The omnipotence of the bureaucracy, the cause of the first Russian revolution

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The nineteenth century is characterized by the greatest development of science and industry. Along with the rapid technological progress, the development of social and political sciences also took place. Socialism - this word has become the measure of human happiness. Hundreds, thousands of emigrants poured into the North American states to make their dream come true, where they found vast expanses of free and cheap land, only there they found a country enjoying political and religious freedom unparalleled in Europe.

Not to mention the numerous religious communities that pursued not so much communist-social goals as religious and moral goals, in the USA, in many states thousands of communist communities were organized (phalansteria is a production and consumer association) …

But between these communist colonies in the middle of the 19th century and the subsequent social movement in the United States there is no organic connection, but the bureaucracy of the New World, saturated with the doctrines of modern socialism, and later the European bureaucracy, had to reckon with the opinion of the proletariat. The colossal trade union movement with social programs, consumer societies have forever left in the bureaucracy those features that they have retained to this day - a sense of openness, responsibility and ownership.

Quite the opposite could be observed in monarchist Russia. The ruling class, the bureaucracy, stood guard over all the ideology that was beneficial to it. Any undermining of the foundations of this ideology was considered a crime, or at least indecency. It was indecent, for example, to doubt that the Apostle Andrew baptized the Slavs, that the Russians did not come from Rus, but from the Normans, etc.

The thoroughly rotten tsarist autocracy, the firmly rooted remnants of serfdom, the extreme backwardness of agriculture, the political powerlessness of the masses, the complete dependence of Russian capitalism on Western European capital - all this hampered the country's economic development.

Russian industry was dominated by enterprises with technically backward equipment, with an almost complete lack of mechanization of labor-intensive work and extremely low labor productivity. And this backward industry in Russia for the most part belonged to foreign capitalists. In their hands were concentrated almost three-quarters of the metallurgy and coal industry of Donbass, all oil production, most of the mechanical engineering, the first rudiments of the chemical industry and other decisive branches of production.

Russian industry, as a result of the intensified exploitation of the working class, gave enormous profits, Such a wild country, in which the masses of the people would have been so robbed in the sense of education, light and knowledge - there is not a single country left in Europe except Russia. And this savagery of the masses, especially the peasants, is not accidental, but inevitable under the oppression of the bureaucracy, which seized tens and tens of millions of dessiatines of land, seized all state power and used it for personal purposes.

A well-known publicist of that time, Prince V. P. Meshchersky, in January 1906:

“Before the war, I still believed that, in spite of all its shortcomings, the old bureaucratic system helps the Tsar to rule Russia and relieves Him of the heavy burden of responsibility before God and His conscience.

But since the war, nothing has remained of this illusion, and, following with hellish torments in my soul everything that happened in this world of lies, deception, base flattery, hypocrisy and hypocrisy, cowardice, theft, embezzlement and even treason, called bureaucracy, Suddenly seeing, as a consequence of this abomination of desolation, my state and my Sovereign on the brink of destruction, I hated and cursed this world of the enemies of Russia, which protected the autocracy, only as a shield for my corruption and for the security of my position.

I realized that if I love my homeland and my Sovereign honestly and want their salvation, then I must only wish for the Tsar to destroy the hydra of the bureaucracy, as a revolutionary hydra, which is more dangerous for Him, and to arrange on its ruins such a new order that he did forever it would be impossible for Him to bear responsibility for the meanness, cowardice and lies of the bureaucracy, and that, while remaining the Supreme, that is, the Autocratic Leader of His people, He would give the representatives of the people the power of power to the extent that it could strengthen the Tsar's power with truth and prevent it from being weakened by responsibility for untruth. …

The backwardness of Russia is characterized by the highest infant mortality rate among European countries, half of those born do not live up to the age of five. Semi-colonial dependence, the merciless exploitation of the peoples of Russia with the use of physical violence - the whip and rod brought the peasants out of patience in 1905. The Svoboda magazine in 1907 summed up the punishments in Russia for the entire year 1906 (picture in the title).

In Russia, despite police surveillance and a colossal struggle against dissent, the ideas of socialism also penetrated the workers 'and peasants' environment. In 1905, the first issue of the Svoboda magazine published the article "Long Live Socialism"! we will give it in full: