Why Russia?

[Morgenstern]

I was wondering, why of all places did Russia become a hotbed of Communist activity?

[Muzk]

Because of dialectics.

[Red Commissar]

I was wondering, why of all places did Russia become a hotbed of Communist activity?

Simply put, a combination of a sufficiently oppressive regime, a regime that was losing power in the country, and increasingly worsening economic conditions and outdated concepts. However a lot of that support wasn't entirely for communists in the beginning.

It was up to the Bolsheviks to be able to draw that agitation against the regime to their cause, especially in the course of the revolution against the Czar and later the civil war, rather than the Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Octoborists, Liberals, etc...

[which doctor]

This is a really complicated question, but I'll make a few basic points and hopefully point you in the right direction.

Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Russia (primarily western Russia, especially St. Petersburg) underwent massive industrialization in a very short period of time. What took centuries in other countries took only decades in Russia. Most of this development was made possible by capital from Western Europe (specifically France), so Tsarist Russia at this point in time was practically a colony of the French bourgeoisie, in terms of economic relations. So despite the image of Russia being an economically backwards nation of peasants is misleading, since there existed a sizable urban proletariat.

Russian Marxists were in close contact with other European Marxists. Due to a strict Tsarist government and the common practice of exiling political dissidents, many Russian Marxists spent considerable time in other countries such as Switzerland, Germany, France, and England, where they were in contact with all the most influential personalities of the time, so they were definitely up-to-date and cosmopolitan people. For instance, I think Lenin and Trotsky met for the first time in London.

The antiquated monarchy of Tsarist Russia provided another incentive, so to speak, for a revolution. The Tsarist empire was a pretty ramshackle outfit too, so it didn't take a whole lot to topple (as opposed to Germany, for instance). This allowed for a proletarian revolution to occur contemporaneously with a bourgeois revolution. The problems inherent to such a contradiction were expressed politically in the 1905, February 1917, and October 1917 revolutions, perhaps most acutely in the Bolshevik - Menshevik Split.

Here is an interesting insight from the 1882 preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto by Marx:

The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina (http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#obshchina), though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?



The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882

That Marx even posed the question, as early as 1882, of what would happen if the Russian Revolution would be the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West (which it was) was pretty remarkable. The prevailing attitude up until WWI was still that Germany would be the country to lead Russia into revolution, while in reality the opposite happened, though the German Revolution never materialized.

A good source to answer your question is Leon Trotsky's Results and Prospects, which was written in response to the 1905 revolution, and analyzes Russia's unique historical position in relation to the extent of its industrialization.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp-index.htm

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A hugely backwards regime, led by an inordinately vain and idiotic Tsar.
This Feudal cum Capitalist system led to immense inequality - 95% of people in Tsarist Russia were insanely poor people, 70% being peasants.

The advent of war highlighted the idiocy of the Tsar, as did Bloody Sunday, the Russia-Japan war, the promotion of Grigory Rasputin and the austerity regime of Stolypin.

An unhealthy mixture of a shockingly corrupt, inefficient and backwards system, mixed with some shocking short/medium term decisions which triggered revolution.

[Black Sheep]

I was wondering, why of all places did Russia become a hotbed of Communist activity?
Any news/info on that?
I have no idea. :confused: