Revolution and Society
How reflections of the turn of the 20th century can be seen in the early 21st
The book "The Concise History of the Russian Revolution” by Richard Pipes outlines the events that took place before and during the revolutions in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. The beggining chapters describe the political atmosphere and general ambience of the country before its first revolution in 1905.
In a general way pre-revolutionary Russia mimics the political climate here in North America. Pipes explains that revolution typically begins with rebellion. The rebellion is usually the result of legitimate frustration within the population. Pipes also notes these demands made by the people within the activist movements are originally practical in nature and can often times be satisfied within the existing political framework. However occasionally these once pragmatic movements are hijacked by radical intellectuals. These new captains than steer the original ship of rebellion into the seas full blown revolution.
Before 1905, Russia was still ruled by a feudal system with Tsar Nicolas the second at its pinnacle. The only government was that of the monorachy leaving the people of Russia with no parliamentary representation. This was the main requisition of the 1905 revolution, a formation of some sort of elected parliamentary body to represent "the people" at a governmental level.
The climactic event of the 1905 revolution was Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday occured when a Preist and prominent labour leader Georgy Gapon decided to bring a petition filled with the grumbling of the working class to the Winter Palace in order to present it to Russian royalty. Gapon and his many followers were met with gunshots instead of an audience with the Tsar. A total of 200 protestors were killed and 800 wounded. Subsequent strikes, protests and rallies were held after and in response to Bloody Sunday that eventually caused the existing regime to cave and compromise with the Russian citizenry. The concessions of the Tsar to form an elected legistlaure to serve under the existing monarchy known as the "Duma" that represented the interests of the Russian citizenry was enough to temporarily regain national serenity.
Recently acts of rebellion have occurred in America, these movements like the one in Russia started with with practical demands. The LGBT movement started with the demand for martiage equality and the BLM protests were originally about police reform in order to minimize that institutions disproportionate brutality within the black community. However both of these causes as Pipes puts it have been hijacked by "radical intellectuals who translate these concrete complaints into an all destructive force."
The original ask for marriage equality has endured an extreme metamorphasis into a movement that suggests a man can become a woman simply by saying they are consisting pf an ever growing acronym that now encompasses half the alphabet and affirms your two year old can be trans. Requisitions for police reform by BLM has now morphed into a culture that claims systematic racism is the cause of all minority communities woes and lurks around every corner like some proverbial boogie man.
Not dissimilar to pre-revolution Russia where Universities acted as a springboard for revolutionary thought, parallels can be drawn in modern America. The ideologies associated with these radical systems of thought, gender ideology and critical race theory have their roots in "higher education". The culture derived from these methods of thinking is now beggining to spill from the university into the mainstream. In Pipes book he states:
"The technique of translating specific complaints into general political demands became standard operating strategy for both radicals and liberals in Russia. It thwarted compromises and reforms, for it assumed that nothing whatever could be improved as long as the existing regime remained in place, which meant that revolution was a necessary precondition of any progress."
This is the type of situation the radical left has wedged their followers into. When you claim systemic racism is everywhere and effects everything or that gender is a "social construct" that needs to be imploded and rebuilt you really have no other option other than revolution. This is because in these types of philosophies or world views the system itself is the problem and must be smashed in order for any meaningful progress to be made.
Interestingly this idea of leveling the existing structure of the system was one of Vladimir Lenin's mantras. Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik party, the political party that ended up successfully coming to power after Russia's third revolution in October 1917 the one that ushered in the communist regime.
Lenin believed that simply taking command of the existing governmental structure wasn't enough and that in order to create the utopia the system would have to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. This idea was rooted in the writings of Karl Marx who laid the theoretical groundwork for communism many years earlier. Ironically the leaders of BLM claimed to be themselves "trained Marxists" so them and consequently the movement having a similar "revolutionary" train of thought wouldn't be surprising.
Another pillar in the ethos of both CRT and gender ideology is the emphasis on group identity. The Marxist philosophies that drove the Bolsheviks also placed heavy emphasis on group or 'class' identity. Marxist doctrine divided people into classes based on economic stature rather than the modern system of grouping which uses race, sexuality or gender to divide people into factions.
The working class was known as the Proletariat whereas the equivalent of what we would now call the upper middle class or upper classes were defined as the "Bourgeoisie". Lenin who put the Marxist ideology into practice after seizing power loathed the Bourgoisie and viewed them as exploitave oppressors of the communist hero, the Proletariat. He also had a distate for the rural population of Russia which consisted of mostly peasants, referring to them as a 'petty Bourgeois'. His distaste was likely rooted in the fact that rural Russians initially didn't recognize the Bolsheviks as the 'sole rulers of Russia' that they claimed to be. Rural Russians treated the previous government formed in 1905 with similar indifference. Left to mostly to their own devices for decades rural or peasant Russians had for the most part governed themselves under local councils known as Zemstvo's and communes. What political leanings they did have was generally favorable to rival parties like the Socialist Revolutionaries or moderate liberal parties like the Constitutional Democrats commonly known as Kadets.
Out of the 'petty Bourgois' Lenin despised the 'Kulak' the most.
"The Kulaks are the most beastly, the coarsest, the most savage exploiters … These bloodsuckers have waxed rich during the war … These spiders have grown fat at the expense of peasants, impoverished by the war, of hungry workers. These leeches have drunk the blood of toilers, growing the richer the more the worker starved in the cities and factories. These vampires have gathered and continue to gather in their hands the lands of landlords, enslaving, time and again, the poor peasants. Merciless war against these Kulaks! Death to them!" -Vladimir Lenin
The Kulak was a class of farmer who was considered affluent. Until 1861 nearly half of agrarian based Russians were serfs and owned by landlords. Tsar Alexander the Second ended serfdom and in the process awarded them land, however to mitigate the economic effects of landlords losing labour and land the serfs had to compensate their once landlords with the equivalent of a 49-year mortgage. Industrious farmers once released from serfdom began developing their own domains. However private ownership of land was not common practice at the time, instead something known as 'strip farming' was popular. In strip farming a given plot of land was owned and run by a commune, each family in the commune was allotted a strip of land for their needs, think of a 'community garden' type of structure.
This changed under the third prime minister of Russia Pyotr Stolypin who served in the Provisional Government that existed from the revolution in 1905 to the coup orchestrated by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. Stolypin thought that by giving the Russian peasantry the ability to own land they'd be able to lift themselves from abject poverty and become more economically viable. The desired effect was accomplished to some degree however in other situations families ended up selling what they previously were alotted in the communes and now owned no land, putting them in the position of selling their labor in order to make ends meet.
This environment fostered the 'Kulak', the Kulaks were the peasants that either held onto their existing land and or acquired additional land through the now private market and employed fellow citizens to work their fields. A very small portion of Kulaks may have been exceptionally successful and able to build wealth but in a high majority of cases they were equivalent to what we would consider to be modest farmers in current times.
Saying that, even this definition of a Kulak; one of being a farmer who owned land and employed people is too specific. Kulak broadened to a term used against anyone who in rural Russia opposed the regime or was considered a political enemy. Additionally because food shortages were occuring in the cities any farmer regardless of economic status who resisted food exactions or otherwise displayed overt hostility was slapped with the Kulak label.
Lenin who again was an advid follower of Marxist doctrine despised the idea of private property and in his eyes like the Bourgoisie the Kulaks acquired their wealth by exploitave means. So with this attitude in 1918 the Bolshevik government 'liquidated' them with similar ferocity as Hitler used against the jews.
This whole mentality of group identity and opressed/oppressor classes is what is at the heart of both CRT and gender ideology. In both philosophies similar to Marxism it seems everything is seen through that oppressed/oppressor lense. In CRT systemic racism is presented as an endemic problem and that the existing societal structure is built on a racist oppressive foundation. Gender ideology distances itself a little more than CRT from the oppressed/oppresser model and in a more general sense looks to the existing structure of gender and sex as oppressive to people who subscribe to their ideology.
Like in Marxist philosophy both have groups of oppressors, CRT casts white people in the role whereas followers of gender ideology cast those who hold 'traditional' views of gender as their oppressors. In both it is typically and especially the 'cis-gendered' white man who is seen as the embodiment of evil. The Bolsheviks had the Kulaks (amoung many others), the Nazi's the Jews and in our modern ideological psychosis it is the white man who is the root of all our societal problems. And much like the Bolsheviks definition of Kulak that broadened to cover an ever wider category of people the specific image of the oppressive class that originally consisted of cis gendered white men has expanded to include feminist women known as T.E.R.F's (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and even trans people who don’t necessarily subscribe to accepted narratives.
But how did this happen? How did we get here?
Pipes refers to the fact that popular rebellions usually have their origins in conservative roots. Now in Russia the original acts of rebellion by right wing minded citizens was hijacked by the radical intellectuals and liberals, in modern America the original conservative rebellion is what caused the appropriate political environment to be created in which radical and revolutionary thought could flourish. The right wing triggered "big bang" that lead to the creation of our current entropic political environment was the election of one Donald J. Trump.
Although Trumps ascension to the oval office wasn't obtained by means of revolution it was still no less an expression of rebellion. He was a big orange grenade a lot of frustrated citizens were anxious to lobe into the system.
He was appealing as a force of destruction and revelation to an angsty population because he tapped into a major component of conservative rebellion. With the simple phrase "Make America Great Again" he ignited the conservatives desire for "the good 'ol days" and accessed the rights nostalgia for the past. Trump and his campaign also successfully identifed themselves with the legitimate frustration within the working class. This frustration of the American Proletariat stems from their economic stability being stripped away by globalist, govermmental and corporate forces.
By continually advertising himself as "an outsider" people knew at the very least he would be different from the status quo. By personally funding a large portion of his campaign Trump also claimed to be free from the influence of "special interests". Interests that a lot of working America have perceived as the true controllers of government instead of them "the people". Not unlike pre 1905 Russia, Americans felt like they lacked legitimate representation within government. Instead of a monarchy exuding power onto them as was the case with the Russians; Americans instead felt that the system that once worked for them was now in the hands of the "elites", a pseudo-monarchy of corporate, military and political puppet masters. Trump differentiated himself from his main opponent even further by casting Hillary in stark contrast, emphasizing the fact that she was a career politician funded by the aforementioned forces plaguing them "the people".
When the Donald promised to "Make America Great Again" the nation that came to a lot of voters minds was post WW2 America which provided the economic conditions responsible for building a healthy and thriving middle class. The America where they're grandpa hopped off a boat with nothing but twenty dollars in his pocket and a strong back then was able to build a comfortable life within a generation.
Trumps message of making the country great again, evicting corrupt career politicians by "draining the swamp" and taking down foreign adversaries like 'Gina resonated with the laid off factory workers of America's rust belt and the working class in general. This was 'the class' responsible for electing him to the presidency and similar to 1905 Russia in the sense that the Tsar's actions after Bloody Sunday quelled the rebellion for a short amount of time Trumps election also satisfied conservatives for the most part while he was in office.
Nonetheless Trump's polarizing nature split the right and left, his presence as President created a type of binary pitting people either for him or against him. This caused the bottom to fall-out on moderates and consequently radicalized the parties.
Howard Rosenthal a political scientist developed a method for measuring political polarization. Rosenthal noted that Trump was the logical by-product of the middle classes economic frustrations. More specifically Rosenthal noticed "...the median income of a white man hasn't increased against inflation since the 1960's."1 Rosenthal concluded these declining fortunes was the main lever that moved Trump into the White House. Models measuring polarization produced by PEW research show that the polarization of the two parties significantly increased in 2017, shortly after after Trumps election.2
As mentioned Democrats seem to be plagued with more radical influence than Republicans. Likely because Conservatives are more grounded in conventional wisdom and tradition than forward thinking, progressive Liberals. COVID added fuel to the fire, once the virus became politicized it further drove the wedge in-between the right and left.
In Pipes book he states that in both the French and Russian revolutions the original practical demands made by right wing minded citizens typically has "an objective being the restitution of traditional rights of which the population feels unjustly deprived."
The draconian measures taken up by government during COVID provided a fertile environment for which the population felt its "traditional rights" were "unjustly deprived." This lead to protests like "Operation Gridlock" in 2020 and "The Freedom Convoy" in early 2022 among others. The recent demonstrations held by the Dutch farmers in the Netherlands is another example of a population fighting for restitution of something the government has taken from them.
The divisive environment has fostered radicaliztion. By abandoning moderates and in a political no man's land and with radicals firing at each other from the trenches politics has now become a form of warfare. This chaotic climate is the one desired by radical intellectuals. Referring back to Pipes quote, it's the one where "...nothing whatever could be improved as long as the existing regime remained in place, which meant that revolution was a necessary precondition of any progress."
This is the situation we now find ourselves in. The right lobed a big orange grenade into the system that obliterated the shaky ground moderates once stood on. This subsequently polarized the parties further and since then the lefts causes have been hijacked by the radical intellectuals proporting upheaval of the current social and political systems from university strongholds. The causes, names, dates and countries maybe different but in a general sense the historical reflections of a country on the brink of revolution can be seen in our current enigma.
Foot notes
Blake Hounshell, "The man who did the math on our partisan divisions", The New York Times, August 31 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/political-science-partisanship.html
"The shift in American public's political values", PEW Research, October 20 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/