What Causes Revolutions – Rachael Jones

As Karl Marx once stated, “Every revolution is social in so far as it destroys the old society. Every revolution is political in so far as it destroys the old power.”1 Revolutions don’t just occur from one factor alone; rather there is a mixture of different factors that all contribute and when combined, result in revolution. However, common to all revolutions are the social classes that form the country, and when they aren’t happy with the existing regime they rise up with demands, resulting in revolution. In both the Russian (1917) and French (1789) revolutions; social, economic and political factors all contributed to the overthrow of the existing regimes. In both cases external factors, namely war, pushed these societies to boiling point. However, this only occurred because of the unstable conditions of society before war. It is the unrest in social classes that act as the backbones’ of revolutions, with other factors extending off it. Every grievance is like a drop of rain that falls into the ocean, an abundant amount of water causes a tsunami, revolution!

The discontent and unrest among the social classes was the leading factor in the causes of the Russian and French Revolutions. In Russia, after losing the Crimean War, the army needed to modernised itself to maintain its great power status. In order to achieve this, Russia’s society and economy needed to undergo major change. When Russia began to modernise its economy, social changes occurred that threatened the feudal tsarist autocracy. Failed harvests, inflation and economic depression saw Russia’s peasants and urban workers increasingly resort to riots, demonstrations and strikes to protest at their poor conditions.

Russia was an ethnically divided nation, comprising of 23 different nationalities, so it was not surprising that many resented Russian rule. Less than half the nation was Russian and 77% of the whole population were peasants with only about 1.5% of the total belonging to the world outside agriculture. Although it was necessary to modernise Russia if it was to retain ‘great power’ status, the process of industrialisation was disruptive and threatened the security of the tsarist autocracy. Peasant poverty was a long standing issue within Russian society; living standards were poor, with a whole family often sharing a single room. However, they were granted emancipation in the late 1800’s. When serfdom was abolished, the economy and society had to be reconstructed. The nobility were forced to part with half their land so that the peasant class could have land of their own. Although they were paid compensation, members of the nobility were disgruntled as their power was diminished. The peasants were free, but they too were resentful at the mortgage payments they were required to make. Consequently, the reforms alienated both the nobility and the peasantry.

By 1900 almost all sectors of the population were dissatisfied. The peasants wanted more land, the workers wanted improved living conditions and socialist reform, the middle class wanted a constitution and franchise, and the aristocracy wanted a greater influence on government. Russia’s people demanded the redress of numerous political, social and economic problems. Yet Tsar Nicholas II persisted in the belief that to grant reforms would undermine his autocrat power. It was all of this conflict and disorder within the classes that caused the revolution. Of course there are other factors involved but if there was no discomfort in society, Russia may have been able to pull through the economic crisis and war effort. The politics of Russia and the economic crisis both contributed to the discontent and unrest among the social classes; therefore it is namely social factors that cause revolution.

1 Karl Marx, Revolution – A Redefinition

This situation is similar to that of the French Revolution. In France it was the huge gap between living standards and rights of the rich and the vast majority of the population that was the major cause for revolution. At the beginning of the 18th Century, France had 20 million people living within its borders and over the course of the century, that number increased by another 8 to 10 million.2 Under the Ancien Regime, everyone in France belonged to one of three estates. The First Estate was the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. The Second Estate was the noblesse; the nobles and aristocrats who in the Middle Ages who had been the feudal lords. The Third Estate was made up of everyone else in the kingdom and consisted of several different social classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle class and were people like non-aristocrat landowners, merchants, owners of manufacturing industries and other businesses and professionals. The sans-culottes were people who owned small shops, craft and other town workers, as well as day labourers and domestic servants. The final sub-class are the peasants. Peasants made up more than 97% of the population! In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries France had become the most influential European continental monarchy. The collapse of the Ancien Regime, shook the European world on a scale unequalled since the collapse of the Roman Empire.3

There was much dissatisfaction in the social classes of France. The bourgeoisie wanted the ability to rise higher in society, often many of them were more intellectual than the noblesse but they were just unfortunate in not being born into that estate. The peasants wanted to have the even spread of taxes and be free of the burden they carried. They did all the work and got nothing in return, the noblesse just lived off the labour of the French people and served no useful function. The influence of enlightenment created a dramatic turn in events and questioned the existing social order. Leading writers and philosophers such as Jean Francois Arouet (1695 – 1778) and Jean Jacques Rosseau (1712 – 1778) casted doubt on institutions and discussed new ideas. Rosseau challenged the idea that kings rule and subjects obey. Arouet became famous for his criticisms of the Church. Such ideas were absorbed by the reading public and helped undermine the beliefs upon which the old order was based. The First and Second Estates rebelled at the idea that they should be made to pay taxes while the Third Estate pushed for change. R. R. Palmer wrote, “It was also a revolution of liberty and equality, to which it added fraternity, meaning at first a national citizenship in which persons of different social classes and ethnic backgrounds could find a common ground.”4 This was marked in the meeting of the States-General. This social upheaval and disorder lead to the causing the revolution.

The tsarist rule of Nicholas II and appalling politics of Russia was also a contributing factor to the cause of the revolution. Rather than modernise the political structure, Tsar Nicholas repressed demands for political reform, leaving Russian suspects with no civil liberties. Nicholas II was a conservative leader with few of the skills needed to effectively rule 132 million people. He was politically naïve and accepted the advice he favoured rather than that of people who attempted to guide him towards what was politically sound and achievable. Propaganda and the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church encouraged his people to love and respect their Tsar and look on him as a father who had the right to rule them severely in the interests of Russia. Political parties were illegal until 1905. There was no parliament until 1906 and even then the Tsar was hostile to its existence. There was no constitution to limit the Tsar’s power or control the methods for choosing ministers.

2 http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/ - a collaboration of the Rov Rosenzweig Centre for History and New Media (George Mason University) and American Social History Project (City University of New York)3 H. R. Cowe, Revolutions in the Modern World, 19794 R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760 – 1800, 1959

Nicholas II was free to appoint and dismiss his advisers without giving reasons. Nicholas II also ruled a police state. The secret police, the Okhrana, responded brutally to anyone who dared to question his authority. Russia’s one million soldiers could be moved to any part of the empire to put down revolts. The government imposed strict censorship of the press. Critics, protesters and would-be revolutionaries risked death, prison and exile for any activities they organised against the government. Vladmir Lenin played a massive role in the Russian revolution. He was recorded saying, “Not a single class in history has reached power without thrusting forward its political leaders, without advancing leading representatives capable of directing and organising the movement. We must train people who will dedicate to the revolution, not a spare evening but the whole of their lives…”5 Nicholas had neither the personal qualities nor the political skills to maintain the autocracy as the pace of social and economic change increased. This political disorder and ‘suffocation’ of civil right is another contributing factor as to why the people of Russia turned to revolution.

You see these very same problems two centuries ago in the French revolution. Peter Amann once said, “As I define it, revolution prevails when the state’s monopoly of power is effectively challenged and persists until a monopoly is re-established.”6 King Louis XVI’s rule over France was another factor that influenced the making of the revolution. People were unsatisfied with his ability to be king. He ruled as an absolute monarch, not sharing any power with any group or representatives. He ruled by ‘divine’ right, being appointed by God. Absolutism had been developing in France since the 15th Century and Louis XVI was the country’s supreme ruler. Just like Nicholas II, Louis XVI was a young and naïve king who didn’t have the first idea on how to run a country. He had advisors but only listened to what appealed to him and not what would benefit the whole country. Living in Versailles, Louis XVI was away from the heart of France and was distant from the people. Ruling from a distance seemed quite comfortable for Louis XVI because he never had to deal first-hand with the problems of the nation. He could sit back in his magnificent palace and let other people do the dirty work. He was blind to what was going on in his country and his inability to rule was definitely a contributing factor to the revolution.

Russia was on the brink of economic crises and this was another ‘drop of water’ that built up and caused the tsunami of revolution. By the 19th century, Russia was a huge empire with an economy based on agriculture; the Russian government was encouraging industrial growth. The autocratic government linked the political and economic systems. Half the arable land was owned directly by the Tsar and the rest by the nobility, although they made up less than half the population. However, after pressure to industrialise the country in order to modernise the army and retain ‘great power’ status the economy began its downward spiral into the drain. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 allowed rapid industrial development. This development focused on railways, the Trans-Siberian railway, and heavy industry at the expense of other economic sectors because the army’s needs were seen as paramount. Although industry developed slowly during the 19th century, Russia only began the painful and disruptive process of industrialisation in the last decades.

5 Vladmir Lenin6 Peter Amann, Revolution – A Redefinition

The growth of towns, which accompanied government attempts to industrialise Russia, resulted in the concentration in large numbers of an increasingly rebellious working class. By 1900, Russia had about 2, 500, 000 urban workers. They lived in unhygienic and overcrowded factory dormitories where the two-shift system often meant that two workers shared a bunk bed. In smaller factories, families lived next to their workbenches. Others had rooms in poorly built, cramped and unsanitary housing. Less than half those who lived in houses had running water or sewerage systems. They worked a 12-hour day for poor wages and had no trade unions to fight for them because they were illegal. Revolutionary activists from parties such as the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries had a willing audience. Workers increasingly went on strike to demand improved working and living conditions. It was these appalling working conditions and mistreatment of economic schemes that also contributed with the causes of the revolution.

This same scenario was also seen in the French revolution, with peasants and workers doing all the work and getting little reward. The chief weakness of France’s pre-revolutionary form of government was faulty finance.7 The economy in France was atrocious and was definitely a cause of the revolution. Peasants were burdened with many direct and indirect taxes to the clergy, nobles and king. They were expected to do all the work and pay all the taxes, effectively fuelling the economy by themselves. The First and Second Estates put very little back into the economy. Peasants couldn’t even afford to feed their own families but were still expected to work to provide for the upper Estates. 20 million peasants lived in France but they owned only a third of the land. Most held small lots or were tenant farmers. Many had no land at all and survived only through poorly paid work on the estates of the nobles or wealthy bourgeoisie. They were starving and poor, and this causes people to go to drastic measures and do whatever was necessary to fill their stomachs. The bourgeoisie were very smart and had prestigious jobs, however they weren’t happy with where they were positioned in the economy and wanted the ability to earn more money, but being part of the Third Estate limited this. After assisting the Americans in the war of independence France was left dry of money. In supporting it Louis got his finances into a very bad condition. Necker carried in the war by loans and the increase of taxes was not enough to make up the deficit. 8 This caused a domino effect in all Estates. All these grievances contributed to the turn of events that resulted in revolution.

The external factor of war was what pushed Russia over the edge. The decision to go to war with Japan in February 1904 increased the government’s weaknesses. The war turned out to be a series of Russian military errors that demonstrated the inefficiency of the Russian army and navy. The war ended with the humiliation of Russian defeat in August 1905. It was the first victory of an Asian power over a European power. Evidence of Russia’s military weakness increased people’s discontent and demands for reform. Then in 1914, when Russia entered World War I it really pushed Russia into revolution. The Tsar started losing his grip on power and lost support from key sectors of Russian society. The army was an army of conscripts who were poorly led and treated badly by their aristocrat officers. Poor moral within the army led to mutiny, with soldiers killing their own officers and supporting the revolutionary, Bolshevik Party. This final decision to go to war acted as the catalyst to the revolution, it was the final element added to the mix that caused eruption.

7 A. Goodwin, The French Revolution, 1953 8 Lionel Kochan, 1962

The external factor of war was also evident in the French Revolution. The American War evoked the rights of man and it stirred up great excitement in France.9 France entered the American War of independence in 1778 and assisted in the victory of the Americans seeking independence from Britain. The French joined the war as a way of sucking up to America but all it really did was ‘suck’ all of France’s resources and left them weak. This took its toll on many peasantry and middle class citizens, people were becoming starved as taxes and bread prices kept on rising; another factor added on to the many causes of the revolution.

As both the Russian and French revolutions demonstrate, there are a wide variety of factors that cause revolution and there is a pattern throughout both. The economy was unstable, political leaders were not doing what’s best for the country – but what’s good for them, the influences of war taking their toll on society and lastly the unrest and turmoil in the social classes that form the nation. Social issues, especially lack of food, were one of the most significant of these as starvation of the peasantry in both France and Russia was arguably the catalyst for the beginning of the overthrow of the monarchy. However, revolutions do not occur due to one factor alone and the long term issued existing in the social, political and economic structure of both France and Russia must be considered to understand the cause of a revolution.

Bibliography:

Turning Points – Chapter 2 – The Reign of Terror in France, 1792-94

History in Depth – The French Revolution

Challenge, Change and Continuity – Chapter 5 – The Decline and Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

Turning Points – Chapter 4 – The Decline and Fall of the Romanov Dynasty ‘

Wikipedia

9 A. Goodwin, The French Revolution, 1953