1. SOCIALISM IN EUROPE AND THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Liberals , radicals and
conservatives
2. INTRODUCTION
European states usually discriminated in Socialism in
Europe and the Russian Revolution Chapter ll India and
the Contemporary World 26 favour of one religion or
another Liberals also opposed the uncontrolled power of
dynastic rulers. They wanted to safeguard the rights of
individuals against governments.
They argued for a representative, elected parliamentary
government, subject to laws interpreted by a well-trained
judiciary that was independent of rulers and officials.
However, they were not democrats.
They did not believe in universal adult franchise, that is,
the right of every citizen to vote. They felt men of
property mainly should have the vote. They also did not
want the vote for women.
3.
4. LIBERALS
One of the groups which looked to change society were the
liberals. Liberals wanted a nation w Liberalism emerged in
Russia before the Russian Revolution and continued to develop
among Constitutional Democrats such as Pavel Miliukov living
in exile after 1917.
After the fall of communism, several new liberal parties were
formed, but only one of them Yabloko succeeded in becoming a
relevant force. This is a left-of-center liberal party.
The Union of Right Forces is a right-of-center liberal party.
It can also be seen as a democratic conservative market party. In
this scheme, the party is not included as liberal, being
considered a democratic conservative party, but it can also be
called liberal because of its pro-free-market and anti-
authoritarianism stances. The so-called Liberal Democratic
Party of Russia is not at all "liberal" – it is a nationalist, right-
wing, populist party which tolerated all religions.
5. CREATION
An effectively multi-party system emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s in
wake of the Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. A formal law for this purpose was
introduced in October 1990. In April 1991, the Liberal Democratic Party of the
Soviet Union became the second officially registered political party in the
country. According to former Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev, the new
party was a joint project of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leadership
and the KGB.
He described how director Vladimir Kryuchkov presented the project of the
puppet party at a meeting with Gorbachev and informed him about his selection of
leaders and the mechanism of funding. Former General Philipp Bobkov described
the organization as "Zubatov's pseudo-party under control that directs interests
and sentiments of certain social groups".The outspoken leader of the
party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an effective media performer, gained 8% of votes
during the 1991 presidential elections. He also supported the August 1991 coup
attempt. In 1992, the LDPSS broke apart into its regional offsprings and the
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia was created as its successor in Russia.
6. LIBERALS
1993 to 2000:
In the 1993 Duma
elections, the pro-
reform party
supporting President B
oris Yeltsin, Russia's
Choice, received only
15% of the vote and
the new Communist
Party of the Russian
Federation only 12.4%.
2000 to 2010:
In the presidential
election of 2000, the
party has again put
forward Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, who won
2.7% of votes.
7.
8. RADICALS
They wanted a nation where the
government should be elected by a majority
of the population and some of them wanted
women to participate in the same.
Radical thought is inseparable
from the history of Russian socialism for
many reasons. It was in Russia that the
first socialist revolution broke out, one
that saw the expression of a vigorous
current of radical revolt.
9. Nineteenth-century Russia was not lacking
in currents of thought or revolutionary
groups whose Jacobin inspiration would
seem to link up, without any apparent
break, with Lenin's Bolshevism. But a far
more powerful tradition, one whose roots
spread widely throughout the social soil of
the Empire, had truly flourished for'half a
century before being overwhelmed and
deformed by the rise of ideologies based
on power. An inventory of this tradition
yields a rich harvest of elements of which
the present revolutionary movement
appears to be the direct heir.
10. CONSERVATIVES
They were not ready for changes
and wanted to discard the idea of changes.
At one point they agreed to the upcoming
changes but they wanted that at the same
time the past should be respected.
People who benefited from ld forms of
government and society wanted to stop or
slow the rate of changes.
11.
12. RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
•The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in
1917 which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise
of the Soviet Union.
•The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication
of EmperorNicholas II and the old regime was replaced by
a provisional government during the first revolution of
February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the
older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time).
•Alongside it arose grassroots community assemblies (called
'soviets') which contended for authority. In the second
revolution that October, the Provisional Government was
toppled and all power was given to the soviets.
13.
14.
15.
16. RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN 1914
Connection by 1914 led to Russia's entry
into the First World War on the side of France, the
United Kingdom, and Serbia, against the German,
Austrian, and Ottoman empires. The Russian
Empirefunctioned as an absolute monarchy until
the Revolution of 1905 and then became a de jure
constitutional monarchy.
Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russian Empire in
1914.
17. Economically, the empire had a predominantly agricultural base,
with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs (until they
were freed in 1861). The economy slowly industrialized with the
help of foreign investments in railways and factories.
The land was ruled by a nobility (the boyars) from the 10th
through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar
Ivan III (1462–1505) laid the groundwork for the empire that later
emerged. He tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance
of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the
foundations of the Russian state. Emperor Peter the Great (1682–
1725) fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge
empire into a major European power.
He moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of St.
Petersburg, and led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the
traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a
modern, scientific, Europe-oriented, and rationalist system.
19. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias
Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and
political theorist.
He served as head of government of Soviet Russia
from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to
1924.