Jared Emry

Due to the irrational and deadly nature of the first great world war, the Russian proletariat was more than dissatisfied with their current governance; this and the cultural and aesthetic status previously existing allowed the Bolsheviks to rise to power. The British Ministry of Information successfully frothed the British into an anti-German frenzy with propaganda detailing mostly fictional German atrocities, thus demonstrating for the billionth time the undeniable and empirical correlation between empathy and violence (as empathy is easily weaponized and the empathetic are more like to endorse and be violent against that which they perceive to violate their culturally dictated moral norms without any evidence of violation), as all good propaganda does. British protestors, such as Rosa Luxemburg, Bertrand Russell, and Eugene Debs, were jailed for questioning and silenced. (Chomsky 69). Nicholas II of Russia and the subsequent administrations of state failed to have such effective propaganda and failed to imprison the Russian equivalents of the dissidents previously mentioned. The Bolshevik’s propaganda was supplemented by leaked documents that seemed to show a continued dedication to the war, and the war in itself provided the Bolshevik’s ladder to power.

The primary rigor to be endured in interpreting the events of the Russian Revolution is to know the political climate and the ideologies that drive it. The first and foremost significantly pertinent ideology appeared in the mid-19^th century and it was called Nihilism. Russian Nihilism isn’t quite the same as the Nihilism Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist philosophers spoke of. The nihilism the existentialists talked of is an abstract condition of tension between what we desire to value and what reality demands — a trait of the modern age. It is a process of levelling in which the individual is made to conform to society (that social phenomena including, but not limited to, both higher and lower education, state religion, psychiatry, and other such phenomena, that abstractly facilitate and organize the destruction of the individual for the sake of social stability) and the individual is left meaningless in a stillness worse than the death (Kierkegaard 51–53). The existentialist philosopher asks how return the value of our own life — the intent here is to avoid nihilism at all costs. The Russian Nihilists appeared as Kierkegaard first spoke of levelling but are radically different in some significant aspects. Russian Nihilism was an ideologically-driven movement driven by a desire to annihilate the social order that imposed the abstract levelling. Russian Nihilism railed against the repressions of the Tsar. The seemingly contradictory value system, “Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!” became fairly popular amongst a certain kind of people in Russia (Bukanin, Die Reaktion). The Nihilists formed secret societies, such as The Organization, and conducted themselves with tactics that could be called terrorism (although you could say the same about John Brown; it seems things are only terroristic if the right people like the outcomes) (Edie et al.). Russian Nihilism viewed the society as having positivists and negativists or those who conform to and support the status quo and those who don’t. The tenants of socialism were already present in Russian Nihilism with Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who formed the idea of a struggle between bourgeoisie and the proletariat long before Marx’s words reached Russia (Chernyshevsky).

The second major pertinent philosophy is Marxism. Marxism is an economic ideology that believes economic need begins with the populous base and a system must be constructed onto the base that will provide for those needs. Interestingly enough, the Nihilists were incredibly hostile to Marxism as they believed such a top-down approach is authoritarian and calls for a strong hand (a dictator) to guide the construction. The Nihilist believed a dictator called for by the Marxists could only be corrupted by self-perpetuation at the cost of universal slavery. This conflict is probably best seen in the debates between Marx and Bakunin, both of whom were major philosophers between the two distinct ideologies. However, the Russian Government cracked down on the Nihilists decades prior to the revolution and left a vacuum for Marxism. The Nihilists were exiled to Siberia for even the most minor infractions, but the aesthetic sensibilities and value system were left behind for the Marxism of the Bolsheviks.

Bolshevik Propaganda did not require much to levy the support of the people. Underground support had simply drifted from the Nihilists to the Marxists; the change was only in what might be considered to be insignificant details and so the aesthetic needed not to change for the people. One such Russian Marxist was Vladimir Lenin, whose writings formed the foundation of the October Revolution and the foundations of the Soviet Union. 100,000 copies of Pravda were printed daily and more than 350,000 leaflets were distributed by the Bolsheviks around St. Petersburg to promote Bolshevik ideals. As far as election results go, the Bolshevik Party gained two-thirds of the votes in only three months. The shift toward the Bolsheviks was both quick and popular, thanks partially to the significant and pre-existing Nihilist aesthetic (Lenin). Their propaganda, among other things, portrayed Lenin or Leon Trotsky as a St. George, a knight that slays the foul beast. This also hit to another core of Russian culture, that of the Russian Orthodox Church that has always held St. George to a particular esteem set apart a little further than other saints. St. George was and continues to be a very popular subject on Russian iconography.  Coinciding with the Bolshevik propaganda, the movements of western nations that supported the anti-Bolsheviks fed right into the propaganda and seemed to validate Bolshevik claims concerning the legitimacy of their current government and the evils of Western imperialism (Carmichael).

Through the use of propaganda the Marxist Bolsheviks managed to gain power via the hijacking of Russian Nihilism; however, they failed to realize the state is antithetical to the people, and where the people still exists, it hates the state and cannot understand it. The Nihilist fear of the Marxist leader would be realized with rise of Stalin. The authoritarian came down as a Saint, almost like that of a false prophet, and lead the revolution, but the ideals set out to be achieved were not and possibly could not be achieved. 

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