THE REFLECTION OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM.

THESIS

Submitted as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Sarjana Degree of English Department Faculty of Letters and Humanities UIN Sunan Ampel

Surabaya

Vita Anggoro Sari Reg. Number : A83211197

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY SUNAN AMPEL SURABAYA 2016

EXAMINER SHEET

This thesis has been approved and accepted by the Board of Examiners, English Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya on

3rd February 2015

Acknowledged by:

The Dean of Faculty of Letter and Humanities

Dr. H. Imam Ghazali, M.A NIP: 196002121990031002

The Board of Examiners:

Examiner I, Examiner IV,

Wahju Kusumajanti, M. Hum Himmatul Khoiroh, S.Ag., M. Pd NIP: 197002051999032002 NIP: 197612222007012021

ABSTRACT

Sari, Vita Anggoro. 2016. THE REFLECTION OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM. Thesis. English Department. Faculty of Letters and Humanities. State Islamic University Sunan Ampel Surabaya. Thesis Advisor: Wahju Kusumajanti, M. Hum

This thesis attempts to analyze novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, an author that well known as critical and straightforward person. The concern of this thesis is the reflection of the 1917 Russian Revolution in the novel. In order to investigate about Russian Revolution and its relation with the novel, the writer uses the sociology of literature and new historicism theory to analyze the novel, and presenting the analysis uses qualitative method. Furthermore, the writer tries to analyze the cause of the Russian revolutions in 1917, how the event happens, the main characters, the effect of the revolution and how it reflects in the novel. The result of the analysis shows that the Russian revolution and Animal Farm have some parallel which proof that Orwell wrote the novel based on those which happen in revolution.

INTISARI

Sari, Vita Anggoro. 2016. THE REFLECTION OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM. Sastra Inggris. Fakultas Adab dan Humaniora. Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya. Pembimbing: Wahju Kusumajanti, M. Hum

Skripsi ini berusaha untuk menganalis novel Animal Farm oleh George Orwell, seorang penulis yang terkenal sebagai seorang yang kritis dan jujur. Fokus dari skripsi ini adalah refleksi dari revolusi Rusia pada tahun 1917 yang ada didalam novel. Untuk meneliti tentang revolusi Rusia dan hubungannya dengan novel tersebut, penulis menggunakan teori sosiologi sastra dan new historicism untuk menganalisis novel, dan menyajikan analisis tersebut menggunakan metode qualitatif. Selanjutnya, penulis mencoba untuk menganalisis penyebab dari revolusi Rusia pada tahun 1917, bagaimana kejadian tersebut terjadi, karakter utama dalam revolusi, efek dari revolusi dan bagaimana refleksi dari revolusi tersebut didalam novel. Hasil dari analisis menunjukkan bahwa revolusi Rusia dan Animal Farm mempunyai persamaan-persamaan yang membuktikan bahwa Orwell menulis novel tersebut berdasarkan hal-hal yang terjadi pada revolusi tersebut.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Inside Cover Page ... i

Inside Tittle Page ... ii

Declaration Page ... iii

Approval Sheet ... iv

Examiner Sheet ... v

Motto ... vi

Dedication Sheet ... vii

Acknowledgements ... viii

Table of Contents ... x

Abstract ... xii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study ... 1

1.2 Statement of the Problem ... 6

1.3 Objective of the Study ... 7

1.4 Significance of the Study ... 7

1.5 Scope and Limitation ... 7

1.6 Method of the Study ... 8

1.7 Organizations of the Study ... 8

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 Sociology and Literature ... 11

2.1.1 Literature and Reality ... 12

2.2 New-Historicism ... 15

2.3 Related Study ... 17

CHAPTER III A BRIEF SKETCH OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN 1917 3.1 Russia before Revolution ... 18

3.2.1 The Russo-Japanese War ... 20

3.2.2 Bloody Sunday ... 21

3.2.3 The October Manifesto ... 23

3.2.4 The First World War ... 27

3.3 The 1917 Revolution ... 29

3.3.1 The Revolution in February 1917 ... 29

3.3.2 The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 ... 34

3.4 The Bolshevik’ Somersault in Gaining Power ... 38

3.5 Russia after the Revolution ... 42

3.6 The Main Characters in the Revolution ... ... 43

3.6.1 The Nicholas II ... 44

3.6.2 Joseph Stalin ... ... 45

36.3 Leon Trotsky ... ... 48

CHAPTER IV THE REFLECTION OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM 4.1 Animal Farm before Revolution ... ... 51

4.2 The Cause of the Revolution in Animal Farm ... 53

4.3 The Revolution in Animal Farm ... 56

4.4 Animal Farm after the Revolution ... 60

4.5 The Characterization of the Main Characters in Russian Revolution in Animal Farm ... 63

4.5.1 Mister Jones ... 63

4.5.2 Napoleon ... 65

4.5.3 Snowball ... 69

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ... 72

REFERENCES ... 75

APPENDIX I SYNOPSIS ... 77

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1.Background of the Study

Russia, or officially known as The Russian Federation is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Eastern Europe and northern Asia (Britannica 1). With very great size of territory at 17.075.400 square kilometres, Russia by far is the largest country in the world. The territory is nearly twice the territory of Canada, the second largest country. The same as its territory, Russia also occupy the rank as the ninth country in the world that had most population with

143.819.000 people in year 2014.

Even though Russia has great scale in territory, this country did not get its glory easily. Before it becomes a Union Republic, Russia was part of The Soviet Union. The Russian republic was established after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became a union republic in 1922. After dissolve itself from The Soviet Union, Russian was experienced political and economy changes. They had to endure a generally weak in economy, high inflation, and a complex of social ills that served to lower life expectancy significantly (Britannica 1).

Russia has experienced some revolutions. Revolution is a complex series of events by any product of interaction (Strauss 1). On the other hand, Laura Neitzel on her journal What Is Revolution states that as a historical process, “revolution” refers to a movement, often violent, to overthrow an old regime and effect complete change in the fundamental institutions of society (Neitzel 1). Different from Neitzel and Strauss’ definition, Hannah Arendt, a Germanic political theorist

in her book On Revolution came up with the idea about revolutions in the modern age. In that book she said that:

Revolutions in the modern age is that the idea of freedom and the experience of a new beginning should coincide. And since the current notion of the Free World is that freedom, and neither justice nor greatness, is the highest criterion for judging the constitutions of political bodies, it is not only our understanding of revolution but our conception of freedom, clearly revolutionary in origin, on which may hinge the extent to which we are prepared to accept or reject this coincidence (Arendt 29).

Revolution had been a tradition in Russia. It is considered as a tradition because revolution in Russia happens more than once. Started from the small revolution in the early 1870s that caused by the intelligentsia's idealization of the peasantryand frustration with its own situation and the prospects for

politicalreform led to the spontaneous mass movement which best

exemplifiesPopulist aspirations. Thousandsof students and members of the intelligentsia left the cities to go tothe villages (Fitzpatrick 24). After that, there was revolutionary terrorism in the late 1870s, motivated by the Populists' desire to avenge their imprisoned comrades andpartly by the rather desperate hope that a well placed blow mightdestroy the whole superstructure of autocratic Russia (25). Populist was a term that originally used by the Russian Marxists todifferentiate themselves from all the various intelligentsia groupsthat disagreed with them.

There were more than those three revolutions that happened in Russia. But, the revolution that left big impact and being an inspiration for many 20th century revolutions was the Russian revolution of 1917. The Russian Revolution of 1917 is usually called as two revolutions. The first one is in February when they

overthrew the imperial government and the second one is in October that placed the Bolsheviks in power. The Bolsheviks were The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party who followed Lenin’s lead (30).

The 1917 revolution began in the last week of February. The cause of this revolution is bread shortages, strikes, and locks out that happen after the Russia-German war. As the addition, a demonstration in honour of International

Women’s Day byfemale workers of the Vyborg district brought a crowd on to thestreets of Petrograd that the authorities could not disperse (44). At that time, Tsar Nicholas II as the emperor of Russia showed his weakness in leading the country. He was absent to visit Army Headquarters in Mogilev.

This February revolution contributes bigger events happens in Russia. Starts from Nicholas’ abdication, then followed by the politicians of Petrograd’s activity that have original intention to get rid of Tsar Nicholas II (45), and in November 1917, Bolshevik forces lead by Vladimir Lenin’s lieutenant, Leon Trotsky seized government buildings in Petrograd and took control of Russia.

The 1917 revolution really put Russia in chaos. The February Revolution had given birth to a formidable array ofworkers' organizations in all Russia's industrial centres, but especiallyin Petrograd and Moscow (55). The rising of this working class militancy suffered the urban workers, because the industrialists made them as target. Then after the Bolshevik took control over Russia, they took over the lead in the factories too.

The description of The Russian Revolution can be found in a literary work entitle Animal Farm by George Orwell. Animal Farm is a political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution. Orwell is well known as critical and straightforward author. While other intellectuals and journalist were struggling to make excuses for the Soviet system, Orwell risked his reputation to expose its many evils (Shelden 56).

According to Professor Michael Shelden in his book “The World of George Orwell”, Eric Arthur Blair was George Orwell’s real name. He was born in Bengal, India on June 25, 1903. Blair is the son of Richard Blair, a civil servant at the lower rungs of the British Empire. A year after Eric born, Ida Blair, his

mother, didwhat many colonial wives did in India. She left the hot climateand settled in England with her children, bringing thetwo up alone while she waited for her husband to serveout the remaining years of his work (9).

Orwell was educated in England. He already shows his interest in writer’s world since he is eleven. He receives good education and military training in his school. And after he leaves Eton, his previous school, Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and a British colony after that. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer, and forced himself to got other jobs. He described his experiences in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before the publication of the book.

Different from Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell got rejected many times when he wanted to publish Animal Farm. The reason of that rejection

was because this book was too controversial. This book was published in 1945, but it was successful in the late 1950s. Even though the publication of this book was delayed, but the book became a great success after its publication.

Unfortunately, Orwell's health was deteriorating and he died at young age because of tuberculosis on January 21, 1950. So that he cannot celebrate his novel success.

Animal Farm is one of Orwell’s popular novels. The other one is Nineteen Eighty Four. These two novels have been translated into sixty languages and have sold more than thirty million copies (6). He wrote Animal Farm between

November 1943 and February 1944.

Animal Farm itself is a kind of modern fable. This novel talks about a group of animals which did rebel and oust the humans from the farm where they live. The animals run the farm themselves, and rename the farm from Manor Farm into Animal Farm. The pigs are chosen to manage the farm by other animals because they are smarter than others. Beyond expectation, Animal Farm begins well than people expected. Snowball, one of the three cleverest pigs teaches the other animals how to read and write, though few animals besides the pigs learn to read well. Food is plentiful due to a good harvest, and the entire farm is organized and running smoothly. The animals live and work happily, because they think that they’re works for themselves, not for human that they hate. But, in the end of the story, Animal Farm was being the same with The Manor Farm. Manor Farm was the name of the farm when owned by Mr. Jones, the human. Even it becomes worse because Napoleon, the only Berkshire pig on the farm runs Animal farm tyrannically.

There are some reasons why the writer chooses Animal Farm by George Orwell as her thesis research. First of all, the writer finds out some articles on internet which explain that Animal Farm by George Orwell have some relation with The Russian Revolution. But the information is so vague, and there is no specific thesis or books which explained more about that. The second, the writer is interested in characters of the novel, and wants to explore more about how Orwell characterize the people in The Russian Revolution into his novel’s

characters. The third, the writer wants to know the reason and the goal that Orwell wants to achieve by writing this novel. The last, the writer is interested in the class arranging between the animals and the political view that involved in the novel. At the beginning of twentieth century, classes is still exists in Russia. The people there split into four groups: urban, peasants, clergy, and noble.

In this study, the writer will try to prove that this novel is the reflection of The Russian Revolution. The analysis in this paper will include about the history of Russian Revolution, the main characters in The Russian Revolution, the events that happened at that time and how they influence the event in the novel.

1.2.Statement of the Problem

The statement of problem of this study is: how does Animal Farm reflects The Russian Revolution in 1917?

1.3.Objective of the Study

This study concern of presenting a brief account for the readers about the problems stated previously. Through this study, the writer tries to explain about how Animal Farm reflects The Russian Revolution in 1917.

1.4.Significance of the Study

By writing this thesis, the writer tries to explore about the reflection of The Russian Revolution in 1917 in novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. The writer hopes that this research gives some benefits for the readers, especially for the students of English Letter Department in exploring about the sociology of literature theory that rarely used to analyze a literary work.

The writer also hopes that this study can be useful contribution in literary studies, especially about history in literature.

1.5.Scope and Limitation

The scope of the study is focused on the sociology of literature theory. Sociology of literature is taken as the theory to analyze Animal Farm by George Orwell, because George Orwell who wrote this novel used to write about his own experience, what event that happened around him, or as a critical.

This study focused on the reflection of The Russian Revolution in 1917 as seen in novel Animal Farm by George Orwell and to explain about it.

1.6.Method of Study

This is a library based study. It means that the writer will make use

references such as books, article, journal, and magazines either from hard copy or online ones. The primary data of this study is the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. In presenting the analysis, the writer mainly uses qualitative method. The data analysis follows the following steps.

1. Making use the sociology of literature approach to analyze the novel to see its relationship with The Russian Revolution in 1917.

2. Providing historical facts of The Russian Revolution in 1917. It is including the cause, how the event happens, whothe main character is, and whatthe effect of the revolution is.

3. Finding out in what way the chosen novel reflects The Russian Revolution in 1917.

4. Making conclusion based on the result of data analysis.

1.7.Organization of Study

The thesis writer divides this thesis into five chapters. The first chapter of the thesis is the introduction which consists of the background of study, the statement of problem, the objective of study, the significance of study, the scope and limitation, the method of study, the theoretical framework and the organization of the study. The second chapter is the theoretical

framework which consists of the sociology of literature and new historicism theory. The third chapter is about the brief history of Russian Revolution. The

fourth chapter is contains about the analysis on the reflection of The Russian Revolution in 1917 in Animal Farm by George Orwell. And the last, the fifth chapter is contains about the conclusion.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. The word “criticism” comes from the ancient Greek noun “krites”, which have meaning “judge” (Habib 10). On other hand, Tim Gillespie explains that literary criticism is the discipline of interpreting, analyzing and evaluating works of literature (4).

Literary criticism has important functions in the study about literature. It improves the reader general reading skill, and has functioned as tools to help solve problems of understanding what we read too (Gillespie 2). However, literary criticism supports the developments of critical thinking skills. Through literary criticism, the reader knows how to classify a given writer as Romantic, classical, or modern. Through literary criticism too the reader will knows which tradition a given writer was working in and how she was trying to subvert it in certain ways. Besides that, the reader will be able to arrive at any comparative assessment of writers in terms of literary merit, even be able to interpret the meanings of individual lines or words in any appropriate context through literary criticism (Habib 11).

There are many theories in literary criticism study. A theory is the specific method, approach, or viewpoint a critic or reader has staked out from which he or she interprets, analyzes, and evaluates works of literature and often the world (Gillespie 3). Some theories in literary criticism are biographical criticism, historical criticism, psychological criticism, and others.

In this study, the writer will analyze about the reflection of the Russian Revolution in Animal Farm by George Orwell. In order to investigate about the Russian Revolution and its relation with the novel, the writer uses the sociology of literature and new historicism theory to analyze this novel. In the sociology of literature’s perspective, literary work is considered as the representation of reality that happens in society (Wiyatmi 10). The sociology of literature approach is uses to investigate about the connection between the novel and the society where the event happens. And New Historicism is uses to learn a history of an era through literary text.

2.1. Sociology and Literature

The sociology of literature is derivative from the word sociology and literature. Sociology is stand for the scientific study of human social life, groups, and societies. It is a dazzling and compelling enterprise because its subject matter is our own behaviour as social beings (Giddens 3). Alan Swingewood in his book The Sociology of Literature explains that sociology is essentially the scientific, objective study of man in society, the study of social institutions, and a social processes; it seeks to answer the question of how society is possible, how it works, why it persist (3).

As for literature is considered as permanent expressions in words (written or spoken), specially arranged in pleasing accepted patterns or forms. Literature expresses thoughts, feelings, ideas or other special aspects of human experiences (Ade 19). On the other hand, Rene Wellek and Austin Warren explain in the book

Theory of Literature that the term literature seems best if we limit it to the art of literature. The art of literature here is refers to imaginative literature (11).

In convenient with its name, the sociology of literature figures out literary work through the combination of sociology and literature aspects. In this

approach, theories that related to literature are being the dominant. As for the theories about sociology have function as the complement theory (Ratna 18). Wiyatmi in her book Sosiologi Sastra explains that in literary study, the sociology of literature is defined as an approach which apprehends and criticizes literary work by considering the social aspects (5).

In the sociology of literature approach, literature and society are important element that cannot be separate. The sociology of literature contemplates literary work as the result of interaction between the author and society (Ratna 12). In this theory’s perspective, literature has some different functions. The first function, literature can be document of social and culture reality or political event that happened in specific era. The second, literature can be a tool to convey some values or ideology to the reader of society. The last function, literature can be a tool to against savageness or unfairness through humanity values (Wiyatmi 11). These three functions had broke people’s assumption that literary work is just for entertainment or adding human knowledge. Aside from that, literary work has some other functions as historical document and to speak out some ideologies. 2.1.1. Literature and Reality

In the connection between literature and reality, A. Teeuw (187) explains that literary work was born from exemplary of reality, but it is become the model

of reality all at once. It is happens when an estimate values that accepted by certain people is those which discovered in the literary work. That values then uses as the measurement of reality in society. In real life, people often compare beautiful thing or scenery that they see with those in literary works. The statement like “the view in this village is beautiful like painting” is one of some examples that literature uses as the measurement of reality.

Based on the aspects and its function, the sociology of literature is

considered as the development of mimesis theory by Plato, the Greek philosopher which lives in 4th and 5th centuries, literary work is the imitation of reality.

According to Saraswati (20), Plato in his book Ion and The Republic which talks about mimesis theory explains that;

1. Literature is an imitation of reality. The idea of this theory then becomes the direction for study about relation between literature and reality. 2. There are three kinds of artists; they are user, maker, and imitator or

author. According to Plato’s explanation, the highest level of artist here is user. These three artists classified based on what they have or create. The user is the one who have the idea. The user gives the maker

direction to make the idea into reality, and then the imitator or author copy it into imitation.

3. The importance of literature for children education. In Plato’s era, every kinds of literature are written into poetry (Saraswati 20). Poetry have important role in education world. That is why Plato thinks that every story in the poetry that spread in the society should be censored first.

The stories about fight and battle between Gods should be keeping for the adult, not for children. This is helping the children to have good character and be good adult in the future.

4. In contradictory with the third point, poetry works in different way for adult. For children, poetry has the importance to build good character, but Plato did not think that adult should read more about poetry. Plato explains that the republic of society should use their wit more than feeling to create their ideal country. And they should do more action to get what they want than just dream about it. Poetry which is the result of imitation should be remote from society. Because Plato was sure that poetry will fertilize the feeling and dry out the wit.

In the sociology of literary approach, mimesis theory apprehends literary work by its relation with the reality and social aspect of community (Wiyatmi 8). Literary work is considered not only as a social document, but also as a part of life society (Ratna 6), the existence of literary work should always be understood about how its relations with the social aspects (Wiyatmi 9). Because in writing a literary work, an author usually get influence from the society where he or she live. That is the reason why literary work considered as representative of the reality that happens in the society. In this approach, literature is considered as one of society phenomenon, or in another word we can call it as a society product.

Even though the relations between literature and society has been talking point since Plato and Aristoteles period, but the sociology of literature as an autonomous study is recognized in the 18th century (Ratna 7). That is why the

presence of the sociology of literature is considered late than the other studies about sociology such as the sociology of education, politic, ideology, and religion.

2.2. New-Historicism

The term “New Historicism” was stated by an American critic Stephen Greenblatt through his book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from more to

Shakespeare (Barry 115). In this book, Greenblatt offers a new perspective in the study of Renaissance, which namely by stressing the relevance of literary text with the various social, politic, and economic forces that enclose it (Taum 5). According to Greenblatt, New Historicism involves an intensified willingness to read all of the textual trace of the past with the attention traditionally conferred only on literary text. Greenblatt explains that analyzes the historical context widely becomes the New historicism’s method in interpreting literary text.

New Historicism itself is a literary criticism which considered that in studying literary work, it should be studied and interpreted within the historical context that surrounds the text made by the author (Tyson 291). Based on the idea from the theory of New Historicism, it considered that literature could never be interpreted without understanding the existing of the historical context.

According to J. Case Tompkins in his article New Historicism and Cultural Study states that Greenblatt provides matters or issue which able to dig up in analysing the literary work by using New Historicism theory, such as: what language or characters or events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s day, how are such events interpreted and presented in the story, does

the work’s presentation support or condemn the event, what social concern

established in the literary text, and is there a broad social structure that is flatter or blame in the text (3). Those relevant matters are able to dig up the problems in analysing literary work by using New Historicism theory.

New Historicism theory is not separated both literary and non-literary text which have historical background, they lay the historical context as an important aspect in studying the text. Moreover, according to M. H. Abrams, New historicist conceive of a literary text as „situated’ within the institutions, social practices, and discourses that constitute the overall culture of a particular time and place, and which the literary text interacts as both product and producer of cultural energies and code (183). For them, literary text is a media that provide a historical event which they able to analyze.

Peter Barry in her book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Study, defines that New Historicism is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary text, which usually of the same historical period (201). New historicist gives the same attention between literary and non-literary text, then analyzes it based on the historical background depicts within it. They refuse to give a privilege to the literary text, instead of use the historical background as the main element to analyze text.

In addition to evaluate the time or the social condition during the writing of literary text, new historicist also examine the social sphere where the authors move during their lives, the books and theories which influences them in writing literary text, because they look at literary text as a representation from the

historical events from an era. According to Greenblatt itself, New Historicism is reading and learning the historical events represented through the literary text, so that the historical context is needed in interpreting the literary work (Abrams 184). This method is focused on the text and its content. By using this method, we can learn a history of an era through literary text.

2.3. Related Study

Animal Farm is a popular novel by George Orwell. There are many articles which talk about how great this novel as a critical novel. But, the study which explore deeply about this novel is still difficult to found.

The related study of this research is thesis by Nadzifussya’an under the title “The Idea of Class Struggle Depicted in Orwell’s Animal Farm”. The similarities of this research and the previous one is both of them uses the novel Animal Farm as the object of study, and the sociology of literature approach to analyze the novel. But, different from the previous research which explains more about the concept of class struggle and the concept of ideology described in Animal Farm, in this study the writer will explain about the reflection of The Russian Revolution of 1917 in the novel Animal Farm.

CHAPTER III

A BRIEF SKETCH OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN 1917 The Russian revolution in 1917 is one of the event that left big impact for Russian and its government. This revolution happens in the midst of chaos in Russia after Germany-Russia war. There are some events that happened at that time, started from the February revolution, the October revolution, some betrayal and the government alter in Russia.

In this chapter, the writer will discuss about the history of Russian revolution in 1917 in short. The following explanation will include about the condition of Russia before revolution, the cause of revolution, the events, the condition in Russia after revolution, and the important characters in the revolution.

3.1. Russia Before Revolution

Russia in 1917 is considers as a chaos and dominated by revolution. It is considers as chaos because by 1917 the bond between the Tsar and most of the Russian people had been broken. Governmental corruption and inefficiency were rampant. Beside that, the tsar’s reactionary policies, including the occasional dissolution of the Duma, or Russian parliament, the chief fruit of the 1905 revolution, had spread dissatisfaction even to moderate elements

But it was the government’s inefficient prosecution of World War I that provided the challenge the old regime could not meet. Not well equipped and poorly led, Russian armies suffered catastrophic losses in campaign after against German armies. The war made revolution inevitable in two ways: it showed Russia was no longer a military match for the nations of central and Western Europe, and it hopelessly disrupted the economy.

At that time, Russia's towns had no tradition of political organization or self government, and its nobility had similarly failed to develop a corporate sense of identity strong enough to force concessions from the throne (Fitzpatrick 15). Nicholas II, as Russia last Tsar seems failed to lead his country. His people were hungry because of the bread shortages that happen after the war. Other than that, there are some conflicts and betrayal that happen inside the palace. The dynasty fell by shaking, before the revolution even had time to approach its first problems (Trotsky 57). In short, Russia was in a situation never happened before.

3.2. The Cause of the 1917 Revolution

The 1917 revolution began in the last week of February. Just like the writer explained shortly in the chapter one, the cause of this revolution are bread

shortages, strikes and locks out that happen in Russia. In addition of that, the weakness in leading the country and regime which had done by Tsar Nicholas II as the emperor of Russia make worse the situation (Fitzpatrick 44). The food shortage itself happens because of some events that happen in Russia. Those events are:

3.2.1. The Russo-Japanese War

In January 1904, the war with imperial Japan broke out in the northern Chinese region of Manchuria. The Tsar, according to tradition personally announced to the Russian people the opening of hostilities. The Tsar did so, however, from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg rather than from the ancient walled fortress of the Kremlin in Moscow, as had been customary for Russian monarchs. Many Russians believed that this breach of protocol boded ill for the imperial war effort (Davenport 23). Initially, the public mood reflected the upbeat tenor of such pronouncements, but that soon changed. The war dragged on, month after bloody month. Russian battlefield defeats mounted, as the Japanese Army penetrated deeper into Manchuria. Accompanying the dark news from the front were food and fuel shortages at home caused by the war. Inflation ran rampant as demand for staples and consumer goods rapidly outstripped supply. Soaring prices drained the finances of ordinary Russians. Resentment grew, as did a gnawing sense that the tsar’s government was unable or unwilling to remedy the situation (24).

Liberal reformers began issuing calls for immediate action in the shape of political change, and moderate socialists soon joined them. The Union of

Liberation, founded in 1904, demanded nationwide elections and the creation of a representative assembly with the power to mend the economy and stop the war. Radical socialists, chief among them are the Bolsheviks, went even further and began hinting at possible revolutionary action to bring about the needed changes. When one radical in Russia assassinated the interior minister, the Bolsheviks

hailed the attack as a sign that the people were ready for an armed seizure of power by the working class. The St. Petersburg Bolsheviks, in particular, wanted to act. On December 19, 1904, the Bolshevik committee in the capital wrote to Lenin begging for more support, but Lenin did not respond.

Many Bolsheviks were determined to begin preparing for revolution, even though it was clear that the working class they intended to empower was not yet ready to rise up against the tsarist order and smash the monarchy. Segments of it, however, were ready to organize their ranks for peaceful collective action. The first one to do it was the factory workers in St. Petersburg. Using the model of a fraternal organization, a group of labourers in the Russian capital came together as the Assembly of St. Petersburg Factory Workers, under the leadership of a

reformist priest, Father Georgii Gapon, to urge Nicholas II to improve the lot of working people by repairing the Russian economy and ending the war (25). 3.2.2. Bloody Sunday

Yet the war against Japan went on, and so did the failure of the Russian armies. The prospect of victory faded as utter defeat became more likely. On the home front, the anger and frustration of the Russian people rose, along with skyrocketing costs of food and fuel. The scarcity of common staples bore down on average Russians, workers and peasants alike. The flashpoint of the tensions was reached in January 1905, when 150,000 workers took to the streets, led by Father Gapon, to demand labour reforms and an end to the war. Heartened by the workers’ obvious willingness to stand up for themselves, Gapon announced his intention to organize a march to the Winter Palace, where Nicholas II was tending

his pregnant wife, in order to deliver his protest document to the tsar in person (Davenport 26).

The capital’s Bolshevik and Menshevik committees took lukewarm stands on Gapon’s plan. The Mensheviks and their SR allies offered grudging support but little else. The Bolsheviks, with Lenin in exile, opposed the march in both theory and practice. The Bolshevik leaders ordered party members to stand down and await further instructions, despite frantic pleas for action. The Bolshevik chief himself would follow events from Switzerland, where he kept up on developments by reading local Swiss newspapers (27).

Even though abandoned by the moderate and radical factions of the Social Democratic Labour Party, but Gapon, his strikers, and their families gathered together on the afternoon of Sunday, January 9. Converging on the Winter Palace from several directions at once, Gapon’s columns made for Palace Square, where they were supposed to meet at 2:00 p.m. The processions, as promised, were orderly and peaceful. But, more than that, they were reflective of the traditional attachments the Russian people still harboured to the Orthodox Church and the Tsar. As they moved toward the palace, marchers held aloft banners proclaiming their love for the tsar not withstanding their disappointment in his government’s policies. Some also carried Nicholas’s portrait along with the national flag. Other workers cradled religious icons or crucifixes in their arms. From nearly every column, voices arose singing church hymns or reciting prayers. Gapon’s

In the heart of St. Petersburg, near the Narva Arch, a monument to Russia’s triumph over Napoleon, the line of marchers with Gapon at its head was brought to a halt by tsarist troops. The commander of the soldiers instructed the workers and their families to disperse immediately or suffer the consequences for

challenging the regime. The demonstrators refused to comply. Instead, they pushed forward. Under strict orders to prevent the workers from reaching the royal palace, the officer once again told them to turn back. Getting no positive response from the people or Gapon, the commander ordered his men to open fire. Eight successive volleys of rifle fire later, 10 workers lay dead in the snow and dozens ran or crawled away wounded (27).

Similar tragic scenarios played out all over St. Petersburg on Bloody Sunday. By evening, the death toll had reached 96 dead and 333 wounded, of whom 34 would later die from their injuries. Gapon himself fled to Finland, where he was murdered a year later. His petition to the tsar, so humble in its sentiment and so costly in innocent blood, was never delivered. Nicholas could only mourn when he informed that his soldiers had shot down hundreds of his loyal subjects (28).

3.2.3. The October Manifesto

The public reaction to the Bloody Sunday massacre came swiftly and was nearly unanimous in its condemnation of the shootings. A liberal newspaper editorial proclaimed, that Tsar Nicholas has revealed himself as the enemy and butcher of the people. A socialist pamphlet issued soon after the events of January

put its denunciation in slogan form: “Down with the Tsar murderer! Down with autocracy! Long live social democracy! . . . Long live the revolution!”

Nicholas, stung by the severity of the criticism directed at him personally, responded with contempt. The tsar rejected the complaints of the St. Petersburg workers and dismissed their protests as the product of agitation by “ill-intentioned leaders” who wanted to establish inthe motherland a “form of government, alien to our country.” The tsar accepted no responsibility whatsoever for the state terror unleashed on the Sunday marchers (Davenports 28).

In his ignorance and denial, Nicholas failed to notice that the strikes begun by Gapon and the Putilov workers continued after the brutal suppression of January 9. Far from bringing the stoppages to an end, Bloody Sunday only served to energize those pushing for substantial reforms, and thus contributed to the spread of the strikes far beyond the confines of the St. Petersburg industrial district (28).

On May Day 1905, massive demonstrations held across the country

provoked counter demonstrations and violent attacks by tsarist thugs known as the Black Hundred. A mixed bag of petty criminals, racists, religious fanatics, and heavy drinking street toughs, the Black Hundred targeted those who in any way challenged the status quo of the Church and the tsar. Encouraged by imperial bureaucrats, local officials, and Orthodox clergymen, the gangs beat and openly murdered liberals, socialists, and strikers. The Black Hundred target is anyone suspected of participating in labour actions or even giving moral support to the workers. Special hatred and violence were reserved for the minority that was

traditionally held in the lowest regard and was perennially blamed for all of Russia’s ills: the Jews. Using the strikes as an excuse to vent their extreme anti -Semitism, Black Hundred mobs descended on every Jew they could find, politically active or not (29).

Reviled by the tsar and subjected to a campaign of state sanctioned terror, reformers and radicals alike prepared to move to a new level of action (29). The revolutionary tension finally broke on May 14, 1905, when news reached Russia that an imperial fleet sent to retake Port Arthur, Russia’s main naval base, seized by the Japanese at the war’s outset had been destroyed by the Japanese in the Tsushima Straits off the coast of Korea. Support for the tsar’s government collapsed. Street fighting broke out in Kharkov, Baku, and Odessa, where 2,000 people died before martial law was declared on June 15 (30). On that same day, the sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied and commandeered their ship, steaming it toward Odessa and firing two shells at the city before eventually abandoning it near the port of Constanza in Romania and fleeing (31).

By the late summer of 1905, strikes had paralyzed nearly every aspect of social life in Russia. Violence was flaring up across the empire. Soldiers and sailors looked with increasing favour upon the actions taken by the Potemkin’s crew, reports of sporadic refusals by enlisted men to obey orders began coming in to the imperial military headquarters. Russia stood on the verge of national chaos. Nicholas had no choice but to relent. On August 6, the Tsar announced that

elections would be held the following January for representatives who would sit in a new state Duma, which was designed to serve Nicholas as a popular advisory

body. Seventeen days later, Nicholas’s commissioner to the peace talks with the Japanese, who was being hosted by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, cabled St. Petersburg that there had been a breakthrough in the negotiations. Given certain concessions on Russia’s part, Japan was willing to sign a treaty ending the war. One of the main causes of the popular upheavals had been eliminated (31).

The promised elections and the Treaty of Portsmouth should have been enough to satisfy those who calling for change in Russia. Instead, the civil unrest not only continued, but worsened. Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs urged the Russian people to boycott the January elections as a sham. Furthermore,

Bolsheviks told workers and students to demonstrate against any state Duma set up to rubber stamp the tsar’s decisions. In the streets, the walkouts that had begun in January expanded and merged into a general strike, including nearly every category of worker from pharmacists to chocolate makers. By October, the St. Petersburg workers felt confident enough to form a representative assembly of their own to help organize and lead the nationwide labour action (31). It was christened the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, simply known as the Soviet, and it threatened to become a competitor for the proposed state Duma (32).

Faced with open defiance and a likely parallel government to his own, Nicholas bent once again. The Tsar issued a proclamation that acknowledged the civil rights of ordinary Russians, safeguarded political liberty, and provided for a Duma with legislative authority, albeit one that was quite limited relative to

parliaments in Western Europe. This October Manifesto is brief and rather vague, marked imperial Russia’s tentative first step toward the kind of representative government and limited monarchy that reformers had imagined for decades (33). But the Bolsheviks were not satisfied. The manifesto in their thinking was nothing more than a small concession thrown to the masses to quiet them and to allow the state to survive the turmoil in the streets.

3.2.4. The First World War

By 1914, Russia could be described as being in a state of profound tension. No one could confidently predict the empire’s political future. Nor could anyone at the time appreciate the full impact of the tsar’s decision to enter the First World War as part of an alliance that included Great Britain, France, Italy, and

eventually the United States. Opposing these Allies were the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. Among these nations, powerful

Germany was the most feared by the Russians. The Tsars in the past had admired Germany and had often tried to emulate German ways, but in 1914, Nicholas II wanted none of that. In order to highlight Russia’s belligerence, he ordered the name of the imperial capital to be changed from the Germanic St. Petersburg to the more Slavic, Petrograd (Davenport 38).

From the newly christened Petrograd, Tsar Nicholas led Russia into its second war in just 10 years. But this would be no ordinary war for empire. It would be a total war, one that required total commitment on the part of the Russian state and the Russian people. The inherent stresses and strains of such a conflict contained enough negative power to break a fragile nation like Russia.

Nicholas was willing to gamble that his subjects would be able to endure. He was convinced that ordinary Russians loved him, were devoted to their country, and could withstand the rigors of a global war.

The tsar’s confidence was soon put to the test. Russia and Germany went to war on August 1, 1914. Less than a month later, the German army inflicted a staggering defeat upon Nicholas’s forces at the Battle of Dannenberg. Two weeks after that, another Russian command was crushed at the Masuria Lakes. Russia’s combined losses in men and materiel for August and September 1914 topped 250,000 men and more than 650 artillery pieces. From the outset, Russia was losing the war. Yet battlefield defeats represented only one terrible reality in that first year of World War I. At home, the Russian people once again suffered through wartime shortages of food, fuel, and transport. The shift in industrial production from consumer goods to military hardware was felt as a sharp drop in the national standard of living. The demand for factory labour compounded Russia’s problems by swelling the already burgeoning urban population. Workers needed to be fed, clothed, and housed as they strived to equip the tsarist armies. Bread, meat, coal, oil, and soon housing supplies, as a consequence, rapidly dwindled (39).

By mid 1915, Russia was in retreat from the German divisions and

experiencing urban and rural unrest at home. Peasants endured long, hard days of labour in the fields only to have their grain seized by troops who left little or no surplus behind. Hunger became commonplace once more. The military draft also weighed heavily on a peasantry dependent upon male workers on the land. Thus,

both the crops and the young men who tilled the soil to raise them were swept up in the service of the tsar. The stage already was set for starvation and discontent when the 1916 harvest failed (39). The worst grain crop in a decade left Russians in the cities and in the countryside more disillusioned and angry than at any time since 1905. Those worst conditions that experience by Russian then become the reason why the biggest revolution in 1917 happens.

3.3. The 1917 Revolution

The 1917 revolutions are the biggest revolution that happen and did by the workers and revolutionaries in Russia. It already explained in the first chapter that the 1917 revolution actually is a term that used to the two big revolutions that happen in Russia. The first revolution was happened in February 1917, and the second revolution happened in October 1917. But, it was the February revolution that brings the big impact and brings down the Romanov dynasty that leads by the Tsar.

3.3.1. The Revolution in February 1917

The revolution in February 1917 is happen for five days, from 23rd of February until 27th of February. On February 23, under the flag of “Woman’s Day”, began the long ripe and long withheld uprising of the Petrograd working masses. The first step of the insurrection was the strike. Tired with the war and feel upset with the worst situation in the country, the worker that dominate by women start to make a move on the 23rd of February in 1917.

The 23rdof February was International Woman’s Day. The social -democratic circles had intended to mark this day in a general manner: by meetings, speeches, and leaflets. There is no one who thought that that it might become the first day of the revolution. Not a single organisation called for strikes on that day. The February revolution was begun from this time, overcoming the resistance of its own revolutionary organizations, the initiative being taken of their own accord by the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat, such as the women textile workers and some soldiers’ wives. About 90,000 workers, men and women, were on strike that day. The fighting mood expressed itself in demonstrations, meetings, and encounters with the police (Trotsky 75).

This movement began in the Vyborg district with its large industrial establishments, then it crossed over to the St. Petersburg (now the name changed into Petrograd) side. There were no strikes or demonstrations elsewhere,

according to the testimony of the secret police. On that day, detachments of troops were called in to assist the police, but there were no encounters with them that happened. A mass of women flocked to the municipal Duma demanding bread. Red banners appeared in different parts of the city, and inscriptions on them showed that the workers wanted bread, but neither autocracy nor war.

Woman’s Day passed successfully, with enthusiasm and without victims. But on the following day the movement not only fails to diminish, but doubles. About a half of the industrial workers of Petrograd are on strike on the 24th of February. The workers come to the factories in the morning. Instead of going to work, they hold meetings. Then they begin processions toward the centre. New

districts and new groups of the population are drawn into the movement. The slogan “Bread!” is crowded out or obscured by louderslogans: “Down with autocracy!” “Down with thewar!” Continuous demonstrations on the Nevsky first compact masses of workmen singing revolutionary songs (75). This Woman Day becomes the first day of the February revolution and becomes the starter of the long revolutions in Russia.

In the course of three days it broadened and became practically general. This is gave assurance to the masses and carried them forward. Becoming more and more aggressive, the strike merged with the demonstrations, which were bringing the revolutionary mass face to face with the troops. This raised the problem as a whole to the higher level where things are solved by force of arms. The first days brought a number of individual successes, but these were more symptomatic than substantial (Trotsky 80).

But on the 23rd and 24th demonstrations, twenty eight policemen were beaten up. The military commander of the district, General Khabalov, almost a dictator, did not resort to shooting. It is not because he is kind hearted person, but

everything was provided for and marked down in advance, even the time for the shooting (77). Khabalov meticulously adhered to the plan he had worked out. On the first day, at the 23rd, the police operated alone. On the 24th, the most part of the cavalry was led into the streets, but only to work with whip and lance. The use of infantry and firearms was to depend on the further development of events (78).

On the 25th, the strike spread wider. According to the government’s figures, about 240.000 workers participated that day. The most backward layers are

following up the vanguard. The streetcars are at a stand. Business concerns are closed. In that day, students of the higher schools join the strike too.

By noon, tens of thousands of people pour to the Kazan cathedral and the surrounding streets. Attempts are made to organise street meetings, a series of armed encounters with the police occurs. Orators address the crowds around the Alexander III monument. At that time, the mounted police open fire. But the crowd fight back, shots from the crowd kill a police inspector, wound the chief of police and several other policemen. Bottles, petards and hand grenades are thrown (79).

The following days, the demonstration is in its heat. On the 26th of

February, the factories were closed, and this prevented the workers to gain more strength. But this calmness does not last long. The workers gradually concentrate, and move from all suburbs to the centre. But at that time, they find the city

transformed. Posses, cordons, and horsepatrols are everywhere. The approaches to the Nevsky are especially well guarded. Every now and then shots ring out from ambush. The number of people who killed and wounded grows. The police shoot from windows, through balcony doors, behind columns, and attics (82). And at 27th of February, the members of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks were seized by Khabalov (94).

Even though the initiative of demonstration were taken by the workers which half of it were women, but actually the Bolshevik involve in the

demonstration too. Between those masses, one of them is a worker of Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the leaders in the worker’s districts. For the famous

revolutionary, the Bolshevik, all their activity since 1905 was a preparation for the new revolution (77). And the activities of the government, an enormous share of them, were preparations to put down the new revolution.

At that day, before the women textile workers in several factories went on strike on 23rd of February, they sent delegates to the metal workers with an appeal for support. Kayurov, the worker’s leader said that the Bolsheviks are agreed about the move, and they were followed by the workers Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. But if there is a mass strike, the workers must call everybody into the streets and take the lead. That was Kayurov’s decision, and the Vyborg committee had to agree to it. Actually the idea of going into the streets had long been ripening among the workers; only at that moment nobody imagined where it would lead (74).

In middle of the chaos, the situation becomes worse because the Nicholas I1 himself was absent. The Tsar is visiting Army Headquarters in Mogilev. He is having gone there not because he was needed, but in flight from the Petrograd disorders (57). His response to the crisis was a laconic instruction by telegraph that the disorders should be ended immediately (Fitzpatrick 44).

Actually, tension between the Tsar and Russian people was ongoing since Bloody Sunday, the tragic scene that happened in January 1905. The number of death had reached 96 dead and 333 wounded, of whom 34 would later die from injuries. Even though the Tsar was not in the palace and did not give order to the guards to shoot the participants in demonstration, but people blame the Tsar for this incident (Davenport 27).

Before the February revolution happen, by January 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was already living in a fog of distrust and fear (41). It was happen after Rasputin, the monk who claims that he possessed the requisite skills to cure the imperial heir, Alexei, of his hemophilia was murdered by a group of men led by a distant member of the royal family. The murder happened in the late of 1916, and Rasputin has such a big credibility from the Tsar.

Nicholas reacted to the assassination by flying into a blind rage that blended into a fit of paranoia. The Tsar, withdrew into his palace and his family. He trusted no one and refused to listen to, let alone consult, his staff. Nicholas turned an especially cold shoulder to the State Duma and the reform advocates. He became convinced that they were all part of a radical plot to bring down the Romanov dynasty (40).

After some incidents that happened in Russia, on March 2, Nicholas agreed to step down from government. He even rejects the crown for his son, Alexei, as well. Then he gives it to his brother, Grand Duke Michael. On March 3, Nicholas signed the abdication documents and left the throne to the grand duke, who wisely refused it in turn. Then, Nicholas II, his wife, and their son and daughters were taken into custody shortly after the tsar relinquished the crown (45). Within a matter of hours, the centuries old Romanov dynasty had fallen.

3.3.2. The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917

After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the Provisional Government, led in its final period by Alexander Kerensky, had replaced the imperial rule of Nicholas II in 1917, but itself lasted a mere eight months. The Soviet system that he led is a

start of the October revolution in 1917 (Sakwa 4). The October revolution was effectively four revolutions rolled into one:

1. The first was the mass revolution. This revolution is when peasants sought land, the soldiers (peasants in another guise) struggled for peace, and workers strove for greater recognition in the labour process. 2. The second revolution was the counter elite revolution, in which the

alienated Russian intelligentsia repudiated the absolute claims of divine rule by the monarchy and fought to apply what they considered to be more enlightened forms of rule. The Bolsheviks from this perspective were only the most ruthless and effective part of this counter-elite, challenging the bases of the old order in the name of the radical emancipation of the people and in the name of a new set of social ideals.

3. The third revolution was the national one. Poland and Finland had broken away from the Russian empire, but the Provisional

Government’s failure to respond to the national aspirations of Ukraine, the South Caucasian and the Central Asian republics was the reasons for its downfall.

4. The fourth revolution was what could be called the revolution of internationalism. The Russian revolution reflected a trend of thought, exemplified by Marx, which suggested that the old style nation state was redundant, and that capitalism became a global system, so social orders would gradually lose their national characteristics. From this

perspective, the revolution could just as easily have taken place in Berlin or Paris. It just happened to start in what Lenin called by “the weakest link in the imperialist chain”, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but would according to him inevitably spread.

The inter-relationship and tension between these four levels of revolution are what make the Russian revolution so perennially fascinating. This October revolution is usually called as the Bolsheviks revolution, because the Bolshevik is the one who did the revolution.

The revolution start when on the evening of October 10, Lenin secretly met with the members of the Central Committee in a small Petrograd apartment. The time for revolution had arrived, he contended, and violence was an absolute necessity if that revolution were to be secured. After all of the upside down in the July and August, Lenin added that the masses were now prepared to follow the Bolsheviks (Davenport 74), and that the Bolsheviks should act along with the masses. Any action taken prior to the Congress might look like a betrayal of the popular trust and could cost the Bolsheviks the strong support they had gained in the soviets (73).

Moderates and conservatives in Petrograd sensed that the Bolsheviks were up to something. And everyone recognized that Kerensky was trying to

monopolize the available armed forces in preparation of the dissolution of the Soviet and the arrest of its members. Fearful for its very existence, the Soviet turned to the Bolsheviks for protection and formed a joint defense force built

around the Bolshevik (76). Military Organization that was called the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was tasked with preserving the security and authority of the Soviet. Even though Kerensky succeed in redeploying the sympathetic garrison, the Bolshevik that led by MRC was commanded to resist any effort to disband the Soviet and any attempt at a counterrevolution. Kerensky had unwittingly united his enemies and vastly increased Lenin’s influence in the streets.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks are gaining more support from the Soviet, and the Kerensky regime’s power was eroding with each passing minute. The prime minister’s plea for troops resulted in the mustering of a token force consisting of 2,000 young military cadets and 200 women of the First Petrograd Women’s Shock Battalion. The rest of the soldiers either refused to march or had openly defected to the Bolsheviks and the MRC. Increasingly isolated, Kerensky addressed his government and the Russian people in a rambling speech late on October 24. Lenin dismissed Kerensky’s speech as the last gasp of a dying

political order. He pushed the insurrection into its next phase. The Bolsheviks had no time to waste, they had to complete their takeover of the government before the Congress of Soviets met that day. If Lenin could proclaim his party to be the rulers of Russia at the very beginning of the session, the Congress would have little choice but to validate the Bolsheviks’ actions (78).

At this time, the Bolsheviks almost got their victory. The Bolshevik

station and cut electricity to all government offices and the Winter Palace. Kerensky and his administration were sealed off. Government ministers desperately sought some way to escape from Petrograd. Kerensky already had arranged to leave Petrograd, with the help of the American ambassador (79). And by the late afternoon of October 25, finally Trotsky was able to announce that the Provisional Government was no longer exist (82). Lenin now could proclaim to the world that a new Bolshevik Russia had been born.

3.4. The Bolsheviks’ Somersault In Gaining Power

The Bolshevik seizure of power was followed by some events. It is started by a New York Times editorial comment that captured the Russian hope for change. Commenting on the political quality of Kerensky and other new leaders of post-tsarist Russia, the newspaper claimed:

“Nowhere in their country could the Russian people have found better men to lead them out of the darkness of tyranny”.

The Bolshevik have such influence in the government since 1904, and knows that their leader, Vladimir Lenin has potential, the Bolsheviks ask him which remained in Switzerland to back to Russia soon. At that time, the condition in Russia is still the same before the February revolution. Shortages of food, fuel, and clothing persisted throughout Russia, while the continuing war generated resentment among workers and soldiers. The 300,000 soldiers of the Petrograd garrison and the 30,000 sailors at Kronstadt feared that the Kerensky regime meant to prolong the fighting at the front (Davenport 48).

On July, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had long signaled their intention to replace the current leadership of the Petrograd Soviet with Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionary, and others who opposed the Bolsheviks found this notion ludicrous. The Mensheviks, in particular, bristled at the idea. Their party had brought down the Romanovs and had successfully constructed a coalition government that included socialists, moderate reformers, and create Kadets, members of the centrist Constitutional Democratic Party (54), and the Bolsheviks had done nothing.

At the time when the Mensheviks and other Socialist Revolutionary take down the Romanov Dynasty on March, Petrograd’s Bolshevik Committee did nothing but watch as the Provisional Government took control of Russia, because Lenin’s strict orders. That is why the other revolutionaries oppose the Bolsheviks’ idea. But, even though there are many sides that oppose the idea, the Bolsheviks still make a move that called as “July Rising”.

The condition become worse and the Provisional Government used the July Rising as an excuse to paint the Bolsheviks as dangerous provocateurs and

traitors, and that the Bolsheviks will do revolutionary democracy. Targeted by the press and Kerensky, the Bolsheviks soon were being attacked on the streets by people who enflamed by the hysterical rhetoric of their leaders. As prime minister, Kerensky moved with astonishing speed to eliminate the Bolsheviks while they were at their weakest. He ordered the confiscation of privately owned firearms and the disbanding of armed factions such as the Bolshevik Military Organization.

Soldiers and sailors committees were broken up, and harsh forms of military discipline were reinstated (58).The Provisional Government ordered the arrests of Bolshevik leaders Lenin, Lev Kamenev, Grigorii Zinoviev, and Leon Trotsky. Lenin and Zinoviev went into hiding to avoid capture, first at Lenin’s sister’s house and then once more in Finland.

By August 1917, the state authorities were dismantling the Bolshevik Party. The members were frightened, and its leadership was in disarray. The leaders that remaining in Petrograd are Joseph Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin, and Felix

Dzerzhinsky. These remaining leaders presided over a political movement teetering on the edge of extinction (59).

While the Bolshevik’ leader, Lenin struggled to endure his exile, the mood in Russia was rapidly shifting. Kerensky’s arbitrary arrests and open persecution of the Bolsheviks came against a backdrop of continued military setbacks, economic ruin, critical shortages of basic necessities in the cities, and broken promises of land reform in the countryside. Because the government failed to redistribute land to the people who worked it, 481 peasant uprisings occurred in 1917. Deteriorating factory conditions provoked a new wave of strikes, while the imposition of harsh discipline within the ranks prompted discontent and renewed radicalism among soldiers and sailors. In short, by early August 1917, average Russians were willing to listen to the Bolsheviks again (61). The Russian think that the government should lead by the workers and people who supporting the worker, and start to give the Bolsheviks their support.

Then, the Bolsheviks decided to push forward independently until they were in a position to exercise more power in the Petrograd Soviet and in regional soviets. They still have the will to bring down the government while

simultaneously maneuvering to gain a commanding role in the soviets. The first step in both directions was participation in the August Petrograd city duma

elections. The Bolshevik shows in the balloting, and their candidates won 67 seats in the Duma. They are being in the second position under the radical faction of the Socialist Revolutionary, which took 75 seats. The conservative Kadets get 42 seats, and the Mensheviks came in at an embarrassing 8 seats total. This positive result encouraged Lenin to keep up the political pressure and to work more closely with Stalin, the manager of the party in its leader’s absence (63). They decided that the Duma elections had given the party a new respectability and that there would be no better time to win over the Petrograd Soviet.

After experience many upside down, the Bolsheviks starting to gain its power again when General Lavr Kornilov, one of leaders in army, on August 19 quietly rearranged his troops around Petrograd and made the final decision to move against the Provisional Government. The country panicked again, and the ministers turned to the Petrograd Soviet and pleaded for an alliance. The Soviet, having been identified as a Bolshevik appendage and targeted for destruction by Kornilov, readily agreed. Together, the Soviet and the government formed the Committee for the Struggle Against the Counterrevolution. Kerensky was relieved until he learned that the Soviet’s only condition in establishing the committee is armed Bolshevik participation (66).

As Petrograd’s defense grew more formidable, Kornilov’s revolt began to unravel. His units started to defect to the Red Guards en masse, with officers increasingly following their men in doing so. Sensing that Kornilov was becoming a liability, many of his fellow generals distanced themselves from the reactionary figure whose star was now quite obviously falling. Kornilov, by August 30, was a commander without an army and a conspirator without a plot. He soon was arrested and replaced as commander in chief by General Alekseyev. The Provisional Government had been saved, but only through the efforts of the Bolshevik Party (67). Kerensky acknowledged the Bolsheviks and ordered the release of all Bolshevik prisoners that still being held since the July arrests, including Trotsky. Kornilov’s revolt elevated the Bolsheviks into the ranks of national saviors. From this time, the Bolsheviks start to get their power in Russia.

3.5. Russia After the Revolution

From the party’s earliest days, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had promised Russians that a new day was coming within their lifetimes. After the February revolution and the October revolution which done by the Bolsheviks, the

condition in Russia is not getting better. After Lenin’s government had to beg for help from one of the world’s preeminent capitalist powers, United States,

Bolshevik economic promises faded completely into a dull haze of shared hardship. Russians were supposed to partake equally in the benefits of socialist modernization, and everyone would live a life of comfort and abundance. Instead, Russians suffered together through repeated crop failures, bungled food

At that time, the Bolsheviks neither produced the material benefits they had trumpeted, nor did they bring the liberty Russians had been traditionally denied. The freedom Lenin had spoken of became meaningless before it even had been realized. Lenin’s socialist state became characterized by constant surveillance and arbitrary arrests. Political critics were rounded up, given show trials, and

imprisoned in one of the 315 special camps that eventually were established to hold opponents of the regime. Workers and soldiers who complained of Bolshevik excesses were ordered to be silent. An uprising of disillusioned Kronstadt sailors in 1921 was put down through the use of raw armed force.

After all of support that they gain in the revolution, it is revealed that the Bolsheviks’ government does not have any different with Kerensky regime. The freedom that the Bolsheviks offer was transformed into tyranny (99). It is meant that even after all of chaos and revolutions and the changing of the leader at that time, Russian still cannot achieve the life and peace that they want.

3.6. The Main Characters in 1917 Revolution

There are some important characters that involve in the Russian revolution 1917 which made this revolution become one of the biggest revolutions. And among them, there are some famous names that become the main character which influence the revolution. Whether they are famous because of their leadership, ideology, or even tyrant government, these names do has strong bond with the 1917 Russian revolution.

3.6.1. The Nicholas II

Nicholas II was born on May 6, 1868 (from the Julian calendar, which was used in Russia until 1918) in Pushkin, Russia. His born name is Nikolai

Aleksandrovich Romanov. He was his parents' firstborn child. Nicholas II's father, Alexander Alexandrovich, was heir to the Russian empire. Nicholas II's mother, Maria Feodorovna, had been born in Denmark. Maria Feodorovna provided a nurturing family environment during Nicholas II’s upbringing. Alexander was a strong influence on Nicholas II, shaping his conservative, religious values and his belief in autocratic government (http://www.biography.com).

Nicholas inherited the throne when his father, Alexander III, died in 1894. He is crowned as The Tsar II. Although he believed in autocracy, he was

eventually forced to create an elected legislature. And he showed weakness in leading the country. The poet Blok characterised the czar during the last months of the monarchy as follows:

“Stubborn, but without will; nervous, but insensitive to everything; distrustful of people, taut and cautious in speech, he was no longer master of himself. He had ceased to understand the situation, and did not take one clearly conscious step, but gave himself over completely into the hands of those whom he himself had placed in power.” And how much these traits of tautness and lack of will, cautiousness and distrust, were to increase during the last days of February and first days of March (Trotsky 61). Nicholas II’s handling of Bloody Sunday and World War I incensed his subjects and led to his abdication. After some revolutions that happen in 1972, he gives up on the throne. Bolsheviks executed him on July 17, 1918, in

3.6.2. Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born in December 18, 1879, in Gori, Georgia. His born name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. He is the son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman. At age 7, he contracted

smallpox, leaving his face scarred. A few years later he was injured in a carriage accident which left arm slightly deformed. The other village children treated him cruelly, instilling in him a sense of inferiority. Because of this, Joseph began a quest for greatness and respect. He also developed a cruel streak for those who crossed him (http://www.biography.com).

Joseph's mother, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, wanted him to become a priest. In 1888, she managed to enroll him in church school in Gori. Joseph did well in school, and his efforts gained him a scholarship to Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1894. A year later, Joseph came in contact with Messame Dassy, a secret organization that supported Georgian independence from Russia. Some of the members were socialists who introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Joseph joined the group in 1898.

Though he excelled in seminary school, Joseph left in 1899. Joseph chose not to return home, but stayed in Tiflis, devoting his time to the revolutionary movement. For a time, he found work as a tutor and later as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory. In 1901, he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party and worked full-time for the revolutionary movement. In 1902, he was arrested for

exiles in the fledgling years of the Russian Revolution. It was during this time that Joseph adopted the name "Stalin," that have meaning steel in Russian.

Even though the Bolsheviks have strong orator like Vladimir Lenin or an intellectual like Leon Trotsky, but Joseph Stalin excelled in the mundane

operations of the revolution, calling meetings, publishing leaflets and organizing strikes and demonstrations. Besides that, Stalin had done betrayal that alters the Bolsheviks’ government and Russia in 1924.

Actually Lenin, the Bolsheviks leader had warned the party to beware of one man, Joseph Stalin. It was happen when Lenin preparing Russia for the day ahead without him. Already suffering in 1922 from impaired judgment, Lenin passed over Trotsky for the role of party general secretary (Davenport 100). It was a decision that he and Russian would soon regret. The person Lenin supported at the time as party leader was Stalin. But in 1923, almost totally incapacitated and obviously dying, Lenin feared if Stalin becomes General Secretary, he has concentrated limitless power in his hands. And Lenin not certain that he will always be careful enough in use the power.

Lenin went to warn the party to against Stalin to get any more power. Lenin’s old friend Bukharin sensed even better the danger posed by Stalin. He said that “Stalin will strangle us,” and he warned his comrades, “He is an

unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to his lust for power”. Trotsky similarly sounded as alarm bells for Stalin’s ascension to party control. Stalin’s response to all this was to wait out Lenin’s death.After having Lenin’s body

embalmed and entombed in a manner that recalled the treatment of saints in the Orthodox Church, Stalin moved against anyone who stood between him and ultimate rule. Opponents were all purged from the party and executed. Trotsky, living in exile in Mexico since being expelled from the Communist Party after Lenin died, was assassinated in 1940 on Stalin’s orders.

After that, Stalin proceeded to create his own personal empire out of the remnants of the Bolshevik Revolution. Between 1924 and 1937, he assembled a totalitarian machine operated exclusively by himself. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union became an extension of his will, his megalomania, and his paranoia. Stalin scoffed at the worldwide socialist revolution that Bolshevism had proposed, and he replaced it with the dubious notion of Socialism in One Country, as he labeled it. Stalin’s Russia would isolate itself and move into the future in the direction and at the pace that Stalin chose.

In order to make sure that the transformation from the Bolshevik Revolution to a Stalinist dictatorship was completed and secured, Stalin turned to Felix

Dzerzhinsky’s, and laterLavrenty Beria’s, secret police. Using a ruthless state organization that became the NKVD and later evolved into the Cold War KGB, Stalin swept millions of Russians into prisons and labor camps. Only the German dictator Adolf Hitler established a camp system to rival the Soviet gulags in their inhumane cruelty and total disregard for human dignity and justice (101). In the early 1930s, Stalin compounded the political terror he was creating with a

program of forced industrialization and farm collectivization that cost an estimated 10 million Russians their lives.

Later in the decade, in a further attempt to remake Russia in his own image, Stalin cleared the Red Army of officers who even hinted at having their own political or military views, thus substantially weakening the Russian defenses at a time when Nazi Germany was growing vastly stronger (102) . When the German armies invaded Russia in June 1941, untold numbers of Soviet soldiers paid in blood for Stalin’s vanity and paranoid delusions. The courage and devotion of those who remained was enough to win the Second World War and allow Stalin to claim the credit.

Stalin died from suffering massive heart attack on Mach 5, 1953. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 10 million of his own people.

3.6.3. Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky was born on November 7, 1879, in Yanovka, Ukraine. His born name is Lev Davidovich Bronstein. His parents, David and Anna Bronstein, were prosperous Jewish farmers. When he was 8 years old, Trotksy went to school in Odessa, and then moved in 1896 to Nikolayev, Ukraine, for his final year in school. While there, he became enthralled with Marxism.

In 1897, Trotsky helped found the South Russian Workers' Union. He was arrested within a year and spent two years in prison before being tried, convicted

„Comrades,’ he said quietly, „do you know who is responsible for this? Doyou know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill?SNOWBALL!’ he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. „Snowball has done thisthing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself forhis ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night anddestroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce thedeath sentence upon Snowball. ’Animal Hero, Second Class,’ and half a bushelof apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone whocaptures him alive!’ (Orwell 28).

Snowball is the scapegoat for all of the chaos which actually cause by Napoleon itself. He is the victim of Napoleon’s paranoia, which occurred to Trotsky at that time also. At the end, the capable leader is gone, and changed by the tyrant leader which runs their power with terror.

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION

Animal Farm is one of the popular novels by George Orwell. Because of its popularity, this novel has been translated into sixty languages. Animal Farm itself is a kind of modern fable. This novel talks about a group of animals which did rebel and oust the humans from the farm where they live. Besides that, Animal Farm is a satirical novel that Orwell wrote to describes Russian Revolution in 1917. Since it is a satirical novel, there is a problem that analyzed in this thesis. The problem is about how Animal Farm reflects The Russian Revolution in 1917. To analyze this problem, Animal Farm is investigated from the aspect of the Sociology of Literature.

In Animal Farm, there are some parallel facts which proof that novel Animal farm is the reflection of Russian revolution in 1917. The first parallel between the Russian revolutions in 1917 and the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell is in the condition before the revolution happens. In the novel, Orwell explains that the farm is in the bad state when the farm is owned by Mr. Jones, a disheartened farmer who cannot treat his animals properly. The animals is starving, because Mr. Jones and him men unfed them. Or if they give the animals food, they give it under ratio. This condition is the same with those in Russia when the country leads by Nicholas II, the Romanov Tsar. Because of Nicholas II bad in lead and handling the problem in the country that happen after war, his people is starving because of food shortages.

Starvation and food shortages that happen to the people and animals are become the second parallel. These problems are the cause why the revolution happens in novel Animal Farm and Russia in year 1917. Because of the starvation that happens for long time, Russian did demonstration which demanding bread and asks the Tsar to stop participate in the war. The demonstration turns out become awful revolution the next days. Orwell describes these events also in the novel Animal Farm, even though the scene is not exact. The description of the revolution is become the third parallel between Animal Farm and the February revolution in Russia in year 1917.

The fourth parallel is the condition in Animal Farm and Russia after the revolution. There is one thing that exactly explains about it in the Russia in 1917 and Animal Farm; they who did the revolution are not achieving their actual goal. After the revolution, the animals and Russian were able to bring down the

previous leader and government. The Russian bring down the autocracy and the Tsar from the country, and the animals are success in the rebellion which ousts the human from the farm. But their actual goal to get the better new life is not achieve yet, because the new and more terrible power is arise.

The last parallel is the main characters that being the dominant in the revolution. Based on the character explanation and events that happens in Animal Farm, the writer concludes that Mr. Jones is the characterization of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Romanov. Then, Napoleon is the characterization of Joseph Stalin, the tyrant leader from the Bolshevik party. And the last is Snowball the pig. He is the characterization of Leon Trotsky, which betrayed by Stalin to get the power.

From these parallel facts which the writer mentioned, it is proven that novel Animal Farm by George Orwell is the reflection of the revolution that happened in Russia in year 1917.

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