B.A.

(Programme) Semester-V History

DISCIPLINE SPECIFIC ELECTIVE (DSE)

Issues in Twentieth Century World History-I
Unit : I-III & V

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi

Department of History
 Graduate
raduate Course

DISCIPLINE SPECIFIC ELECTIVE (DSE)

Issues in Twentieth Century World History
History--I

Contents

UNIT I : The Twentieth Century: Some Concepts and Definitions Nalini Taneja
UNIT II : First World War
(a) Causes off The First World War: An Analysis Dr. Naveen Vashishta
(b) Course and Consequences of The First World War
in Europe and The World Dr. Naveen Vashishta
UNIT III : 1917 Russian Revolution
(a) Origins of the Russian Revolution of 1917 Dr. Naveen Vashishta
(b) Course of Russian Revolution and its Impact on
Russia and World Dr. Naveen Vashishta

UNIT V : Modernity in the Light of Changing Cultural Scenario Shubhankita Ojha

(* Please refer P-5-88 of Unit
Unit-I for Modernity,
Contemporary Era and Conclusion also)

Editor:
Nalini Taneja
Prabhat Kumar

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 UNIT I
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SOME CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS
Nalini Taneja
1.1 Objectives
After reading this essay you should be able to
 Understand some basic concepts that define the 20th century world
 Be able to recognize the elements that went into creating the modern world
 Define the elements of continuity and change in the 20 th century
 Trace the historical roots of twentieth century world
 Perceive the nature of the world order and
 Analyse the causes of inequality and conflict in the 20th century world
 Understand why socialism posed such a challenge to capitalism
 Also understand why the collapse of socialism in many countries has strengthened
capitalism but not destroyed the challenge of socialism.
1.2 Introduction
While the world as we saw it at the end of the 20 th century was very different from the world in
the beginning of the 20th century, there are some basic features that lend it an element of
continuity. When we speak of the 20th century we speak of the modern world, and this modern
world was not created overnight, nor at the same time chronologically and not even at the same
pace in all areas of the world. The historical roots of the 20th century world can be traced to the
decline of feudalism and the emergence and growth of capitalist societies, to begin with, in 16 th
century Europe and then elsewhere. Decisive developments in this historical process were the
Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution which shaped the modern world. In that sense
there is a relationship and continuity with the 19th century during which capitalist
industrialization became the dominant mode of production and nationalism and nation states the
predominant feature of politics. Therefore we can safely say that the 20 th century world was
created by capitalist industrialization with all its social and political ramifications.
You will read about various aspects of the 20th century in the later essays. In this essay we will
discuss some of the defining concepts and definitions necessary for understanding the 20 th
century.
1.3 Capitalist industrialization
Capital permeated all aspects of life in the twentieth century: societies where it advanced rapidly
and, interestingly, also where it emerged but was hindered in its advance by the entrenched older
social and economic structures. The twentieth century has seen the division of the world into
advanced or ‘developed’ countries and those which are characterized as ‘developing’ countries;
and within countries into those considered ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.
In fact the rapid economic advance that capitalist industrialization entailed itself became a factor
for the backwardness of some societies, and within societies for a large majority of its people.
Colonialism and divisions into classes are aspects of these inequalities. In other words inequality
was as much inbuilt in capitalism as it was in earlier societies.

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Definition and features
As you know industry is older than capitalism. When we talk of capitalist industrialization we
therefore refer to the changes that took place in the organization of production during late 18 th
and 19th century. These changes in the organization of industry are inseparable from the growth
of capitalism.
Capitalism entails an economic and social system characterized by private ownership of property
i.e., the means of production—land, factory, raw stocks—are all privately owned and controlled
and production takes place for sale and profit rather than for use by the producers. What is
produced, therefore, becomes a commodity, i.e., an item for sale and profit making. It has an
exchange value rather than use value, and an unequal exchange value because those who own the
resources gain from it rather than those who labour to produce it.
In other words, the means of producing, distributing and exchanging commodities are operated
by their owners solely for the financial gain of the owners. The profits are distributed to owners
or invested in new technology and industries, wages are paid to the labour from it. Capital in its
various forms is thus the major factor of production in capitalist industrialization.
In addition to the above, i.e.,1) private ownership of means of production and exchange, 2)
production for sale and financial gain rather than use, and 3) capital in its various forms being the
major factor of production, there are certain other equally essential features that characterize
capitalist industrialization.
For example, Marx and Engels point out in their Communist Manifesto (1848) that 4) the people
who have no means of production of their own (and they are in a majority), are forced to find
employment, in other words, to sell their labour power, in order to live. Labour, also, therefore,
becomes commodity, an item to be sold in return for wages (livelihood).
Further, if everything is subjected to buying and selling then 5) market becomes the essential and
central feature of a society based on capitalist industrialization. All inputs and outputs are
supplied commercially through the market. All relationships are contractual relationships
determined by the laws of supply and demand, or what is known as the rationality of the market.
For example if there are more workers seeking employment than employers demanding work the
wages will be lower and vice versa. Again in times of scarcity prices can go higher, in times of
recession and financial crisis for the industrialists there may be heavy discounts.
6) Due to the ownership pattern the owners hold all the decision making powers and workers and
other employees can only use their collective bargaining power through their organizations or
trade unions and strikes etc. But as you can gauge, since they own no means of income other
than their labour they are at a disadvantage, except in their numbers and in their unity, to the
extent that there is unity amongst them.
Now the question arises that if owners are paying for the production then why should they not
have the profit and what is so unfair about it? Many economists and thinkers believe that this is
a reasonably fair deal. Marx and Engels, however, argued for a deeper analysis. 7) They argued
that the profits of the employer essentially came from the exploitation of the labour of the
workers i.e unequal exchange in the contractual relationship between the factory owner and the
worker because the worker produced surplus value over and above what he was paid for. The
wages paid are lower than the value of the goods and services produced for the capitalist. They
showed that a worker is paid for his labour time, which is the number of hours he/she worked,
and not on the basis of the volume of goods produced or the amount gained when the product is
sold in the market. With improvements in technology and more advanced machines the workers
collectively produced much more in the same time but their wages did not rise in the same
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measure. The factory owner gained his increased profits from this discrepancy between the value
gained by the industrialist and what he has paid for. Everything utilized by the industrialist—raw
stocks, infrastructure, capital, credit from banks, the distribution and transportation, machinery,
even a pin—has involved labour underpaid for. This is known as the creation of surplus value
out of the labour of the worker and is the crux of the injustice inherent in capitalism. Therefore,
they argued, as long as private property (in the means of production) exists this contradiction
between the interest of the capitalist and the worker will remain. Capitalist industrialization
reflects this basic contradiction and inherent injustice and inequality of opportunity.
Thus both technology and social organization of labour-- the relationship between owners and
workers—were reshaped at a certain stage in history to conform to the commercial logic. This is
what is characterized as capitalist industrialization.
Perceptions of capitalist development
For some historians and economists technical progress, leading to new inventions and their
widespread use and diffusion, constituted the core of capitalist industrialization. Others regard
the application of science to industry as its most significant characteristic. Still others have given
more significance to the agrarian changes which created some of the pre requisites for large scale
industrialization. Many have emphasized the growth of markets, within countries and across the
world, the increasing division of labour, again within countries or across the world, or the
changes taking place within industrial production itself (which they refer to as proto-
industrialization). Some, following Karl Marx, have emphasized the new relationships which
emerged from changes in the productive forces (technical progress), the transformations in the
organization of production (new institutional arrangements) and new ownership patterns.
Stages of capitalist industrialization
Different thinkers and scholars emphasized some or a particular set of features of capitalist
industrialization as crucial and identified its various stages through time differently. All of them,
however, agree that it is a historical phenomenon: that it originated at a certain point in history
and has been undergoing significant changes within the continuing social formation (social and
economic framework).
For capitalist or industrial society to emerge as dominant, for it to permeate the whole production
process of society, many different economic, cultural, technological, legal and political
conditions had to come together—improved technology for mass production, a class of property
less workers, a legal system protecting private ownership and market in private property,
development of infrastructure to promote economic activity on a large scale, a political system
that is conducive to it.
The earliest phase is termed as merchant or mercantile capitalism and is said to correspond to the
period from the 15th to the 18th centuries when western European nations like England, France,
the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain dominated the seas and international trade and embarked on
the colonization of other continents. The next phase spreading over the 19 th century is seen as
growth of full blown capitalism linked inseparably with investments in industrial production and
the growth of large scale production facilitated by technological progress -- use of steam engines,
new inventions in textile machinery and agriculture, new means of transportation especially
railways, new methods of coal and iron mining—and factories worked with wage labour and
individually owned.

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The early years of the 20th century saw rapid strides in steel industry, ship building, and
concentration of production in large scale firms, cartels, and financial capital. It also saw
monopoly capitalism, imperialism and inter imperialist rivalries take on a more aggressive
stance. Monopolies in capitalist industrialization resulted from the more advanced countries
recognizing heir pre-eminent position in industrial production and seeking to maintain this pre-
eminence by protecting and monopolizing markets and the economies of their colonies rather
than leaving it to open market and competition. In other words they now favoured a regulated
market, controlled by them, rather than laissez faire, or leaving the laws of supply and demand to
determine economies.
The second half of the 20th century saw the emergence of multi or transnational corporations,
new economic policies which involved structural adjustments in both advanced countries and the
third world countries as a result of pressure from the advanced countries, and cuts in welfare
spending by governments across the world. It also increasingly led to neo liberal economic
policies, privatization of public or state owned assets. Multinationals spread their production
processes and control across national boundaries, moving production overseas to reduce costs
where labour was cheaper and to pre-empt competition from third world economies. These
policies representing a new phase in capitalist industrialization and the consequent imperialist
pressure on third world economies has been known as globalization.
Forms of capitalist industrialization
The time periods for the emergence of capitalist industrialization have differed and there have
also been variations in the paths to capitalist industrialization. This is because of the great
historical and geographical diversities involved, and the specific social and political
particularities of the countries concerned. Apart from these factors the pattern of agricultural
changes in the different countries and colonialism also had a great role to play in defining the
specific features of capitalist industrialization in each country.
Imperialism and capitalist industrialization
Imperialism is the world framework of political and economic relations imposed by the advanced
capitalist countries on the rest of the world. It emerges from and is historically linked with
capitalist industrialization and colonialism. The manner in which the unequal and exploitative
relationship between the advanced capitalist countries, also called the imperialist countries, and
the rest of the world has been worked out and maintained has depended on the stage of capitalist
industrialization and the balance of political power derived from economic strength.
Early stages of colonialism were marked by politically imposed and protected (for the benefit of
the colonizer country that is) unequal terms of trade. They were reworked at a later stage of
capitalist industrialization as the imperialism of free trade or unfettered exploitation of colonies.
Finally, in the last decades of the 19th century, with the emergence of monopolies and finance
capital there were attempts at division and re divisions of the world between the advanced
capitalist countries.
In the 20th century the alternating periods of economic expansion and depression led to both
crises for the capitalist system and intensification of inter imperialist rivalries. The 20 th century
was also the century of the rise and success of socialist economies. The challenge that socialist
economies with their emphasis on social justice and equality and opposition to the whole
colonial framework presented to capitalist industrialisation led to the great conflict between the
socialist world and the capitalist countries whose rivalries among themselves were held in check
by their joint hatred and opposition to socialism.

4
The demise of socialist economies in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe and
the dilution of the socialist elements within the Chinese economy has strengthened capitalism but
it has not destroyed the promise of socialism. The capitalist industrialized world and the unequal
world order that it sustains is still subject to financial crises which adversely affect lives of
billions of people, but also because the globalization policies of today’s world are leading to
even greater inequalities between nations and within nations.
1.4 Modernity
Modernity as a term applies to the modern era and is distinct from modernism which refers to
specific features within different forms of art, literature, music, cinema etc. The modern also
implies the opposite of being backward and evokes a sense of being progressive. In historical
terms it refers to the post medieval period of history, particularly the intellectual and cultural
developments associated with Renaissance and the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. It was
first used in this sense.
But increasingly the term has come to denote not just intellectual trends but the transformation of
attitudes and a change in the world outlook of a larger set of people than those affected by the
intellectual currents in the 16th-18th centuries. The French revolution and the industrial
revolutions in various parts of the world transformed lives of many more millions of people. This
also broadened the scope and meaning of what is meant by being modern. The term modernity
came to denote the basic features of an industrialized society. It is contained in capitalist society
and in socialist societies as well.
In this broader sense modernity implies an industrial civilization, a certain complex of economic,
social and political institutional arrangements associated with the changes that the development
of capitalist industrialization entailed: right to private property, representative governments, the
idea of free nations and popular sovereignty, the practice of electoral democracy, the
secularization of societies and a value for religious tolerance and individual rights. The 19 th
century is said to mark the first phase of modernity in this sense, based on the fruits of new
inventions, the steam engine, trains, ships, petroleum. The Newtonian revolution and Darwin’s
theory of revolution, Harvey’s discoveries of circulation of blood changed the way people looked
at the world. There was expansion and change in the nature of what is conceived of as the public
sphere, a reorganization of social and personal lives, a new relationship with work and leisure.
Printing technology, disappearance of old patronage and the intervention of the market, along
with expansion of education enabled the democratization of culture and increased the access to
knowledge and what was considered as ‘high’ culture.
Of the twentieth century one can say that most parts of the world had civilizations influenced if
not completely transformed by capitalist industrialization. The use of technology in
communication—radio, telephone, film, television, computers—and dissemination of knowledge
expanded the consumer base for products of industry and for culture. They created bases for new
solidarities and collective actions. Modernity meant changes in family and household, between
work and leisure, between society and individual, between church and state, between church and
believers, between men and women. The idea of equality and women’s emancipation, of
women’s vote and entry of women into various professions, the changes in dress are all
inconceivable without this context of modernity. Modernity made possible the creation of a
strong force of intelligentsia that could talk for the larger society even as it came from within its
privileged section. Capacities for production, space exploration, higher life expectations, cures
for several diseases, created possibilities for a better world not just for a few but for all.

5
All this was on the plus side. The context of capitalist society into which modernity was inbuilt
had its flip side for the vast majority of people. Critiques of modernity had their bases in the
contradictions inherent in capitalist society.
One kind of critique has been that science had led to loss of spiritualism and decline of religion,
technology and mass production had destroyed individual creativity, industry and urbanization
had destroyed the environment and link with nature and all this had in turn affected man’s
nature. Nuclear bombs, wars, loss of neighborhood and community solidarities, dilution of
certain traditional values and relations, were seen as results of modernity and unbridled
individualism fostered by modernity. These critics opposed what they called the ugliness of
modern production, rejected capitalism and democracy at the cost of older values. This took the
form of romanticism, because this critique did not take into account the reality that going back in
time is not realizable or a possibility.
Another kind of critique valued the advances of capitalist industrialization, particularly the
increased production that now made it possible to alleviate the standards of living of the majority
of the people of the world and the values that modernity brought. But they were very conscious
of its limitations as well. They wanted political and individual liberties to be supplemented with
economic rights and social and economic equality in the real sense. They were critical of the
inequalities inherent in the system of capitalist industrialization and the wide gap between theory
and reality with regard to other rights. They stood for socialism, classless societies and equality
between nations and within nations. They stood for equality between men and women and for
minority rights. They thought all this was not achievable within the framework of capitalist
society. Theirs was therefore a critical appreciation of modernity: they wanted to realize in
practice the promise of freedom and equality, which was possible only by overthrowing the
system that had both created the possibilities of their realization and also prevented their actual
realization because of the injustice structurally inbuilt in capitalist societies. The socialist
movements and the socialist and communist parties and their various organizations best
represented this world view.
A third response to modernity, which can be characterized as reactionary modernism, is one
which accepted the fruits of modern society, such as large scale production and new technologies
and the comforts they made possible, but were repulsed by its ideas. Equality, workers rights,
women’s emancipation, democracy were an anathema to them. This trend became particularly
successful in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, although it had supporters elsewhere as well.
Linked to this last response to modernity is what has been termed as post modernism. This is a
response which is rooted in the unhappiness over the changes that took place in the US and
following that in Western Europe during the 1960s and the subsequent decades. Some social
scientists saw this as the period of post industrialism and therefore characterized the societies of
this phase as the ‘post-modern’ condition. Post modernism is thus a critique of modern society
which refuses to acknowledge the capitalist basis of the modern society. It detaches society from
its moorings and criticizes modernity rather than capitalism. This is not a rational critique of
society. This irrationality of its critique of society gets transferred to its over all world view, and
all the ills of modern life are attributed to modernity.
Because modernity means an understanding of the world and of human development on the
basis of the principles of rationality, scientific temper and an appreciation of the laws of human
development, post modernism on the contrary opposed reason, application of general laws and
what they called the ‘meta narratives’. For post modernists each person has his/her own truth
and every person’s situation and therefore vantage point differs. A text does not contain except

6
what we personally see in it: everything is relative, everything is subjective and everything exists
only to the extent that we recognize it.
This kind of a critique of modernity has had some negative consequences for how we look at the
world and what can be done to transform society for the better, because we can simply refuse to
see what we don’t want to or are unable to.
1.5 Contemporary Era
When we talk of contemporary era we refer exclusively to the twentieth century and within the
twentieth century to those events and developments which impinge on or continue to impact on
the present. In short, the contemporary, for us, as in the dictionary meaning of being
simultaneous, defines what we call our times or whatever exists in our lifetimes, and all that
forms a background that determines our present lives.
The three defining developments or events that still live with us are the World War I (1914-
1918), the Russian revolution of 1917, and World War II (1939-1945). They have definitively set
their stamp on our world, not only because of the millions of people involved in them, but also
because the causes they represented still remain alive with us and the conflicts they generated
have not been resolved. International conflict, inter-imperialist rivalry and conflict of interests
between the advanced capitalist countries and what is known as the Third World remain with us
unresolved. The threat of wars and peace movements are important issues of today. Poverty and
inequalities in societies make socialism and the 1917 revolution still relevant to us.
The contemporary era has also seen the unification of nationalities and particularly in the second
half of the twentieth century a process of decolonization and the consequent creation of
independent nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. From the 40s to the 90s of the twentieth
century we see the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, representing the tensions
between the socialist and the capitalist world. This is also the period of what we term the Space
Age characterized by fast pace of space exploration and race for space dominance and the
growth of technology and cultural developments associated with it. This is followed by the
digital revolution or the age of information technology, characterized by extensive expansion and
transformation in industry due to computers and the possibilities of manipulation of information
and knowledge by those countries which dominated this field.
The changes of the 20th century encompassed not just North America and Europe, but the entire
world. Three quarters of the world awakened into new nationhood, political rights so far not
available to them and new arrangements of civil society. As Prabhat Patnaik has put it, “the
institutionalization of ‘one-person-one-vote’ constituted a veritable social revolution.” The actual
existing democracy is thus an achievement of popular movements of the 20 th century. Women
won their right to vote in the advanced countries only in the 20 th century after great struggles,
and in the rest of the world by virtue of being active participants in national liberation. A third of
the humanity broke away from the capitalist system to adopt socialism as basis of economy and
state. Democracy itself was given a new meaning and content by these democratic upsurges.
Reigned against them were the forces of fascism represented by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,
and the rule and onslaught of big Capital on the movements of the working people and the
marginalized all over the world.
In terms of historical time the contemporary era marks the high time of capitalist
industrialization and modernity. But it is an era in which, as Aijaz Ahmad has commented,
“socialism emerged as the central fact around which most aspirations and conflicts on the global
scale were shaped.” There was imperialist domination on the one hand and on the other mass
struggles against it which involved billions of people. National liberation movements reflected a
7
democratic upsurge the world over. These struggles were shaped by socialism and the entry of
masses of people as actors and subjects of their own history. The Soviet Union not only actively
supported national liberation movements, there would have been no defeat of fascism without the
sacrifice and heroism of the Soviet armies, and the resistance forces linked with socialism in the
advanced capitalist countries.
1.6 Conclusion
You have seen how the world we live in has been defined by capitalist industrialization and
socialism in the 20th century. It continues to be so in the 21st century.
The 20th century ended with the collapse of socialist states in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, US hegemony over the world and the important international institutions, and the
beginning of the 21st century has seen a financial crisis that has important negative ramifications
for living standards of billions of people. Despite these disastrous consequences the US, and
other advanced capitalist countries, continue to pursue and impose on the rest of the world the
neo liberal economic policies which constitute the core of globalization, as they have been doing
since the 1980s and more particularly 1990s. While in our part of the world it seems the middle
classes are under the spell of these policies and the popular resistance to them is weak, in the
Latin American countries both people and governments are actively opposing these policies and
the US hegemony in world affairs. How these contestations will unfold in the 21 st century is not
yet clear.
1.7 Some Questions
Answer the following questions in approximately 200 words. (Please consult the relevant
readings recommended for the course, given in the syllabus and also at the end of the course
material).
1. Explain four features of capitalist industrialization.
2. Describe some of the changes in capitalist industrialization in the 20 th century.
3. How is modernity related to capitalist industrialization?
4. Discuss the main aspects of modern civilization as seen in daily life.
5. Discuss one trend that represented a critique of modernity.
6. Write about any one important development which shaped the twentieth century.
7. How did capitalist industrialization contribute to inequalities in the world?
8. In what way did socialism constitute a challenge to the imperialist world order?

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 UNIT II : FIRST WORLD WAR

(a) CAUSES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR: AN ANALYSIS

-Dr. Naveen Vashishta
When the First World War was declared, eager commanders put long-standing military plans
into effect. The German general staff counted on a rapid victory against France in the west
before the Russian army could be brought into action in the east. But expecting a quick victory,
German forces occupied Belgium. However, this violation of Belgian neutrality unavoidably
brought Britain into war on the side of Russia and France.
The Schlieffen Plan
Germany’s plan for war against France had been established by Count Alfred von Schlieffen,
a former chief of the German General Staff. Based on the assumption that it would take Russia,
France’s ally, some time to prepare her armies to fight, the Schlieffen Plan called for German
armies to knock the French out of the war within six weeks. To accomplish this, the German
armies would storm around the network of fortifications on the eastern frontier of France.
German forces would march through Belgium and Holland and turn south. A pincer movement
southwards would encircle Paris from the northwest, and then turn to trap the French armies
struggling in Alsace-Lorraine. Schlieffen and his successors all believed that the plan would
probably bring Great Britain into the war because it would never accept the breach of Belgian
territory and the possible presence of an enemy power just across the English Channel. But the
Germans believed that a small British army would pose little threat. Then once Paris had fallen,
there would still be time to send the victorious army to east to defeat the Russians. This was the
solution to Bismarck’s nightmare, a simultaneous war on two fronts.
Schlieffen last words had been “Keep the right wing (of the attacking armies) strong.”
However his successor, Von Moltke, reduced the strength of attacking force by strengthening
German defenses in Alsace-Lorraine. He also eliminated Holland from the invasion plan for lack
of men. The French high command which had known the basics of the Schlieffen Plan for years
did not believe that German army could rapidly move through Belgium, partly because the
attacking forces would have to conquer the daunting fortress at Liege. The French also knew that
the plan called for inclusion of reserves into the main German army, and doubted they could
quickly become an able fighting force.
Similarly the French high command had its own plan for war. It too visualizes a swift attack
based on patriotic energy of the troops. “Plan XVII” would send two French armies into Alsace-
Lorraine, as the Germans expected. The French planned another thrust to drive German forces
back. With the bulk of German army tied up by French and British troops in Belgium the way to
Berlin would be open. But having miscalculated the size of the effective German fighting force,
the French also underestimated the speed with which their enemy could mobilize for war and
attack. The Schlieffen Plan dictated the course of the opening hostilities and the stalemate that
followed.
Battles in Europe
The battles of First World War were fought in different parts of the world. In terms of
intensity of fighting and killings, the battles in Europe overshadowed the battles outside Europe.
On the Western front in Europe, the war began when the German armies, sweeping across
Belgium, entered southern France and by early September had reached in the close vicinity of
Paris. The French army in the mean time had moved to the France-German frontier to march into
Alsace-Lorraine. The German army hoped to surround the French army and achieve a quick
9
victory. The French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine was repulsed but the withdrawing French
forces along with the British forces met the German forces in the Battle of Marne.1 The German
forces had to move back and they entrenched themselves along the river Aisne. There were
desperate fights, but by November end the war entered a period of a long deadlock on the
Western front when neither could remove the other for about four years.
Behind a long continuous chain of opposing trenches and barbed wire extending from the
southern border of France with Switzerland to the northern seacoast of France, the opposing
armies dug themselves in. Protected from the machine gun and rifle fire behind the trenches,
neither side could break through the other’s line of trenches. Each side conducted raids on the
other with little success. Germany, in 1915, started the use of poison gas to achieve the
breakthrough, and Britain, in 1916, introduced the use of tanks for the same purpose but neither
made much difference.
On the Eastern front, Russia achieved some initial successes against Germany and Austria
but these were short-lived. In 1915, the Russian armies suffered heavy defeats and the forces of
the Central Powers entered many territories of the Russian empire. In 1916, Russia launched
another offensive but it was repulsed. After the October Revolution of 1917 Russia withdrew
from the war. On 2nd March 1918, she signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and
abandoned many of its territories as a price of peace. In the meantime, Serbia and Romania had
surrendered.
War Outside Europe
Outside Europe, some major battles were fought in North Africa and West Asia. Germany
and Turkey united to intimidate the Allied possessions and influence in North Africa and West
Asia. Britain and France fought these attempts and tried to seize the Arab territories of the
Ottoman Empire. They also established contacts with Arab nationalists and others and provoked
anti-Turkish Arab risings. While pretending to champion the cause of Arab country’s freedom
from Turkish rule, Britain and France entered into a secret agreement, known as the Sykes-Picot
agreement in 1916 which provided for the division of Arab countries between Britain and
France. In 1917, the British government also promised to establish a national home for the
Jewish people in Palestine. This pledge by Britain about another country was to have serious
repercussions for peace and stability in West Asia.
During the war years, German colonial possessions in Africa and Asia were seized by Allied
powers. Japan made colonial gains in China by acquiring control over the German sphere of
influence and forcing China to make further concessions to her. German Southwest Africa was
occupied by South African troops, Togoland by British, French and Belgian troops. The fighting
between British and German troops in German East Africa continued till the end of the war.
The Deadlock in Europe
In the meantime, the “war of attrition” was on in Europe. It meant a war of material, of
industrial strength and supply capacity of the belligerent states. Each side was trying to wear out
the other side by mobilizing more and more men and using huge amounts of war equipments.
Two catastrophic battles were fought as a part of this “war of attrition.” In February 1916,
Germany launched a massive attack on the French forts stretched around Verdun. The French
were prepared to hold Verdun at all costs. Its loss would be a potentially mortal blow to French
morale. So the French poured hundreds of thousand of their soldiers into the battle. In the damp
chilling mists of the hills of Argonne, there were a lot of casualties. Although the French army
held but lost 315,000 men killed or wounded; 90,000 died at the appropriately named “Dead

1
It was named after the river Marne near which the battle was fought.
10
Man’s Hill” alone. The Germans suffered 281,000 casualties. A French counterattack in the fall
recaptured many of the forts the Germans had taken; again the casualties increased. In all, the
French suffered 540,000 casualties and the Germans 430,000 casualties at Verdun. It was the
longest battle of World War I.
The Battle of Verdun merely delayed plans for a massive British offensive on Somme,
supported by a similar French thrust. The assault began on 1st July 1916 after a week’s
bombardment. At the first end of the first day of the Battle of Somme2, about 60,000 soldiers of
the 110,000 British soldiers had become casualties, including 19,000 killed. 3 When the disastrous
offensive finally ended in mid-November, Britain had lost 420,000 men killed and wounded. The
French lost 200,000 men and the Germans lost 650,000 soldiers.
The war had become a total war. It was no longer restricted to battles between armies. It
required total mobilization of all the resources of the main warring nations. An increasing
amount of armaments and other war materials were required to be produced which meant
changing the production pattern. Every economic activity had to be subordinated to the needs of
the war. So warring groups started a system of imposing an economic blockade. It necessitated
that no goods i.e. food, war materials, raw materials should be allowed to enter the enemy’s
country from anywhere. By doing this, each side thought that the other would be starved into
submission. Britain imposed a naval blockade on Germany and though the naval fleets of the two
countries fought only one major battle, and that too indecisive, the British succeeded in the
blockade of Germany. To prevent food and other supplies from reaching Britain, Germany
started using submarines4 which it had developed not only to destroy enemy ships but also ships
of neutral countries heading for British ports.
A large number of new weapons were introduced in this war. The machine gun and liquid
fire were two such weapons. For the first time, aircrafts were used in warfare for bombing the
civilian population but it had little role in deciding the outcome of the war. The British
introduced the use of the tank. Another horrible weapon used in the war was poison gas.
The Final Stages of War
In 1917, two events of great consequence occurred, each of which appeared to one side to
present an opportunity to end the stalemate on the western front. Reacting in part to a German
campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied shipping, the United States entered
the war in April on the Allies side. And Russia withdrew from the war after the Bolsheviks
seized the power in the October Revolution. Meanwhile, the French armies seemed on the verge
of collapse and a massive German offensive that began in March 1918 pushed Allied forces back
further than they had been since 1914. The stage was set for the final phase of the war.
1. The United States Enters the War
On 6th April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. USA had become the major
source of arms and other essential supplies for the Entente powers. On May 7 th May, 1915, a
German submarine sank the British cruise liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. The ship was,
despite U.S denials, carrying American manufactured ammunition to the Allies; 128 U.S citizens
were among the almost 1,200 killed. The U.S already annoyed by the fresh German introduction
of the mustard gas into warfare, protested strongly, and on 1st September the German

2
This battle was named after the river Somme along which it was fought.
3
There were more British soldiers killed and wounded in the first three days of the Battle of Somme than Americans
killed in World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined, and three times as many killed as had
been killed in fifteen years of war against Napoleon.
4
U-boat, in German Unterseeboot.
11
government accepted the American demand to abandon the unrestricted submarine warfare. For
the next two years, the Germans, wanting to keep the U.S neutral, adopted a policy of warning
liners before sinking them, providing for the safety of the passengers.
But the fact remained that Germany could prevent Britain from maintaining total control of
the high seas only with submarines. The continuing success of the British blockade led Germany
to announce on 1st February, 1917, that its submarines would attack any ship in “war zones.”
Moreover there was a pressure from the German high command who believed that this was the
only hope for knocking Britain out of the war. With more Americans killed in submarine attacks
USA entered the war on 6th April, 1917 on the side of the Allied Powers.
2. Russia Withdraws from the War
The second significant event of 1917 was the Russian Revolution. The Russian
revolutionaries had opposed the war from the beginning and, under the leadership of Lenin,
decided to transform it into a revolutionary war to overthrow the Russian autocracy and to seize
power. The Russian army had suffered severe reverses in the war. Over 600,000 Russian soldiers
had been killed. As soon as the Bolsheviks came to power, it issued the Decree on Peace with
proposals to end the war without any annexations and indemnities. Russia decided to withdraw
from the war and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3rd March, 1918 with Germany, which
officially ended Russia’s participation in what the Allies called “the Great War of Civilization.”
The End of War
Many efforts were made to bring the war to an end. Discontent had been rising in the civilian
population and among the soldiers of all the major warring countries. There were demonstrations
and mutinies. The Russian emperor had already fallen. The discontent was much widespread in
the countries of the Central Powers. There was a wave of strikes in Germany and Austria-
Hungary and a succession of mutinies in their armies and navies. In Austria-Hungary, there were
desertions on large scale among the soldiers of “subject nationalities” and many of them were
fighting on the side of the Allies. By about the middle of July 1918, the tide of the war was
beginning to turn against Germany which had launched a series of offensives on the western
front, inflicting heavy casualties on the Allies. But by July, the German offensive was contained
and the Allies launched counter-offensives. In the meantime the Allied forces had started their
military intervention in Russia. In the east, thousands of Japanese troops poured into Siberia.
While the Allied intervention in Russia was to survive the end of the First World War, the
collapse of the Central Powers had begun.
On 8th January, 1918, American President Woodrow Wilson set out a blueprint for permanent
peace. His “Fourteen Points” were based upon his understanding of how the Great War had
begun, and how future wars could be avoided. The first point called for “open covenants
(agreements), openly arrived at,” in place of the secret treaties whose obligations had put Europe
into war. Wilson also called for freedom of the seas and freedom of trade, and the impartial
settlement of colonial rivalries. Other points included the principle of non-intervention in Russia;
the return of full sovereignty to Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine to France; autonomy for the
national groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and the independence of Romania, Serbia,
Montenegro, and Poland. The last of the Fourteen Points called for the establishment of an
organization or association of nations to settle other national conflicts as they arose.
Bulgaria surrendered on 29th September, 1918. By the end of October the Ottoman Empire
had ceased to exist. On November 12, the Habsburg emperor renounced his throne. Most people
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire-the Czechs, the Poles, the Yugoslavs and the Hungarians-had
already declared their independence. Now only Germany remained and final Allied offensives
against her were launched in September. On 3rd November, revolution broke out in Germany; on
12
9th November, the German emperor abdicated and fled to Holland, and on 10 th November
Germany was proclaimed a republic. On 11th November, 1918, a representative of the
provisional German government and General Foch of France signed an armistice and the First
World War came to an end.
The celebrations in London, Paris, New York, and elsewhere on the Allied side went on
for days. A French veteran, tiring of the street festivities in his town, went in the evening to a
graveyard. There he came upon a woman crying next to the tomb of her husband. Their small
boy was with her, playing with a tricolor flag. Suddenly he cried out, “Papa, we’ve won!”
Consequences of the War
The First World War lasted for four years and three months. It began on August 4, 1914 and
ended on November 11, 1918. It involved sixty sovereign states, overthrew four Empires
(German Empire, Hapsburg Empire, Turkish Empire, Russian Empire), gave birth to seven new
nations, took ten million combatant lives (another 30 million were wounded), and cost about £
35,000 million. This war was in several ways exclusively novel in human history. It has been
described as the "primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century." It was the largest global
conflict yet seen, leading to the deaths of millions and the devastation of parts of Western
Europe. There had been wars in Europe before, involving many states. This one, however, was a
general conflict between highly organized states that had at their control all the resources of
modern warfare and were well equipped to find new methods of destruction and defence. It was
fought with determination and desperation by the nations because they believed that it was a war
for the survival and for high ideals; it was fought everywhere-on land, above land, on sea and
under sea. Obviously any such conflict was bound to have enormous and far reaching
consequences for Europe and rest of the world.
Destruction of Human Lives
The destruction caused by war in terms of human lives lost was terrible. There had been
nothing like the Great War in history. The figures of persons who fought in the war are shocking.
About 6,000 people had been killed each day for more than 1,500 days. In more than four years
of fighting, at least 65 million soldiers were mobilized. Out of 42 million men who served in the
Allied armies, 22 million were casualties; thus making the war Europe’s cruelest scourge. The
Central Powers mobilized 23 million, and had 15 million casualties. The table below shows
casualties (in million) during World War I in different countries.
Country Mobilized Casualties Percentage
Austria-Hungary 7.8 7 90
Russia 12 9.15 76
France 8.4 6 71
Germany 11 7 63
Italy 5.5 2.15 39
Britain 8.9 3 34
United States 4.35 0.36 8
Source: John Merriman: History of Modern Europe, From French Revolution to the Present, Vol.II,
1996, p.1082.
This was of course an unprecedented rate of casualties in any European warfare. This
massive loss of human lives affected the structure of population both in sex and in age groups.
The loss of life among women was much lower. Thus in Britain in the year 1911 there were 1067
13
females to every 1000 males. However, in 1921, the sex ratio changed to 1093 females to every
1000 males. This disequilibrium led to many social complexities and other related problems in
the society.
But sheer numbers do not tell the entire story. The psychic damage to the generation of
survivors can hardly be measured. Of the wounded who survived, many were destined to spend
the rest of their lives in hospitals. Soldiers who had lost their limbs or who were injured in other
ways became a common sight in European countries after the war. The flower of European
youth-or much of it-had perished. Europe seemed a continent of widows and spinsters so many
were killed in the prime of their life that the birth rate fell strikingly after the war. Support for
families of the dead soldiers and the invalid unable to work strained national budgets. The
bloodshed was not confined to Europe alone. In an outbreak of ethnic hostility and in response to
Armenian demands for independent state, the Turks forced 1.75 million Armenians to leave their
homes in Turkey; more than a third of them died without water in the desert sun on the way to
Syria, their bodies consumed by animals. Furthermore, about 27 million people died in an
influenza epidemic during the last years of and after the war.
Social and Cultural Consequences
European countries directed all of their resources into total war which resulted in enormous
social changes. This war had the effect of accelerating women’s emancipation wherever the
movement started before 1914. Women over 30 years of age were granted parliamentary vote in
Britain in 1918 because the war required a national effort and in modern warfare civilian morale
and industrial production had become as important as the army. Moreover, conscription created
labor shortages which had to be filled at once, and women soon dispelled many anti-feminist
myths as they proved their ability to do hard jobs in the factories and on the farm. Women
participated in all activities and worked on factories, shops, offices and voluntary services,
hospitals and schools. They worked hand in hand with men and so won their claim of equality
with them. It became easier now for them to find work as traditional hindrances were eliminated.
They undertook a variety of jobs previously held by men. They were also more widely employed
in industrial jobs. By 1918, 37.6 percent of the work force in the Krupp armaments firm in
Germany was female. In England the proportion of women works rose strikingly in public
transport (for example, from 18,000 to 117,000 bus conductors), banking (9,500 to 63,700), and
commerce (505,000 to 934,000). Many restrictions on women disappeared during the war. It
became acceptable for young, employed, single middle-class women to have their own
apartments, to go out without chaperones 5, and to smoke in public. Even the barriers of class and
wealth were weakened to quite a great extent by the “fellowship of the trenches.” If women
edged nearer to some kind of equality, the same was even truer of organized labor in nearly all
belligerent countries. For government to mobilize manpower in the war, the cooperation of the
trade union movement was essential and by the end of the war, unions were in a much stronger
position after collaboration with the government.
This social trauma manifested itself in many different ways. Some people were revolted by
nationalism and what it had caused; so, they began to work toward a more internationalist world
through organizations such as the League of Nations. Pacifism became increasingly popular.
Others had the opposite reaction, feeling that only military strength could be relied on for
protection in a chaotic and inhumane world that did not respect hypothetical notions of
civilization. Certainly a sense of disillusionment and cynicism became pronounced. Nihilism
grew in popularity. Many people believed that the war heralded the end of the world as they had

5
Older person, usually a woman, who looks after a girl or a young unmarried woman on social occasions.
14
known it, including the collapse of capitalism and imperialism. Communist and socialist
movements around the world drew strength from this theory, enjoying a level of popularity they
had never known before. These feelings were most pronounced in areas directly or particularly
harshly affected by the war, such as central Europe, Russia and France.
Artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, Ernst Barlach, and Käthe Kollwitz represented their
experiences, or those of their society, in blunt paintings and sculpture. Similarly, authors such as
Erich Maria Remarque wrote grim novels detailing their experiences. These works had a strong
impact on society, causing a great deal of controversy and highlighting conflicting interpretations
of the war. In Germany, nationalists including the Nazis believed that much of this work was
degenerate and undermined the cohesion of society as well as dishonouring the dead.
The war destroyed the cultural fabric of Europe. It caused widespread destruction of
buildings. Old established values were questioned and often unthinkably repudiated, while the
newer ones restored nothing lasting of any significance. The void thus left, saw an alarming
decline of moral standards.
Economic Impact
The economic impact of the war was much disproportioned. At one end there were those who
profited from the war and at the other end were those who suffered under the effects of inflation.
The prospects of making enormous amounts of money in war manufacture were ample. War
profiteers were a public scandal. Fictional new rich had numerous real-life counterparts.
However, government rarely interfered in major firms, as happened when the German military
took over the Daimler motor car works for padding costs on war-production contracts.
Governments tended to favor large, centralized industries over smaller ones. The war was a
stimulus towards grouping companies into larger firms. When resources became scarce,
nonessential firms, which tended to be small, were simply closed down. Inflation was the
greatest single economic factor as war budgets rose to astronomical figures and massive demand
forced shortages of many consumer goods. Virtually ever able-bodied person was employed to
keep up with the demand. This combination of high demand, scarcity, and full employment sent
prices soaring, even in the best managed countries. In Britain, a pound sterling brought in 1919
about one-third of what it had bought in 1914. French prices approximately doubled during the
war and it only got worse during the 1920's. Inflation rates were even higher in other
belligerents. The German currency ceased to have value in 1923. All of this had been foreseen by
John Maynard Keynes as a result of the Versailles Treaty: “The danger confronting us, therefore,
is the rapid depression of the standard of life of the European populations to a point which will
mean actual starvation for some (a point already reached in Russian and approximately reach in
Austria).”
Inflation affected different people quite differently. Skilled workers in strategic industries
found that their wages kept pace with prices or even rose a little faster. Unskilled workers and
workers in less important industries fell behind. Clerks, lesser civil servants, teachers,
clergymen, and small shopkeepers earned less than many skilled labors. Those who suffered the
most were those dependent on fixed incoming. The incomes of old people on pensions or middle
class living on small dividends remained about the same while prices double or tripled. These
dropped down into poverty. These "new poor" kept their pride by repairing old clothes,
supplementing food budget with gardens, and giving up everything to appear as they had before
the war. Inflation radically changed the relative position of many in society. Conflicts arose over
the differences in purchasing power. All wage earners had less real purchasing power at the end
of the war than they had had at the beginning. To make matters worse some great fortunes were
built during the wartime and postwar inflation. Those who were able to borrow large amounts of
15
money could repay their debts in devalued currency from their war profit. It has been pointed
out, that all the economic slogans of the post-war years, strangely enough, began with the prefix
re: reconstruction, recovery, reparations, retrenchment, repayment of war debts, restoration of
gold standard etc.
Political Implications
The First World War and Peace Treaty concluded after it transformed the political map of the
world, particularly Europe. As mentioned earlier, four ruling dynasties were destroyed. It
uprooted the hereditary autocracy and monarchy from almost all the European countries. The
war had been declared ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ There were some countries like
England, Spain, Romania and Greece etc., where the monarchy could not be uprooted. But
nobody could deny the fact that the governments of these countries could not preserve the tone of
monarchy in the real sense and democratization of the governments became order of the day
after the First World War which compelled the autocratic rulers to rule as constitutional
monarchs or to abdicate. This war promoted the feelings of democracy all over the world.
Governments took on many new powers in order to fight the total war. War governments
fought opposition by increasing police power. Authoritarian regimes like tsarist Russia had
always depended on the threat of force, but now even parliamentary governments felt the
necessity to expand police powers and control public opinion. Britain gave police powers wide
scope in August 1914 by the Defence of the Realm Act which authorized the public authorities to
arrest and punish rebels under martial law if necessary. Through later acts, police powers grew
to include suspending newspapers and the ability to intervene in a citizen's private life in the use
of lights at home, food consumption, and bar hours. Police powers tended to grow as the war
went on and public opposition increased as well. In France a sharp rise of strikes, mutinies, and
talk of a negotiated peace raised doubts about whether France could really carry on the war in
1917. A group of French political leaders decided to carry out the war at the cost of less internal
liberty. The government cracked down on anyone suspected of supporting a compromise peace.
Many of the crackdowns and sedition charges were just a result of war panic or calculated
political opportunism. Expanded police powers also included control of public information and
opinion. The censorship of newspapers and personal mail was already an established practice.
Governments regularly used their power to prevent leaking of military secrets and the airing of
dangerous opinions considering war efforts. The other side of using police power on public
opinion was the "organizing of enthusiasm," which could be thought of as: “Propaganda tries to
force a doctrine on the whole people; the organization embraces within its scope only those who
do not threaten on psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination of the
idea.”
World War I provided a place for the birth of propaganda which countries used with even
more horrifying results during World War II. Governments used the media to influence people to
enlist and to persuade them war into supporting the war. The French prime minister used his
power to draft journalists or defer them in exchange for favorable coverage. The German right
created a new mass party, the Fatherland Party. It was backed by secret funds from the army and
was devoted to propaganda for war discipline. By 1918, the Fatherland Party was larger than the
Social Democratic Party. Germany had become quite effective at influencing the masses.
The war weakened the world’s centre, Europe, and strength the periphery-North America,
Russia and Asia. The period after the war saw the beginning of the end of the European
supremacy in the world. Economically and militarily, Europe was surpassed by the United States
which emerged as world power after the war. The Soviet Union became the first socialist country

16
and was also to come up as a major world power. Thus Europe’s primacy was at the end and its
future looked miserable.
The period after the war also saw the strengthening of the freedom movements in Asia and
Africa. The weakening of Europe and the emergence of Soviet Union which declared her support
to the struggles for national independence contribute to the growing strengths of these struggles.
There was also a problem of redistribution of balance of power in the world. As a result of this
war, there was a military and political collapse of old empires. The pre-war German and Austrian
dominance, for a time, came to an end. The supreme task before the peacemakers was to see that
Germany is kept in check and also, weakened militarily. Another problem was the reshaping of
eastern and central Europe in the light of newly emerging realities of national grouping,
economic viability and military security.
Environmental Impact of War
In terms of environmental impact, World War I was most damaging, because of landscape
changes caused by trench warfare. This war was fought from trenches, dug from the North Sea to
the border of Switzerland. In 1918 when the war was over, empires disintegrated into smaller
countries, marking the division of Europe today. Over 9 million people had died, most of which
perished from influenza after the outbreak of the Spanish Flu. The war did not directly cause the
influenza outbreak, but it was amplified. Mass movement of troops and close quarters caused the
Spanish Flu to spread quickly. Furthermore, stresses of war may have increased the vulnerability
of soldiers to the disease.
Digging trenches caused trample of grassland, crushing of plants and animals, and churning
of soil. Erosion resulted from forest logging to expand the network of trenches. Soil structures
were transformed severely, and if the war was never fought, in all likelihood the landscape
would have looked very differently today.
Another destructive impact was the application of poison gas. Gases were spread throughout
the trenches to kill soldiers of the opposite front. Examples of gases applied during World War I
are tear gas (aerosols causing eye irritation), mustard gas (cell toxic gas causing blistering and
bleeding), and carbonyl chloride (carcinogenic gas). The gases caused a total of 100,000 deaths,
most caused by carbonyl chloride (phosgene). Battlefields were polluted, and most of the gas
evaporated into the atmosphere. After the war, unexploded ammunition caused major problems
in former battle areas. Environmental legislation prohibits explosion or dumping chemical
weapons at sea; therefore the cleanup was and still remains a costly operation. In 1925, most war
participants signed a treaty banning the application of gaseous chemical weapons. Chemical
disarmament plants were planned in France and Belgium.
Peace Treaties
When the First World War ended there were a great deal of near sighted decisions made that
directly lead to the Second World War thus it has been said that the Second World War was
actually a continuation of the First World War. After the First World War, the Allies imposed a
series of peace treaties on the Central Powers. The1919 Treaty of Versailles, in which Germany
was kept under blockade until she signed, ended the war. It declared Germany responsible for the
war and required Germany to pay enormous war reparations and awarding territory to the
victors. Unable to pay them with exports (a result of territorial losses and postwar recession), she
did so by borrowing from the United States, until the reparations were suspended in 1931. The
"Guilt Thesis"6 became a controversial explanation of events in Britain and the United States.

6
See appendix.
17
The Treaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Germany, which nationalist movements,
especially the Nazis, exploited. The treaty contributed to one of the worst economic collapses in
German history, sparking runaway inflation in the 1920s.
The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. The treaty,
however, was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish republican movement.
This led to the Turkish Independence War and, ultimately, to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Austria-Hungary was also partitioned, largely along ethnic lines. The details were contained in
the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon.
The New International Organization
The League of Nations was a world organization contrived to replace the old system of
‘power politics.’ It was an international organization founded as a result of the Treaty of
Versailles in 1919–1920. The scheme of League of Nations was sponsored with great fervor by
President Woodrow Wilson. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through
collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and
improving global quality of life. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a
fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League failed in its supreme
task of preserving peace. The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great
Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or
provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, they were often reluctant to do
so. Sanctions could also hurt the League members imposing the sanctions and given the pacifist
attitude following World War I, countries were reluctant to do so. Benito Mussolini stated that
"The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."
After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League
ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis Powers in the 1930s. The onset
of the Second World War suggested that the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was
to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and
inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.
Conclusion
Thus to conclude we can say that World War I did not completely end with the signing of
the Treaty of Versailles, for its social, cultural, political, economic, environmental and
psychological effects influenced the lives of people long after the last shot was fired. The Great
War could not be relegated to the past. War became the continuing experience of the 20 th
century.
Suggested Readings
1. John Merriman, History of Modern Europe, From French Revolution to the Present, Vol.II,
1996, p.1039-84.
2. Frank McDonough, The Origins of the First and Second World Wars (Cambridge
Perspectives in History), 1997.
3. Keith Robbins, The First World War, Oxford University Press, 2002.
4. IGNOU Study Material, EHI-01, Block 3.

18
 APPENDIX
FIRST WORLD WAR: WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
The historical debate on the origins of the First World War has been affected by the
existing political climate and by the urge to find out as to who was primarily responsible. The
official report on the origins of the war, written by victorious powers, and presented to the
Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 concluded that the war was premeditated by Germany
and resulted from acts deliberately committed in order to make it unavoidable. Germany
and Austria-Hungary deliberately worked to defeat all the many conciliatory proposals made by
Entente powers to avoid war. The German War Guilt is enshrined in Article 231 of the Treaty of
Versailles.
During the inter-war years the Germans sought to reverse the verdict and released many
official documents to accomplish this end. In 1927 Erich Brandenburg, a German historian
argued that Germany did not plan the First World War. He blamed Russia for wanting control
over the Balkans, and France for wanting revenge for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. In 1930,
Sidney Fay, an American historian, argued that no European power wanted war in 1914 and that
all to a greater and lesser degree must share the blame. Fay attached some liability to each power
involved in the July Crisis and came to the conclusion that the verdict of German War Guilt was
defective. Thus the idea of collective responsibility for the outbreak of the war came to become
an orthodox interpretation. In 1938, G.P Gooch, a British historian, reflected the prevailing
orthodoxy by stating that “The belief that any nation or statesman was the arch criminal in 1914
is no longer held by serious students of history.” Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister,
suggested that “all the nations of Europe slithered over the edge of the boiling cauldron of war in
1914.” Slowly and slowly, the debate over the origins of the war began to move away from
apportioning guilt towards an assessment of long-term causes.
Debate over German responsibility for the war: The debate over whether Germany intended
an offensive war or a war of territorial expansion is still a topic of debate. In 1961, Fritz Fisher, a
German historian, published a voluminous book titled ‘Germany’s Aims in the First World
War’(1967) in which he apportioned chief responsibility to Germany for preparing and launching
World War I. According to him, the German desire for territorial expansion and to break free of
its diplomatic encirclement culminated in the war. Fisher stated that Germany was ready to go to
war at any cost in order to establish herself as a great power. He further alleged that Germany
even went to the extent of provoking her allies into initiating war. He tried to show that Germany
was following an aggressive policy inspired by economic interests and designed to achieve world
power. He never deviated from his basic line of thinking that Germany was eager to make up for
the disadvantage suffered as a result of entering late into world politics and this would have
made the war inevitable. In his view there was a continuity in German objectives from 1900
to the Second World War.
Fisher’s work was criticized by Gerhard Ritter, another German historian, who saw
Fisher’s work as an act of national disloyalty. Ritter admitted that the German War Guilt Thesis
needed revision but did not accept Fisher’s thesis. He also condemned Fisher for applying what
he saw as basically Marxist approach to history without actually being openly Marxist as this
would have made him unpopular. According to him Germany had no desire for world
domination and its main aim was to support its ally Austria-Hungary. He also accused Fisher of
ignoring the environment of the time and of not comparing different kinds of foreign imperialism
including that of USA and Japan. In this sense we can see that aggression was not the prerogative
of any one country. The imperial objectives that Germany has been accused of were also

19
experienced by the other Great Powers. The clearest example of this is the feeble pretexts on
which Britain and USA entered the war.
There are many other views as well on the extent of responsibility that needs to be
apportioned to Germany for the war. Immanuel Geiss, a supporter of Fisher’s thesis suggest that
the main long-term cause of the war was the German desire for Weltpolitik7. John Rohl sees the
origins of the war in the German government pursuit of a pre-existing plan to split the Triple
Entente or provoke a European war. Most historians however reject the idea of a pre-planed
German war. The argument of a defensive German war has been articulated by scholars like
Egmont Zechlin and Karl Erdmann. They still reject the idea of Germany cold-bloodedly
planning a war for vast territorial gains. They believed that German policy in 1914 decided on a
preventive war born of desperation and with no master plan for vast expansion, designed to
ensure the survival of Germany as a major European power.
Thus to conclude we can say that the anti-Fisher school of thought is willing to accept
that Germany should take the major responsibility for the war but rejects the view of German
policy being determined by domestic problems and the view that Germany was planning an
aggressive war of territorial expansion. Instead, it suggests that German leaders desired a
localized European war, with a quick German victory to break free from its diplomatic
encirclement.

7
For Geiss, Weltpolitik was a belligerent policy which invited a hostile reaction and ultimately raised the
international temperature to a point at which peace became impossible to sustain.
20
(b) COURSE AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN EUROPE AND
THE WORLD
-Dr. Naveen Vashishta
The League of Nations was an international association for the furtherance of cooperation
among nations, the settlement of international disputes, and the preservation of the peace formed
after the First World War. The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been outlined as
far back as 1795, in Immanuel Kant’s work Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. One
attempt to put such a concept into practice were the international Hague Conventions of 1899
and 1907. It was to have been a universal alliance aiming at disarmament and the peaceful
settlement of disputes through arbitration. Following the failure of the Hague Peace Conferences,
a third conference had been planned for 1915. The League is often spoken as being the
brainchild of the American President Woodrow Wilson. Although Wilson was certainly a great
supporter of the idea of international organisation for peace, the League was in reality the result
of a coming together of similar suggestions (made during the First World War) by a number of
world statesman. Lord Robert Cecil of Britain, Jan Sumts of South Africa and Leon Bourgeois of
France put forward detailed schemes as to how an organisation was to set up: Lloyd George
reffered to it as one of Britain’s war aims, and Wilson included it as the last of his fourteen
points. Wilson’s great contribution was to insist that the League Covenant 8, which had been
drawn up by an international committee, should be included in each of the separate peace
treaties. It had two main aims: To maintain peace through collective security9 and to encourage
international co-operation in order to solve economic and social problems.
The League's creation was a centerpiece of Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace, The Paris
Peace Conference accepted the proposal to create the League of Nations on January 25, 1919.
The Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League
was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on June 28, 1919.
Initially, the Charter was signed by 44 states, including 31 states which had taken part in the war
on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict. Despite Wilson's efforts to
establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, the
United States neither ratified the Charter nor joined the League due to opposition in the U.S.
Senate. On 10th January 1920, the League of Nations, officially came into existence with its
headquarters at Geneva in Switzerland. The League held its first council meeting in Paris on
January 16, 1920 six days after the Versailles Treaty came into force. In November, the
headquarters of the League moved to Geneva, where the first general assembly of the League
was held on November 15, 1920 with representatives from 41 nations in attendance.
Symbols
The League of Nations had neither an official flag nor logo. Proposals for adopting an
official symbol were made during the League's beginning in 1920, but the member states never
reached agreement. However, League of Nations organization used varying logos and flags (or
none at all) in their own operations. An international contest was held in 1929 to find a design,
which again failed to produce a symbol. One of the reasons for this failure may have been the
fear by the member states that the power of the supranational organization might supersede them.
Finally, in 1939, a semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue
pentagon. The pentagon and the five-pointed stars were supposed to symbolize the five
8
The list of rules by which the League was to operate.
9
If one state attacked another, the member state of the League would act together, collectively, to restrain the
aggressor, either by economic or by military sanctions.
21
continents and the five races of mankind. In a bow on top and at the bottom, the flag had the
names in English (League of Nations) and French (Société des Nations). This flag was used on
the building of the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
Languages
The official languages of the League of Nations were French, English and Spanish (from
1920). The League seriously considered adopting Esperanto as their working language and
actively encouraging its use but neither option was ever adopted. In 1921, there was a proposal
by Lord Robert Cecil to introduce Esperanto into state schools of member nations and a report
was commissioned to investigate this. When the report was presented two years later it
recommended the teaching of Esperanto in schools, a proposal that 11 delegates accepted. The
strongest opposition came from the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux, partially in order to
protect the French Language which he argued was already the international language. The
opposition meant the report was accepted apart from the part that approved Esperanto in schools.
Structure of League of Nations
The League had four principal organs, a Secretariat, a Council, an Assembly and a
Permanent Court of International Justice. The League also had numerous Agencies and
Commissions. Authorization for any action required both a unanimous vote by the Council and a
majority vote in the Assembly.
The Secretariat
The Secretariat of the League consisted of the Secretary-General (based in Geneva) who
was appointed by the Council with the approval of the Assembly and such other staff as was
required for its work. The other staff of the Secretariat was appointed by the Secretary-General in
consultation with the Council. There were two Deputy Secretary-General and two Under
Secretaries-General, subordinate to the Secretary-General. The number-states paid the expenses
of the Secretariat. The Secretariat functioned through the year in contrast to the Council and the
Assembly.
The Council
The Council of the League comprised of permanent members, non-permanent members
and ad hoc representatives. It began with four permanent members (the United Kingdom, France,
Italy, Japan) and four non-permanent members, which were elected by the Assembly for a three
year period. The first four non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Spain.
The United States was meant to be the fifth permanent member, but the United States Senate
voted on March 19, 1920 against the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing
American participation in the League. This prompted the United States to go back to policies of
isolationism.
The initial composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of times. The
number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on September 22, 1922, and then to
nine on September 8, 1926. Germany also joined the League and became a fifth permanent
member of the Council on the latter date, taking the Council to a total of fifteen members. When
Germany and Japan later both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was
eventually increased from nine to eleven. The Council met on average five times a year, and in
extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and
1939. every member of the Council had only one vote.
The Council was required to deal with any matter within the sphere of action of the
League or affecting the peace of the world. The main function of the Council was the settlement
22
of disputes among the various countries of the world. It was required to formulate plans for
disarmanent by various states. It was to recommed methods by which the territorial integrity of
the states could be guaranted.
The General Assembly
The League of Nations' Assembly was a meeting of all the Member States, with each
state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It was required to meet at least once a
year. In case of necessity, there could be additional meetings of the Assembly. It was given the
authority to deal with any matter within its sphere of action or which affected the peace of the
world. It could not discuss those matters which were exclusively reserved for the Council. It
could admit new members of the League by two-third majority. Every year it elected a certain
member of non-permanent members of the Council. The Judges of the Permanent Court of
International Justice were elected by the Assembly for a certain number of years. The Assembly
revised the budget prepared by the Secretariat and also supervised the work of the Council.
Permanent Court of International Justice
The Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), sometimes called the World Court,
was the international court of the League of Nations, established on15th February 1922 under
Article XIV of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The PCIJ began its preliminary session in
the Hague in January 1922 and heard its first case, an advisory opinion, in May 1922. Between
1922 and 1940 the Court dealt with 38 contentious cases between States and delivered 27
advisory opinions. It was replaced in 1946 by the International Court of Justice when the United
Nations was organized.
Technically speaking, the PCIJ was not an organ of the League of Nations, although the
Court's existence was closely connected to the League. The jurisdiction of this Court extended to
all the cases which the party referred to it and all matters specially provided for in the treaties
and conventions in force. The members were allowed to accept the optional clause by signing the
separate protocol and that gave the Court jurisdiction in matters concerning the interpretation of
any treaty, questions of international law, any dispute which involved a violation of international
law etc. While making decisions, the Court applied the international convention recognized by
the states in conflict, international customs, general principles of law recognized by the civilized
states, judicial decisions, and the teachings of highly qualified publicists of the various states.
The Court was also required to give its advisory opinion in certain matters. The judgment of the
Court was final and there was no provision for appeal. However, the Court could review its
previous decisions in the light of new facts brought before it, provided those facts were not
known to the parties at the time of decision.
Second World War marked the end of the Permanent Court of International Justice. The
Court held its last wartime session in the Hague in February 1940, before the German invasion of
the Netherlands. With the search for a new post-war international order, delegates at the
Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, DC (August-October 1944) discussed the
development of a new International Court of Justice, which would work in association with the
new United Nations Organization. Delegates at the San Francisco Conference approved the new
International Court of Justice (June 1945) as one of the principal organs of the United Nations
(Article VII) and as the UN's chief judicial organization. In October 1945, the members of the
PCIJ held their last session in the Hague and on January 31, 1946, the judges of the Permanent
Court of International Justice resigned.

23
Other bodies
Several other agencies and commissions were created by the League to deal with major
international problems. These were the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organization, the
International Labour Organization, the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on
Intellectual Cooperation (ancestor of the UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the
Commission for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. Several of these institutions were
transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War. In addition to the International
Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice became a UN institution as
the International Court of Justice, and the Health Organization was restructured as the World
Health Organization.
The League's health organization had three bodies, a Health Bureau, containing
permanent officials of the League, an executive section the General Advisory Council or
Conference consisting of medical experts, and a Health Committee. The Committee's purpose
was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and get work ready
to be presented to the Council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria and yellow fever,
the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health
Organization also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent
typhus epidemics including organising a large education campaign about the disease.
In 1919 the International Labour Organization was created as a part of the Versailles
Treaty and became part of the League's operations with Albert Thomas as its first director. It
successfully convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight hour
working week. It also worked to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace,
and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. The organization continued to exist
after the end of the League, becoming an agency of the United Nations in 1946.
The League wanted to regulate the drugs trade and established the Permanent Central
Opium Board to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second International
Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of opium and its
by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations
for the legal international trade in narcotics.
The Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world,
and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the countries who
administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League also secured a
commitment from Ethiopia, as a condition of joining the League in 1926, to end slavery and
worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and inter-tribal slavery. It succeeded in gaining the
emancipation of 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and organized raids against slave traders in its
efforts to stop the practice of forced labour in Africa. It also succeeded in reducing the death rate
of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55% to 4%. Records were kept to control
slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking women and children. Led by Fridtjof Nansen the
Commission for Refugees looked after the interests of refugees including overseeing their
repatriation and, when necessary resettlement. At the end of the First World War there were two
to three million ex-prisoners of war dispersed throughout Russia, within two years of the
commission's foundation, in 1920, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established
camps in Turkey in 1922 to deal with a refugee crisis in that country and to help prevent disease
and hunger. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless
peoples. The Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to make an inquiry
into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in April 1938 and dissolved in early
1939.
24
The Mandate System
League of Nations Mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the
League of Nations. Previously, the conquered territories were annexed by the conquerers. In
1919, a new device called Mandate System was adopted according to which conquered territories
were to be put under the guardianship of the League of Nations and certain powers were to be
put in charge of those territories to carry on their administration. While appointing a member
country as a mandatory power, its resources, experience, and geographical positions were taken
into account. The mandated territories were considered as a sacred trust of civilisation. These
territories were former colonies of the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire that were placed
under the supervision of the League following World War I. The Permanent Mandates
Commission supervised League of Nations Mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed
territories so that residents could decide which country they would join.
Types of mandates: The exact level of control by the Mandatory power over each mandate was
decided on an individual basis by the League of Nations. However, in every case the Mandatory
power was forbidden to construct fortifications or raise an army within the mandate and was
required to present an annual report on the territory to the League of Nations. Despite this,
mandates were seen as de facto colonies of the empires of the victor nations.The mandates were
divided into three distinct groups based upon the level of development each population had
achieved at that time.
Class A mandates: The first group or Class A mandates were areas formerly controlled by the
Ottoman Empire deemed to "...have reached a stage of development where their existence as
independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative
advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes
of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."
The Class A mandates were:
 Iraq (United Kingdom), 10 August 1920 - 3 October 1932, then an independent kingdom.
 Palestine (United Kingdom), from 25 April 1920 (effective 29 September 1923 - 14 May
1948 to the independence of Israel), till 25 May 1946 including Transjordan (the
Hashemite emirate, later kingdom of Jordan).
 Syria (France), 29 September 1923 - 1 January 1944, including Lebanon; Hatay (a former
Ottoman Alexandretta sandjak) broke away from it and became a French protectorate,
until it was ceded to the republic Turkey.
By 1948 these mandates had been replaced by new monarchies (Iraq, Jordan) and republican
governments (Israel, Lebanon, Syria).
Class B mandates: The second group or Class B mandates were all former German territories in
the SubSaharan regions of West and Central Africa, which were deemed to require a greater
level of control by the mandatory power: "...the Mandatory must be responsible for the
administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and
religion". The mandatory power was forbidden to construct military or naval bases within the
mandates.
The Class B mandates were :
 Ruanda-Urundi (Belgium), formerly two separate German protectorates, joined as a
single mandate from 20 July 1922, but 1 March 1926 - 30 June 1960 in administrative

25
 union with the colony Belgian Congo, since 13 December 1946 a United Nations Trust
Territory (till their separate Independences on 1 July 1962)
 Tanganyika (United Kingdom) from 20 July 1922, 11 December 1946 made a United
Nations trust territory; from 1 May 1961 enjoys self-rule, on 9 December 1961
independence (as dominion), on 9 December 1962 a Republic, in 1964 federated with
Zanzibar, and soon renamed together Tanzania and two former German territories, each
split in a British and a French League of Nations mandate territory, according to earlier
military occupation zones:
 Kamerun was split on 20 July 1922 into British Cameroons (under a Resident) and
French Cameroun (under a Commissioner till 27 August 1940, then under a Governor),
on 13 December 1946 transformed into United Nations Trust Territories, again a British
(successively under senior district officers officiating as Resident, a Special Resident and
Commissioners) and a French Trust (under a Haut Commissaire)
 The former German colony of Togoland was split in British Togoland (under an
Administrator, a post filled by the colonial Governor of the British Gold Coast (present
Ghana) except 30 September 1920 - 11 October 1923 Francis Walter Fillon Jackson) and
French Togoland (under a Commissioner) (United Kingdom and France), 20 July 1922
separate Mandates, transformed on 13 December 1946 into United Nations trust
territories, French Togo Associated Territory (under a Commissioner till 30 August 1956,
then under a High Commissioner as Autonomous Republic of Togo) and British
Togoland (as before; on 13 December 1956 it ceased to exist as it became part of Ghana)
Class C mandates: A final group, the Class C mandates, including South-West Africa and
certain of the South Pacific Islands, were considered to be "best administered under the laws of
the mandatory as integral portions of its territory"
The Class C mandates were former German possessions:
 former German New Guinea (Australia) from 17 December 1920 under a (at first
Military) Administrator; after (wartime) Japanese/U.S. military commands from 8
December 1946 under UN mandate as North East New Guinea (under Australia, as
administrative unit), until it merged into present Papua New Guinea.
 Nauru, formerly part of German New Guinea (Australia in effective control, formally
together with United Kingdom and New Zealand) from 17 December 1920, 1 November
1947 made into a United Nations trust territory (same three powers) till its 31 January
1968 independence as a Republic - all that time under an Administrator
 former German Samoa (New Zealand) 17 December 1920 a League of Nations mandate,
renamed Western Samoa (as opposed to American Samoa), from 25 January 1947 a
United Nations trust territory till its 1 January 1962 independence
 South Pacific Mandate (Japan)
 South-West Africa (South Africa);
o from 1 October 1922 Walvisbaai's administration (still merely having a
Magistrate until its 16 March 1931 Municipal status, thence a Mayor) was also
assigned to South West Africa Mandate
According to the Council of the League of Nations, meeting of August 1920 "draft
mandates adopted by the Allied and Associated Powers would not be definitive until they had
been considered and approved by the League ... the legal title held by the mandatory Power must
26
be a double one: one conferred by the Principal Powers and the other conferred by the League of
Nations,"
Three steps were required to establish a Mandate under international law: (1) The
Principal Allied and Associated Powers confer a mandate on one of their number or on a third
power; (2) the principal powers officially notify the council of the League of Nations that a
certain power has been appointed mandatory for such a certain defined territory; and (3) the
council of the League of Nations takes official cognisance of the appointment of the mandatory
power and informs the latter that it [the council] considers it as invested with the mandate, and at
the same time notifies it of the terms of the mandate, after assertaining whether they are in
conformance with the provisions of the covenant. The Mandate System was critisized as “a
hallow mockery”, “ a hypocritcal sham and designed to disguise old imperialistic wolves in new
sheep’s clothing”.
The Successes of the League
It would be unjust to dismiss the League as a total failure; in fact many of its
commissions and committees achieved valuable results and much was done to foster
international co-operation. One of the most successful was the International Labour Organisation
under its French socialist director, Albert Thomas. Its obejective was to improve the conditions
of labour all over the world by persuading governments to fix maximum working day and week,
specify adequate minimum wages and introduce sickness and unemployment benefits and old
age pensions. It collected and published a vast amount of information and many governments
were prevailed to take upon action. The Refugee Organisation led by a Norweign explorer,
Fridtjof Nansen solved the problems of thousands of war prisoners marooned in Russia after the
war ended. The Health Organisation did good work in investigating the causes of epidemics and
was particularly successful in combating a typhus epidemic in Russia which at one time seemed
likely to engulf Europe. The Mandates Commission supervised the government of the territories
taken away from Germany and Turkey, while another commission was resposible for
administering the Saar to be returned to Germany. Not all were successful, however, the
Disarmament Commission made no progress in the near impossible task of persuading member
states to reduce armaments, though they had all promised to do so when they agreed to the
covenant.
Many political disputes were referred to the League in the early 1920s; in all but two of
the League’s decisions were accepted. For example in the dispute between Sweden and Finland
over the Aland Islands, the decision was in favour of Finland (1920); over the rival claims of
Germany and Poland to the important industrial area of Upper Silesia, the League decided that it
should be partitioned between the two (1921). When the Greeks invaded Bulgaria after some
shooting incidents on the frontier, the League swiftly intervened: Greek troops were withdrawn
and damages paid to Bulgaria (1925). When Turkey claimed the province of Mosul, part of the
Britain mandated territory of Iraq, the League decided in favour of Iraq. Even further afield,
squabbles were settled between Peru and Columbia and between Bolivia and Paraguay. It is
significant, however, that none of these decisions went against a major state, which might have
challened the League’s verdict. In fact during this same period the League twice found itself
overruled by the Conference of Ambassadors based in Paris, which was intended to deal with
problems arising out of the Treaty of Versailles. There were first the rival claims of Poland and
Lithuania to Vilna (1920) followed by the Corfu Incident, a quarrel between Italy under
Mussolini and Greece (1923). The fact that the League seemed unable or unwilling to respond to
these affronts was not a promising sign.

27
Failure of League of Nations
Although The League of Nations has done much that it should be proud of, its failures are
much too noticeable to turn a blinds eye on. At the time of Corfu Incident in1923, many people
wondered what would happen if a powerful state were to challenge the League on an issue of
major importance, for example by invading an innocent country. How effective would League be
then? Unfortunately several such challenges occurred during the 1930s, and on every ocassion
the League was found wanting. Reasons ascribed for this failure are discussed below:
1. An initial disadvantage of the League was that it was too closely linked with the Treaty of
Versailles, giving it the air of being an organisation for the benefit of the victorious powers.
In addition, it had to defend the peace settlement which was far from perfect. Some of the
provisions were bound to cause trouble- for example, the disappointment of Italy and the
inclusion of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
2. The League was dealt a severe blow in March 1920 when the United States Senate rejected
the Versailles Settlement and the League. There were many reasons behind this decision:
many Americans wanted to return to a policy of isolation and feared that membership of the
League might cause them to be embroiled in another war; the Republicans, now in majority
in the Senate, strongly opposed Woodrow Wilson(a Democrat), but he refused to
compromise over either the League Covenant or the terms of the treaties. Thus the League
was deprived of a powerful member whose presence would have been of great psychological
and financial advantage.
3. Germany was not allowed to join the League until 1926 and the USSR became its member
only in 1934(when Germany left), so that for the first few years of its existence the League
was deprived of three of the world’s most important powers.
4. In the early years, the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris was an embarrassment. It was
intended to function only until the League machinery was established, but it lingered on, and
on several ocassion took precedence over League. In 1920 the League supported Lithuania in
her claim to Vilna which had just been taken away from her by the Poles, but then allowed
the Ambassadors to award Vilna to Poland. A later example was the Corfu Incident(1923)
which arose from the boundary dispute between Greece and Albania, in which three Italian
officers working on the boundary commission were killed. Mussolini blamed the Greek
Island of Corfu. Greece appealed to the League, Mussolini refused to recognize its
competence to deal with the problem and threatened to withdraw from the League,
whereupon the Ambassadors ordered Greece to pay the full amount demanded. At this early
stage, however, supporters of the League dismissed these incidents as teething troubles.
5. There were serious weaknesses in the Covenant making it difficult to ensure that decisive
action was taken against any aggressor. It was difficult to achieve unanimous decisions. The
League had no military of its own and through Article 16 expected member states to supply
troops if necessary, a resolution was passed in 1923 that each member would decide for itself
whether or not to fight in a crisis. This clearly made nonsense of the idea of collective
security. Several attempts were made to strengthen the Covenant but these failed because a
unanimous decision was needed to change it and this was never achieved. The most notable
attempt was made in 1924 by the British Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay McDonald, in a
resolution known as Geneva Protocol which pledged members to accept arbitration and help
any victim of unprovoked aggression. With supreme irony, the Conservative government
which followed McDonald informed the League that they could not agree to the protocol;

28
 they were reluctant to commit Britain and the dominions to the defence of all the 1919
frontiers. Unfortunately this left the League as its critics remarked, ‘lacking teeth’.
6. The continued absence of the USA and the USSR plus the hostility of Italy made the League
very much a Franco-British affair, but as their rejection of Geneva Protocol showed, the
British Conservatives were never enthusiastic about the League and preferred to sign the
Locarno Treaties(1925) outside the League instead of conducting negotiations within it.
None of these weaknesses necessarily doomed the League to failure, however, provided all
the members were prepared to refrain from aggression and accept League decisions; between
1925 and 1930 events ran fairly smoothly but unfortunately dictators rose to power in Japan
and Germany together with Italy; they refused to keep up the rules and pursued a series of
actions which revealed the League’s weaknesses.
7. In 1931 Japanese troops invaded the Chinese territory of Manchuria. China appealed to the
League which condemned Japan and ordered her troops to be withdrawn. When Japan
refused, the League appointed a commission under Lord Lytton in1932 which decided that
there were faults on both sides and suggested that Manchuria be governed by the League.
However, Japan rejected this and withdrew from the League (March 1933). The question of
economic sanctions let alone military ones was not raised because Britain and France had
serious economic problems and were reluctant to apply a trade boycott of Japan in case it led
to war, which they were ill-equipped to win, especially without American help. Japan had
sucessfully defied the League, and its prestige was damaged though not yet fatally.
8. The failure of the World Disarmament Conference(1932) which met under the auspices of the
League was a grave disappointment. The Germans asked for equality of armaments with
France, but when the French demanded that this should be postponed for at least eight years,
Hitler was able to use the French attitude as an excuse to withdraw Germany from the
conference and later from the League.
9. The most serious blow was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935. The League
condemned Italy and introduced economic sanctions which, however, did not include a ban
on exports of oil, coal and steel to Italy. So half-hearted were the sanctions that Italy was able
to complete the conquest of Abyssinia without too much inconvenience in May 1936. A few
weeks later sanctions were abandoned and Mussolini had flouted the League. Again Britain
and France must share the blame for League’s failure. Their motives was the desire not to
antagonise Mussolini too much so as to keep him as an ally against the real danger-Germany,
but the results were disastrous: Mussolini was annoyed by the sanctions anyway and began to
draw closer to Hitler. In this way the small states lost all faith in the League and Hitler
himself was encouraged to break the Versailles Treaties. After 1935, therefore, the League
was not taken seriously again.
Demise and Legacy
As the situation in Europe deteriorated into war, the Assembly transferred, on 30
September 1938 and 14 December 1939, enough power to the Secretary General to allow the
League to continue to legally exist and continue with operations on a reduced scale. After this
was completed, the headquarters of the League remained unoccupied for nearly six years until
the Second World War had ended. The final meeting of the League of Nations was held in April
in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly where their first act was the closure
the twentieth meeting, adjourned on 14 December 1939, and opened the twenty-first. This
session concerned itself with liquidating the League, the Palace of Peace was given to the UN,
reserve funds were returned to the nations that had supplied them and the debts of the League

29
were settled. Robert Cecil is said to have summed up the feeling of the gathering during a speech
to the final assembly when he said: “aggression where it occurs and however it may be defended,
is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ
whatever force is necessary to crush it ... that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be
ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers
that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but
even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals,
depend.”The motion that dissolved the League, stating that "The League of Nations shall cease
to exist except for the purpose of the liquidation of its affairs" passed unanimously. The motion
also set the date for the end of the League as the day after the session was closed. On the 18
April 1939 the President of the Assembly, Carl J. Hambro of Norway, declared "the twenty-first
and last session of the General Assembly of the League of Nations closed." As a result the
League of Nations ceased to exist on 19 April 1939.
With the onset of World War II, it had been clear that the League had failed in its purpose
– to avoid any future world war. During the war, neither the League's Assembly nor Council had
been able or willing to meet, and its Secretariat in Geneva had been reduced to a skeleton staff,
with many offices moving to North America. At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied Powers
agreed to create a new body to replace the League. This body was to be the United Nations.
Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and
eventually became affiliated with the UN. The League's assets of $22,000,000 were then
assigned to the U.N.
The structure of the United Nations was intended to make it more effective than the
League. The principal Allies in World War II (UK, USSR, France, U.S., and China) became
permanent members of the UN Security Council, giving the new "Great Powers" significant
international influence, mirroring the League Council. Decisions of the UN Security Council are
binding on all members of the UN; however, unanimous decisions are not required, unlike the
League Council. Permanent members of the UN Security Council were given a shield to protect
their vital interests, which has prevented the UN acting decisively in many cases. Similarly, the
UN does not have its own standing armed forces, but the UN has been more successful than the
League in calling for its members to contribute to armed interventions, such as the Korean War,
and peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia. However, the UN has in some cases been forced to
rely on economic sanctions. The UN has also been more successful than the League in attracting
members from the nations of the world, making it more representative.
Conclusion
According to Pat Buchnan, in the final analysis, it was not the League that failed. It was
the Allies that failed. Neither Britain nor France—nor the United States—was willing to risk war
for high principle, if authenticated that principle jeopardized vital interests. None of the three had
a vital interest in whether or not Japan (or Russia or China) controlled Manchuria. And if the
United States refused to join the League, how could nations object if Germany walked out? As
for Ethiopia, was upholding the principle of non-aggression in Africa worth a war that might
drive Italy into the arms of Nazi Germany? Indeed, the limited sanctions imposed on Italy helped
to create the Rome-Berlin Pact of Steel, that first Axis of Evil. As for Hitler’s military
occupation of the Rhineland, this was a direct challenge to France. But if France, with its huge
army, would not act militarily in its own vital interests, why should anyone else?
Although the League was called a ‘League of Notions’ or a ‘League of Robbers’ and it
was believed that the League could only bark and did not bite, yet it did a lot of work which
proved very significant. There were some quarrels, which the League settled very successfully,
30
yet it had to come forth a number of problems, which it failed to settle at all. On the whole,
according to F.P. Walters, “The League as a working institution is dead, but the ideals which it
sought to promote, the hopes to which it gave rise, the method it devised, the agencies it created,
have become an integral part of the political thinking of the civilized world.”
Suggested Readings
1. Andrew J. Williams, Failed Imagination?: New World Orders of the Twentieth Century,
Manchester University Press, 1998.
2. F. P Walters, A History of the League of Nations, Vol.2, O.U.P, London, 1952.
3. F.S Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times, 1920–1946. New York: Holmes
& Meier, 1986.
4. Frank McDonough, The Origins of the First and Second World Wars (Cambridge
Perspectives in History), 1997.

31
 UNIT III : 1917 RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
(a) ORIGINS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917
Dr. Naveen Vashishta
Introduction
The Russian Revolution was a pivotal event in the history of the twentieth century. It
ushered in an era of ideological conflict culminating in the Cold War and remained an especially
politicized historical event. Only the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 finally
transformed the Russian Revolution into an historical fact. The Russian Revolution of 1917
actually refers to a series of events in imperial Russia that culminated in 1917 with the
establishment of the Soviet state that became known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR). The two successful revolutions of 1917 are referred to collectively as the Russian
Revolution. The first revolution overthrew the autocratic imperial monarchy. It began with a
revolt on February 23 to 27, 1917, according to the Julian, or Old Style, calendar then in use in
Russia10. The second revolution, which opened with the armed insurrection of October 24 and
25, organized by the Bolshevik Party against the Provisional Government, effected a change in
all economic, political, and social relationships in Russian society; it is often designated as the
Bolshevik, or October Revolution.
Causes of the Russian Revolution
Although the events of the Russian Revolution happened abruptly, the causes may be
traced back nearly a century. Prior to 1917 Russian society was undergoing significant changes
that resulted in the crisis of the old order. The new social and economic forces generated by these
changes had different interests and desires. Therefore, by 1917 there emerged an extreme
contradiction and divergence between the old and new Russia. The Russian Revolution
represented the democratic ambitions of these new forces. The Russian state on the other hand
represented the interests of the old ruling classes. The Russian autocracy remained strong on the
support of landed nobility. So there emerged, by 1917, a crisis not only between the old and new
forces but also between these new forces and the Russian state. According to Richard Pipes “The
Russian Revolution of 1917 was not an event or even a process, but a sequence of disruptive and
violent acts that occurred more or less concurrently but involved actors with differing and in
some measure contradictory objectives.” So what were the long and short term causes that led to
this milestone in history? Let us examine these in detail.
1. Autocratic rule and inefficiency of the Tsar
The government in Russia was autocratic without being efficient. The Tsar’s
administration was weak and corrupt. His autocracy had outlived the purpose. The spread of
western ideas led to the development of progressive ideas among the people. The demand for
truly representative body with adequate powers to satisfy the needs of the people was a gathering
force. Instead of fulfilling the demands of the people, Tsar Nicholas II of Romanov dynasty,
announced that he would preserve the principles of autocracy as firmly and unwaveringly as his
predecessor. He kept Constantine Pobedonostev11, the evil genius of Russia, in power. Another

10
On January 31, 1918, the Soviet government adopted the Gregorian, or New Style, calendar, which moved dates
by thirteen days; therefore, in the New Style calendar the dates for the first revolution would be March 8 to 12.
11
Pobedonostev was a strong monarchist with fervent beliefs about which path was in the best interest of Russia. He
was a reactionary and he passed these beliefs to Alexander and then later to Nicholas. According to Pobedonostev,
the monarch's absolute rule was ensured by God. He believed that any infringement on this power was against God's
wishes. He instilled in Nicholas the belief that his most important job was to pass along to his heir the same form of
32
evil genius who exercised great influence on the administration of the Tsar was Gregory
Rasputin.12 The government was run by the bureaucracy who was inflexible and inefficient. It is
true that Russia did come to have its first Parliament (Duma) in 1906. But it did not lead to the
establishment of parliamentary institutions on the English model. It did not have full authority
over legislation and finance. It had no control over the ministry. Even the budget was
safeguarded from parliamentary interference. Due to successive interference of the imperial
government in the elections, the Duma became a reactionary body. All kinds of restrictions were
placed on the individual freedom as well as the freedom of press.
Another weakness of the autocracy was the personality of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas
II himself. Poorly educated, narrow in intellectual perspective, a bad judge of people, isolated
from the Russian society at large and in contact only with the most narrow military and
bureaucratic circles, intimidated by the ghost of his imposing father and helpless under the
destructive influence of his endlessly unfortunate wife: Nicholas II was obviously inadequate to
the demands of his high position and this was an inadequacy for which no degree of charm, of
courtesy of delicacy of manner, could compensate. He was short-sighted and his lack of grasp of
the realities of the life of the country interfering with political process in ways that were for him
absolutely suicidal.
2. Discontent of the Peasantry
The Russian peasants were dissatisfied with the conditions of their life. They were not
happy with the terms of the emancipation settlement13 which freed them from serfdom in 1861
but required them to pay compensation to the landlords for the loss of their labor rights. The
problem was further compounded by the failure of Witte's land reforms of the early 1900s. The
serfs claimed that the release of landlords from their military commitments in the 18 th century
should have automatically liberated them from their periodical obligations which they owed to
the landlords. So they resented the imposition of financial burdens in lieu of labor burdens as a
violation of an implied contract. The exaction of these redemption payments 14 was maintained up
to 1907. Further the peasants were assigned less land than they had previously possessed. The
situation deteriorated because of their inability to make the best use of the soil which they
occupied. The system of cultivation in Russia was backward. The peasants lacked the capital and
technique to raise it to a higher level by adopting the methods of intensive cultivation. The scope
for individual action was further reduced by the system of land ownership which was assigned to
the mir15, by the intermixture of strips into which many of the holdings were divided and by the
status of the peasant household as legal representatives of its members in all property relations.
The root cause of the dissatisfaction of the Russian peasants was the shortage of land.
The peasants cast hungry eyes upon the estates of big landlords. Long before the revolution they
pressed for a fresh allocation of land. Peter Stolypin, prime minister from 1906 to 1911, made
determined efforts to win over the peasants believing that given twenty years of peace there
would be no question of revolution. Redemption payments were abolished and peasants were
encouraged to buy their own land (about 2 million had done so by 1916 and another 3.5 million

absolute power which had been passed to him. "Pobedonostev did succeed in getting some of his ideas into
Nicholas' head, and especially this one: that it was the duty of a Tsar-autocrat to pass on all his powers intact to his
son.”
12
Another figure that played a significant part in causing the Russian revolution. He was a monk in the Russian
Orthodox Church and had increasing importance and influence on the Tsar.
13
It was introduced by Alexander II (1855-1881), the Russian Tsar.
14
The peasants were to pay an annual sum for 49 years to the government, at the end of which time the land was to
be their property.
15
The village community
33
had immigrated to Siberia where they had their own farms). As a result there emerged a class of
comfortably-off peasants (called kulaks) whom, Stolypin hoped; the government could rely on
for support against revolution. By 1911 it was becoming clear that Stolypin's land reforms would
not have the desired result, partly because the peasant population was growing too rapidly (at the
rate of 1.5 million a year) for his schemes to cope with, and because farming methods were too
inefficient to support the growing population comfortably. The assassination of Stolypin in
1911 removed one of the few really able tsarist ministers and perhaps the only man who could
have saved the monarchy
3. Discontent of the Workers
During the concluding years of the 19th century, the Russian industry developed a great
deal. It was owing to several factors. The emancipation of serfs made available a plentiful supply
of cheap labor for the industry. The creation of railways opened up the means of communication
and increased the facilities of transport. Foreign loans provided the necessary basis for large
industrial undertakings. As a result of exceptional growth of industry, factory system grew
rapidly. The industrial workers are always more intelligent and less conservative in their nature
than the rural laborers. The factory system had done away with the isolation of the worker and
brought the great masses of men together. It also gave them an insight of their economic power.
The workers suffered from long hours of work, low wages, brutality, and a system of rapacious
fines. The government was generally blind to the sufferings of the workers. The capitalists
blocked the path of factory reform on the ground of what they termed freedom of the people’s
labor which actually meant the freedom of the strong to exploit the weak. The Russian workmen
sought to redress their grievances through strikes.
The expansion of industry not only created an industrial proletariat, but also called into
existence a class of wealthy manufacturers. Russia thus passed into the stage of capitalism. She
had fallen into the line with western industrialism. Labor for the fast developing industries was
continuously recruited from the rural population. Their abrupt divorce from the land and their
isolation from the educated classes, made the Russian workers hospitable to the revolutionary
ideas. But this advantage was off-set by their illiteracy, backwardness, lack of organizational
abilities and absence of system in labor.
Apart from this, the Russian industry in its techniques and capitalist structure stood at the
level of the advanced countries and even outperformed them in some respects. There was a great
concentration of industry in Russia. Enterprises employing more than a thousand workers
employed 41.4 percent of the Russian labor which meant that there was no transitional layer
between the capitalists and the workers.
Sheila Fitzpatric in her book ‘The Russian Revolution’ states that "...the factory
committees took over [the factories in order] to save the workers from unemployment, when the
owner or manager abandoned the plant or threatened to close it because it was losing money. As
such events became more common, the definition of workers' control moved closer to something
like workers' self-management." She notes that because of the growing disagreement between the
workers and the government, that real grievances were developed and that a program of self-
management became every more necessary in the eyes of the working classes. Instead of foreign
anarchistic elements conspiring to get worker support, it was the conditions in Petrograd that
caused the workers to become more rebellious. Workers angered by "...the Bolsheviks [who had
gained] influence in the factory committees...[that] there was an emerging sense in the working
class that 'soviet power' meant that the workers should be sole masters in the district, the city,
and perhaps the country as a whole...this was closer to anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism than to
Bolshevism, and the Bolshevik leaders did not in fact share the view that direct workers’
34
democracy through factory committees and the soviets was a plausible or desirable alternative to
their own concept of party-led 'proletarian dictatorship."
4. Spread of Socialism
As the industrialization of Russia began to make great progress there arose a new
generation of industrial workers who had to work hard in the crowded towns under
circumstances which made their lives an intolerable burden. Naturally it was from this class that
the message of socialism met with a heavy response. In the 1890’s the teachings of Marx 16 were
popularized and spread by radicals like the novelist Maxim Gorkey, and revolutionary socialism
made rapid progress among factory workers, winning over many of the intelligentsia, to its
cause. In 1895 was founded the Workmen’s Social Democratic Party with a programme similar
to that of the socialists in other countries. The peasantry now led by middle-class radicals,
emulated the example of the urban proletariat and in 1901 organized a Social Revolutionary
Party with a platform that included the confiscation of the large estates of the nobility and their
division into small individual holdings. The party believed in terrorism as a weapon, though they
kept it for the present in reserve. Thus was set on foot a revolutionary movement which aimed at
reconstructing the social and political systems of Russia on socialist principles. In 1903 there
was a split in the Social Democratic Party on the questions of party discipline and tactics, and its
radical section led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov popularly known as Lenin, seceded from the main
body. This section came to be known as Bolsheviks (men of majority) and the more moderate
wing of the party came to be known as Mensheviks (minority men). As a party the Bolsheviks
remained far inferior in numbers to the Mensheviks, although they had secured the majority on
the questions which caused their secession. Both believed in strikes and revolution, but the
Bolsheviks felt it was essential to win the support of peasants as well as industrial workers,
whereas the Mensheviks, doubting the value of peasant support, favored close co-operation with
the middle class; Lenin was strongly opposed to this. In 1912 appeared the new Bolshevik
newspaper Pravda (Truth), which was extremely important as a means of publicizing Bolshevik
ideas and giving political direction to the already developing strike wave.
5. Demands for liberal reforms by the new middle classes
When the twentieth century opened the challenge to autocracy in Russia came more from
liberalism than socialism. The industrial revolution had created well-developed and energetic
middle class, and merchants, factory-owners and other businessmen joined hands with
intellectual liberals in demanding some system of representative government. The Zemstva 17 also
became active and drew up a definite programme of reform demanding a freely elected national
assembly, a responsible ministry, equality of all citizens and freedom of the press, of religion and
of speech. But Tsar Nicholas II, who was under the influence of the reactionary minister Plehve,
turned a deaf ear to these demands. The Russian government failed to recognize that the people
had outgrown the necessity of an autocrat and that the old bottles would not contain the new
wine. Hence it continued to be oppressive and repressive quite unmindful of the gathering storm.
The stubbornness of the Tsar and his blindness to the potential strength of the new forces that

16
Karl Marx wrote “Communist Manifesto” which is known as the ‘Bible of Russian Revolution’. In this book
Marx declared that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. He predicted that in the
ongoing struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the latter was bound to win, leading to the
establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat which in turn would finally give place to a classless society.
17
The reform of 1864 created district and provincial assemblies (Zemstva). The members of the district assemblies
were elected by the inhabitants of each rural district, peasants and nobles alike. Members of the district assemblies
then elected delegates of the provincial assemblies. This system of election tended to cut down the power of the
nobles and gave more political right to the non-noble classes.
35
were surging around him, were among the important causes which produced the Russian
Revolution.
6. The Revolution of 1905
The Revolution of 1905 proved a dress rehearsal of the Revolution of 1917. The storm
that had been brewing burst forth in 1905 when the government stood discredited by its failure in
the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian army suffered heavy reverses in the war. This had further
strength the revolutionary movement in Russia. There were agitations and disturbances all over
the country. On 9th January 1905, a mass of peaceful workers with their wives and children was
fired at in St. Petersburg while on its way to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Tsar.
More than a thousand of them were killed and thousand of others were wounded. This day is
known as Bloody Sunday. The news of the killings provoked unprecedented disturbances
throughout Russia. Even the sections of the army and navy revolted. A new form of organization
called the ‘Soviet’, or the council of worker’s representatives was developed in this revolution
which proved decisive in the upheaval of 1917. Soviet of peasants was also formed. The
Zemstvos demanded reforms, the workman struck work, and the peasantry plundered the
landlords. Unable to suppress the growing disorders the Tsar promised reforms and announced
the summoning of a Duma or national assembly18. But the experiment of reconciling
parliamentary government with autocracy ended in failure. Taking advantage of the divisions in
the rank of the opposition the Tsar reduced the Duma to a mere consultative body and was able
to secure the triumph of autocracy. By 1906, the revolutionary wave had spent its main force and
reaction was in full swing. The government under the influence of Stolypin continued the policy
of alternate (sometimes combined) repression and concession, and the hatred aroused by the
former more than undid any benefits from the latter.
7. The attempt to diminish the power of the Duma (Russian Parliament)
No sooner had the 1905 Revolution died out than Nicholas II thought of withdrawing the
liberal concessions from the people. Before the first Duma met, the government propagated the
constitution the Fundamental Laws. The Tsar was described as 'the supreme autocratic power' in
the constitution. He kept huge executive and legislative powers, including the control of the army
and foreign policy, the right to dissolve the Duma and to dismiss his ministers.
The Duma was to consist of the Upper and Lower Chambers. Half of the members of the
Upper Chamber were appointed by the Tsar. Although the Lower Chamber was elected by wide
male suffrage and secret voting, the elaborate system of indirect voting favored the wealthier
class. The voters first voted for the electors who then voted for those further electors who could
finally vote for the members of the Duma. This system of election favored the wealthier class
who had the freedom to take part in a series of elections. The wealthier class was usually
conservative in their political outlook and inclined to support the Tsar. Thus the autocratic power
of the Tsar was well-protected by the undemocratic provisions of the constitution.
The First Duma took place in May-July 1906. Even though indirect voting favoured the
wealthier and politically conservative classes 19, the majority of the people elected to sit in the
First Duma were anti-government. The First Duma consisted of the members of the following
groups: the Constitutional Democrats or Cadets 20, the Octobrists21, the national groups, the labor

18
This was a supposed ‘parliament’ that could only give advice to the Tsar and this was ignored – members who
opposed the Tsar were executed or imprisoned.
19
The conservative classes comprised the landowners, rich merchants and pro-Tsarist supporters.
20
The Cadets comprised liberals who demanded the establishment of a parliament, with legislative power. Their
views were very much like those of the British liberals.
36
group, the peasant members22, a few Social Democrats (The socialist parties boycotted the first
election because they had not forgotten the suppression of St. Petersburg and the Moscow
Soviets. But a few Social Democrats disobeyed the order of the Party and took part in the
elections.) The largest party was the Cadets. These political groups and parties demanded
ministerial responsibility and full control of all affairs of the state, including taxation. In other
words, they wanted a constitutional monarchy. The Tsar promptly dissolved the Duma. On the
whole the First Duma lasted for 73 days.
In the election of the Second Duma the Tsar intimidated many anti-government voters to
give up their candidature or their right to vote. But intimidation was useless. Many anti-
government candidates were elected to the Second Duma. Most threatening to the Tsar, 65 Social
Democrats were elected. The Social Democrats made demands to liberalize the Tsarist
government. As a result, the Second Duma met the same fate as the First Duma. Within 3 months
(March-June, 1907), it was again dissolved by the Tsar.
The Tsar was firm not to face a rebellious Duma again. He altered the franchise to
deprive many of the peasants and non-Russian nationalities of the vote and to give so many votes
to the wealthy landowners as to assure that 60 percent of the seats of the Duma were taken up by
them23. Because of the new franchise system, most of the men elected into the Duma were
government supporters.
The Third Duma (1907-1912) and the Fourth Duma (1912-1917) served their period of
office of five years. They were dominated by the Octobrists and the Monarchists. The Cadets and
the handful of socialists occupied about one quarter of the seats in the Duma. As the Duma grew
conservative in its composition, the frustration among the Russian masses found little chance of
expression in the Duma. Many of the Russian people turned against Tsardom again.
Despite the promises of the October Manifesto that civil liberties would be granted to the
people, a policy of repression was adopted by Stolypin, Prime Minister from 1906 to 1911. He
was infamous for persecuting the Jews and ruthless treatment of rioters in the countryside. To
punish the Finnish nationalists, he deprived Finland of independence. Many Social Democrats,
including Lenin, were deported.
8. Discontent of the non-Russian National Minorities
The Russian Empire was a multi-ethnic Empire. Nearly half of the population of Russia
was made up of national minorities like Poles, Finns, Jews, Latvians and Lithuanians. If the
Russian government had wished it could have done everything to reconcile them to the Russian
state and play them off against potential rebellious central Great Russian group. But the Tsar’s
government did neither; it instead followed the policy of forceful ‘Russification’ 24 towards them.
The publication of newspapers and books in the languages of non-Russian nationalities was
completely forbidden. Instructions could not be imparted to students in the schools in their native
languages. Russian government intentionally promoted contempt and hatred for the non-
Russians. Russian population was made to look upon them as aliens and as inferior races. Most
of the highly placed government officials were Russians and the entire business in the numerous

21
The Octobrists were the right-wing liberals. They were well-satisfied with the October Manifesto and would not
ask for more political rights.
22
The national groups represented the national minorities. The labour group and the peasant members represented
those peasants and workers who did not join the Social Revolutionary Party and the Social Democratic Party
23
According to the government decree of 1907, the Duma should be elected on a class basis by a number of
electoral colleges. The wealthier landowners were to choose 60 per cent of the electors, the peasants 22 per cent, the
merchants 15 per cent, and the working men 3 per cent.
24
It means suppression of the languages and literatures and cultures of other nationalities.
37
organs of the administration was conducted in the Russian language. Russian officials spared no
effort in insulting, humiliating and oppressing the non-Russian nationalities. They had to suffer
untold miseries at the hands of Tsardom, which has rightly called as the ‘hangman and torturer of
the non-Russian peoples.’ As a result a high percentage of members of national minorities
participated in the revolution.
Freedom from national oppression in the Tsarist Empire coincided with the victory of the
socialist revolution. Apart from the disaffection felt by the peoples of the Baltic region, Central
Asia, Transcaucasia and other areas as a result of political and cultural bias, the economic
backwardness that Tsarist economic policies involved for these regions ensured that they
remained primarily agricultural with a strong stake in the land question. There surfaced strong
movements for national self-determination, demanding rights for their own languages, culture,
equal opportunities and even a separate political identity. The Bolsheviks supported land for the
peasant as well as the right to secession and a voluntary union. The peasantry in these areas
played a vital role in the victory of the socialist alternative to the Tsarist autocracy, completely
evading all liberal solutions to nationalist objectives.
9. Economic Crisis
The economic causes of the Russian Revolution were based mainly on the Tsar's mis-
management, compounded by World War I. More than fifteen million men joined the army,
which left an insufficient number of workers in the factories and on the farms. The result was
widespread shortages of food and materials. Factory workers had to bear terrible working
conditions, including twelve to fourteen hour days and low wages. Many riots and strikes for
better conditions and higher wages broke out. Although some factories agreed to the requests for
higher wages, wartime inflation quashed the increase. Prices rose high because all kinds of goods
and food became scarce during the war. In general, the price rose by 500 - 700 per cent between
1914 and 1917. The scarcity of food and all kinds of goods were due to the following reasons: (i)
Russia was cut off from outside aid by the blockade of the Central Powers; (ii) the transport
system was poor; (iii) the devastation of the wheat-growing Ukraine early in the war; (iv) the
factories had to manufacture military goods to meet the needs of the unnaturally large army25.
Because of the exorbitant prices of bread, many Russian people were hungry. Hunger led to
waves of strikes of workers who cried out not only economic demands but also political
demands: "Down with the Tsar".
There was one protest to which Nicholas II responded with violence in response,
industrial workers went on strike and effectively paralyzed the railway and transportation
networks. What few supplies were available could not be effectively transported. As goods
became more and more scarce, prices skyrocketed. By 1917, famine threatened many of the
larger cities. Nicholas's failure to solve his country's economic suffering and communism's
promise to do just that comprised the core of the revolution.
10. The Impact of the First World War
The outbreak of war in August 1914 initially served to quiet the prevalent social and
political protests, focusing hostilities against a common external enemy, but this patriotic unity
did not last for very long. As the war dragged on inconclusively, war-weariness gradually took
its toll. More important, though, was this deeper fragility: although many ordinary Russians
joined anti-German demonstrations in the first few weeks of the war, the most popular reaction

25
Because Russia was industrially backward, she found it necessary to recruit a large army to fight against Germany
so that her superiority in numbers could compensate her deficiency in equipment. By 1917 about fifteen million
were recruited 37% of the male population of working age. This led to labor shortage and less production in
factories.
38
appears to have been skepticism and fatalism. Hostility toward the Germany and the desire to
defend their land and their lives did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for the Tsar or the
government.
Russia's first major battle of the war was a disaster: in the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg,
over 120,000 Russian troops were killed, wounded or captured, while Germany suffered just
20,000 casualties. In the autumn of 1915, Nicholas II had taken direct command of the army,
personally overseeing Russia's main theatre of war and leaving his ambitious but incapable wife
Alexandra in charge of the government. Reports of corruption and incompetence in the Imperial
government began to emerge, and the growing influence of Gregori Rasputin in the Imperial
family was widely resented. In 1915, things took a critical turn for the worse when Germany
shifted its focus of attack to the Eastern front. The superior German army which was better led,
trained and supplied was terrifyingly effective against the ill-equipped Russian forces, and, by
the end of October 1916, Russia had lost between 1,600,000 and 1,800,000 soldiers, with an
additional 2,000,000 prisoners of war and 1,000,000 missing, all making up a total of nearly
5,000,000 men. These staggering losses played a definite role in the mutinies which began to
occur and, in 1916, reports of fraternizing with the enemy started to circulate. Soldiers went
hungry, and they lacked shoes, munitions, and even weapons. Widespread discontent lowered
morale, only to be further undermined by a series of military defeats.
Casualty rates were the most vivid sign of this disaster. Already, by the end of 1914, only
five months into the war, nearly 400,000 Russian men had lost their lives and nearly 1,000,000
were injured. Far sooner than expected, scarcely-trained recruits had to be called up for active
duty, a process repeated throughout the war as staggering losses continued to mount. The officer
class also saw remarkable turnover, especially within the lower echelons, which were quickly
filled with soldiers rising up through the ranks. These men, usually of peasant or worker
backgrounds, were to play a large role in the politicization of the troops in 1917.
The huge losses on the battlefields were not limited to men, however. The army quickly
ran short of rifles and ammunition (as well as uniforms and food), and, by mid-1915, men were
being sent to the front bearing no arms; it was hoped that they could equip themselves with the
arms that they recovered from fallen soldiers, of both sides, on the battlefields. With patently
good reason, the soldiers did not feel that they were being treated as human beings, or even as
valuable soldiers, but, rather, as raw materials to be squandered for the purposes of the rich and
powerful. By the spring of 1915, the army was in steady retreat -- and it was not always orderly:
desertion, plunder and chaotic flight were not uncommon. By 1916, however, the situation had
improved in many respects. Russian troops stopped retreating, and there were even some modest
successes in the offensives that were staged that year, albeit at great loss of life. Also, the
problem of shortages was largely solved by a major effort to increase domestic production.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1916, morale among soldiers was even worse than it had been during
the great retreat of 1915. The fortunes of war may have improved, but the fact of the war, still
draining away strength and lives from the country and its many individuals and families,
remained an oppressive unavoidability. The crisis in morale (as was argued by Allan Wildman, a
leading historian of the Russian army in war and revolution) "was rooted fundamentally in the
feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory
could be achieved."
The war was devastating, of course, and not only to soldiers. By the end of 1915, there
were many signs that the economy was breaking down under the heightened strain of wartime
demand. The main problems were food shortages and rising prices. Inflation propelled real
incomes down at an alarmingly rapid rate, and shortages made it difficult to buy even what one

39
could afford. These shortages were especially a problem in the capital, Petrograd 26, where
distance from supplies and poor transportation networks made matters particularly bad. Shops
closed early or entirely for lack of bread, sugar, meat and other provisions, and lines lengthened
massively for what remained. It became increasingly difficult both to afford and actually buy
food. Not surprisingly, strikes increased steadily from the middle of 1915, and so did crime; but,
for the most part, people suffered and endured -- scourging the city for food -- working-class
women in Petrograd reportedly spent about forty hours a week in food lines --, begging, turning
to prostitution or crime, tearing down wooden fences to keep stoves heated for warmth,
complaining about the rich, and wondering when and how this would all come to an end. With
good reason, the government officials responsible for public order worried about how long the
people's patience would last. A report by the Petrograd branch of the security police, the
Okhrana, in October 1916, warned quite bluntly of "the possibility in the near future of riots by
the lower classes of the empire enraged by the burdens of daily existence.”
Nicholas II was blamed for all of these crises, and what little support he had left began to
crumble. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in November 1916. It
stated that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the country unless a constitutional form of
government was put in place. In typical fashion, however, Nicholas ignored them, and Russia's
Tsarist regime collapsed a few months later during the February Revolution of 1917. One year
later, the Tsar and his entire family were executed. Ultimately, Nicholas's inept handling of his
country and the War destroyed the Tsars and ended up costing him both his rule and life.
Conclusion
In conclusion we can say that there were many reasons for a revolution in Russia. Some
were political, others were social and economic, but they all had something in common - they all
helped to dethrone Tsar Nicholas II. Russia in the early 20th century covered a huge area that
was a large proportion of the Asian continent and one very powerful man, the Tsar Nicholas II,
ruled it all. Most of the country was living in poverty in overcrowded areas, working with the
same system as in medieval times, and being paid very little. There were only two industrial
cities, Petrograd and Moscow, with the rest of it countryside slums. Nicholas had a tough time
ruling over this huge country, nearly 8000km across with tens of millions of people, which
stretched from Poland nearly to Alaska. We can be sympathetic towards him because of the size
of his empire but some of his problems were his own fault. He was a strict autocrat - giving the
people no power or control over their lives. His decision to go to the war in 1914 proved
disastrous for the imperial regime. According to Richard Pipes “Had it not been World War 1,
the Russian Imperial government might have muddled through and in time yielded to some kind
of parliamentary regime. ”
Suggested Readings
1. Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1994
2. Orlando Figes, A People’s tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London, 1996.
3. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution 1899-1919, London, 1990.
4. J.L.H.Keep, The Russian Revolution a Study in Mass Mobilization, London 1976.
5. John Merriman, History of Modern Europe, From French Revolution to the Present, Vol.II,
1996.
6. Norman Lowe, Mastering Modern World History(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).
7. Clive Emsley, Conflict and Stability in Europe, Routledge, 1979
8. IGNOU Study Material, EHI-01 & EHI-07.
26
Formerly the City of St. Petersburg
40
 (b) COURSE OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON RUSSIA AND
WORLD
Dr. Naveen Vashishta
Stages of Russian Revolution
A. The First Stage – The Fall of Tsardom
On March 8, 1917, the first street disturbances broke out in Petrograd. It was sparked off
by the shortage of bread. After a few days came the demand; ‘Down with the Autocracy’. There
were red flags all over the city. Soon it spread to other cities and also to the countryside. The
Tsar ordered his troops to suppress the strikers. The troops at first fired on the strikers but then
refused to do so and fraternized instead. When the Petrograd troops turned to the side of these
hungry strikers on March 10, it meant that the army which had been used to preserve the
autocratic monarchy would not protect the Tsar. On March 12, the Tsar ordered the Fourth Duma
to suspend its sessions. The Duma refused to obey the orders. Since both the upper and lower
classes did not accept the rule of the Tsar, his rule was over.
The top generals of the army informed the Nicholas II that the well-being of the nation
and the successful pursuit of war required his abdication so in order to pacify the discontent of
his people he renounced the throne in favour of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich
(1878–1918). The latter, however, decided against accepting the crown saying that he would do
so only at the request of a future constituent assembly. The provisional government, except for
the addition of the socialist leader Kerensky, was made up of the same liberal leaders who had
organized the progressive bloc in the Duma in 1915. The prime minister, Prince Lvov, was a
wealthy landowner and a member of the Constitutional Democratic (or Cadet) party, which
favored an immediate constitutional monarchy and ultimately a republic. Lvov was largely a
figurehead; the outstanding personality in the government was Milyukov (1859–1943), minister
of foreign affairs and strongest leader of the Cadet party since its founding in 1905. He played
the principal role in formulating policy. Kerensky, the minister of justice, who had been leader of
the Trudovik (“laborite”) faction in the Duma, was the only representative of moderate socialist
opinion in the provisional government. But his brother knew that there was widespread hatred of
Tsardom. Thus on March 16, 1917, the Romanov dynasty came to an end and Russia lost the
pivot around which its political life revolved for three centuries (1613-1917).
The March Revolution was a spontaneous revolution set off by the lower classes. It came
as a result of their deep-seated hatred of the Tsars who deprived them of political freedom, and
brought them severe economic sufferings and military defeats. The First World War brought the
dissatisfaction of the Russians to a head. The Russian masses made the revolution impulsively
without any leadership from the revolutionary parties.
B. The Second Stage – Dual Power (dvoevlastie)
(1) Two Parallel Developments
On March 12, a group of Duma deputies, rejecting the Tsar's order to dissolve,
constituted a Provisional Government and assumed the interim responsibility for public order.
On March 11, the hungry strikers and the Petrograd troops had set up the Petrograd Soviet of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Workers and soldiers in other places followed their example
and also set up soviets to take over functions of local governments. These soviets were popularly
elected by the masses and so enjoyed more popular support than the Provisional Government
which represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landlords. This situation was one of
‘dual power’.
41
 The Provisional Government, formed under the premiership of Prince Lvov, was
recognized as the legal authority by both the foreign governments and the soviets in Russia. The
foreign governments recognized the Provisional Government because it advocated those
democratic principles close to British and American democracy. The soviets accepted the
legality of the Provisional Government on condition that it did not go against the aims of the
soviets. A curious situation arose: the Provisional Government ruled the country with full
support only of the middle classes; the soviets got the majority support from the people but did
not want to rule the country. Thus, the rule of the Provisional Government had to depend upon
the conditional support of the soviets.
(2) The Attempts of the Provisional Government to Preserve Its Own Power
The Provisional Government tried to strengthen its authority by various means but all of
her efforts gave more chances for the political opponents to attack it.
(i) The granting of political freedom- Many of the members of the Provisional Government
were middle-class liberals. They believed in political democracy. Thus the Provisional
Government granted an official pardon to political prisoners, cancelled the discriminatory
legislation, introduced the eight-hour day, legalized strikes, and granted freedom of the press,
speech and assembly. The ethnic minorities received autonomy. The political prisoners were
allowed to return to Russia. Thus the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had full freedom to attack the
Provisional Government as soon as they returned from their exiles.
(ii) Compromise with the Soviets-The Petrograd Soviet declared that it would support the
Provisional Government if it approved the latter's action. On March 14, the Soviet issued the
Army Order No. 1. According to this order, the soldiers should send their representatives to the
Petrograd Soviet should elect their own committees to run their military units and should take
orders only from the Petrograd Soviet. In short, the Provisional Government had to share her
control of the Russian army with the Petrograd Soviet. Since the Petrograd Soviet did not
encourage the army to fight and so there was a further decline in the fighting spirit of the army.
(iii) The continuation of the war-The Provisional Government decided to continue the war.
They still thought that if they could win the war, they could gain the support of the Russian
people. Moreover, they hoped to honor their international obligations with the Allied countries--
Britain and France, for example, the Anglo-Russian Entente and the French-Russian Alliance. .
Besides all these, the Provisional Government hoped to get Constantinople. Thus the Provisional
Government fought many battles in May and June, although the Russian army was unwilling to
fight.
In July, the Russian forces were mobilized for a 'July offensive in Galacia'. Russian
forces suffered heavy losses. People at the front and behind the front turned to the Bolsheviks
because they demanded the immediate ending of the war.
(iv) The calling of the Constituent Assembly-Soon after the March Revolution, the Provisional
Government promised to call a Constituent Assembly to be elected by universal manhood
suffrage. The general public hoped that the election for the Constituent Assembly would be held
as soon as possible.
The peasants expected that once the Constituent Assembly was called, it would legalize
the confiscation and distribution of the landlords' estates. To the great disappointment of the
Russian people, the Provisional Government hesitated to call the Constituent Assembly due to
the turmoil within the country. Meanwhile the prices of food and other daily necessities
continued to rise, this turned many Russians against the Provisional Government.

42
 To sum up, the Provisional Government which had support from the upper and middle
classes could only prolong its rule by getting the support from the masses. The continuation of
the war and the failure to tackle with the economic questions of the day alienated the masses
from the Provisional Government. Under this situation, any political party professing to satisfy
these needs of the masses would be welcomed and could easily seize political power. The
Bolsheviks led by Lenin seized this opportunity.
C. The Third Stage – Lenin’s return (April 1917) and internal split within the Provisional
Government (August 1917)
(1) Lenin's Return- When the March Revolution broke out, the prominent leaders of the
Bolshevik Party were in exile. In April, Lenin returned to Russia with the help of the German
government because the latter thought that they could make use of Lenin's anti-war propaganda
to weaken the Provisional Government's will and ability to fight 27. As expected, Lenin
immediately launched his antiwar attack on the Government upon his arrival at Finland Station
in Russia. He demanded the Provisional Government to give 'All power to the Soviets' 28. He
convinced his Bolshevik supporters that the seizure of power by the soviets would be the signal
for a European-wide socialist revolution. To prepare for the seizure of power, his Bolshevik
supporters set out to win support from the masses in the soviets. Up to June, their efforts were
not very successful. When the First All Russian Congress of Soviets met in the capital, the Social
Revolutionaries (285 deputies) and the Mensheviks (245 deputies) still dominated the soviets 29.
The Bolsheviks had 105 deputies in the Congress.
From June onwards the situation began to change. A number of moderate Socialists took
part in the Provisional Government. Kerensky, a leading member of the Social Revolutionary
Party, even became the Prime Minister of the government. He was responsible for continuing to
send the poorly-equipped troops into battle and inviting the Mensheviks to take part in the
administration. Thus the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were discredited in the eyes
of the Russian people as they were identified with the unpopular Provisional Government.
Although the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks represented the interests of the people
but they failed to realize that the time was ripe for the socialist revolution i.e. the second stage of
the revolution. They did not see that the bourgeoisie was already in opposition to a further
progress of the revolution. Only the Bolsheviks realized all this. They were the only political
party to give voice to the aspirations of the people and put forward the demand of the time. The
popularity of the Bolshevik Party rose as a result of its antiwar policy. They demanded land for
the peasants; workers control over industries; the right of nations to self-determination; and
above all bread. ‘Peace! Land! Bread! Democracy!’ became the popular slogans. Thus the
Bolsheviks had a popular base.
(2) Lenin's setback- The Bolsheviks were soon involved in a spontaneous rising of the workers
in July. Kerensky immediately seized this opportunity to suppress the Bolshevik Party. Lenin

27
Being a socialist, Lenin adopted an antiwar policy during the First World War. He advocated that the First World
War was a fight among the capitalistic government for influence and power. The workers should not assist them. As
a proponent of withdrawing Russia from the Great War, the Germans were willing to facilitate Lenin's passage back
via a 'sealed train'.
28
Other demands of Lenin included the speedy conclusion of the war without annexation, the renunciation of all
secret diplomatic agreements, the control of factories by workers and the immediate seizure of land by peasants.)
29
Soon after the Revolution, the soviets of the masses came under the control of the Social Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
43
escaped to Finland and Trotsky was imprisoned30. The Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, was
suppressed. The growing influence of the Bolsheviks came to a halt for a short while, but soon
the Bolsheviks had their chance to seize power again.The Bolsheviks quickly revived their
influence when the Provisional Government had to make use of the military support of the
Bolshevik workers in Petrograd to defeat a coup d'etat by a right-wing politician named Kornilov
in August31.
D. The Fourth Stage-The November Revolution (September-November 1917)
Kornilov's coup, combined with more battle defeats by the Germans and the failure of the
government to solve the economic problems of the workers and peasants, produced a decisive
swing of opinion in Petrograd towards the Bolsheviks. In September, the Bolsheviks, for the first
time, won a majority in both the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. Trotsky, released from prison,
was elected as the President of the Petrograd Soviet. Seeing that the prestige of the Provisional
Government was at its lowest ebb, Lenin made the decision to seize power on October 20. A
'Military Revolutionary Committee' was set up for the coup d'etat.
On November 6, under the direction of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Red
Guards and the regular troops occupied the key points in Petrograd. (The regular troops in
Petrograd and Moscow were won over because of the propaganda against the war policy of Lvov
and Kerensky.) The Provisional Government, like the Tsarist government before them, offered
almost no resistance. Kerensky escaped from Russia and power passed to the soviets.
On November 7, in the evening, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in
Petrograd and approved by a two-thirds of the coup. (Lenin had manipulated the Congress in
such a way as to dominate it.) The Congress elected the Council of People's Commissars as the
executive body of the Soviets. Lenin was the Chairman of the Commissars, Trotsky was the
Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Stalin was the Commissar for Nationalities 32.
Summary of the 1917 Revolutions
The two revolutions in 1917 were of different character. The first was a spontaneous
revolution made by the masses. They hated the reactionary monarchy for its suppression of
personal liberty and its general backwardness. The Provisional Government, soon set up,
consisted chiefly of liberal bourgeoisie33. They wanted to create a democratic republic similar to
that of the United States and France. They wanted to give to the Russians those political liberties
and civil liberties as enjoyed by the Western countries. They regarded Russia as an ally of the
western democratic nations and deemed it necessary to continue the war against Germany. But
the middle class had neglected the land hunger and war-weariness of the masses.
The masses gradually turned to the Bolsheviks. The peasants welcomed the Bolsheviks'
slogan 'peace, land and bread'. The workers welcomed the Bolsheviks slogan 'All power to the
Soviets'. Popularity of the Bolsheviks increased when there was rapid inflation at home and more
military defeats at the front. The number of party members increased tenfold between January
and August 191734. When the Provisional Government was digging its own grave by an internal

30
Trotsky was a Marxist and for a long time worked as an independent revolutionary in Russia. Before 1914 he had
attempted to bring about great cooperation between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, but he failed. In 1917, after
the March Revolution, he returned from exile in America. In July, he decided to join the Bolsheviks.
31
The right-wing politicians believed that a left-wing revolution was imminent. So Kornilov decided to move his
troops towards Petrograd. He wanted to set up a military dictatorship to forestall a left-wing revolution.
32
Stalin arrived from Siberia after the March Revolution and took a leading role in carrying out the coup d'etat.
33
The Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks joined the Provisional Government only after July 1917.
34
The Bolsheviks had 200,000 members in August.
44
split in August, Lenin made use of his well-organized and highly disciplined party to seize power
at once35. Lenin's coup d'etat was a planned revolution and his intention was to set up a socialist
society in Russia. This was how the first communist government set up in the world.
Brief Chronology Leading to Revolution of 1917 36
Date(s) Event(s)
1855 Start of reign of Tsar Alexander II.
1861 Emancipation of the serfs.
1874–81 Growing anti-government terrorist movement and government reaction.
1881 Alexander II assassinated by revolutionaries; succeeded by Alexander III.
1883 First Russian Marxist group formed.
1894 Start of reign of Nicholas II.
1898 First Congress of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP).
1900 Foundation of Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR).
1903 Second Congress of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Beginning of split
between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
1904–5 Russo-Japanese War; Russia loses war.
1905 Russian Revolution of 1905.
January: Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.
June: Battleship Potemkin uprising at Odessa on the Black Sea
October: general strike, St. Petersburg Soviet formed; October Manifesto: Imperial agreement on
elections to the State Duma.
1906 First State Duma. Prime Minister: Peter Stolypin. Agrarian reforms begin.
1907 Second State Duma, February–June.
1907 Third State Duma, until 1912.
1911 Stolypin assassinated.
1912 Fourth State Duma, until 1917. Bolshevik/Menshevik split final.
1914 Germany declares war on Russia.
1915 Serious defeats, Nicholas II declares himself Commander in Chief. Progressive Bloc
formed.
1916 Food and fuel shortages and high prices.
1917 Strikes, mutinies, street demonstrations lead to the fall of autocracy.

35
The other socialist parties (the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries) had a wrong belief that their historical
hours had not yet arrived. They allowed the bourgeois government to stay in power. They still thought a socialist
revolution would only take place after a period of bourgeois rule.
36
Dates are correct for the Julian calendar, which was used in Russia until 1918. It was twelve days behind the
Gregorian calendar during the 19th century and thirteen days behind it during the 20th century.

45
Expanded chronology of Revolution of 1917
Gregorian Date Julian Date Event
January Strikes and unrest in Petrograd
February February Revolution
th rd
March 8 February 23 International Women's Day: Strikes and demonstrations in
Petrograd, growing over the next few days.
March 11th February 26th 50 demonstrators killed in Znamenskaya Square. Tsar
Nicholas II prorogue the State Duma and orders
commander of Petrograd military district to suppress
disorders with force.
March 12th February 27th Troops refuse to fire on demonstrators, desertions. Prison,
courts, and police stations attacked and looted by angry
crowds.
Okhranka buildings set on fire. Garrison joins
revolutionaries.
Petrograd Soviet formed.
Formation of Provisional Committee of the Duma by
liberals from Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets).

March 14th March 1st Order No.1 of the Petrograd Soviet

th nd
March 15 March 2 Nicholas II abdicates. Provisional Government formed
under Prime Minister Prince Lvov.
April 16th April 3rd Return of Lenin to Russia. He publishes his April Thesis
rd th th st
May 3 –4 April 20 –21 "April Days": mass demonstrations by workers, soldiers,
and others in the streets of Petrograd and Moscow
triggered by the publication of the Foreign Minister
Miliukov's note to the allies, which was interpreted as
affirming commitment to the war policies of the old
government. First Provisional Government falls
May 18th May 5th First Coalition Government forms when socialists,
representatives of the Soviet leadership, agree to enter the
cabinet of the Provisional Government. Kerensky, the
only socialist already in the government, made minister of
war and navy.
June 16th June 3rd First All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies opens in Petrograd. Closed on 24th. Elects
Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK), headed
by Mensheviks and SRs.
June 23rd June 10th Planned Bolshevik demonstration in Petrograd banned by
the Soviet.
June 29th June 16th Kerensky orders offensive against Austro-Hungarian
forces. Initial success only.
46
July 1st June 18th Official Soviet demonstration in Petrograd for unity is
unexpectedly dominated by Bolshevik slogans: "Down
with the Ten Capitalist Ministers", "All Power to the
Soviets".
July 15th July 2nd Russian offensive ends. Trotsky joins Bolsheviks.

July 16th–17th July 3rd–4th The "July Days"; mass armed demonstrations in
Petrograd, encouraged by the Bolsheviks, demanding "All
Power to the Soviets".
July 19th July 6th German and Austro-Hungarian counter-attack. Russians
retreat in panic, sacking the town of Tarnopol. Arrest of
Bolshevik leaders ordered.
July 20th July 7th Lvov resigns and asks Kerensky to become Prime
Minister and form a new government. Established July
25th.
August 4th July 22nd Trotsky and Lunacharskii arrested
th th
September 8 August 26 Second coalition government ends

September8th–12th August 26th– "Kornilov mutiny". Begins when the commander-in-chief

30th of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov, demands (or
is believed by Kerensky to demand) that the government
give him all civil and military authority and moves troops
against Petrograd.
September 13th August 31st Majority of deputies of the Petrograd Soviet approve a
Bolshevik resolution for an all-socialist government
excluding the bourgeoisie.
September 14th September 1st Russia declared a republic
th th
September 17 September 4 Trotsky and others freed.
th th
September 18 September 5 Bolshevik resolution on the government wins majority
vote in Moscow Soviet.
October 2nd September Moscow Soviet elects executive committee and new
19th presidium, with Bolshevik majorities, and the Bolshevik
Viktor Nogin as chairman.
October 8th September Third coalition government formed. Bolshevik majority in
25th Petrograd Soviet elects Bolshevik Presidium and Trotsky
as chairman.
October 23rd October 10th Bolshevik Central Committee meeting approves armed
uprising.
October 24th October 11th Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, until October
13th.
November 2nd October 20th First meeting of the Military Revolutionary
Committee(MRC) of the Petrograd Soviet.
November 7th October 25th October Revolution is launched as MRC directs armed
47
 workers and soldiers to capture key buildings in
Petrograd. Winter Palace attacked at 9:40pm and captured
at 2am. Kerensky flees Petrograd. Opening of the 2nd All-
Russian Congress of Soviets.
November 8th October 26th Second Congress of Soviets: Mensheviks and right SR
delegates walk out in protest against the previous day's
events. Congress approves transfer of state authority into
its own hands and local power into the hands of local
soviets of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies,
abolishes capital punishment, issues Decree on Peace and
Decree on Land, and approves the formation of an all-
Bolshevik government, the Council of People's
Commissars (Sovnarkom), with Lenin as chairman.

Impact of the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution had a decisive impact on the history of the twentieth
century. The revolution and its consequences remains a living topic, attitudes towards it being
woven into the fabric of liberal capitalist self-justification and into socialist ideas of all varieties,
not least the shrill polemics of radical groups which trace their lineage back to one form of
Bolshevism or another. It has very much been a case of ‘tell me what you think of the Russian
revolution and I’ll tell you who you are.’37 The revolution that Lenin led marked one of the most
radical turning points in Russia’s history: it affected economics, social and political structure,
international relations, and most any other benchmark by which one might measure a revolution.
Although the new government would prove to be at least as repressive as the one it replaced, the
country’s new rulers were drawn largely from the intellectual and working classes rather than
from the aristocracy—which meant a considerable change in direction for Russia.
Economic Impact
The Russian Revolution radically altered Russia’s economic structure. It meant an end of
private property, and the change to ownership of all property by the state. It also established the
control of workers over industries. There was an introduction of centralised economy keeping in
mind the needs of the whole country, especially the working people. Through a centralised
economy they sought to guarantee a much faster pace of economic development and the fruits of
that development to a vast majority of the people. Through it they sought to prevent an anarchy
in production, and also avoid wastage. The First Five Year Plan, however was introduced much
later but planning was an important contribution of Russian Revolution to the world. The Decree
of Land envisaged the immediate abolition of landed estates(including crown, monastery, and
churchn lands) and their transfer to the peasantry for hereditary use. Small private farms however
still existed there.
Social Impact
The Russian Revolution also destroyed the roots of social inequality. It laid the
foundations of a classless society. The new social set-up was formed on the basis of equality,
justice and Communism. “Everyone according to his ability and everyone according to his work”
was the principle that was followed now. It narrowed the gap between the salaries of the workers
and the owners of the factories. A step of tremendous significance was the publication of the
Declaration of the Rights of the People of Russia by the constitution. These included, among
37
Dr. Christopher Read, Review Article, Writing the History of the Russian Revolution
48
others, the right to self-determination, an eight-hour working day, and insurance against
unemployment. It also guaranteed certain social benefits to all citizens, such as free medical care,
free and equal education for all, equal access to culture and cultural advancement. All this was
gradually made available to the people as production and infrastructure for these provisions were
being simultaneously created.
The roles of Russian women have changed drastically because of the revolution. The
women were given more freedom and therefore were successful in achieving independence
followed by a higher standing in society. Before the 1917 revolution, women were treated to be
beneath men in almost every aspect in life. However, due to active women’s right movements,
and more opportunities the war gave them, women were finally able to declare their
independence and be appreciated as individuals. The Bolsheviks came to power with the idea of
liberation of women and transformation of the family. They were able to equalize women’s legal
status with men’s by reforming certain laws such as the Code on Marriage, the Family, and
Guardianship ratified in October 1918 which allows both spouses were to retain the right to their
own property and earnings, grant children born outside wedlock the same rights as those born
within, and made divorce available upon request. Equality for women was also envisaged in the
constitution. There was a provision for six-month maternity leave, crèches and public canteens at
places of work. All this was aimed at making possible greater participation of women in public
life. These measures had a great impact on capitalist societies. In order to meet the challenges of
the socialist society, they were also forced to grant certain welfare schemes. In fact the concept
of a welfare state in the west was a direct response to the Russian Revolution.
The Revolution also separated religion from politics. Religion was made a purely private
affair. No religious education was imparted in the educational institutions and no public utility
was given in the name of religion.
Political Impact
The Russian Revolution resulted in the establishment of a state of the working people
embodied in the notion of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. It was recognized that the opponents
of the revolution could still harm the interests of the people. The Russian Revolution was infact
immediately followed by the intervention of many other countries on the side of Russian nobility
and bourgeoisie against the revolution and workers of Russia. Therefore, it was essential, for
sometime, to have a political system dominated by the working class.
But this state was much more democratic than the states of bourgeois countries because it
guaranteed the rule of the majority (i.e. workers) over a minority which held civil liberties in the
pre-revolutionary Russia. Thus bourgeois democracy was thus to be transformed into socialist
democracy.
Impact of the Revolution on World
The Bolshevik revolution was by no means a specifically "Russian" phenomenon. As
Lenin was later to put it, Bolshevism had become "World Bolshevism" by virtue of its
revolutionary tactics, theory and program. By indicating the "right road of escape from the
horrors of war and imperialism…Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all." The
"proletariat, the soldiers and peasants lined up against the bourgeoisie." This was the essence of
the Russian Revolution. October was not a coup conducted by a secretive and elitist band. Above
all, the revolution was about the mobilization of the mass of ordinary Russians—workers,
soldiers and peasants—in a struggle to change their world. That is to this day the most important
legacy of the Russian revolution. The greatest historian of the revolution, and one of its most
important participants, Leon Trotsky, described the significance of revolution: “The most
49
indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In
ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and
history is made by specialists in that line of business—kings, ministers, bureaucrats,
parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no
longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political
arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the
initial groundwork for a new regime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgment of
moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as they are given by the objective course of
development. The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of
the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.” Passivity gave way to self
activity. As historian Marc Ferro put it, "the citizens of the new Russia, having overthrown
Tsardom, were in a state of permanent mobilization." "All Russia," wrote Sukhanov, "was
constantly demonstrating in those days."
The Russian Revolution represented an important landmark in international relations. The
Bolsheviks abolished all the old secret treaties signed by the autocracy and the Provisional
Government with different countries. It was increasingly being felt that the people should have
the right to know what their rulers are doing and the people of any country should have the right
to influence the foreign policy of their country through debate and intervention.
The Revolution marked the beginning of the decline of imperialism and the rise of
socialism. As the first successful socialist revolution the Russian Revolution was bound to have
repercussions for the future. The world as a whole was sure to feel the onset of the completely
new type of social and economic system. The Communist International or Comintern, organized
on the lines of First and Second International, was the means of promoting revolutions on an
international scale. The revolution ended the domination and exploitation of the peasants by the
landlords. It made possible to uplift the material and cultural standards of life of the working
people. It helped to destroy the old exploitative and oppressive state machine dominated by the
minority of capitalists and landlords and replaced it by a new type of state-dictatorship of the
proletariat. Lenin and Trotsky said that the goal of socialism in Russia would not be realized
without the success of the world proletariat in other countries, e.g. without German Revolution.
The Bolsheviks recognized the right to self-determination including the right to succession of all
the oppressed nationalities inhabiting the boundaries of the Tsarist Empire and made them equal
partners in socialist construction and overcoming social and economic backwardness
The Russian Revolution inspired all over the world, the struggles of the colonial people
and nations for independence from the Western imperialist countries. The Indian National
Movement, for example, was profoundly affected by the November Revolution. It gathered
momentum and a certain direction from the Russian Revolution. The revolution acted as a
catalytic agent who transformed the national movements all over the world to assume a definite
shape and thus facilitated the early shattering of the stranglehold of the Western imperial power
over Asia and Africa, the two continents, where their imperial supremacy was most widespread
and most oppressive. By rendering active material and political assistance in anti-imperialist
struggles, the revolution had greatly contributed in bringing the downfall of imperialism.
Conclusion
In conclusion we can say that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a movement that
endorsed equality, though more economically than politically. This revolution was in part a
ripple caused by the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization sharply divided society into the
owners and the workers, with the latter comprising the majority of the population. This division
influenced Marx's principles of socialism, which in turn inspired the Russian Revolution. In its
50
effort to reject economic despotism, the revolution set hopes of equality for all those in the world
who felt disempowered by capitalism. Today, the Western economy remains heavily capitalist;
the fundamental ideas of the Russian Revolution are still followed by those who believe that a
redistribution of economic power is necessary for the well-being of the working people. The
1917 Russian revolution was powerful in spreading socialist ideas and astonishing in its scope of
immediate impact, but ultimately it was a failed attempt at a political and economic reform. The
socialist ideals could not be achieved in practice and the communist Soviet government was
dissolved in less than a century. Furthermore, in spite of the reactionary wave created by the
1917 revolution that extended until 1923, no other Marxist movement was successful in
achieving or keeping real power.

51
 UNIT V : MODERNITY, RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY
MODERNITY IN THE LIGHT OF CHANGING CULTURAL SCENARIO

- Shubhankita Ojha
Department of History
University of Delhi

Modernity is a term that very simply speaking, refers to the modern era. Modernity
means different things to different people. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in
the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover
the developments denoted by post-modernity and into the present. The term modern period or
modern era (sometimes also modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle
Ages. The 1500s is usually taken as an approximate starting period for the modern era. Many
major events caused the Western world to change around the turn of the 16th century: from the
Fall of Constantinople (1453), the fall of Muslim Spain, and Christopher Columbus's voyage to
the Americas (both 1492), to the Protestant Reformation begun with Martin Luther's Ninety-Five
Theses (1517). Modern history may contain references to the history of Early modern Europe
from the turn of the 15th century until the late 18th century, but generally refers to the history of
the world since the advent of the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and
18th centuries and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The concepts and ideas developed
since then are part of the modern era. This terminology is a historical periodization that is
applied primarily to Western history.
Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the
world, the idea of the world as open to transformation by human intervention; (2) a complex of
economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range
of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of
these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It
is a society—more technically, a complex of institutions—which unlike any preceding culture
lives in the future rather than the past. 38
Modernity of all things involves positive attitude towards change and attempts to make
progress in technology, economics and military power. It is a positive attitude towards
experimentation with new forms of government, including democracy or that of a republic,
combined with a realistic attitude towards extant institutions, such as that of monarchies,
assessing their strengths and weaknesses based on their record of accomplishments and failures.
Aspects of modernity
One of the most important aspects of modernity is the encouragement of advance or
progress in useful sciences and arts. Revolutions in science and technology have been no less
influential than political revolutions in changing the shape of the modern world. The scientific
revolution, beginning with the discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Galileo, and culminating with
Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), changed the way in
which educated people looked at the natural world.
What is now called technology is the most obvious success of modernity. Mechanical and
scientific invention has changed human health and all aspects of human society: economic,
religious, social, and theoretical. For example, modern machines in Britain sped up the

38
Giddens, A., The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, England, Polity Press (1990).
52
manufacture of cloth and iron. The horse and ox were no longer needed as beasts of burden. The
newly invented engine powered the car, train, ship, and eventually the plane, revolutionizing the
way people travelled. Newly discovered energy sources such as petroleum and nuclear power
could power the new machines. Raw goods could be transported in huge quantities over vast
distances; products could be manufactured quickly and then marketed all over the world, a
situation that Britain, and later the US, Europe and Japan all used to their advantage.
Progress continued as science saw many new scientific discoveries. The telephone, radio,
X-rays, microscopes, electricity all contributed to rapid changes in life-styles and societies.
Discoveries of antibiotics such as penicillin brought new ways of combating diseases. Surgery
and various medications made further progress in medical care, hospitals, and nursing. New
theories such as evolution and psychoanalysis changed humanity's "old fashioned" views of
itself. The theory of evolution, the law of the progress of species and races, and the various new
theories of the laws of the progress of history, also set the stage for the ideas of racism and
ethnological superiority to be used as a basis for nationalism and political systems.
From about 1700 there was a rapid population explosion. Between 1650 and 1850 the
average annual rate of increase of the world’s population doubled, it doubled again by the 1920s,
and more than doubled, once more, by the 1970s. With industrialisation, improvements in
medical knowledge and public health, together with a more regular food supply, bring about a
drastic reduction in the death rate but no corresponding decline in the birth rate. The result was a
population explosion, as experienced in 19th century Europe. The same held good for the
developing societies as well.
Warfare changed with the advent of new varieties of rifle, cannon, gun, machine gun,
armor, tank, plane, jet, and missile. Weapons such as the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb,
known along with chemical weapons and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction,
actually made the devastation of the entire planet possible in minutes. All these are among the
markings of the Modern World.
New attitudes towards religion, with the church diminished, and a desire for personal
freedoms, induced desires for sexual freedoms, which were ultimately accepted by large sectors
of the Western World. Theories of "free love" and uninhibited sexual freedom were advanced
only later in the 1960s. These are the broad effects of modernity which may be seen as a
complex of the polical, social, economic and the cultural and shall be seen in such a light ahead
in the chapter.
Meanings of Modernity
Modernity implies modernization, a continuous process of improvement in the capacity of
humanity to manage and control its physical, social and cultural environment for its own benefit.
According to Malcolm Waters39, modernity is a stable, long term, sociocultural configuration
that has the following characteristics:
 Production systems are industrial, that is relatively large in scale, internally specialized
into occupations, externally specialized by product, and mechanized.
 An increasing proportion of interpersonal practices are self-interested, rational and
calculating.
 Physical and social objects, including human labour, are defined as commodities, that is
they are alienable and can be exchanged in markets.

39
Waters, Malcolm.(ed.), Modernity: Critical Concepts, Vol.1, Routledge, 1999.
53
  Control of the state if specified by social role rather than by personal characteristics and
is subject to periodic constituency legitimation.
 Social units— families, schools, governments, firms, churches, voluntary associations,
etc.— are differentiated from one another, that is separated and distinguished from one
another.
A more elaborate definition is given by Stuart Hall who explains the transition to modernity
in terms of interaction between four processes— the political ( the rise of the secular state and
polity), the economic ( the global capitalist economy), the social (formation of classes and an
advanced sexual and social division of labour) and the cultural (the transition from a religious to
a secular culture). One effect of the operation of these processes is to give modern societies a
distinctive shape and form, making them not simply “societies”(a loose ensemble of social
activities) but social formation (societies with a definite structure and a well defined set of social
relations).
According to him, the defining features or characteristics of modern societies are:
1. The nation-state and an international system of states.
2. The dominance of secular forms of political power and authority and conceptions of
sovereignty and legitimacy, operating within defined territorial boundaries, which are
characteristic of the large, complex structures of the modern nation-state.
3. A monetarized exchange economy, based on the large scale production and consumption
of commodities for the market, extensive ownership of private property and the
accumulation of capital on a systematic, long term basis.
4. Growth of large scale administrative and bureaucratic systems of social organization and
regulation.
5. Decline of the traditional social order, with its fixed social hierarchies and overlapping
allegiances, and the appearance of a dynamic social and sexual division of labour. In
modern capitalist societies, this was characterised by new class formations, and
distinctive patriarchal relations between men and women.
6. Decline of the religious world-view typical of traditional societies and the rise of a
secular and materialistic culture, exhibiting those individualistic, rationalist, and
instrumental impulses now so familiar to us.
7. Formal separation of the “private” from the “public”.
Apart from these, for Hall there exist two other aspects of modernity which he includes under
the rubric of “the cultural”. The first refers to ways of producing and classifying knowledge. The
emergence of modern societies was marked by the birth of a new intellectual and cognitive
world, which gradually emerged with Reformation, the Renaissance, the scientific revolution of
17th century and the Enlightenment of 18th century. This shift in Europe’s intellectual and moral
universe was dramatic, and as constitutive for the formation of modern societies as early
capitalism or the rise of the nation-state. Second, is the construction of cultural and social
identities as part of the formation process. This refers to the construction of a sense of belonging,
which draws people together into an ‘imagined community’ and the construction of symbolic
boundaries which define who does not belong or is excluded from it. So the formation of modern
societies as in Europe had to include the construction of the language, the images and symbols
which defined these societies as ‘communities’ and set them apart, in their represented
differences from others.
54
Beginnings of Modernity
There is considerable debate about when the modern era began. Many historians and
social scientists accept that the originating society for modernity was Britain and its colonies.
They date the early modern period from the sixteenth century. They make their argument on the
grounds that during this period many mercantile capitalists rose to prominence, that there was
some constitutionalization of monarchies, that the puritan reformation established the individual
as the primary site of moral responsibility, and that there was some autonomization of the value
spheres in so far as science was establishing itself independently of religion. However, against
this many sociologists argue that the modern era did not begin until what is known as the
‘Industrial Revolution’ occurred in Britain between about 1750 and about 1820, and political
revolutions that had the effect of overturning monarchical power occurred in the American
colonies in 1776 and in France in 1789. These sociologists consider that the advent of mercantile
capitalism is insufficient to meet the criterions of modernity. By and large, we can say that while
modern societies began to emerge in Europe in the fifteenth century, modernity in the true sense
could hardly be said to exist in any developed form until the idea of “the modern” was given a
decisive formulation in the discourses of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.In the
nineteenth century, modernity became identified with industrialism and the sweeping social,
economic, and cultural changes associated with it. By the twentieth century, modernity became a
progressively global phenomenon.
The analysis of modernity was the primary impetus for the development of social science
in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe. Peter Hamilton in “The Enlightenment & the Birth
of Social Science”40 examines the explosion of intellectual energy in eighteenth century Western
Europe which became known as “the Enlightenment”. This movement gave definition to the very
idea of ‘modernity’ and is often described as the original matrix of the modern social sciences.
Ofcourse in one sense, the study of society was not new. Observations about social life had been
going on since long. But the idea of ‘the social’ as a separate and distinct form of reality, which
could be analyzed in entirely “this worldly”, material terms and laid out for rational investigation
and explanation, is a distinctly modern idea which only finally crystallized in the discourses of
the Enlightenment. The “birth of the social” as an object of knowledge made possible for the first
time the systematic analysis and the practices of investigation we call “the social sciences”.
Enlightenment opened the prospect of an unending era of material progress and prosperity, the
abolition of prejudice and superstition and the mastery of the forces of nature based on the
expansion of human knowledge and understanding.
In the emergence of distinctively modern societies, two upheavals of the 18 th century
played an important role. One was political while the other was economic. The first helped
provoke political revolutions in America and France. The social and political transformations
which occurred in the American and French Revolutions of 1776 and 1789 appear to be
intimately linked. They were widely represented as thresholds between traditional and modern
society, symbolising the end of feudalism and absolutism and rise of the bourgeoisie as the
dominant class in capitalist society, as well as major steps along the roads to both liberal
democracy and totalitarianism. These revolutions estalished the political character of modern
society as constitutional and democratic. Now it became clear that no political system could now
claim legitimacy that was not in some sense based on “the will of the people”. Crucial
innovations of the modern state are territoriality, control of the means of violence, impersonal
structure of power and legitimacy. The second, created an atmosphere conducive to

40
Hamilton, Peter, “The Enlightenment and the birth of Social Science” in Stuart Hall et al. (ed.) Modernity: An
introduction to modern societies, Polity Press,1995.
55
technological innovations— one of the chief elements in the emergence of the Industrial
Revolution in Great Britain. Although the transition from the absolutist to the modern state was
marked by dramatic events and processes such as the English (1640-88) and French (1789)
Revolutions, an exclusive focus on these hinders an understanding of the way in which the
absolutist state itself was crucial in the development of modern political rule. It was the
confluence of “internal” transformation in European states with shifting geopolitical relations
and forces which provided a key impetus to the formation of the modern state.
Ideas of progress and enlightenment had already established themselves in the eighteenth
century and had manifested themselves in the French Revolution of 1789 and the American
Revolution of 1776. However, the Industrial Revolution set off an altogether more complex and
impressive set of developments. Industrializing societies made rapid material progress. Their
productive capacity increased massively, enriching new sections of the population, expanding
capital and setting off a chain search of scientific and technological innovation. Nations that
industrialized had the clear capacity to dominate and even colonize nations that were less
industrialized, and the European nations established colonial empires that both further enriched
them and further convinced them of their superiority. Moreover, the reorganization of production
altered radically the fabric of everyday social life. It created population movements that
disrupted established patterns of kinship and community. It caused people to separate their work
life from their home life. It placed workers in authority systems that were based on rules and
monetary coercion rather than long-standing relationships.
In the economic life there is an emergence of a distinct sphere, governed by new
economic relations, and regulated and represented by new economic ideas. There is a gradual
spread of commerce and trade, the expansion of markets, the new division of labour, and the
growth of material wealth and consumption— starting in eighteenth century with British society
consequent upon the rise of capitalism in Europe and the gradual transformation of the traditional
economy. By the eighteenth century, however, laissez-faire and the market forces of the private
economy were beginning to unleash the productive energies of the capitalist system. Engines of
this development were the commercial and agrarian revolutions.
Robert Bocock in “Cultural Formations of Modern Society”41 discusses three key cultural themes
in the transition to modernity: 1st, the shift from a religious to a secular worldview, and from a
“sacred” to a “profane” foundation for social and moral values, which characterizes the passage
from traditional to modern society; 2nd, the role which religion played in the formation of the
‘spirit of capitalism’; 3rd, the growing awareness among western philosophers and social
theorists of the costs of modern culture— what Freud called “civilization’s discontent” and
Weber saw as the consequences of the increasing rationalization and disenchantment of the
modern world.
One might raise questions about how Europe particularly the north-western part of the
continent suddenly leapt to modernity. Northwestern Europe early in the 16 th century was
backward, technically and culturally. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was still absorbing the
commercial and artistic innovations of the Italian city-states of the Renaissance. Yet it was here
that the changes took place that propelled those particular societies into the forefront of world
development. One reason for this could have been the Protestant Reformation of the 16 th century
here which valued frugality and hard work suited to the development of industrial capitalism.
The Protestant work ethic has similarly been linked to the development of modern science. What
was crucial was the rationalist culture and the scientific habits of mind that this culture nurtured.
41
Bocock, R., “Cultural Formations of Modern Society”, in Stuart Hall et al (ed.) Modernity: An introduction to
Modern Societies. Polity Press 1995.
56
Moreover, the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and verification
could be applied not only to nature but also to society. Eventually, toward the end of the 18 th
century, what would later be called social science— economics and sociology— began to find a
place alongside natural science. Already, by the17th century, western Europe had embarked on
the course of transoceanic exansion that was to become one of its most notable features in the
succeeding centuries.
Modern societies are especially marked by their complexity. It offers a proliferation of
consumer products and a variety of lifestyles. The hold of tradition has weakened in favour of
individual choice and the individual is increasingly aware of the possibility of constructing new
identities. Nevertheless, this greater cultural pluralism and individualism has been accompanied
by a growth of organizations seeking greater regulation and surveillance of social life.
Modernity in the 20th century
What remains to be explained is the fact that what was modern about the twentieth
century particularly? Twentieth century started against a backdrop of the first world war and in
no time the world was caught up between the two great wars. In terms of class and gender
relations, society that was divided on class lines in the industrial capitalist economy did not make
much progress. Nevertheless it did bring forth the question of “rights”. One of the defining
stories of the 20th century was the struggle for women’s emacipation and equality. The war saw
an important change in the position of women in society. With men away at war, women were
needed to work in a variety of jobs from farming to heavy engineering. Before the war, some
women, the “suffragettes” had been carrying out a campaign of violence against the government
to win the vote for women. It was in response to the suffragettes’ contribution to the war effort
that in 1918 won them the right to vote. Though the idea of universal adult franchise shall take
many years more and voting by and large was restricted to women aged 30 while men voted at
21. Despite the fact that the legal framework of patriarchy was being dismantled, male control of
the public sphere was nevertheless furthered by the rigidifying of the sexual division of labour.
Politically speaking the period after 1945 saw the eventual culmination of major ideas of
modernity and social formations underwent dramatic changes. That although patriarchy has been
greatly eroded and the class structure further fragmented, class and gender hierarchies still exist
can certainly not be negated.
It is the same mid decades of the twentieth century that ushered in the wave of anti-
colonialism and anti-imperialism in major parts of the world. These drew primarily from the so
called ‘modern ideas’ of earlier times transmitted from the West and the construction of a
national community belonging to a particular nation-state starts taking shape even in the
developing parts of the world.
Towards the end of twentieth century and even today in the first decade of 21 st century,
satellite images from space of planet Earth as a single place has reawakened intellectual interest
in Enlightenment notions of a universal community of humankind. Further on as the last century
developed, the growing internationalization of the industrial economy made nation-states
increasingly subordinate to the world economic developments. This process led up to the
formation of a ‘global economy’ which integrated different parts of the world into a single
whole.
Quite obviously modernity has a dark side too. Demographically, it leads to crowding,
pollution and environmental destruction. At the same time the competitive modern order that
stimulates unreal expectations provides insufficient and unequal means for their realization. As
according to Krishan Kumar, “Industrial work exacts a high price for the enormous increase in

57
productivity brought about by the intensified division of labour.” 42 This estranged him from his
work because his task became fragmented, undemanding and meaningless.
Though most of what has already been said so far in the chapter acknowledges
differences between different societies, the story is largely looked at from within Western Europe
(the West) where such processes of formation first emerged. This makes the concept of
modernity to some extent “eurocentric”. However, this formation was also a ‘global’ process.
The cultural and ideological dimensions of the West’s expansion need to be taken into
consideration. For if the Rest of the World was necessary for the political, economic, and social
formation of the West, it was also essential to the West’s formation both of its own sense of
itself— a ‘western identity’— and of western forms of knowledge. The formation of the modern
state has to be related to at least two overarching phenomenon: the structures of political and
social groups and classes, and the relations among states – “their position relative to each other,
and their overall position in the world”. Struggles among social collectivities at home and
conflicts among states/nations abroad have had a dramatic impact on the nature, organization and
dynamics of individual states/nations.
Whether the effects of forces that pushed a developing Western Europe to expand
outwards into the “new world” have been socially progressive is debatable. Colonization and
Imperialism have not promoted economic and social development in many societies, most of
which remain profoundly under-developed. The destruction of indigenous cultural life by
western culture is for most of them, a mixed blessing. And as the human, cultural, and ecological
consequences of this form of ‘western development’ become more obvious, the question of
whether there is only one path to modernity is being debated with increased urgency.

42
Krishan Kumar, “Modernization and Industrialization” in Malcolm Waters (ed.) Modernity: Critical Concepts
Vol.1, Routledge, 1999.
58