Читать книгу The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour - Rupert Colley - Страница 5

Introduction

The communist system unleashed by the Russian Revolution of 1917 was the greatest political experiment ever conducted. The Revolution promised freedom from the shackles of Imperialism, corruption and exploitation but until its collapse in 1991, the peoples of the vast Soviet empire endured seventy years of misguided socialism and totalitarianism.

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled over a vast empire that was backward, impoverished and in some respects largely resentful of his autocratic rule. Its people demanded reform and change. The effects of the outbreak of war in 1914 finally, in March 1917, brought down the Tsar and the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty.

The Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar proved equally ineffectual at addressing the needs of Russia’s major problems. Only the representatives of the workers, or ‘Soviets’, seemed to understand the problems that lay at the heart of the empire. From the various Soviet parties it was the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, that seized power and established the Soviet Union with its promises of a new socialist utopia. The consequences shaped the entire twentieth century and their ramifications were felt across the world.

This, in an hour, is the Russian Revolution.