Bismarck: Myth or Mastermind?

The change was brought about after the governing bodies of both colleges asked the headmasters, Mr Anthony Chenevix-Trench of Eton and Sir Desmond Lee of Winchester, to revise the exams to attract more students from state schools. As Latin is often not taught at state schools, compelling candidates to be proficient in the language narrowed the field of entry considerably.

Master in College’s Dining Room looking East commissioned by George Richardson. Five of the Gentlemen Commoners can be seen hung unusually high on the far wall.

George Richardson, a former second master, is particularly relevant to this topic. Or rather his wife, Sarah, commonly known as ‘Mrs Dick, ’ is. She brought ‘warm draughts of humanity into the austere lives of the scholars’ and often overshadowed her husband.

Rubric 45 of the statutes forbade women to hold jobs, or even set foot, in the College. The only exception to this rule occurred when a washerman could not be found, in which case a washerwomen could be allowed to enter, and only then if she was old or ugly enough to not arouse suspicion.

Mrs Dick struggled to be accepted into the monastic society of the College. She was allowed to do what she pleased throughout her own home, but her offer to help in the College kitchen was politely turned down.

Mr Richardson, in his valedictory or retirement speech, made the first call for co-education at Winchester. The call has been repeated time and time again, especially since Winchester’s sister foundation, New College, Oxford, decided to admit girls in 1965, and was answered recently by the governing body. George and Sarah ‘Mrs Dick’ Richardson

The words of the speech are lost to time, but numerous articles were written about it. Mr Richardson championed the mixed system, speaking about the beneficial role girls might play in the education of boys and declaring that he was a convert to it. He, having made the speech in 1899, boldly asserted that in less than 50 years, some of the great public schools of England would be mixed. His influence was probably important to the continuing prevalence of this debate, just as women like Mrs Dick kept it in the College’s consideration.

Thus, throughout its long history, Winchester College has largely evaded bias. The progressive George and Sarah Richardson were undoubtedly important in the College’s journey leading up to the recent announcement, and the Gentleman Commoners are a sharp reminder of Wykeham’s aims to help the poor and needy.

Following the settlement imposed on her at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Germany remained as a loose confederation of thirty-nine independent states under Austrian hegemony for more than half a century. Yet by 1871 the established European order had been shattered, with Austria excluded from a new lesser-German Empire (Klein Deutschland) dominated by Prussia. The question is –what best explains this?

Although the ‘Borussian Myth’ propagated by German nationalist historians such as Heinrich von Treitschke has led Otto von Bismarck to become a quasi-mythical figure, interpretations of this centralEuropean cataclysm are in fact varied. Hagen Schulze emphasises the role of the German national-liberals, arguing that ‘without the diffuse but nevertheless legitimising power of the unification movement there would have emerged not a German Reich but a Great Prussia’. Others have focused on the prevailing economic circumstances, with J.M Keynes arguing that ‘The German Empire has been built more truly on coal and iron than on blood and iron’, and A.J.P. Taylor acknowledging that ‘it might well have been the iron force of economic power rather than the bloody victory of war which forced the decision’. Yet Jonathan Steinberg argues that Bismarck was ultimately the architect of a unified Germany, as he masterminded ‘the greatest diplomatic and political achievement by any leader in the last two centuries’. There is, however, no doubt that Bismarck was only able to have such a revolutionary impact because he was aligned with powerful material and ideological forces. The national-liberal movement gave vital impetus to the national idea, whilst industrialisation, the economic integration provided by the German customs union (the Zollverein), and the economic weakness of France and Austria gave Prussia a military advantage and aided the eventual political integration. Yet neither the national-liberal movement nor a common market was capable of politically unifying Germany alone. Whilst they may have been necessary conditions, it was Bismarck’s realpolitik approach to Prussian foreign policy and unique ability to see potential in the configuration of economic and ideological circumstances that was the sufficient cause. Bismarck’s genius allowed him to use Prussian militarism to destroy the AustroPrussian ‘Deutscher Dualismus’ , win the struggle for central-European supremacy, and create a dominant new state with Prussia at its head.

The German Reich, 1871-1918

Part I: National-liberalism

It is easy to dismiss the role of the national-liberal movement in unifying Germany, but it provided a useful bedrock of national sentiment from which Bismarck could attain the office of MinisterPresident and launch his campaign to unify the German states. The movement spread across Germany during the nineteenth century, confined largely to an educated middle-class who began to reject the concept of dynastic, semi-feudal and absolutist states in favour of a national community. But before 1848, events orchestrated by the student national-liberal fraternity, the Burschenschaft, failed to have a significant impact. These included the burning of conservative writer August von Kotzebue’s book at the 1817 Warburg Festival, his murder in 1819, and the 1832 national-democratic Hambach Festival.

However, the national-liberals came close to politically transforming Germany in 1848, despite facing overwhelming opposition from across Germany and Austria, and in the face of repressive measures like the 1819 Carlsbad Decrees, and the 1832 Six and Ten Articles. 1848 saw widespread pan-German protests and rebellions, the establishment of a National Assembly in Frankfurt, and an elected assembly in Berlin. Yet whilst the events of 1848 did show the inherent vulnerability of Austria’s hegemonic position, the opportunity provided by Metternich’s fall from power and the March Days in Prussia was ultimately squandered. This is emphasised by Jörn Leonhard, who argues that ‘after an initial phase of apparent coherence (the movement) soon disintegrated … due to … different experiences and expectations, and a dichotomy of social projections’. This dichotomy led to intense internal division, as indecisive ideologues argued over the form of a future German state, and the gulf between the urban liberals and rural peasantry became clear. The executive weakness ultimately meant that little progress was made at either the Frankfurt Parliament or the Berlin Assembly, allowing the reactionaries to recover and reverse many of the concessions which they had previously granted.

Fundamentally, however, the national-liberals failed in 1848 as they could not find a German state willing to challenge Austrian hegemony. King Frederick Wilhelm IV regained his nerve in the autumn of that year, dissolving the radical Berlin Assembly and issuing a watered-down constitution that reasserted his ultimate authority. In 1849 the Prussian army forced the dissolution of the Frankfurt Parliament, with the king refusing their offer of the Imperial Crown of a ‘Klein Deutschland’,

Cheering revolutionaries in Berlin, March 19th 1848 and purportedly describing it in private as ‘from the gutter’ and ‘disgraced with the stink of revolution’. Although 1848 could have been a political watershed, it only served to show that the nationalliberals could not unify Germany without the intervention of Prussia, the only state capable of challenging the pervasive Austrian influence. Yet the idea of merging Prussia with a liberal, constitutionalised Germany under the ‘revolutionary’ Frankfurt Parliament was anathema to Frederick Wilhelm IV. Whilst he may have been tempted by the 1850 Erfurt Union of federated German states, the king and his conservative advisors ultimately shrank at the prospect of war with Austria, rejecting the national-liberals and accepting the revival of the German Confederation with the ‘Humiliation of Olmütz’. The events of 1848-50 showed that until Prussia’s attitude towards Austria shifted, and she was prepared to use her military power to challenge Austrian hegemony, the national-liberals could achieve nothing.

The national-liberals remained a powerful force within Prussia in the post-1848 era, and arguably saw some success after Wilhelm I’s regency initiated a moderate liberal ‘new era’ in 1858, but they increasingly served only to be exploited and manipulated. The formation of the German National Association (Nationalverein) in 1859, which sought a liberal ‘Klein Deutschland’ and exerted significant influence in the Prussian parliament, did, however, set the context for the budgetary deadlock over War Minister von Roon’s army reforms, and therefore Bismarck’s appointment as MinisterPresident. Even Bismarck would later admit that the national-liberals provided a sentiment of national unity, and that ‘although German unity was not to be established by parliamentary decisions … liberalism did exercise a pressure on the rulers which made them more inclined to make concessions for the Reich’.

Yet ultimately, the national-liberals would go on to play little real role in the 1860s, particularly as the Nationalverein found itself in crisis over the Second Schleswig and Austro-Prussian Wars. Prussian victory in 1866 and the subsequent indemnity bill marked what Schulze sees as a ‘fateful year for liberalism’, in which liberal opposition to Prussian absolutism was undermined by patriotism, and the

Nationalverein split decisively in two. The support of the pro-government National-Liberals under Eduard Lasker and Rudolf von Bennigsen certainly aided Bismarck after 1866, isolating the sociallyliberal Progress Party and easing Prussia’s subordination of states like Hanover and Bavaria. However, the movement was forced to sacrifice its wish for a liberal Germany in favour of the cause of national unity, and to play a subordinate role when it had once been expected to lead. This is perhaps best put by Schulze, who acknowledges that events during the 1860s ‘showed up the nationalist movement as strong on noise but powerless’.

Rudolf von Bennigsen, founder of the German National Association

Part II: Coal and iron?

Despite little having been achieved towards political or territorial unity until 1864, Germany was already highly economically integrated. In the aftermath of the Vienna Settlement, the 39 German states managed their economies independently, with hundreds of internal customs barriers and restrictive tariffs, including 67 within Prussia alone. However, economic integration progressed rapidly, with the Prussian Customs Union abolishing internal tariffs in 1818, and the Middle German Customs Union following suit a year later. This process was rapidly furthered with the creation of the Zollverein in 1834, a tariff-free customs union of 18 states and 23 million people that encompassed all major states except Hanover and Austria by 1844. The abolition of internal tariffs and the creation of a common external tariff system was highly effective, creating a linked national market that dynamised the German economy. Borussian historians have long argued that the Zollverein was deployed by Prussia specifically to undermine her enemies, developing economic interdependencies that exacerbated the socioeconomic differences between Prussia and Austria and strengthened German resilience against French aggression, while simultaneously reducing the economic independence of the smaller German states. Whilst this is questionable, with Prussia’s initial aim being economic rather than political, the Zollverein’s potential as a political instrument had certainly become clear by the 1850s, as its position as a substitute for the nation state created a favourable environment for further integration.

The Zollverein, therefore, was one of the most important German institutional developments of the 19th Century, particularly as it provided a vital link between the North German Confederation and Southern Germany in 1866-71, helping to foster a more favourable impression of Prussia that aided later annexation. John Bowring’s 1840 report to the British Parliament made this clear, writing that the Zollverein had spread ‘a sentiment… of national unity… and the sentiment of German nationality’. However, whilst the Zollverein may have furthered Prussian economic dominance, and crucially excluded the backward Austrian economy, it certainly didn’t make German unification inevitable, creating what Katharine Lerman describes as a ‘common market rather than a national economy’.

The growth of the Zollverein

Yet it was not just German economic integration that aided unification, but the power of the Prussian economy itself. The acquisition of the coal and iron rich Rhineland and Westphalia in 1815 provided Prussia’s emerging industrial sector with raw materials, and industry grew significantly from the 1850s onwards after an investment boom. The Commutation Law of March 1850 formally abolished feudalism and serfdom, moving Prussia rapidly away from an estate-based rural society towards urban industrial areas, with 55% of the population living in towns and cities by 1858.

Railway construction began in earnest after 1835, with the network spanning 18,560 km by 1870 and providing vital cultural and economic links between distant German states. Friedrick List described the railways as ‘a firm girdle around the loins of Germany, binding her limbs together in a forceful and powerful body’. Indeed, both List and Schulze have argued that there was a symbiotic relationship between the railway network and the Zollverein, with Schulze calling the relationship ‘the one strong bond uniting the nation’ after 1848, and List describing them as ‘striving each towards… the unification of the German tribes’. Whilst the direct political implications of railway construction are questionable, there is no doubt that they were a vital component of Prussia’s economic power- particularly when used for troop mobilisation. Railway construction was in part guided by likely locations of troop deployment, and by 1856 Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, was able to move forces quickly across the country using a detailed timetable devised by his predecessor von Reyher. This proved invaluable in both 1866 and 1870, with trains able to move 500,000 troops to the French frontier in only three weeks during the FrancoPrussian War. By 1860 the Prussian economy produced more coal, iron and steel than either France or Austria, shifting the economic balance of power firmly in her favour, whilst an advanced military industry led by Alfred Krupps produced high-quality armaments in the Ruhr. These weapons, including the revolutionary breechloading Dreyse Needle Gun, easily outmatched French and Austrian armaments until the French adoption of the Chassepot in 1866. Dreyse Needle Gun However, it was not just Prussia’s economic dominance that aided unification, but Austria’s weakness, as their backward economy declined due to a conservative and protectionist approach that feared technological and industrial innovation. Despite Austrian Minister-President Prince Schwarzenberg having warned as early as 1851 that Austria’s continued exclusion from the Zollverein would make it difficult to maintain hegemony in Germany, Vienna still failed to perceive Prussia’s economic threat. While Prussian exports grew, Austria’s shrank, with the liberal Franco-Prussian free-trade treaty of March 1862 termed by Abigail Green as an ‘economic Königgrätz’, excluding Austria from the German common market for good.

Nevertheless, economic factors should not be exaggerated in their importance. Large-scale industry was still limited to a relatively small number of states, with only 20% of the workforce employed in the sector, and output still dwarfed by Britain. Ultimately, neither Prussian economic dominance nor German economic unity could politically unify Germany on their own. Instead, a catalyst was needed – one that was found in Bismarck.

Part III: ‘The Iron Chancellor’

The national-liberal movement and the integrated might of the German economy may therefore have been necessary for unification, but it was Bismarck who was able to exploit the circumstances to unify Germany through Prussian militarism. Whilst Bismarck remained uncompromisingly hostile to democracy, he always saw nationalism and the military pursuit of Prussian hegemony as compatible with the maintenance of Prussian autocracy. As a ‘white revolutionary’ who had witnessed the chaos and near formation of a liberal Germany in 1848, Bismarck understood, as he wrote in 1866, that ‘if

there is to be a revolution, then we prefer to make it than suffer from it’. He was therefore able to circumvent the iron grip of ideology and dogma and use his revolutionary means solely for conservative ends. However, there is no doubt that his job was made easier by what Bruce Waller describes as ‘the avarice, stupidity, indifferences or connivance of the major powers’. Bismarck was able to capitalise on the inconsistent diplomacy of Napoleon III and outmanoeuvre a system in Vienna that oscillated between a desire for dualism and one for domination, and that had begun what Roy Austensen argues was ‘an ill-fated Austrian offensive in Germany that would ultimately lead to the defeat of 1866’. However, it remains clear that Bismarck had a strategic objective when he became MinisterPresident, laying this out in his famous ‘Blood and Iron’ speech of September 1862:

‘Germany is not looking to Prussia’s liberalism, but to its power…. The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions – that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by blood and iron.’

While this was not as bellicose as some historians have later claimed, nor was Bismarck’s strategy as long-planned as he would later claim in his memoirs, this speech nonetheless presented a clear and concise vision. Bismarck would exploit all available opportunities for unification, whilst allying the Prussian monarchy with the national-liberals on terms that left him in control. This was to be one of his greatest achievements, insisting throughout his time in office that, as Henry Kissinger puts it, ‘nationalism and liberalism need not be parallel phenomena. They could be separated, and traditional Prussia play a national role’. Bismarck’s diplomatic prowess was to be showcased when the Schleswig-Holstein question flared up in 1863-4. The question was of such complexity that Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister at the time, is reported to have said that ‘ only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.’ Nevertheless, Bismarck quickly saw the issue as a chance to present Prussia as the champion of German interests. Although aided significantly by the diplomatic isolationism of Britain, he had already quelled Russian opposition by adopting a benevolent attitude during the 1863 Polish Revolt. Therefore, Bismarck was able to draw Austria into a quick and decisive war against Denmark. The Second Schleswig War proved to be hugely significant, described by Otto Pflanze as a moment ‘where a single personality, by his capacity to manipulate the forces within his grasp, influenced the course of history and the lives of millions’.

After the war, at the Convention of Gastein, Bismarck was successful both in gaining control over Schleswig and Saxe-Lauenburg, and in making Austria’s new administration of Holstein look, as Waller argues, ‘egotistical and foolish’. The war also began to reveal the cracks within the Nationalverein that would eventually rend it in two in 1866, as while the nationalists may have celebrated what they perceived as the liberation of Schleswig-Holstein, liberals could only abhor the way it was achieved. Yet perhaps Bismarck’s greatest achievement of 1864 was the loss of Austrian prestige in many of the lesser-German states. With Austria isolated from its traditional support base, Bismarck could exert pressure on her until she declared war in exasperation in 1866.

In the period between 1864 and the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, Bismarck continued to showcase his skill at exercising Prussian foreign policy and at manipulating the antagonisms of his enemies. Knowing that Austrian Emperor Franz Josef would continue to refuse to relinquish hegemony in Germany, Bismarck successfully manipulated Austria further into diplomatic isolation. At Bismarck’s successful 1865 Biarritz

The Battle of Dybbøl, Second Schleswig War, by Wilhelm Camphausen

meeting with Napoleon III, France was pacified through the hint of territorial gain – something that would later prove elusive. The support of Italy was gained in 1866, whilst Britain’s political isolation and

Russia’s continued enmity towards Austria over their stance during the Crimean War secured their neutrality.

Perhaps most crucially, Bismarck worked to shift attitudes towards Austria within the Prussian Junker elite and his king, writing in a letter to Wilhelm I that ‘hostility towards Prussia has become the chief, one might say the only political aim in Vienna’. His final masterstroke was to come in declaring a motion for universal suffrage in the German Confederation in April 1866, perhaps paradoxically using the power of democracy to outmanoeuvre an outraged Vienna and Middle Germany into war.

When Bismarck’s tactical war did break out, he was able to present Austria as the aggressor, with, as Steinberg puts it, the ‘stupefying ineptness’ of Austrian Foreign Minister Count Mensdorff having given him justification. It was Bismarck’s manipulative diplomacy that had made it clear that whilst Prussia was fighting a noble war for equality in 1866, Austria was fighting for her imperialist primacy. Franz Josef had made a grave mistake in trying to defend Austria’s overextended empire, with his lack of compromise in either Italy or Germany making the loss of both inevitable. As Moltke would later say of the war in 1866 ‘Austria’s centre of gravity lay out of Germany; Prussia’s lay within it’. Yet whilst Bismarck’s skill was instrumental in provoking a war on his own terms, and to an extent winning it - with his alliance with Italy forcing Austria to send 100,000 troops south - it was the power of his army and the weakness of Austria’s that led to victory. Bismarck had long warned that Prussia would ‘have to fight for (its) existence against Austria’ as both nations ‘ploughed the same disputed acre’. The Prussian army, therefore, had been extensively reformed after 1858 under the leadership of War Minister von Roon. The introduction of a mandatory three-year active service conscription allowed for the creation of 49 new regiments and enabled the Prussian coalition to wield a mobile army of nearly 500,000 in 1866, and 1.2 million by 1870.

This was in stark contrast to an Austrian army whose budget had almost halved between 1860 and 1865, and whose use of the ‘obsolete’ Lorenz Gun in 1866 has been described by Frank Zimmer as ‘one of the most disastrous miscalculations in the history of the armaments industry’. Arden Bucholz argues that in 1866 Prussia’s modern, bureaucratic attitude to war was pioneering in its ‘disciplinebased, institutionalised knowledge’, directly enabling her to win decisive battles like Königgrätz and Sedan. Steinberg similarly describes the ‘Old Prussia’ going into battle with ‘new technology, transportation, weaponry and communications’ against opponents who severely underestimated them and mistakenly believed in their own military superiority.

However, while this military power led to victory on the battlefield, Bismarck’s genius in 1866 came not just in the creation of a unified North German Confederation, but in his moderation at the Peace of Prague, when he acknowledged that he ‘had to avoid wounding Austria too severely’, at risk of her becoming an ally of France. Kissinger summarises this perfectly when he writes of Bismarck’s ‘doctrine of self-limitation’, and that ‘he was as moderate in concluding his wars as he had been ruthless in preparing them’. Yet, on the same day that Moltke’s army won at Königgrätz, Bismarck further cemented his domestic dominance by crushing the liberals in elections to the Prussian Parliament. A surge of patriotism increased the number of conservative seats from 35 to 136, and the Nationalverein finally rent itself in two in ignominy.

Schlacht bei Königgrätz (Battle of Königgrätz), by Emil Hünten

Bismarck’s ruthless and manipulative diplomacy was to be showcased again in the years before the Franco-Prussian War. He was aware post-1866 that unifying the North German Confederation with the southern states would require challenging France. However, his later assertion that ‘I did not doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before the construction of a United Germany could be

realised’, should be questioned, as he had initially hoped that this could be achieved with friction alone. When it became clear that friction alone was not sufficient, Bismarck’s skill at exploiting contemporary events for his own means was exemplified by the Hohenzollern Candidature, a Franco-German spat around who should take the vacant Spanish throne. Although perhaps partially pressured by the actions of national-liberals, particularly in Baden, Bismarck knew that the Candidature would cause sufficient outrage in France. Bismarck’s success was not just in inciting French reaction, but simultaneously inducing German indignation over the issue, in the hope of presenting southern Germany with a threat that required a unified response.

His political masterstroke, however, was to edit the ‘Ems Telegram’ and publish it in the Berlin Press, making King Wilhelm’s rejection of the French request for a long-term guarantee against a future Hohenzollern Candidature seem final. Whilst the Duc de Gramont, the French Foreign Minister, certainly made a grave error in asking for such a guarantee, (without which the war may have been avoided), Bismarck nonetheless knew how to exploit the mistake. He had again expertly used the circumstances presented to him, with the altered telegram acting, as he put it, like a ‘red rag upon the Gallic bull’. The violent anti-Prussian reaction that followed in France was therefore an essential and expected component of Bismarck’s strategy. It was this reaction, acting alongside Napoleon III’s mounting frustration since miscalculating that Austria would win in 1866, that forced the French Emperor to declare war.

This played perfectly into the hands of Bismarck, who could now present the war as an attack on all of Germany. Bismarck’s careful diplomatic manoeuvring was, therefore, able to acquire a perfect casus belli which could galvanise united German action. Although the might of the German military coalition was certainly aided by what Taylor describes as the ‘gross defects of the French Army’, German victory in the Franco-Prussian War was made inevitable by a slow French mobilisation, with the subsequent heavy loss at Sedan crippling their command structure. It was ultimately this rapid German victory that, as Green argues, ‘acted as a national catharsis, paving the way for German unification in 1871’.

Conclusion

Bismarck, therefore, was no myth – but a mastermind. By 1871, he had achieved what those imbued with the revolutionary fervour of 1848 had proved unable to – a unified ‘Klein Deutschland’ under the hegemony of the Prussian House of Hohenzollern. Yet great men can only succeed if they can exploit the circumstances of their time, and Bismarck’s brilliance as a statesman showed in his ruthless, yet measured, diplomatic approach. When he became Minister-President in 1862, the national idea was firmly in the hands of a movement whose liberalism was anathema to Bismarck’s concept of an autocratic united Germany. It was his acute statesmanship that showed that it was possible to unify Germany whilst preserving the autocracy of the Prussian system, and that the paradox that Prussia could only do so by allying itself to nationalliberalism was only apparent. There is no doubt that Bismarck was aided significantly by the Zollverein, the domination of Prussian industry, the vast railway network, and Prussia’s technologically and doctrinally advanced army. However, the way in which he used those factors to achieve his strategic objective of a united Germany was in no way predetermined.

Bismarck was certainly right when he spoke about ‘blood and iron’, for it was the economic and military power of the Prussian state that won the wars of unification, but it was ultimately his own mastery of international diplomacy that enabled that power to be directed effectively. Bismarck often liked to quote the phrase ‘flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo’ – ‘If I cannot move the Gods, I will turn to the Devil’. This explains his true genius –that he didn’t just have a vision for Germany, but an unwavering will to impose it on others, using any means necessary. The tragedy of Bismarck’s genius, however, was that his 20th century successors forgot the patient preparation that had made unification possible, and the moderation that had secured it.

The time has come to rethink the October Revolution. In the West, the view of the revolution as a coup d’état, forcibly carried out by a minority party, has been shaped by both the Cold War and the dominance of historians such as Richard Pipes. As such, it is the product of inherent Western bias, representing a fallacy that is engrained in the very nature of post-Cold War society - one that is both outdated and entirely inaccurate. To truly understand the October Revolution, one must examine three fundamental principles: the wide and growing support base the Bolsheviks benefitted from in 1917, the increasing radicalism and militancy of the workers, sailors and soldiers, and the broad social changes in Russia that characterised the first two decades of the 20th century. If one combines these factors, it becomes clear that the Bolsheviks had far more support from the masses than Richard Pipes would have us believe, and that without this support they would never have been able to seize power at all.

The surge in support for the Bolsheviks over the course of 1917 is well-supported by statistics (see Figs 1.1-3). These, quite frankly, are hard to argue with, and very clearly show a rapid rise in Bolshevik support, particularly in the ‘Citadels of the Revolution’, Moscow and Petrograd. From a party of just over 8,000 in 1905, the Bolsheviks grew to a 340,000-strong force in October 1917, which included 60,000 party members in Petrograd alone. This suggests that the Bolsheviks received far more than a mere modicum of support; they were in fact undeniably popular, and increasingly so. Though admittedly less popular in the countryside than in the cities, Lenin’s policy of ‘Land to the Peasants’ won many peasants over, whilst support from the Left SRs further boosted the Bolsheviks’ foothold within the peasantry. The demands of the peasants became more and more radical throughout the summer of 1917, with 237 land seizures in July alone (often organised by the mir as a whole, which had retained its importance despite Stolypin’s reforms), the murder of countless landlords and petitions for land redistribution flooding into the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks’ policy of land distribution was exactly what the peasants wanted, and the majority of those who did not actively support the Left SRs or the Bolsheviks did not actively oppose them. As such, the sweetener of the Land Decree was successful, giving the Bolsheviks sufficient support in the countryside to make Lenin’s dream of a popular uprising a reality. Meanwhile, in the cities the image is even clearer. With dire food shortages, rapid inflation and no hope of a brighter tomorrow, the Bolsheviks were able to accrue considerable support as the only simultaneously anti-war, anti-government and proSoviet party. Soviet popularity in the cities skyrocketed in 1917, and, as such, when the Bolsheviks seized power in October they did so with a significant support base amongst workers and soldiers. This allowed them to form the Red Guards, who were crucial in the takeover, and it also allowed them to seize power without sparking violent revolt on the streets of Petrograd. The very success of the October Revolution thus stemmed from widespread support amongst key groups, most notably factory workers, soldiers and of course the Kronstadt sailors (most famous thanks to the part played by the Aurora).

The extent of this support is unquestionable, despite the results of the Constituent Assembly elections. This latter piece of evidence should be taken with a pinch of salt, both as the SRs were split at the time, meaning the Bolsheviks could rely on support from many Left SRs, and as the Bolsheviks won the vote in the cities by a large margin. What was crucial in October 1917 was the support from within Moscow and Petrograd, as the revolution relied particularly on urban workers. Support in the countryside was secondary, but the comparative lack of Bolshevik votes in the countryside does not mean October 1917 was not a popular revolution; it merely highlights the distribution of the Bolsheviks’ popularity, which in total was sufficient to make the October Revolution a mass uprising. What is more, data regarding the lead-up to the revolution is far more relevant than data obtained after it - this is a debate about the nature of the revolution, not its aftermath. What counts is the surge in Bolshevik popularity in the cities before the revolution, not their collective popularity after.

Thinking of October 1917 as merely a coup d’état also implies that the radical policies of the Bolsheviks were entirely distinct from the thoughts and feelings of ‘the proletariat’. This was not so. In many ways, the Bolsheviks responded to pre-existing radicalism amongst the workers and soldiers, rather than creating it. They reacted to the simmering, allconsuming discontent across the whole of Russian

society. This discontent had significantly increased in magnitude after the Lena Goldfields Massacre, before eventually being directed afresh at the Provisional Government after the dire failure of the June Offensive. The July Days were a clear expression of how radical Russian society had become (eyewitnesses suggest the protesters numbered close to 500,000), and how eager it was for change. All the Bolsheviks had to do was to tap into this popular sentiment, for example by supporting, at least publicly if not privately, fullscale rabochii kontrol (workers’ control). What made October 1917 a popular uprising was that the Bolsheviks and the workers were very much ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. Of course, many did not know that by supporting the Bolsheviks they were also supporting the creation of a monolithic one-party state, but thanks to Lenin’s carefully worded speeches they were none the wiser. This alignment between Bolshevik policies and the reality of public sentiment can be supported by Bolshevik dominance in the radical Petrograd factory committees, as well as their later dominance in the Soviets, which truly were ‘created by the people for the people’. The Bolsheviks were able to acquire this dominance not merely by force or connections, but by a framework of policies which ordinary Russians were eager to get behind. The Provisional Government failed to provide workable alternatives, and the Mensheviks’ tacit support of the government and the war, as well as their desire to mediate between workers and their ‘bourgeoise employers’, alienated many. Only the Bolsheviks offered a conduit for the expression of the growing unrest in the cities, and indeed in the countryside. By providing this conduit, the Bolsheviks were completely in tune with Russian workers. They were not simply a minority party taking the initiative but were instead a popular party fulfilling the vox populi.

In this way, the Bolsheviks were responding to social changes which had their roots decades before with Witte’s policy of industrialisation and modernisation. As the population of Moscow and Petrograd boomed and the importance of state industry continued to grow (for example, the state controlled two-thirds of Russian railways by 1899), the nature of Russian society gradually started to change. Fairly high literacy among the urban workers turned the cities into breeding grounds of rapidly disseminated revolutionary ideas, whilst the economic consequences of Witte’s reforms took their toll on the peasants in particular, as they were heavily taxed, both directly and indirectly on goods such as salt and kerosene. When coupled with the inherent weaknesses of Tsarism and the leadership qualities of Tsar Nicholas II, as well as the growth of the middle classes, the inevitable result was the beginning of the increasing radicalisation and polarisation of Russian politics. Social change in Russia therefore had its origins well before Lenin came on the scene, even before the publication of ‘What Is to Be Done?’ As such, October 1917 was the culmination of the wider long-term development of Russian society, not simply a one-off coup d’état. Therefore, the October Revolution was undoubtedly a popular uprising. The Bolsheviks would not have been able to seize power as smoothly as they did without substantial support from the workers, soldiers and sailors. Their popularity is well supported by statistics, and even though they were less popular in the countryside, their land policy nonetheless gained enough support to be a force to be reckoned with. The Bolsheviks were thus merely the agents of a broader, sweeping revolution, which had been facilitated by modernisation and by the blunders of the Provisional Government. They acted upon worker sentiment, not against it, and hence represented not only their own interests, but also the interests and desire for change of many ordinary Russians. The tragedy, of course, was that the revolution Lenin achieved was ultimately destroyed by Stalin. Lenin may have constructed many of the apparatuses of terror which Stalin later used, but the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks’ first few years in power was, on balance, a necessary response to circumstances. Without terror and repression there is no way that the Bolsheviks would have survived, or indeed thrived, as successfully as they did. Lenin thus had to adapt to keep the ship afloat, using terror not because he wanted to but because he had to. Stalin would later use terror in a completely different way, building a state which would have horrified Lenin. Stalinism, therefore, was most certainly not an inevitable product of Leninism. The October Revolution was thus indeed a genuine workers’ revolution, but, thanks to Stalin, what the workers had fought for was never achieved, the consequences of which are still felt today.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

During the over 70 years of Communist rule in the USSR, the Bolshevik’s seizure of power in October 1917 was often revered as a glorious popular uprising in which the common man overthrew the bourgeoisie provisional government and established a socialist utopia. However, to discover the true nature of the event we must look beyond the Bolshevik rhetoric and Soviet propaganda. Behind the mythical status and vivid imagery that future Soviet historians and spin doctors would present, the truth of the ‘revolution,’ is very different. In fact, the true nature of the change of power was the simple collapse of a pitiful and crumbling Provisional government which was ousted by the opportunist (although admittedly talented) Bolshevik conspiracy. The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 was a simple and bloodless coup d’état which was highly likely to have been supported by the scheming Germans from the shadows. Ultimately the coup d’état was orchestrated by a vociferous yet small minority of Bolshevik fanatics, displaying all the traditional markings of a simple putsch.

Sergei Eisenstein's 1927 film about the 1917 revolution demonstrates the later Soviet campaign to create a cult of ‘popular uprising.’

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 displayed all the markings of a coup d’état whilst their planning demonstrated qualities of a textbook putsch. Lenin had always wanted to overthrow the government - demonstrated by his publication of the ‘April Theses.’ In this publication he outlined the Bolshevik desire to oust the provisional government. His military mastermind, Trotsky, had been scheming since his inclusion on the Military Revolutionary Council (MRC) on October 9th 1917. The immediate revolution on the 24th was a typical regime change. During the coup, Trotsky directed the Red Guards to seize strategic vantage points and communication centres. It was not popular revolutionaries who seized the Winter Palace, but the Bolshevik’s very own Red Guards. A prearranged signal brought the Battleship Aurora into the River Neva (Surely if this were a spontaneous popular uprising ‘muscle’ wouldn’t have been needed to clinch victory?).

Battleship Aurora docked in the River Neva. Battleships do not often spontaneously enter cities!

Power fell to the Bolsheviks in a speedy coup d’état. The post-revolution consolidation of power highlighted the ruthless and premeditated Bolshevik conspiracy. During the session of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lev Kamenev informed the delegates that the Bolsheviks were now the supreme authority in Russia. Kamenev (a Bolshevik) read out the list of fourteen members of the new government all of whom were Bolsheviks or Left SR's. Chief amongst them was Lenin. The proceedings of the 27th of October demonstrated that the Bolsheviks were not put into power by an impulsive people’s revolution, but by their own scheming. The surgical coup d’État simply highlighted the October Revolution’s premeditation, with the events simply camouflaged as a popular uprising by the conspirators. The revolution was carried out under false slogans and pretences in a seizure which ultimately displayed all the markings of a coup d’état. The Bolsheviks were a significant minority before and after the revolution. The October insurrection was a regime change, actively supported by a small (albeit noisy) minority of the population. The