschina delinked from the
earlier rural structure was to function as the fulcrum of new social
change. A recent study has rightly detected the early bearings of
agrarian socialism in Pestel's plan.1* Abolition of serfdom and class
differences based on birth, nationalization of land and its redistribu
tion, and right of self-determination to a subjugated country like
12 Pestél, P. I: RUSSKAYA PRAVDA (Hamburg) 1930, pp. 203-3.
13 Venturi, Franco: ROOTS OF REVOLUTION (London, Weidenfeld & Nicol-
son) 1960, p. 7.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
560 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 561
Fourteen years after these words were written, the popular dis-
content against the Tsarist regime burst into an armed insurrection in
the wake of Alexander's death in 1825. By a queer coincidence
that was also the year of Peter the Great's death centenary. Peter
was Russia'^ first princely statesman who looked ahead of his time.
The Decembrist uprising was perhaps a proper tribute the Russian
history paid to Peter's memory in the year of his centenary.
15 Raef, Marc: THE DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT (Engel wood Cliffs, N.J.) 1966,
OP. 56-57.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
562 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
17 For a good account of the Decembrist Uprising following works may be con-
■ulted: Raeff, op. cit.; Riasanovsky, Nicholas: A PARTING OF WAYS (Oxford)
4976 and HISTORY OF THE USSR , Part I (Moscow) 1977.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 563
Peter the Great, opposite the Senate building. The new Tsar however
had already got the smell of the plot. He had moved into action even
before the insurgents could strike. Pavel Pestel could not make hi»
appearance in the Senate Square for he had already been put under
arrest. The rebels could muster only a little over one thousand men
and in the short mid-day hours of 14 December they found themselves
surrounded by the Tsar's loyal troops. The immediate objective of
the rebels was to prevent the Senate and the army from taking the
oath and compelling the Senate to declare Russia a Republic.
The plan could not be carried out as most of the troops obediently
took the oath and swore allegiance to the new Tsar. About 3,000 men
led by 39 officers however marched into the Senate Square and
shouted in favour of Constantine's succession. The rebel leaders
were confused and proved ineffective in executing their plan. In the
meantime the Senate and the State Council had gone ahead with the
swearing in ceremony. The Tsar, who had got the prior intelligence
about the proposed mutiny had moved 10.000 loyal troops to the
Senate Square. The Tsar's artillery opened fire at the insurgents.
Many of them were killed and wounded. Those who could
run fled across the ice on the Neva. The civilians who had come to
the Senate Square to watch the event had already disperssed though
some workers near the Cathedral of St. Isaac threw stones at Nicholas
I, the new Tsar and his suite. The St. Petersburg uprising of
14, December 1825 was miscarried. A mutiny in the south was
attempted within a few weeks' time but it proved as futile as that
in St. Petersburg. The new Tsar dealt ruthlessly with the rebels.
Over 600 people were arrested and interrogated, and more than 120
were put on trial. Pavel Pestel, Seroji Muraiev, Mikhail Bestuzhnev,
Kondraty Ryleyev and Pyotr Khokovsky were executed; and over a
hundred were exiled to Siberia.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
564 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
Despite their failure to bring down the old regime, the Decem-
brists succeeded in sowing the seeds of revolutiouary thought and
action that were destined to grow and blossom in the Russian youth-
ful hearts. Pesters Russkaya Pravda -Russian Justice- that spelt out
a blue-print for the transformation of Russian life on agrarian
utopean socialist lines remained the main doctrinal legacy of the
Dcccmbrist movement. In Herzen's words the guns in St. Issac's
Square awakened a whole generation. Recalling his early child-
hood impressions about the Decembrist uprising Herzen later wrote:
"The stories of the revolt and the trial and the horror seized Moscow,
shook me deeply. A new world opened for me and became the centre
of my spiritual life. The execution of Pestel and his comrades woke
me forever from my youthful dreams".19
Towards Populism
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 565
Bakunin
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
566 ÎNDTAN JOURNAL OF POLTTICAL SCIENCE
Decembrist Space-Out
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 567
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
568 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VÍSIOV, 1825-1917 569
logy and politics. In the debate that Plekhanov conducted with the
Norodniks, a confident prediction was made about the inevitable
capitalist invasion of Russian social life and the destruction of the
primitive rural communes in its wake. An urban industrial working
class was about to grow and revolutionaries must turn their attention
to the industrial working class, he pleaded. Plekhanov also
disapproved of the technique of terror adopted by the Norodniks,
and proposed preparations .of mass working-class struggle
against autocracy. Russian Marxism naturally had to encounter
a dilemma in its revolutionary prognostics and praxis. In Western
Europe, workers were being reused by Marxism to overthrow
capitalism, whereas in Russia, all hopes rested on the growth of
capitalism. A "Manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party" after referring to the "Life-giving hurricane of the 1848
revolution which had blown over Europe fifty years before", noted
that the Russian working class entirely deprived of what its foreign
comrades freely and peacefully enjoy - a share in the administration
of the State, freedom of the spoken and written word, freedom of
organization and assembly. These were necessary instruments in
the struggle for workers' final liberation from private property"."
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
570 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 571
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
572 INDÍAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
October Revolution
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 573
people for a revolutionary way out of the crisis. Men and women,
standing up in queues for bread, rioted in most of the cities. Workers
joined their ranks. February Revolution took every one by surprise.
It was a spontaneous outburst of popular anger. 'It had been the
child of no party'.**
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
574 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
32 Daniels, Robert V.: RED OCTOBER , (London, Seeker & Warburg) 1967 p. 17.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 575
could have been anticipated.. .They are more original, specific, more
variegated." Lenin's concern was more with the concrete things
than with abstract theories. He was a Marxist of a special mould.
He differed with Menshevik version of Marxism concerning
planning and organizing the practical business of proletarian revolu-
tion. He interpreted Marx's concept of conditional perspective
of historical determinism in an interview that he gave in London in
1902: "The Menshtíviks think that history is the product of material
forces acting through the process of evolution. I think with Marx,
that man makes history but within the condition and with the
materials given by the contemporary civilization and man can be a
tremendous force."
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
576 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 577
tion Lenin cautioned his audience that soon after the victory of the
proletarian revolution in at least one of the advanced countries, "a
sharp change will probably come about : Russia will cease to be the
model and will once again become a backward country in the Soviet
and the Socialist sense'*.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
578 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
The first world war drew into its maelstorm nations at diffe-
rent stages of development. Burdens of war exposed each nation to
the cataclysmic force of social dynamics. Tsarist Russia was the
weakest link in the world capitalist chain. It was the most backward
nation among the great powers involved in the war. Industry shared a
small place in Russian economy in comparison with agriculture, the
city in comparison with the village, the proletariat in comparison with
the peasantry. That meant a low productivity of national labour. This
backward aspect of Russian economy was accompanied by an unusual
feature. In the absence of highways, Russia was compelled to build
railroads. Russia was forced to mechanise its production without
a European type of artisanry and manufacture. The social structure
exhibited a similar paradox in Russian development. It was European
finance capital that accelerated the tempo of Russian industrial
development. Against a weak Russian capitalist class that depended
on foreign patronage, a strpng proletariat with national roots among
the people had sprung up in Russia. The young, fresh, determined
Russian proletariat constituted only a tiny minority of the people.
The Russian peasantry, living in half serfdom and the oppressed
nationalities of the Tsarist empire provided the revolutionary reserves
for this revolutionary class.
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 579
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
580 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCH
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 581
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
582 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VISION, 1825-1917 583
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
5S4 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
GENETICS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY VÍSION, 1825-1917 585
This content downloaded from 14.139.210.83 on Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:19:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms