Czar Versus Bolsheviks
...s usually cooked the food, while the male serfs served the nobles and all of their guests. Few basic foods were eaten by the peasants. “Workers lived off black bread, cabbage, cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge, with fresh cucumber in summer and salted in winter”. (Moynahan. Pg 22). The Russian peasants lived in patriarchal, extended families. The final word was always decided by the oldest male of the Family, and only men could inherit land. The females had 2 lower status in the home. Tending the garden and animals was the woman's job, along with the household chores. The marriages for the children were based on property, in the middle-class families. The average peasant family lived in a small wooden house which included a single large room and one or two small storage rooms. An enormous stove that was used for heating and cooking was placed in one corner of the larger room. “It would indeed have been almost impossible for them to move around had it not been for the convenience of the stove, on which some slept at night, and which served as a table in the day-time”. (Tolstoi. pg 3) Older members of the family slept near the stove in the winter. The peasant life in Russia was extremely harsh. The Russian Orthodox Church supported the political and social order. “The Church provided cohesion. Religion bit deep into the Russian soul”.(Moynahan. Pg 15). The church was completely under the control of the czar by the time of Peter The Great. The government gave the church financial help and appointed Church officials. In return, the government expected the Church to closely ally itself to the autocracy, which it did. In the 1800's, priests reported anyone suspected of disloyalty to the police. Some of the secret police even dressed up as priests to hear confessions to get information. Yet the Church was still a place of great comfort for both the rich and the poor. 3 Peasants were baptized as infants, married according to Church law, and received the Church's blessings as they lay dead. The Church held festivals and religious music, which provided some happiness. Until 1905 the Czar’s powers were unlimited. Russia had no constitution, no political party system to check the Czar’s power and a strong secret police that terrorized the people. As a result, reformers were forced underground during the late 1800’s. Democratic groups sought an end the Czarist rule. Farmers wanted the land owned by the nobility. Workers wanted better living conditions and along with the small Russian middle-class, wanted a voice in the government. The Russian socialist movement began in the 19th century. “By 1903, Russia was divided into several political groups. The autocracy was upheld by the landed nobility and the higher clergy; the capitalists desired a constitutional monarchy; the liberal bourgeoisie made up the bulk of the group that later became the Constitutional Democratic party; peasants and intelligentsia were incorporated into the Socialist Revolutionary party; and the workers, influenced by Marxism, were represented in the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Social Democratic Labor party”. (www.History Channel.com). The Provisional Government set up by the Duma attempted to pursue a 4 reasonable policy, calling for a return to order and promising reform of worker's rights. However, it was unwilling to endorse the most pressing demand of the soviets, which was an immediate end to the war. For the next 9 months, the Provisional Government, first under Prince Lvov and then under Alexander Kerensky, unsuccessfully attempted to establish its authority. In the meanwhile, the Bolsheviks gained increasing support from the ever more frustrated soviets. On October 25, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, they stormed the Winter Palace and toppled the Kerensky government. Although the Bolsheviks enjoyed substantial support in St. Petersburg and Moscow, they were by no means in control of the country as a whole. They succeeded in taking Russia out of the war, but within months civil war broke out throughout Russia. For the next three years the country was devastated by civil conflict. As the people embraced more radical political ideas, growing numbers of young workers, distrustful of the upper classes and the armed forces under the Provisional Government, began arming. They organized workers’ mil...