The thing with Russia is that they've had thousands of years of pretty much unremittingly awful history. Right from the start, they had to contend with the fact that the bits of the country with decent soil had terrible weather and vice versa. Then they were overrun by the Mongols, who were not exactly known for their gentleness or tolerance. Then the tsars gradually managed to gain enough power to take over from the Mongols, and they were no better; there was never any concept of the state in Russia, as there was elsewhere. The tsars ruled on a patrimonial basis, in exactly the same way as a head of household - everyone in the realm was under the tsar's personal jurisdiction, and the tsar ran the country for his (or her) own profit. Because that's how the tsars ruled, there was never a separate landed aristocracy who could become strong enough to challenge the tsar's excesses, as there was in, say, England; anything like the Magna Carta would have been unthinkable in Russia. I could go into more detail about exactly how the Russian aristocracy, such as it was, did work, but that would be too long for a comment here.
By the time the Revolution came along, there was very little real support for it among the peasants, basically because by that stage they'd nearly all become so cynical that they couldn't see it doing any good. The revolutionaries were trying to establish a communist state; I would argue that they never succeeded, because communism only ever works if everyone agrees to it, and that never happened. Of course they called it communism anyway, and that's what gave communism such a bad name. (For an instance of real communism in action, see the Acts of the Apostles!) But the peasants just took advantage of the mayhem to riot pretty much randomly and anarchically. They weren't interested in communism; they were just fed up with being pushed around by petty officials. Interestingly, many of them saw the tsar himself as a source of order, and thought that if he only knew how the officials were treating them, he would intervene on their behalf.
So the revolutionaries had to come down pretty hard on the peasants to prevent total chaos, because they hadn't realised what they would be unleashing. This was, of course, tough on the peasants, but then life had been tough on the peasants since times immemorial, and it hadn't exactly been a bunch of roses for anyone else either, except the tsar.
On the whole, I think they're not doing too badly these days, all things considered.
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Date: 2006-07-13 08:56 pm (UTC)From:By the time the Revolution came along, there was very little real support for it among the peasants, basically because by that stage they'd nearly all become so cynical that they couldn't see it doing any good. The revolutionaries were trying to establish a communist state; I would argue that they never succeeded, because communism only ever works if everyone agrees to it, and that never happened. Of course they called it communism anyway, and that's what gave communism such a bad name. (For an instance of real communism in action, see the Acts of the Apostles!) But the peasants just took advantage of the mayhem to riot pretty much randomly and anarchically. They weren't interested in communism; they were just fed up with being pushed around by petty officials. Interestingly, many of them saw the tsar himself as a source of order, and thought that if he only knew how the officials were treating them, he would intervene on their behalf.
So the revolutionaries had to come down pretty hard on the peasants to prevent total chaos, because they hadn't realised what they would be unleashing. This was, of course, tough on the peasants, but then life had been tough on the peasants since times immemorial, and it hadn't exactly been a bunch of roses for anyone else either, except the tsar.
On the whole, I think they're not doing too badly these days, all things considered.