TIMELINE 2020
Phalgun Deevanapalli, Junior School
‘The Russian Revolution’
The Russian revolution showed how people could transform the country with their ideas for a better future that would benefit the underprivileged and would ensure a legacy that future generations would use to better humanity. Marx's critical theories about society, economics and politics – collectively understood as Marxism – hold that human societies develop through class struggle. In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the rich (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Marx predicted that, like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its selfdestruction and replacement by a new system known as socialism. There are differences between Marx’s system (also known as Communism) and Socialism: • A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs is called communism... • In communism, people aren’t allowed to own property, whereas in socialism people can own the personal property. • The main aim of communism is to build a classless society and abolish the capitalism... •As communism also has a strong affiliation with the political system, in it the management of resources is done by elected people. As the First World War loomed ominously on the horizons, many sections of the country had reason to be dissatisfied with the existing autocracy. Nicholas II was a deeply conservative ruler and maintained a strict authoritarian system. Individuals and society in general were expected to show self-restraint, devotion to community, deference to the social hierarchy and a sense of duty to the country. Religious faith helped bind all of these tenets together as a source of comfort and reassurance in the face of difficult conditions and as a means of political authority exercised through the clergy. The lower classes are expected to pray to God and hope he will bring through these bad times, thereby as Karl Marx famously said, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Opium is an illegal drug which has been known to nullify the senses, this time it is religion which is the powerful drug. Perhaps more than any other modern monarch, Nicholas II attached his fate and the future of his dynasty to the notion of the ruler as a saintly father to his people. The outbreak of war in PAGE 20
