Rise of the Bolsheviks

Note and Disclaimer: Information on recent Russian history available to western researchers and writers is largely largely biased toward western sources and comparable Russian sources are difficult to obtain access to. Many western sources are ultimately linked back to Russian dissident sources and quantitative data from different sources will differ drastically. For example a common value quoted in western media for Soviet soldiers killed for “cowardice” or desertion in WWII is app. 1M. The figure cited from Soviet statistics, which is fairly detailed in terms of time, location, and circumstance, is slightly upwards of 100,000 (1). Both are very large numbers but are also very different. Other statistics commonly cited regarding deaths of dissidents or political prisoners are so large that they would seem to indicate a mass depopulation of the entire region. In this section every attempt will be made to be balanced and present ranges noting that tabulating deaths especially of civilian populations is very difficult and tends to produce a wide range of potential values none of which should be considered to be certain.

The Backstory

Between the wars political radicalism was very common especially in academia and amongst the political class both in America and throughout Europe. What small government forces existed in academia and the media were so small and powerless that they would have been almost unnoticeable. The rise of Communist Russia was initially seen not so much as a threat but as more of a pathfinder to progressive elite. With Russia as the heart of communism or Marxism during this time period and the first instance where Marxists had gained full control of a modern nation state, some understanding of Russian history leading up to this time, along with how it was perceived in Europe and America is essential to understand subsequent events.

Treatment of these recent historical events is addressed in philosophical terms by nearly all western writers but these areas have long histories and memories that outlive regime changes and internal revolutions. When Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin in 2024, Putin answered one of the first questions posed by Carlson with a 30 minute explanation of Russian history going back a thousand years. This would seem very strange to a western audience but not to a Slavic audience. Such detail is probably not necessary here but an understanding of European/Western – Russian conflicts that occurred in the modern era are extremely relevant.

England had a long history of outwitting Russia that was frequently referred to as “The Great Game”. When English explorers first made contact with Russia in 1553 they found a weak and unorganized civilization struggling to drive out the last of the Asiatic warlords that had conquered Russia 300 years earlier (2). Mongols and Tartars still held the Black Sea and Russia’s southern coast which put them under the control of the Ottoman Empire meaning that Russia couldn’t access the Black Sea without permission of the sultan. Russia was invaded by Sweden in1708 which was part of the Great Northern War that extended from 1700 – 21 and withstood this in part by denying the invaders resources (scorched earth) (3). Although aided by the vastness of the area and the associated logistical problems that creates, Russia within their own theatre of operation could take on and defeat an invading European power. Russia was no longer weak or easy prey and was growing stronger (3). By the late 1700’s Russian Empress Catherine the Great had succeeded in expelling the Turks from the Russian Black Sea coast after two wars from 1768 to 1774 and 1787 to 1792 (2). This potentially threatened British control of the Mediterranean. The British demanded that the Russian return the fortress of Ochakav to the Turks but Catherine refused. The British backed down but pursued a plan over the next hundred years to play Muslims against Christians propping up the decaying Ottoman Empire. Catherine, on the other hand, sought to unite Christians to drive the Turks out of Europe and restore the Byzantine Empire in what was referred to as the “Greek Plan”.(2)

Byzantine history was deeply tied to Slavic identity. Vladimir the Great, Grand Duke of Kiev, converted to Christianity in 988 leaving the Slavic gods and aligning with the Greek Orthodox Church. Missionaries developed a Slavic alphabet which is the basis for Cyrillic writing. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Many Byzantines fled into Russia (2). The Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan III married a Byzantine Princess Sophia, adopted the double-eagle as Russia’s coat of arms, and took on the title of Tsar meaning Caesar of Moscow which was symbolically seen as the third Rome. The Russian Empire rose from the ashes of Constantinople. (2)

While Catherine sought to unite Christian Europe the British continued to do all in their power to oppose this. They specifically tried to prevent the Russians from having access to the Dardanelles and the Mediterranean which could cause England to lose control of the Mediterranean and the trade routes to the east that they were dependent on (4 p. 290). The French under Napoleon invaded Russia along with other European allies in 1812 and suffered a devastating defeat in a similar manner to the Swede’s. The combined casualties of this war were app. 1M and Napoleon’s power declined after this (3). In 1821 the Russians instigated a rebellion against the Turks and the British, walking a diplomatic tightrope, betrayed their Turkish allies siding with the Greeks in an attempt to create goodwill with the new Greek state (2). Three decades later though the British again sided with the Turks.

In the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856 the Russians invaded the Turks and the British sided with the Sultan and the decaying Ottoman Empire forming a European alliance to invade Russia. Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire invaded Russia and were ultimately victorious resulting in a negotiated settlement with the threat of Austria joining the European alliance seen as a decisive factor in Russia accepting peace (2). Russia wound up having to demilitarize the Black Sea, disperse the Black Sea Fleet, and destroy their fortifications. Throughout this period European powers generally saw the Russians as Asiatic as opposed to European and looked upon them as inferior.

In 1875-8 the Great Eastern Crisis occurred when Christian populations revolted against the Ottoman Empire. This was harshly repressed with as many as 100,000 Christians estimated to have been killed in Bulgaria alone (2). Most Europeans were strongly supportive of the Christians but the English continued to defend the Turks. As Queen Victoria expressed her commitment to the “Great Game”, stating “It is not a question of defending Turkey; it is the question of Russian or British supremacy in the world” (5 pp. 189-90). Russia came to the aid of these Eastern European Christian people and declared war on Turkey on April 24, 1877. As the Russians advanced rapidly toward Constantinople, the Queen became increasingly insistent on Prime Minister Disraeli to intervene. As the Russians reached the outskirts of the city, the British dispatched a fleet of warships to protect the Turkish capital and the Russians backed down on January 20, 1877 just seven miles from the center of the city. (6 p. 19)

In 1904, in what could be seen as a western or American and British proxy war using Japan (7 p. 97), Japan decisively defeated Russia preventing Russia from developing into a Pacific power (8). The New York investment firm Kuhn, Loeb, and Company had raised capital for the Japanese which enabled them to launch a devastating attack against the Russians at Port Arthur with firepower that they were not able to counter. In the course of the following year, they nearly decimated the Russian fleet. Jacob Schiff was awarded the Mikado award in recognition of his role in this campaign (9 p. ch.14). The war lasted two years and thousands of Russian soldiers were taken prisoner. Sources that were hostile to the Tsar paid for the printing of Marxists material and revolutionaries within the prison camps and attempted, with a good deal of success, to indoctrinate the prisoners to be revolutionaries upon their release and return to Russia (9).

Upper Left: Map of the Crimean

war showing the areas of conflict

Above: Period map of the Russo-Japanese War showing movements and battle sites. Note Port Arthur at the end of the peninsula

Left: Short video showing area of control by time and the comparative force sizes and causalities

WWI, Revolution(s), and Civil War

As the world descended into World War I, Russia was to play a key role in this but were also diplomatically manipulated by the British and French. The Czar and Kaiser Wilhelm following the conclusion of the Japanese war agreed to the Bjorko Treaty but the Russians were now deeply in debt to European financiers out of France and under heavy pressure, the deal was walked back (7 pp. 94-5). This also appears to be the first time that a private proposal to give the Russians Constantinople and access to the Mediterranean was dangled in front of the Czar in exchange for supporting a military alliance against Germany (7 p. 95). Russia was already closely linked to the Serbians and also was entangled in a mutual defense treaty with the French which ensured that Germany would face a two front war. When the Serbians and Austrians mobilized for War, Russia initially paused at partial mobilization but Czar Nicholas succumbed to intense pressure from his “allies” and ordered a full mobilization on July 30, 1914 effectively initiating the war and unleashing the “Guns of August”.(7 p. 297)

From the outset of WWI, the Russian military proved no match for the Germans losing two entire armies and as many as 120,000 men within the first month of the conflict. On January 1st the British were forced to help the Russians against the Turks in the Caucus (2) . To prevent the Russians from accepting a separate truce with the Central Powers (10 pp. 13-15) the British decide to launch an attack on the Dardanelles. First the French and British sailed up the 38 mile channel and were decimated from mines and shore fire. This was followed by an eight month land assault on the Gallipoli peninsula resulting in the deaths of 56,707 British, French, and Commonwealth troops (2) (11 pp. 147-57). The attack was called off in December of 1915. Winston Churchill took the blame for this disaster and was removed from First Lord of the Admiralty (2) (11 pp. 165-75). A lingering question about Gallipoli is whether this attack was ever intended to succeed in the first place or was just a very costly deception to keep Russia in the war (12).[1] If the Allies had taken Gallipoli, they would have been obligated to turn the area over to the Russia based on a secret treaty negotiated between March 4 and April 10 of 1915 known as the Constantinople Agreement (the date of signing was reported to be March 18 which is when the invasion began). This would have gone directly against the strategic objectives of the British for the prior 200 years but the Treaty would still have been valid so long as the Allies won the war and Russia was still intact. The British, on the other hand, did get something in return which was a large area of the recently discovered Persian oil fields.[2] There were long discussions and debates on this subject within the British government at the time and the official record is one of confusion.

This leads to what was the most successful invasion of Russia and it didn’t involve invading armies. If the Allies took Constantinople and gave it to Russia this would be a major victory for the Czar but that didn’t happen and just added to the ongoing suffering of the Russian people which set the stage for revolution. Lenin, who was a Russian born revolutionary, was contained in Germany throughout most of the war but was released in Germany and sent back to Russia as part of a plan to take Russia out of the war, it was by no means a certainty that he would ultimately prevail. The second most influential revolutionary of the era was Leo Trotsky who, in 1916, was expelled from France and came to the United States living in New York writing and giving speeches when he too joined the revolutionary movement in Russia (2). When he left for Russia, he was arrested by British authorities in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he was held for one month before Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service[3] ordered his release and he resumed his journey on April 29th.(2)(13 pp. 120-21)

There were two revolutions that occurred in Russia, one in February and one in October of 1917. The February revolution established a provisional socialist government led by Alexander Kerensky. The government was relatively moderate and accommodated several factions of which the Bolsheviks were the smallest. Trotsky and Lenin were not even in Russia when the February revolution took place(9). The February revolution could be considered a palace coup that involved the Czar’s own family who worked closely with the British embassy (2)(14 p. 167). On March 14th the British government endorsed the revolution. On March 24th, 1917 a Danish newspaper noted that British Ambassador Buchannan effectively held the power of “dictator” or Russia.

Demographically it should be noted here that the makeup of the Bolsheviks was not broadly representative of the Russian population. Jews made up less than 3% of the Russian population, were dramatically over-represented in key party positions, the military, and the party in general (15)(16) including many who were not Russian in the first place. In the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and its Central Committee elected in August 1917, five of the committee’s 21 members were Jewish (15). Common estimates of Jewish composition of the Bolsheviks movement at the time of the revolution range from 50% to 85% (17) although there were a large number of people who were part Jewish making this a difficult figure to solidly quantify. The Jewish level of association with the ruling Communist party in Russia was to decline gradually and then rapidly after the revolution and through the Stalin purges.

The October revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power was really more of a coup of another sort. Taking advantage of confusion on the part of the other groups that made up the new government and using a combination of bribes and propaganda, they enlisted several regiments of soldiers to take procession of all government buildings and communication centers in the very early morning of October 25 (9). Resistance was nearly nonexistent. Within a few hours and without any knowledge or consent on the part of the Russian people, the country had fallen to a small minority faction. Kerensky fled for his life and all provisional government ministers were arrested claiming that the British government had played a key role in the collapse of his government (2). Lenin, Trotsky, and their associates and followers didn’t overthrow the Tsar but rather overthrew the first democratic government of Russia. After seizing control of the government they signed a peace treaty with Germany creating a one front war, began confiscating private property, and began to eliminate all opposition. Trotsky held roughly equal power to Lenin and on November 8, 1917 he took the position of Commissar of Foreign Affairs. On November 202nd he announced the repudiation of all secret treaties. He stated that the treaties “lost all their obligatory force for the Russian workmen, soldiers, and peasants, who have taken the government into their own hands” (18 p. 12) and “we sweep all secret treaties into the dustbin” (19). In doing this Russia gave up all claims to Constantinople and access to the Mediterranean but turned over all of Persia to Britain (2). He wasn’t rejecting imperialism but gave a vast area to the world’s predominant imperialist power while upholding their long term strategic objective regarding Russia. [4] The British government claimed all drilling rights in Persia for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [5]. The Persian government wasn’t consulted on this but it didn’t really matter (2).

Eugene Lyons, who was a United Press correspondent and initially highly favorable to the Bolsheviks, after living under the regime for six years wrote an influential book titled Workers Paradise Lost where he summarized the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks real beliefs on popular sovereignty as follows:

Lenin, Trotsky, and their cohorts did not overthrow the monarchy. They overthrew the first democratic society in Russian history, set up through a truly popular revolution in March, 1917.... They represented the smallest of the Russian radical movements.... But theirs was a movement that scoffed at numbers and frankly mistrusted the multitudes. The workers could be educated for their role after the revolution; they would not be led but driven to their terrestrial heaven. Lenin always sneered at the obsession of competing socialist groups with their "mass base." "Give us an organization of professional revolutionaries," he used to say, "and we will turn Russia upside down."... Even these contingents were pathetically duped, having not the remotest notion of the real purposes for which they were being used. They were striking out, they thought, for the multi-party Soviets, for freedom, equality, and other goals which their organizers regarded as emotional garbage.... On the brink of the dictatorship, Lenin dared to promise that the state will fade away, since "all need of force will vanish." Not at some remote future, but at once: "The proletarian state begins to wither immediately after its triumph, for in a classless society a state is unnecessary and impossible....Soviet power is a new kind of state, in which there is no bureaucracy, no police, no standing army." Also: "So long as the state exists, there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state." Within a few months after they attained power, most of the tsarist practices the Leninists had condemned were revived, usually in more ominous forms: political prisoners, convictions without trial and without the formality of charges, savage persecution of dissenting views, death penalties for more varieties of crime than in any other modern nation. The rest were put into effect in the following years, including the suppression of all other parties, restoration of the internal passport, a state monopoly of the press, along with repressive practices the monarchy had outlived for a century or more. (20 pp. 13-29)

Even with financial backing from New York banking interests, a Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War that was to ensue was still uncertain but they never wavered in their plans or their ruthlessness (9). Lenin and Trotsky’s red faction worked outward from the capital and after about two years of fierce fighting had defeated the white faction and took control of the vast state (21). This victory was in no small part due to financial support from the United States and England. Still the outcome would seem to have been extremely improbable. The Red Army consisted of 300,000 fighters who were boxed in by a comparable number of White Army forces supplemented by about 180,000 allied troops including 60,000 British, 70,000 Japanese, plus smaller contingents of Americans, French, and others (2)(22 pp. 227-30). The White forces, however, were dependent on Britain for funding. Winston Churchill was War Secretary at the time and appears to have done all he could to defeat the Red Army and probably would have except that Prime Minister Lloyd George effectively blocked nearly everything he did (2)[6]. The foreign troops were not used effectively and sometimes it wasn’t clear who they were fighting for and against. After five years and 10 million dead, the Red Army conquered Russia and several of the border regions became independent including Finland, Poland, and several Baltic States in accordance with the long term British strategy of carving up Russia into smaller “statelets”. (22 pp. 227-30)(22 p. 329)

The interaction between Lloyd George and Churchill during the Russian Civil War raises some interesting and lingering historical questions. Lloyd George was from Wales and was a man of the left with solid populace credentials appealing to labor and the under classes of England and was a world class orator. He was also very ambitious, had numerous extra-marital affairs that are known of and probably many others that aren’t, and was adaptive to business interests when it furthered his career. Churchill, while going through a number of changes in his political philosophy and party alignment during his public career, was consistently opposed to communism. In 1909 George was involved in a notable libel trial that originated from his role in a high profile divorce the year before between Sir Charles Henry and Lady Julia Henry where the Sunday People reported that the husband had been paid 20,000 lb not to mention Lloyd George (7 p. 166). To save his political career he had to sue the paper for libel. The legal teams for George and Sunday People amounted to legal “all star teams” of the time and it was anticipated to be a show trial with a parade of ex-lovers that would end George’s public career. Instead the paper’s legal team did nothing during cross-examination other than ask a few benign questions and didn’t call any witnesses (7 p. 166). After this very public and seemingly unexplainable event, George’s political views seem to have become more malleable. As his political career advanced prior to becoming Prime Minister Lloyd George, who was a firebrand of the Left, became agreeable to compromise and backed things he never would have considered. He supported a naval buildup, accepted compulsory military service, and was open to compromise on Northern Ireland (7 p. 168). The question then with regard to the Russian Civil War is did he sabotage the White Army because he philosophically supported the Red faction or did this serve some greater strategic goal that he understood but Churchill didn’t? (2)

This is a short video of the areas of control and relative force sizes of the Russian Civil War. This conflict was complicated by a large number of factions but note how the larger force gradually crumbled.

The Bolsheviks in Power

In the years following the October Revolution, there was a steady stream of large non-competitive contracts from the new Soviet government to British and American businesses. The Wilson administration sent 700,000 tons of food to the Soviet Union which saved the regime from certain collapse and allowed Lenin to consolidate control over all of Russia. This operation was handled by the US Food Administration and was very profitable for the commercial enterprises that were associated with it.(9)

The Bolshevik government was heavy handed in the treatment of religion but, again, exactly how heavy handed depends on what sources one accepts as accurate. In Fascist states the government would typically try to place the church or churches under the control of the government and use it as a political tool but under communism and the Bolsheviks in particular, the government sought to exterminate the church and remove it from history and culture. The lengths that the Russian Communists went to do this were largely hidden from public knowledge by the western press at the time. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 there was no initial opposition to the first or second revolution by either the Russian Orthodox or the, much smaller in Russia, Catholic Church. Lenin, however, condemned religion as “unutterable vileness” and sought to utterly destroy the church (23 p. 200).

By the early 1920’s even the western press was aware that large numbers of bishops and priests had been executed and many tortured. At the time, the accepted statistics through the first five years of Bolshevik rule were twenty-eight Orthodox bishops and more than twelve hundred priests executed. This does not include a large but not fully known number of executions of monks and nuns during the forced closure of 579 monasteries and convents. The total would have been in the thousands. Many thousands more clergy, monks, and nuns were imprisoned, sent to labor camps, or confined in mental hospitals (24). In 1922, a concentration camp for clergy was established in a former Orthodox monastery on an island in the White Sea. Eight metropolitans, twenty archbishops, and forty-seven Orthodox bishops died there, “executed by firing squad”(23 p. 200).

These statistics represent a low end estimate. A high end estimate would be that compiled by a Presidential commission led by Alexander Yakovlev after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yakovlev was a Soviet official turned reformer in the decline of the Soviet Union and it should be emphasized that accurately compiling this type of data decades after the crimes occurred is extremely difficult and requires significant assumptions and mathematical extrapolation. He attended Columbia University as an exchange student in the late 1950’s, spent 10 years in a state of “diplomatic exile” as ambassador to Canada, and was a primary architect of reforms under Gorbachev (25). The commission gained access to government archives and determined that 2,000,000 clergy (including rabbis, monks, and nuns) had been exterminated by the Soviet regime (23 pp. 200-01)(26). Yakovlev summarized this in his report writing:

The official term execution was often a euphemism for murder, fiendishly refined. For example, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was mutilated, castrated, and shot, and his corpse was left naked for the public to desecrate. Metropolitan Veniamin of St. Petersburg, in line to succeed the patriarch, was turned into a pillar of ice: he was doused with cold water in the freezing cold. Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk … was strapped alive to the paddlewheel of a steamboat and mangled by the rotating blades. Archbishop Andronnik of Perm … was buried alive. Archbishop Vasily was crucified and burned.(23 p. 201)

The report goes on to document specific atrocities against clergy which include being crucified on the central doors of iconostasis, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled with priestly stoles, given Communion with melted lead, and drowned in holes in the ice. It further alleges that these crimes weren’t confined to the early years of the revolution but continued through the 1960’s and into the 70’s. All told, the total number of people that Yakovlev estimated to have been slaughtered on account of the religion is at least 20 million with similar numbers shipped off to a vast chain of prison camps (23 pp. 200-02)(24). As late as the 1960’s influential figures in politics, media, and academia generally denied all reports of mistreatment of clergy in the Soviet Union calling such claims, “misinformation spread by reactionaries and fascists” (23 pp. 201-02). Exactly how accurate the report is can certainly be debated but this is a data point to at least consider. An alternate take on Russian religious history during the Stalin years is that his stance on the Orthodox Church softened and the beginning of WWII.(27)

The 1920’s saw rapid fluctuations in Russian economic and social policies that are important to generally understand in order to determine what their real objectives were after World War II and the initiation of the Cold War. The rapid nationalization of industry and agriculture following the October revolution by 1921 led to peasant uprisings and urban riots. “War Communism” was abandoned in favor of market based reforms for agriculture and other commodities including private industry and private land holding. In response to this there was a dramatic increase in prosperity and political stability. This continued for two years until late 1923 with the approaching death of Lenin and the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky.(28 p. ch. 8)

This video depicts persecution of the Orthodox Church in Russia which includes date of death of the martyrs. It should be kept in mind that this was done by an Orthodox Group. The Orthodox Church is now held in very high regard in Russia and is deeply linked to Russian culture.

Stalin, Stalinization, and the Purge of the Trotskyites

Lenin’s economic policies from 1921 to 1923 had resulted in a phenomenal recovery. The peasant’s position had recovered from one third to one half of where they stood in 1913 but they never did fully recover which led to significant agrarian discontent (28 p. ch. 8). The problem as Stalin perceived it was how to get increased supplies of food without offering the peasants manufactured consumer goods. This leads to a fundamental conflict between Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin is thought to have favored communism in a single country or region while Trotsky called for “world revolution”. Carroll Quigley described Trotsky’s assessment of the situation as follows: “According to Trotsky, Russia was economically too weak and too backward to be able to establish a Communist system alone. Such a system, all agreed, could not exist except in a fully industrialized country. Russia, which was so far from being industrialized, could obtain the necessary capital only by borrowing it abroad or by accumulating it from its own people. In either case, it would be taken, in the long run, from Russia’s peasants by political duress, in the one case being exported to pay for foreign loans and, in the other case, being given, as food and raw materials, to the industrial workers in the city” (28 p. ch. 9). Stalin emerged victorious in this power struggle and Trotsky was expelled from the politburo in 1925, expelled from the party in 1926, internally exiled to Alma Alta in 1927, and then deported in 1929. In exile he lived in Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico where he was assassinated in May of 1940.(2)

By 1927 it was apparent that the Bolsheviks weren’t intending or able to extend the revolution to Germany or the west and China to the east although they remained active and somewhat involved in both areas. This brought about a series of policies referred to as “Stalinism” that featured economic policies focusing on Russia without requiring a spreading revolution for its survival. The losers in Stalinism were the rural peasants who would be compelled to produce and retain far less in order for wealth to be transferred to industrial workers in cities. It was believed that “Communism in Russia alone” would require industrialization at “breakneck speed” emphasizing heavy industry and armaments at the expense of a rising standard of living (28). Stalinism established three successive five year plans that went into full operation in 1930 after starting slowly from 1927-9. Between February and March collective farms increased from 59,400, with 4,400,000 families, to 110,200 farms, with 14,300,000 families (28). All peasants who resisted had their property confiscated, were beaten, sent into exile, and many were killed. The number of cattle was reduced from 30.7 million in 1928 to 19.6 million in 1933, while, in the same five years, sheep and goats fell from 146.7 million to 50.2 million, hogs from 26 to 12.1 million, and horses from 33.5 to 16.6 million. While agricultural production collapsed, the food taken to support urbanization and industrialization didn’t decrease which created an acute shortage of food in rural areas, most notably the Ukraine, resulting in widespread famine. To a certain extent this was a policy induced famine but there were other factors that played into the outcome and the subject is still debated. Recognized numbers from the time were that at least three million peasants died but Stalin is said to have later told Churchill in 1945 that the real number was 12 million (28). To produce more food, the area under cultivation increased by 21% between 1927 and 1938 but the population also increased from 150 million to 170 million so the acreage per capita only rose from 1.9 acres to 2.1 acres and much of the land was semi-arid requiring irrigation.

The effect of the Stalinization plans on industrial output is somewhat difficult to assess due to poor statistical data but there are some general conclusions that can be supported. There were large increases in output especially in capital goods and in armaments. There was little increase in consumer goods. National income was rising but the standard of living was not (28). Under the five-year plans inequality was increasing rapidly with variations in salaries consistently getting wider and nonmonetary privileges extended to the favored upper ranks. Economic shortages and disruptions were generally attributed to “saboteurs” or “enemies of the state” resulting in hundreds of thousands being killed, with many others being arrested and exiled to the prison system. Estimates of the number of persons in such slave-labor camps just prior to the German invasion in June of 1941 vary from a low of two million to as high as twenty million (28). There were large purges through the era of Stalin. According to Carroll Quigley, “For every leader who was publicly eliminated by these “Moscow Treason Trials” thousands were eliminated in secret. By 1939 all of the older leaders of Bolshevism had been driven from public life and most had died violent deaths, leaving only Stalin and his younger collaborators, such as Molotov and Voroshilov. All opposition to this group, in action, word, or thought, was regarded as equivalent to counterrevolutionary sabotage and aggressive capitalistic espionage.” (28) The Stalin purges heavily targeted remaining Trotskyites, a disproportional number of which were Jewish. Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimated that Jews in leading positions went from a high of 50% in some sectors to 6% (15).

In the late 1930’s, Russia was involved in three fairly large scale military engagements that gave an indication of their military capabilities as well as providing practical experience with evolving weapons and tactics. The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to 39 where communist Republican forces fought Conservatives led by General Franco who overwhelmingly controlled the military. The conservatives were supported by Germany along with troops from Portugal, Italy, and Morocco (120,000 Spain, 50,000 Germany, 150,000 Italy,20,000 Portugal, 90,000 Morocco) with Germany providing heavy logistics support (29 p. 98) . The Communists were supported by Russia along with volunteers from a number of foreign countries including the US. Starting several months prior to Franco’s intervention and lasting for several months, Republicans murdered 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarians, 2,364 monks and friars, and 283 nuns (23 p. 204). This war caused a fairly bitter conflict in the United States with the political left, ranging from Roosevelt New Dealers to Communists, the academic establishment, and most protestant denominations solidly and sometimes actively supporting the Spanish Republicans. The Communist Party successfully recruited several thousand young Americans to go to Spain and fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade which did not fare well. Catholics, on the other hand, solidly supported Franco and the church.(23 p. 205)

The second was against the Japanese 6th Army in China. The US following World War I had acknowledged Japanese claims in Manchuria but that area became contested between Chinese Nationalists, Chinese communists, and Russia. Starting in May of 1939, an armed conflict developed between Russia and Japan on the border with Mongolia which was under Russian control. In June and July Russian armaments were upgraded to the latest hardware. The Russians could have taken up defensive positions but launched a highly successful blitzkrieg attack against Japan that was executed flawlessly crushing the 6th Army. The defeat at Khalkhin-Gol had the desired strategic consequences on Japanese war planning which then avoided any exposure to Russia.

The third major event was the Winter War with Finland which followed an unsuccessful attempt by Russia to form an alliance against Germany with England and France (30). Finland shared a border with the Soviet Union and was located strategically for shipping. Finland had an internal communist faction there from 1918 and the Russians had attempted to spread the revolution to Finland but had failed (29 pp. 136-7). On October 14, 1939 the Soviet Union demanded that the Finnish frontier north of Leningrad be pushed back along the shore of the gulf so it would run westward instead of southward. The Finnish frontier would then be about 50 miles from Leningrad, leaving Finland about half of the Karelian Isthmus. The Soviets also demanded a 30-year lease on the Finnish naval base at Hangö at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, a strip about 100 miles long and 10 miles wide in central Finland (28). Despite being apparently outgunned by what would appear to have been a much larger and stronger adversary, Finland rejected these terms. This could have been due to British influence or the fear that the Russian terms were only a first step to a complete takeover. The Finns had asked for German support as early as October 6th or 7th but it wasn’t granted (28). The Finns may have underestimated the Soviet’s determination to attack but the same could be said of the Finns resolve to fight back. On November 26, 1939 the Soviets attacked at five major points with large forces and heavy equipment across a defensive pale or layered defensive zone. The Finns also made skillful use of terrain and winter weather. Through December and January, six or more Soviet divisions were torn to pieces. In February the Soviet offensive started to move forward and the Finns were forced to accept Soviet terms on March 12, 1940 (28). While this was at the time seen as a sign of weakness for the Red Army, it really established two important points. This first is that a fortified layered defensive zone such as this is very difficult to cross even for a much stronger and larger force. The second is that the Soviets eventually did it which was no small feat (29 pp. 138-45). This set the stage for the Russian – German war, the fall of Western Europe, and the entry of the United States into the conflict.

The definition of the political spectrum that developed during this era is largely still present today although, because the history isn’t well understood, the language isn’t either and remains confusing. There was no real significant international small government conservative movement at that time apart from maybe a vague common memory. The idea that modern liberalism was an opposing force to both Marxism and Fascism did enjoy broad acceptance however history since then would tend to indicate neo-liberalism was and remains a sort of synthesis of the two. A modern conservative or Libertarian would tend to evaluate or compare different government philosophies based on the degree of personal and economic freedom and adherence to a natural rights concept, therefore concluding that Marxism and Fascism had only minor differences. This sort of thinking, however, really didn’t exist then especially within academia. There was, however, an ethnic or racial aspect to the Marxist / Communist conflict that isn’t well appreciated in the west. Communism for all its other faults wasn’t racial while German fascism was based on the ethnic superiority of northern European people specifically in relation to Slavic people. The Russians had endured multiple European invasions at the point and were seen as an enemy of the European nations. At a personal level, however, there were many similarities. Economist F A Hayek, who between the wars was a socialist but came to realize the flaws and contradictions in collectivist thought, observed in a series of academic essays that were assembled into a highly influential book entitled “Road to Serfdom” that Marxists and Fascists tend to be “cut out of the same cloth” and that those who seek government power are commonly the worst society has to offer. (31 pp. 157-70)

Lloyd George and the Liberal Party lost control of the government in 1924 as the Conservatives came to power largely on the “Zinoviev letter” and the Red Scare. By 1927 diplomatic ties with Russia were severed which also aligned with the fall or Trotsky.

This video is an older video of Stalin's rise to power, industrialization program, collectivization of agriculture, and the purges of the 1930's. Some of the video and even audio isn't great. It does point out that Stalin was not particularly close to Lenin and that he was not selected by Lenin as a heir to power.

Footnotes

[1] Australian historian Harvey Broadbent has written four books on the Gallipoli Campaign, including The Boys Who Came Home (1990), Gallipoli: The Fatal Shore (2005), Defending Gallipoli (2015), and Gallipoli: The Turkish Defence (2015).(2)

[2] In 1907 Russia and Britain had signed a treaty giving Russia control of the north of the Persian oil field, Britain control of the south, and a larger neutral area between the two. The Constantinople agreement gave Britain control of the neutral area.

[3] Now known as MI6

[4] Trotsky is regarding by many authors and historians to have been a British agent due to his unusual release from custody by British Secret Service, association with British elites, and actions he took that greatly benefited England while damaging Russian interests. In the treason trials of the Stalin purge, Trotsky was convicted as a British spy and there was significant evidence presented to support this.

[5] Later known as British Petroleum

[6] In Poe’s essay and in Damien Wright’s Churchill’s Secret War with Lenin, a detailed case is made that Lloyd George’s actions protecting the Bolsheviks was deliberate and that he was following long standing British strategic objectives

Bibliography

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3. Manaev, Georgy. Russia Beyond - Which Countries Dared to Invade Russia. [Online] August 01, 2019. https://www.rbth.com/history/330753-which-countries-dared-to-invade-russiahttps://www.rbth.com/history/330753-which-countries-dared-to-invade-russia.

4. Black, Jeremy. British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolution. Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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6. Redcliffe, Viscount Stratford de. The Eastern Question. London, England : John Murray, 1881.

7. Docherty, Gerry and Macgregor, Jim. Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. EDinburgh, Scotland : Mainstream Publishing, 2013.

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17. Unz, Ron. Unz Report. [Online] February 19, 2024. https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-gaza-jewish-power-and-the-holocaust/.

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19. Times, London. Lenin's Peace Decree Ready for Issue. London Times. November 26, 1917, p. 8.

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21. Wilde, Robert. ThoughtCo. [Online] January 21, 2020. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-russian-civil-war-1221809.

22. Gilbert, Martin. World in Torment. Hillsdale, Michigan : Hillsdale College Press, 1975.

23. Stark, Rodney. Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania : Templeton Press, 2016.

24. Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer. New York, New York : St. Martin's Press, 1987.

25. Keller, Bill. Moscow's other Mastermind: Aleksandr Yakovle. New York Times Magazine. February 19, 1989, pp. 30-33, 40-43.

26. Pospielovsky, Dimitry. Soviet Anti-Religious Campaigns and Persecutions. 1988.

27. Yegorov, Oleg. Russia Beyond. [Online] December 4, 2019. https://www.rbth.com/history/331371-stalin-orthodox-church.

28. Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope A history of the World in Our Time. New York, New York : Macmillan company, 1966.

29. Suvoruv, Viktor. The Chief Culprit. Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, 2008.

30. Fiasco: The Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance That Never Was. Carley, Michael Jabara. 2019, The International History Review, pp. 1949-6540.

31. Hayek, F A. The Road to Serfdom. London, England : University of Chicago Press, 1944.

Rise of the Bolsheviks

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