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Over the last few centuries, many thinkers have been attracted to the idea of introducing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) an arrangement under which the state regularly sends an amount of money to all citizens without them having to meet any test of need. The proposals appeal lies in its simplicity, low cost of administration and apparent fairness.

Interest in this idea has burgeoned over the past few years, driven by a growing fear that in future, although robots and AI will make our economy much more productive, millions of people will be unable to find any sort of employment. There is therefore a danger of mass poverty in an age of abundance.

In my recent book The AI Economy, I explained why I am not persuaded by either the likelihood of this nightmare vision being realised or the suitability of a UBI to address the consequent problems if it were. I stand by those arguments. But the coronavirus crisis potentially provides a new source of support for UBI. Last week more than 100 opposition MPs and peers proposed that the Government should introduce a UBI of 50 per week in order to counter the economic impact of the virus. Forget abundance. Now it is a matter of relieving poverty and boosting demand in times of scarcity. Do they have a point?

The proposal is not entirely daft. The American government is making one-off payments of $1,200 (970) to every adult and an additional $500 per child. And one-off payments of about $1,000 per person have been announced in Japan and Hong Kong.

Such payments can be seen as the equivalent of one-off tax reductions but with the benefit appearing pretty much immediately and falling equally on (almost) all citizens alike, including those at the bottom of the pile who do not pay any tax. This measure is simple and, since most people benefit, it is politically appealing and may be quickly agreed. It is useful in countries that do not have extensive welfare systems. So what about introducing a similar measure here, whether as a one-off or a regular payment?

Let us be clear. There is no argument about whether it is right for governments to give financial assistance during these extraordinary times. The issue is about the form of such assistance.

Before the coronavirus, the main arguments against a UBI were that one, it would potentially undermine the incentive to work, and arouse widespread resentment on the part of those in society who did still work; two, to give any meaningful benefit to recipients, it would need to be set at such a rate that there would be a huge rise in public expenditure which would have to be financed by taxation, impeding the efficiency of the economy and reducing output; and three, if the UBI replaced other benefits at no extra cost to the Exchequer then the recipients of existing benefits would be worse off.

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Government must reject this road to socialism - Telegraph.co.uk

SaturdayApr25,2020at12:01AM

Some of our millennials are having an affair with socialism. They think it will give them all that they want. It wont!

What it will give them, judging by past performance, is Argentina, Laos, Cambodia, Viet-Nam, North Korea, China and a host of other small nations. Do these millennials even know what socialism is? Im not talking about what the textbooks say it is, I mean are they really looking at true socialism?

Here are some examples of what socialism has given the world: Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Ravensbruck, Majdanek, and Treblinka. These were gifts to the world from the German National Socialist Party starting in 1933 and continued till late 1945. Along with these gifts they gave us at least 25 million deaths in Europe as the world tried to stop the spread of Socialism.

The camps listed here are just a small part of the 100-plus camps operated by the Third Reich during WWII with the desired outcome of exterminating the undesirable people of Europe. Under True Socialism or Progressivism, the government owns all forms of production, and tells you where to work and how much you will earn. It rations out everything. There is no free market. What you have is the equal distribution of misery.

Under real socialism, this is the true ideology. Once you can no longer produce for the good of the whole, you are useless and need to be eliminated. Your school has done a lousy job of educating you. Learn the truth about socialism and all other forms of government of which none are perfect. Read about George Bernard Shaw, Karl Marx. Learn what Joseph Stalin did to his people. Chairman Mao.

Any government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything you have.

James Lowder

Dunsmuir

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Letters to the editor: Socialism - News - Siskiyou Daily News

April 27, 1972

FULFIL DREAM OF

SHER-E-BANGLA

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman calls upon the Bangalee nation to build a socialist Shonar Bangla as dreamed by Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Huq. In a message to the nation on the 10th death anniversary of the great leader, who fought for the economic emancipation of Bangalee peasantry, Bangabandhu says that Sher-e-Bangla's political acumen, great personality and strength of character will always inspire the Bangalee nation.

The prime minister further says that Fazlul Huq was a true Bangalee in his words and deeds, through which he carved out a niche in the hearts of the peasants of Bengal. "In the history of Bangladesh, Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Huq was the pioneer among those who fought for the cause of the oppressed people in rural Bengal," he adds.

"While we observe his death anniversary for the first time in the sovereign and independent Bangladesh, we can say that he believed in our principles of democracy, secularism, socialism and nationalism. On this auspicious day let us pledge to build the Shonar Bangla on the principle of socialism," reads the message of Bangabandhu.

BANGABANDHU'S STERN WARNING TO EXPLOITERS

Bangabandhu reaffirms today that socialism must be established in the country to provide the teeming millions with food, clothing and shelter. Addressing a seminar organised by the Awami League on the 10th death anniversary of Sher-e-Bangla, the prime minister makes it clear that if any obstruction is put in the way of the establishment of socialism, it will be removed. He warns those elements who are conspiring against the policy of nationalisation that if they do not desist soon from their evil-mongering, they might be put behind bars.

The prime minister wonders how some people can forget the blood which still stains the country. How can people still indulge in profiteering, bribery and corruption? He calls upon all to change their mentality.

He further says that a section of workers is forcing the administrators of nationalised industries to pay them money. The workers, he says, forget that these industries belong to seven-and-a-half crore people of the country, not only to them. Turning to those who are amassing fortunes, Bangabandhu asks them to take a lesson from the fate of the Muslim Leaguers. People will not tolerate them, he warns. "I shall remain with the people," he declares. "I have received the love and affection of the people and I don't want anything more."

SOURCES: April 28, 1972 issues of Bangladesh Observer, Dainik Bangla and Ittefaq

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Build Shonar Bangla on the principle of socialism - The Daily Star

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lenin. To mark the occasion, David Lane presents an assessment of Lenins theory of socialist revolution. He writes that while Lenin was correct in his appraisal of the social forces in support of a bourgeois revolution, he provided an incomplete and erroneous analysis of advanced imperial monopoly capitalism. Consequently, the October Revolution of 1917 was a local and regional achievement, but did not have the global revolutionary consequences that he anticipated.

It is 150 years since the birth, on 22 April 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk, Russia), of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov: known universally as Lenin. He came from a wealthy family in the social estate of the nobility. His father was an inspector of schools and able to finance the education of his two sons at university. A formative event in Lenins life was the execution by hanging of his brother for plotting the assassination of the Tsar in 1887. Lenin himself followed in the tradition of opposition to the autocracy and was expelled from Kazan university for dissident activity and later, in 1897, exiled for three years to Shushenskoye in Siberia.

He became an active social-democrat in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and was a founder and leader of its Bolshevik wing. Lenin was a leading Marxist theorist of monopoly capitalism and is best known for devising the tactics and strategy for the successful Bolshevik insurrection against the Provisional Government in October 1917. He consequently became the head of the government of Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union (Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars) until he died in 1924.

Views about Lenin

Lenin is a controversial political leader who aroused deep feelings of loyalty among his followers, not only Bolsheviks in the former USSR but also among the leaders of communist parties, such as Mao Tse Tung and Fidel Castro. Concurrently, the memory of Lenin is subjected to intense hostility by his opponents both in the former socialist countries, and by politicians, the mass media and academics in western countries.

LeszekKolakowski has set the tone for contemporary western interpretations. To Lenin . . . all theoretical questions were merely instruments of a single aim, the revolution; and the meaning of all human affairs, ideas, institutions and values resided exclusively in their bearing in the class struggle. . .. By a natural progression, the dictatorship first exercised over society, in the name of the working class and then over the working class, in the name of the party, was now applied to the party itself, creating the basis for a one-man tyranny (pp. 383, 489).

Marxists have been divided about Lenin. He has been the subject of abuse from many communists and ex-communists alike who have considered Lenins thought, or the doctrine of Leninism, to be an unacceptable development or extension of Marxist thought. This has a long history going back before the October Revolution with criticisms by Rosa Luxemburg of Lenins call for a centralised and organised political party.

Marxists sympathetic to the socialist states, however, have a more positive view of Lenins work. Georgy Lukacs, the eminent Hungarian philosopher, as early as 1924, described Lenin as the greatest thinker to have been produced by the revolutionary working-class movement since Marx. (p. 9). Even after the dismantling of the European communist states, in the twenty-first century, writers such Lars T Lih, and Alan Shandro, provide positive appraisals of Lenins leadership and political analysis. Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and political critic, has called for a return to Lenin, to repeating, in the present worldwide conditions, the Leninist gesture of reinventing the revolutionary project in the conditions of imperialism and colonialism. (p.11)

The ambiguity of these conflicting interpretations lies in the lumping together of quite distinctive phases and dimensions of Lenins political philosophy and action. Lenins thought has to be deconstructed from the ideology and practice of Marxism-Leninism. We need to distinguish between Lenins thought (his conception of the conditions and tactics for socialist revolution); the legitimating doctrine of Leninism devised in the USSR after the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the continuation of the revolution after Lenins death under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, and in China under Mao Zedong.

Whereas Marx and Engels used western Europe as their chief empirical referent, Lenins approach was based on his observation of Russian society in the late nineteenth century which he embedded in the evolution of capitalism as a world economic system. Such contradictions could only be resolved, he contended, by a movement to socialism. By extending Marxs method and linking it in this way explicitly to Russian problems, Marxism as it developed in Russia became differentiated from the Marxism of western Europe.

Socialist revolution

Lenin followed conventional nineteen century Marxist reasoning: socialism could only arise out of modern bourgeois capitalism. He developed an understanding of capitalism as applied to Russia in three substantive ways. These three elements should be seen in combination and may be regarded as Lenins theory of socialist revolution. There is first, based on Marxist laws of historical materialism, the idea of the uneven development of capitalism; second, a theory of leadership and mobilisation embodied in a political party promoting revolution; and third, a theory of imperialism which describes the stage of monopoly capitalism in the early twentieth century. Lenin went beyond Marx and Engels by combining political economy, a sociological understanding of the social structure, and political action.

The first major shift in Marxist orientation in Lenins thinking is that the developing and exploited countries (Russia being the paradigmatic case) have moved them to the vanguard of socialist revolution. This was legitimated by the theory of combined and uneven development and of imperialism (see Lenins Development of Capitalism in Russia). As an integral part of Lenins thought, it links the socialist revolution in the East to consequences of capitalism in the West.

Europe in 1917 gave rise to a situation which offered us the opportunity to create the fundamental requisites of civilisation in a different way from that of the Western European countries. Lenins theory of revolution involved an important shift in emphasis. For European Marxists, the socialist revolution would arise out of the most developed forms of capitalism where the contradictions and the strength of the working class would be greatest. For Lenin, capitalism was international: the socialist revolution would take place at the weakest link in the capitalist chain and this was to be found in countries undergoing the transition to capitalism. The contradictions of capitalism were greatest in the semi-peripheries of world capitalism. Lenin also anticipated revolution spreading to Asian countries such as China. In this respect, Lenin was correct: world history took a different turn. The focus of socialist revolution moved to the East. But that was not all.

Revolution in the West

Lenins idea was that a Russian revolution led by the Bolsheviks would be paralleled in western Europe. During the 1905 Revolution he said: [I]f we succeed the revolutionary conflagration will spread to Europe: the European worker languishing under bourgeois reaction, will rise in his turn and show us how it is done, then the revolutionary upsurge in Europe will have a repercussive effect upon Russia and will convert an epoch in a few revolutionary years into an era of several revolutionary decades. In the socialist revolution, the ally of the Russian working class (here he included the rural poor peasants) would be the international working class.

Lenins theory linked empirically the rise of capitalism in a post-feudal country (Russia) to the imperialist nature of capitalism and its effects on the class structure of the core and peripheral countries. There were major implications. First, imperialism exploits the developing countries which leads concurrently to the development of capitalism in the dependent host countries and improvements to living standards of the workers in the dominant home countries. Consequently, the working classes in the advanced countries support their governments in their claims for colonies and areas of influence.

Second, the class struggle had to be understood in an international perspective. Exploitation on a world scale transcends national boundaries. The collapse of the world system of capitalism would snap first at its weakest link. Russia was the paradigmatic case. The revolution in Russia would be the spark which would lead to the proletarian revolution in the West. These three factors provided the material foundation for a socialist revolution in Russia.

The role of the party

Marx and Engels were principally concerned with the anatomy and dynamics of capitalism. The political praxis of the move to socialism, the vehicle of change, was undeveloped in their thinking. It was assumed that workers parties, the social-democratic party in particular, would be the instrument of change. However, Russia lacked a civil society in which political parties could form and challenge for political power.

Lenin called for a centralised party of committed socialist revolutionaries. In his path breaking pamphlet, What is to be done?, he contended that, Class consciousness can be brought to the workers only from outside. The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop trade union consciousness. That is, the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary legislation. Lenin here called for the formation of a revolutionary Marxist party to lead the working class.

The most innovative feature of Lenins approach is the way he combined theory and praxis on national and international levels. Lenin was primarily concerned with changing the world rather than interpreting it. As the influential French philosopher, Louis Althusser, has cogently put it: in Lenins political and economic works, we can study Marxist philosophy at work . . . in the practical state, Marxist philosophy which has become politics, political action, analysis and decision.

An evaluation

The political conditions in Russia revised traditional Marxism in three ways. First, the class structure of countries as they moved from feudalism to capitalism differed from the developed capitalist countries: Russia lacked a politically confident domestic capitalist class, the peasantry was differentiated and included layers of labourers and poor peasants who were allied to the working class.

Second, the geographical spread of capitalism in the form of imperialism gave class conflict an international scope though it retained a national focus; its uneven development led to severe contradictions in the semi-peripheral economies. Third, the political conditions in the dependent colonial countries were autocratic and lacked parliamentary forms of participation. A revolutionary party was required and it should be organised and composed only of socialists supporting a course of revolutionary action initially to bring about a democratic republic, to be followed by a socialist revolution.

Socialist revolution in Russia

Lenin made a decisive shift in Marxist analysis. In the traditional Marxist prognosis, only at the most advanced stage of capitalism would the contradictions lead to its collapse followed by the transition to a communist mode of production. For Lenin, capitalism was formed from different interconnected state formations with uneven and hybrid levels of capitalist development.

Lenin concluded that world capitalism was most vulnerable at its weakest link (or links), not at its most advanced and developed formation. But a new social formation would not spontaneously grow out of capitalism. Human action in the form of a Marxist political party was necessary to move society on from capitalism to socialism. Lenin shifted attention away from the system contradictions of capitalism to the social class contradictions. He added a sociological critique to Marxs economic analysis.

What did Lenin get right, and in what respects has history shown his thinking to be wrong or incomplete? Lenins analysis of the social structure of development in Russia, as an exemplar of developing colonial countries, was correct. He detected the weakness of the domestic bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force. He fittingly widened the definition of the working class from the proletariat to include all the working population (trudyashchiysya) in the democratic revolution.

The problem of the peasantry

While he considered the rich and middle peasantry to be class groups which would support the overthrow of the autocracy and the institution of a property-owning bourgeoisie, he misjudged the middle and poor peasants adverse disposition towards a collectivist economic structure. The October Revolution led not only to the consolidation of peasant lands but to a considerable growth in the number of middle and poor peasants. The middle peasants had more to lose than their chains. They would not accept a collectivist form of economic coordination and land reform. In the period of revolutionary consolidation, after 1917, class interests diverged and later led to open conflict between town and country.

However, in China (and also in the eastern European socialist states after the Second World War) the move to collectivisation was much less violent and generally more successful. As Nolan has put it: the process of collectivization was carried through in fundamentally different ways in China and the Soviet Union, and with sharply contrasting results. In China, collectivization was achieved with far less social disruption, without widespread bloodshed and loss of human life, and without drastic economic losses (p. 194).

In China, the Communist Party had a base in the countryside whereas in the USSR it was an urban party composed of manual and non-manual workers. In the circumstances of Russia in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the leadership had to extract grain from the peasants, whereas in China the process was one of increasing production by moving to more efficient units. In Russia, the largest group in the countryside were middle peasants producing primarily for themselves (and selling surplus) on their individual plots granted to them by the October Revolution. Their attachment to land ownership was much greater than their support for a new form of collective ownership. Consequently, the Bolsheviks, when in power, faced opposition from the villages which led to violence between the peasantry and Soviet leadership.

Party organisation

Lenins analysis of the need for political organisation, which was necessary to further the interests of the opposition to the Tsarist autocracy, was correct. Under the conditions of police surveillance, a party of a new type with a democratic form of policy making and centralised organisation and control was a practical necessity in Tsarist Russia. The role of the media in the form of an all-Russian newspaper as an educative instrument as well as a coordinating one was also right.

Where Lenin was incomplete was in his failure fully to understand the autocratic effects of bureaucratic control which became apparent in the period after the seizure of power in Russia. While organisational forms, similar to democratic centralism, had also been adopted by other social-democratic parties (such as the SPD in Germany), after 1917, in Russia, it became a process of centralised economic development and modernisation. The political forms of Tsarist Russia were reconstituted as a socialist political bureaucracy. Applying democratic centralism as a form of organisation to all associations in society led to forms of political domination incompatible with socialism.

Geopolitical and economic analysis

Lenins geopolitical analysis of capitalism as imperial monopoly capitalism correctly drew attention to the inherent conflict between hegemonic capitalist and dependent states. He saw the contradictions between the positive effects of economic development concurrent with the economic exploitation of the dependent countries.

Lenins political focus, on capitalisms weakest links and the successful seizure of power in 1917, shifted the national and socialist revolutions to the colonial world. Lenin showed immense courage and political leadership in carrying out a successful national revolution. This was his greatest achievement. Lenin noted the dislocating effects of the First World War on the capitalist powers. It was a decisive factor in disrupting the Russian economy and society and created a wide range of political strata predisposed to revolution.

But he was mistaken to believe that it would break world capitalism. Moreover, Lenin misjudged the national political and social relationships between classes in the developed capitalist states. On 20 October 1920, in a report to the Central Committee at the Ninth All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party, he reiterated his belief that in Germany and England we have created a new zone of the proletarian revolution against worldwide imperialism. (p. 100) Despite significant demonstrations and strike activity, the idea that a working-class rebellion would take place then in England was grossly mistaken.

Imperial capitalism could be likened not to a continuous chain, but to a large tree cutting off new thin and old decayed branches does not kill it. Capitalism continued to expand and grow. Eventually in the late twentieth century, it overpowered the Soviet Union as well as the eastern European socialist states. Lenin erred in his understanding of the working classes in the advanced capitalist states. Despite systemic economic crises, capitalist societies have maintained high levels of social and political integration. Even in the early twentieth century, the western working-classes remained integrated into capitalist society and this attachment was neither broken by the suffering endured during the First World War, nor by the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Lenin creatively fused Marxs economic analysis of capitalism to a sociology of Russia, to a geo-economics of capitalism and to a politics of leadership and action. Lenin regarded the October Revolution in Russia as a success for the socialist cause. However, his approach was incomplete and he provided an erroneous analysis of the disintegration of advanced imperial capitalism. Social and political integration has remained much higher than he anticipated and in this he is not alone. Capitalism in the West was threatened by the October Revolution but not defeated by it. Slavoj Zizeks appeal to reinvent Lenins call to revolution, in the conditions of imperialism and colonialism, remains even more challenging now than it did in October 1917. What is lacking is an analysis not of the weakest links in capitalism, but of the hegemonic core.

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Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics.

_________________________________

About the author

David Lane Cambridge UniversityDavid Lane is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) and Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University; previously he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. His recent publications include: Changing Regional Alliances for China and the West (With G. Zhu) (2018), The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism (2014). He has written extensively on development, transformation and the changing forms of capitalist society. Recent work has been on Eurasia, employment and unemployment and alternatives to capitalism.

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Revisiting Lenin's theory of socialist revolution on the 150th anniversary of his birth - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

Check NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Social Science (History - Chapter 2 Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution) based on the latest CBSE Class 9th Social Science Syllabus 2020-21. These solutions are very helpful for the preparation of the Class 9th SST exam 2020-21.

Question 1. What were the social, economic and political conditions in Russia before 1905?

Answer 1.

Social Conditions:

About 85% of Russia's population was into agriculture. Workers were a divided social group. Some had strong links with the villages from which they came. Others had settled in cities permanently.

Workers were divided by skill. Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions. These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during 1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902.

In the countryside, peasants cultivated most of the land. But the nobility, the crown and the Orthodox Church owned large properties. Like workers, peasants too were divided. They were also deeply religious. But except in a few cases they had no respect for the nobility.

Economic Conditions:

The vast majority of people in Russia were agriculturists. About 85 percent of the Russian empire s population earned their living from agriculture cultivators produced for the market as well as for their own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.

The industry was found in pockets. Prominent industrial areas were St Petersburg and Moscow. Craftsmen undertook much of the production, but large factories existed alongside craft workshops.

Many factories were set up in the 1890s when Russias railway network was extended, and foreign investment in industry increased. Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled.

In Russia, peasants wanted the land of the nobles to be given to them. Frequently, they refused to pay rent and even murdered landlords. In 1902, this occurred on a large scale in south Russia. And in 1905, such incidents took place all over Russia.

Political Condition:

Socialists were active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century. They formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled for peasant's rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be transferred to peasants.

Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist Revolutionaries about peasants. Lenin felt that peasants were not one united group. Some were poor and others rich, some worked as labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers.

Given this differentiation within them, they could not all be part of a socialist movement. The party was divided over the strategy of the organisation. Vladimir

Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive society like Tsarist Russia the party should be disciplined and should control the number and quality of its members.

Russia was an autocracy. Tsar was not subject to parliament. Liberals in Russia campaigned to end this state of affairs.

Together with the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries, they worked with peasants and workers during the revolution of 1905 to demand a constitution.

One day over 110,000 workers in St Petersburg went on strike demanding a reduction in the working day to eight hours, an increase in wages

and improvement in working conditions.

When the procession of workers led by Father Gapon reached the Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks. Over 100 workers were killed and about 300 wounded.

The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that became known as the 1905 Revolution.

NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Social Science: History - Chapter 1 The French Revolution

Question 2. In what ways was the working population in Russia different from other countries in Europe, before 1917?

Answer 2.

About 85 percent of the Russian empire's population earned their living from agriculture. This proportion was higher than in most European countries.

For instance, in France and Germany, the proportion was between 40 per cent and 50 per cent.

In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as well as for their own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.

Russian peasants were different from other European peasants in another way. They pooled their land together periodically and their commune (mir) divided it according to the needs of individual families.

Question 3. Why did the Tsarist autocracy collapse in 1917?

Answer 3.

In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances - Germany, Austria and Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and Russia (later Italy and Romania). This was the First World War.

In Russia, the war was initially popular and people rallied around Tsar Nicholas II. As the war continued, though, the Tsar refused to consult the main parties in the Duma. Support wore thin.

Anti-German sentiments ran high, as can be seen in the renaming of St Petersburg - a German name- as Petrograd.

The Tsarina Alexandra's German origins and poor advisers, especially a monk called Rasputin, made the autocracy unpopular.

The First World War on the 'eastern front' differed from that on the 'western front'. In the west, armies fought from trenches stretched along eastern France. In the east, armies moved a good deal and fought battles leaving large casualties. Defeats were shocking and demoralising.

Russia's armies lost badly in Germany and Austria between 1914 and 1916. There were over 7 million casualties by 1917.

As they retreated, the Russian army destroyed crops and buildings to prevent the enemy from being able to live off the land. The destruction of crops and buildings led to over 3 million refugees in Russia. The situation discredited the government and the Tsar. Soldiers did not wish to fight such a war.

The war also had a severe impact on the industry. Russia's own industries were few in number and the country was cut off from other suppliers of industrial goods by German control of the Baltic Sea.

Industrial equipment disintegrated more rapidly in Russia than elsewhere in Europe. By 1916, railway lines began to break down. Able-bodied men were called up to the war. As a result, there were labour shortages and small workshops producing essentials were shut down.

Large supplies of grain were sent to feed the army. For the people in the cities, bread and flour became scarce. By the winter of 1916, riots at bread shops were common. In February 1917, the government suspended the Duma.

Military commanders advised Tsar to abdicate. He followed their advice and abdicated on 2 March.

Question 4. Make two lists: one with the main events and the effects of the February Revolution and the other with the main events and effects of the October Revolution. Write a paragraph on who was involved in each, who were the leaders and what was the impact of each on Soviet history.

Answer 4.

February Revolution:

In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in the workers quarters. The winter was very cold & there had been an exceptional frost and heavy snow. Parliamentarians wishing to preserve the elected government were opposed to the Tsar's desire to dissolve the Duma.

On 22 February, a lockout took place at a factory on the right bank. The next day, workers in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy.

In many factories, women led the way to strikes. This came to be called the International Women's Day.

On Sunday, 25 February, the government suspended the Duma. Politicians spoke out against the measure.

Demonstrators returned in force to the streets of the left bank on the 26th. On the 27th, the Police Headquarters were ransacked. The

streets thronged with people raising slogans about bread, wages, better hours and democracy.

The government tried to control the situation and called out the cavalry once again. However, the cavalry refused to fire on the demonstrators

An officer was shot at the barracks of a regiment and three other regiments mutinied, voting to join the striking workers. By that evening, soldiers and striking workers had gathered to form a 'soviet' or 'council' in the same building as the Duma met. This was the Petrograd Soviet.

The very next day, a delegation went to see the Tsar.

Military commanders advised him to abdicate. He followed their advice and abdicated on 2 March. Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a Provisional Government to run the country. Russias future would be decided by a constituent assembly, elected based on universal adult suffrage. Petrograd had led the February Revolution that brought down the monarchy in February 1917.

In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile. He and the Bolsheviks had opposed the war since 1914.

He declared that the war be brought to a close, land be transferred to the peasants, and banks be nationalised. These three demands were Lenin's 'April Theses'.

Popular demonstrations staged by the Bolsheviks July 1917 were sternly repressed.

Meanwhile, in the countryside, peasants and their Socialist Revolutionary leaders pressed for a redistribution of land.

Land committees were formed to handle this. Encouraged by the Socialist Revolutionaries, peasants seized land between July and September 1917.

October Revolution:

On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and

the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power. A

Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet

under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure. The date of the event

was kept a secret.

The uprising began on 24 October. Sensing trouble, Prime Minister

Kerenskii had left the city to summon troops. At dawn, military men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik newspapers. Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone

and telegraph offices and protect the Winter Palace.

In a swift response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers.

Late in the day, the ship Aurora shelled the Winter Palace. Other vessels

sailed down the Neva and took over various military points. By nightfall, the city was under the committee's control and the ministers had surrendered.

At a meeting of the All Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action.

Uprisings took place in other cities. There was heavy fighting - especially in Moscow - but by December, the Bolsheviks controlled the Moscow-Petrograd area. The Bolsheviks were opposed to private property.

Most industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917.

The land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks conducted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed to gain majority support.

In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly. He thought the All Russian Congress of Soviets was more democratic than an assembly elected in uncertain conditions.

In March 1918, despite opposition by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk.

Question 5. What were the main changes brought about by the Bolsheviks immediately after the October Revolution?

Answer 5.

The main changes were:

Most industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917.

The land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility.

In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of large houses according to family requirements.

They banned the use of the old titles of the aristocracy.

New uniforms were designed for the army and officials.

The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks conducted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed to gain majority support.

In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly

In March 1918, despite opposition by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk.

The Bolsheviks became the only party to participate in the elections to the All Russian Congress of Soviets, which became the Parliament of the country.

Russia became a one-party state. Trade unions were kept under party control.

Question 6. Write a few lines to show what you know about:

kulaks

the Duma

women workers between 1900 and 1930

the Liberals

Stalins collectivisation programme.

Continued here:
NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Social Science: History - Chapter 2 Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution -