We know that the Russian revolutiontook place in 1917 and there were two special moments throughout that year: one in February, when the Empire Russian was destroyed by revolutionaries, and another in October, when the revolution came to be spearheaded by the soviets (Councils of Workers, Peasants and Military), led by Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky. This centralization of revolutionary command by the Bolsheviks generated a period of civil war, in which the ArmyRed, Bolshevik, and the ArmyWhite, contrary to Bolshevik centralism. This period of conflict, which lasted until mid-1921, became known as “war communism”. After the Bolshevik victory over opponents, the so-called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or simply, USSR.
The Global Revolution
In the phase of war communism, Lenin believed that there could be a collapse of the imperialist powers, provoked by the First World War, a fact that would make communist revolution possible not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Western Europe and, later, in the rest of the world. There was, then, a perspective of “Global Revolution”. One of the most obvious attempts at communist revolution in Europe was that which took place in Germany in 1919, led by the "MovementSpartacist”. This attempt turned out to be a failure and caused the projects of communist “revolutionary contagion” to be curbed.
Centralization of Power
At the same time that the prospect of the Global Revolution had to be “postponed”, the Russian communists realized that it was necessary to keep power centralized. Such centralization implied issues such as state control of food production, general administration of the country by the Communist Party, collectivization of the private property, press censorship and curtailment of individual liberties - which also resulted in the mandatory work decree -, among others measures. These strategies provided the basis for the modeltotalitarian that would be explicit under the leadership of Stalin posteriorly.
In 1921 Lenin drew up the call NEP (New Economic Policy) and created the GOSPLAN (State Economic Planning Commission) as ways of establishing state control over the basic conditions of economic and political life for the Russian population. In a short time, this control was extended to neighboring countries to guarantee a communist encirclement against the European powers. Six countries joined Russia and the power of the soviets: Transcaucasia,Ukraine,RussiaWhite,Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan and Tadykistan. These six countries, plus Russia, formed the USSR, made official in 1922.
With Lenin's death in 1924, there was a fierce dispute between the most prominent leaders. The "winner" of the dispute was Stalin, who transformed the Soviet Union into a true totalitarian and oppressive empire, fulfilling what came to be called "revolution from above", as highlighted by Italian historian Silva Pons:
[…] The height of the authoritarianism of State terrorism was reached in 1932-1933, when Stalin decided to use the famine and hunger, caused by collectivization, to break down peasant resistance. Mass death spread again in rural society on a scale that obscured even the consequences of the 1921 famine, annihilating millions of people. In Ukraine, the situation reached the proportions and characteristics of genocide. From all this would emerge an even more powerful and oppressive state. [1]
When he took power, Stalin transformed the state itself into a “revolutionary agent”, making the bureaucratic apparatus a personalist structure, that is, geared towards the cult of his image, as was done by totalitarian nationalists of the same period, like hitler and Mussolini. Furthermore, the millions of deaths from starvation in Ukraine, cited by Silvio Pons, constitute what has come to be known as "Holodomor" (which in Ukrainian exactly means starvation, death from lack of food). Furthermore, the Soviet Union, at the time of Stalin, became a real empire, with great penetration around the world, through the control exercised over the communist parties of the rest of the globe.
GRADES
[1] PONS, Silvio. The Global Revolution: History of International Communism. Trans. Luiz Sérgio Henriques. Rio de Janeiro: Counterpoint, 2014. P. 153.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
