Quote:
Originally Posted by NJ Brazen_3133
I am hoping there is someone on here who can answer my questions about the Bolsheviks before, during, and after the October Revolution.What were their numbers right before they started their revolution?What kind of people did they have? Were they mostly just factory workers and farmers?
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Oh boy, there are no "short cuts," or quick answers to these questions, when you are talking about such old and complex European nation like Russians.
I can tell you in two words that Communism in Russia was not "masterminded" by peasants and workers, but that would be only half-true. Then I'd tell you that it was a creation of Russian intelligentsia, but you probably wouldn't be even familiar with such terminology.
Why don't you read something like N. Berdyaev's "The origin of Russian communism"; it's a good read and here is at least the explanation regarding what Russian intelligentsia was - a class behind revolution back in those time ( which might or might not accurately reflect the definition of this class in later times.)
"To understand the sources of Russian communism and make clear to oneself the
character of the Russian revolution, one must understand that singular phenomenon
which in Russia is called 'intelligentsia'. Western people would make a mistake if they
identified the Russian intelligentsia with those who in the West are known as
'intellectuals'.
'Intellectuals' are people of intellectual work and creativeness, mainly learned people,
writers, artists, professors, teachers and so on. The Russian intelligentsia is an entirely
different group; and to it may belong people occupied in no intellectual work, and
generally speaking not particularly intellectual. Many Russian scholars and writers
certainly could not be reckoned as belonging to the intelligentsia in the strict sense of the
word. The intelligentsia reminds one more of a monastic order or sect, with its own very
intolerant ethics, its own obligatory outlook on life, with its own manners and customs
and even its own particular physical appearance, by which it is always possible to
recognize a member of the intelligentsia and to distinguish him from other social groups.
Our intelligentsia were a group formed out of various social classes and held together by
ideas, not by sharing a common profession or economic status. They were derived to
begin with mainly from the more cultured section of the nobility, later from the sons of
the clergy, small government officials, the lower middle class, and, after the liberation,
from the peasants. That then is the intelligentsia; its members were of different social
classes, and held together solely by ideas, and, moreover, by ideas about sociology. In the second half of the nineteenth century the stratum of society which is
simply called cultured is developed into a new type and is given the name 'intelligentsia'.
This type has its characteristic traits which belong to all its present representatives."
http://www.jesus-for-all.com/fikr/pdf_3189.pdf
PS. N. Berdyaev was a Russian philosopher who lived back in those days, and who was later expelled from the country along with a "group of some 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas the Bolshevik government found objectionable"
Nikolai Berdyaev - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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