Archive for May 1992

Name: Timothy Comeau
Course: History 431
Date Due: 22 May 1992
Date Submitted: 22 May 1992
Instructor: Paul-Emile Comeau

80

In this comparison, I shall first write a summary of both revolutions, in two diferent parts and at the end, in the third and final part, I shall compare the two.

Part I The Irish Revolution

The revolution which occurred in the year 1798 was the result of a deep sense of inferiority and resentment brought on by centuries of abuse by the English. Examples of this abuse are found in the tithes Catholic Irish were forced to pay to support the Protestant church which they regarded as heathen and despised, and the “Godly Slaughter” by Cromwell in 1649.

The uprising can be traced back to the formation of the volunteer militia, which was created to defend Ireland during the American Revolution. However, the militia turned to address their complaints. In turn, the volunteer army was successfully bribed with concessions to shut them up.

The government attempted to ease the grievances of the people with the constitution of 1782, which gave the appearance of freedom. However, the feelings of hurt felt by the Irish people were not healed by the constitution, and they continued to resent the British government. They saw the ministers in the newly formed Irish Protestant Parliament as agents of their oppressors.

Inspired by the American and French Revolutions, the Irish prepared for violent action.

The Irish revolutionaries, calling themselves the United Irishman, and lead by the Protestant idealist Theobald Wolfe Tone, got a promise of French intervention to support an internal rising.

A central organizing body was set up in Dublin, and called itself the Supreme Executive. Throughout 1796 and 1797, the Supreme Executive made plans to contain the British garrison and control all the major communication channels.

All this activity was made forfeit by the simple fact that the British government had an intricate network of spies infiltrated in the Supreme Executive.

The government acted on their knowledge on 11 March 1798 witha sting operation, securing the Directory for the Province of Leinster, and arresting most of the men involved in the Supreme Executive.

The government did not end there. On 30 March 1798 they declared martial law, and began a relentless terror campaign which lasted through April and May, and which yielded large quantities of weapons.

The revolutionary movement suffered with the government crackdown, but also strengthened the outrage. The Irish began to feel they had little to lose by an open revolt.

The outburst finally came on 24 May 1798. The British military heads were not afraid of the Irish., but looked upon them with contempt, due to their previous mayhem, which mostly required no military skill. However, they were shocked to learn that they were outnumbered, and that the Irish peasants would attack with desperate courage with apathy to losses.

The British forces soon discovered that when they did win a battle, the rebels would withdraw and violence would erupt somewhere else. The British strategy was to engage each unit of the United Irishmen in battle and pray for victory. But this required time. And time was one thing not on the side of the English forces.

Captured documents indicated that France was planning an invasion. It was clear: if the revolt could not be quelled by the time the French arrived, Ireland would be lost.

By this time, the rebels had taken the town of Wexford and proclaimed a republic based on the French model. They talked of “We the people associated and united for the purpose of procuring our just rights…”, though it was not clear, and none knew how, these rights were to be achieved.

The revolution was rotting away into provincialism, glued together more by fear of the English then by common goals of revolution.

It was at this time that a new British Viceroy was appointed. His named was Sir William Cornwallis (or Yorktown fame), and his prime objectives were to conserve forces for the French rather than kill them off fighting English peasants. Thus his first task was to capitalize on the divisions among the rebels by allowing the soldiers to surrender with retaliation.

Finally in August 1798, Lord Cornwallis offered general amnesty to the citizens of Ireland, and the revolt, which had been on the decline, finally petered out like the proverbial flame in the wind.

The government believed the revolt was over. It had lasted 3 months and left 25,000 dead (including 2000 loyal to crown Protestants and Catholics). Evidence of the scale confiscated: 48,000 muskets, 70,000 pikes, and 22 canons.

Just as peace was being restored, the French arrived. They landed on 23 August 1798 at Killala in Mayo County. There were 1000 of them, with 7000 more to come. Wolfe Tone arrived with General Hubert, and Napper Tandy, then other Irish leader with the French forces, was to come with the relief forces. Over 7000 Irish rose to support the invasion, and the government in London feared the revolt would be reborn.

But the French were too late. Humbert, without the relief force he had expected, faced 5000 British soldiers with only 850 men at Ballinamuck. He fought for half an hour and then surrendered.

The few remaining rebels near Killala were soon finished off.

The revolt was over, and the aftermath saw hangings, deportations to Australia, and general repression.

Part II The Russian Revolution

The Russian revolution began with the inauguration of Czar Nicholas II in 1894. “Nicholas was as determined to be an autocrat as his father. No man, however, was less fitted for the role. Though he was handsome and charming, he lacked completely the leadership qualities of his father.” ¹ That coupled with a series of bad harvests in the 1890’s which caused starvation, caused the growth of the revolutionary bacteria.

With the rise of industrialism, discontent and feelings of negativity grew among the city workers and middle class. The discontent fueled the birth of three political organizations, each intent on overthrowing the czarist government.

These were:
(1) THE LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISTS, who wanted to replace the czar with a western type government;
(2) THE SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES, who tried to promote a peasant revolution;
(3) THE MARXISTS, who followed the teachings of Karl Marx.

The last party, the Marxists, became the most important of the three. In 1898, they established the Russian Social Democratic Party, which split in 1903 into two sects – the Bolsheviks and the Menesheviks. The leader of the Bolsheviks later became very important. His name was Vladimir I. Ulyanov, and he called himself Lenin.

In 1899, an economic recession crippled the country. The already mounting discontent began to grow exponentially. As a result, student protests, peasant revolts, and worker strikes increased. When the Russo-Japanese war broke out, the discontent and unrest only grew further.

The final blow came when World War I broke out. All was detoured to meet the needs of the soldiers. Trains no longer served the common folk. Food, fuel and housing shortages were prevalent.

The soldiers eventually grew disloyal due to their knowledge that they would be going to the front to face an almost certain death.

By the end of 1916, the majority of the Russian educated opposed Czar Nicholas II. Most had good reason. Rasputin was the unofficial ruler, and he was ruining the country.

Grigori Y. Rasputin was a monk that charmed Nicholas II’s wife. Through her, he influenced the czar’s decisions, so that he would end up appointing incompetent people to important government posts. The result was an inefficient government, full of corrupt ministers, and a government in which the people had no confidence. Finally, Rasputin was assassinated by wealthy nobles, but by that time it was too late.

In March 1917, the revolution began. Riots and strikes over bread shortages grew more violent in Petrograd. Soldiers were called in but instead turned to the Duma for aid. Nicholas II ordered the Duma to dissolve, but parliament ignored the command. Nicholas lost all political support and gave up the throne on 15 March. The royal family was imprisoned and assassinated by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.

In the turmoil after the March revolt, a new soviet of Workers and Soldiers deputies was established in Petrograd. Many similar soviets were set up throughout Russia.

In April, Lenin ordered “all powers to the soviets”, but the soviets were unwilling to take over the government.

Then in July, armed workers and soldiers attempted to seize power in Petrograd, but failed in their objectives. Lenin, in the aftermath, fled to Finland, while his followers either escaped as he had, or were jailed. Later that month, Alexander F. Kerensky, a socialist, became premier.

The next 3 months passed without incident, although in those three months (August, September, October), many powerful Russians grew to blame Kerensky for failures in the war, and opposed his socialist views. General Lavr Kornilov, army commander-in-chief, made plans to seize power.

At the same time Kornilov was making plans for his coup-d’etat, Kerensky freed the jailed Bolsheviks, and let them arm the Petrograd workers against Kornilov.

When the General advanced on Petrograd in September, it did not last long. His group broke up before it reached the capital.

But the Bolsheviks were free, and the workers had arms, and when the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd soviet later that month, Lenin returned from Finland, and convinced his party that they should attempt to seize power.

It all began on 7 November. The armed workers finally revolted, and took over important points in Petrograd, including the Winter Palace, headquarters of the provisional government, and arrested the ministers.

By 15 November, the Bolsheviks also controlled Moscow. The Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, formed a new Russian government. They spread Bolshevik rule through the local soviets.

For a little while at least, Lenin allowed the peasants to seize farmland for themselves, and let workers control the factories and play roles in the local soviets.

However, it was a false freedom, and the government soon tightened control, and confiscated most, if not all, of the peasant’s land, and their products. But it did not end there. The Bolshevik government took over industries and set up control management bureaus to control them.

Cheka, a secret police organization, was established, Bolshevik control was absolute.

Once this take-over had taken place, Russia withdrew from World War I, and began peace talks with Germany.

In 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the Russian capital back to Moscow, and changed their name to the Russia Communist party. (This name was later changed to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

Finally, the Bolsheviks organized the Red Army, taking the name from the color of their flag.

The Red Army was first used in 1918, when civil war broke out between the communists and the anti-communists. The communists had large support from the peasants who felt they would lose their government-lent lands to their old landlords (and thus re-become serfs) if the anti-communists won. In the end, the anti-communists lost, due to their poor organization.

At the end of the civil war, the Red Army reconquered Georgia, Ukraine, eastern Armenia, and put down nationalistic independence movements in Byelorussia and Central Asia.

In 1920, the Red Army was again put to the test. “Poland invaded Ukraine in an attempt to expel the communists. The Red Army drove the invaders out and nearly reached Warsaw, Poland’s capital. But the Polish troops, with help from France, finally defeated the Red Army. A treaty signed in 1921 gave Poland the western parts of Byelorussia and the Ukraine.” ²

In the end of 1922, a very important event took place. This was the formation of USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). In 1922, there were only 3 republics, but over the next 18 years, many other republics joined, so that in the end, there were a total of 15.

Also in 1922, the father of the new socialist state, Vladimir Lenin, fell seriously ill and eventually died in 1924.

In the two years prior to his death, an earnest power struggle developed amount the members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.

In truth, Leon Trotsky ranked after Lenin. He ruled in his absence, but Joseph Stalin was advancing in the ranks.

Joseph Stalin had become General Secretary of the party in 1922, and was chosen as a partner in the opposition of Trotsky by Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinovev. These three and Trotsky all had different views to where socialism should go:

(1) Trotsky and his followers believed in promoting a socialist world revolution;
(2) A group led by Nicholas Bukharin believed in a socialist world revolution, but also though the USSR should continue with Lenin’s policy of watered down communism, due to the fact Bukharin did not believe some countries were ready for socialism;
(3) Stalin and his followers believed that soviet socialism could succeed without a planetary revolution.

Stalin would eventually go on to defeat his opponents one by one. When Trotsky lost power in 1925, Stalin was already one step closer to heading the communist party. Indeed, at the 15th Communist Party Congress, in December 1927, Stalin won a sweeping victory.

In 1929, Stalin removed Bukharin, by having him sign a bill which Stalin ordered, in which Bukharin admitted Stalin’s views were correct, and this his were wrong. This action placed Stalin as supreme head of the government, or in other words the dictator of the USSR.

It is at this point that the Russian Revolution is considered to have ended.

Part III. Comparison

Comparison means showing what is similar about different thing, or what is different about the said things.

Well, one similarity between the Russian Revolution and the Irish Revolution was that both were preceded by deep senses of grief and discontentment.

Also, another thing which is similar, is that both revolutions were planned. In Ireland, it was the Supreme Executive, and in Russia, it was the Bolsheviks. However, unlike the Supreme Executive, the Bolsheviks were not infiltrated with spies.

Another similarity: when the Irish rebels took the town of Wexford, they proclaimed a republic. When the Bolsheviks too Petrograd and Moscow, they set up their new government.

The Irish Revolution was not truly a revolution, but was closer to a peasant revolt. The Russian Revolution was a true revolution. The Bolsheviks managed to overthrow the czar and establish a new governmental system. This brings about a difference: where the Irish revolt failed to overthrow the government, the Bolsheviks succeeded.

Thus ends this report.

Footnotes:

1. See Ira Peck, The Russian Revolution (Scholastic Book Services; 1967) p.32-33 [back]

2. See The World Book Encyclopedia, 1989ed, sv “USSR”, p54-55 [back]

Books:

Peck, Ira. The Russian Revolution, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Scholastic Book Services, 1967.

Trueman, Schaffter, Stewart, Hunter. Modern Perspectives, Halifax, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, 1979.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. The World Atlas of Revolutions London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983.

Reference:

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968 Edition, s.v. “Cornwallis, Sir William”.

The World Book Encyclopedia, 1989 Edition, s.v. “USSR”/

The National Geographic Index 1947-1983, Washington D.C., National Geographic Soceity, 1984.

Periodicals:

Judge, Joseph. “The Travail of Ireland.” National Geographic, Vol. 159, No. 4 (April 1981) pp. 432-441. Included: “Ireland and Northern Ireland: A Visitor’s Guide; Historic Ireland” (Pre-Norman, Medieval, Modern), double sided supplement.