"How the 1917 and 1949 Revolutions Shaped Modern World Politics"
Bolshevism
Lenin's revolutionary faction advocating vanguard-party-led seizure of power for socialism
Soviets
workers' and soldiers' councils that became rival centres of authority in 1917 Russia
The American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) laid the conceptual foundations of the modern state: popular sovereignty, inalienable individual rights, and nationalism as organising ideas. The Russian Revolution of 1917 carried this trajectory further, from the political into the social and economic sphere. Land redistribution, workers' rights, public ownership, mass education and welfare provisions stopped being abstract ideals and became programmes a state actually attempted. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 carried this further still, showing that Marxism could be reshaped for a predominantly agrarian, colonised Asian society rather than an industrialised Western one.
Imperial Russia entered World War I burdened by agrarian inequality, a restive industrial working class, and an autocracy under Tsar Nicholas II that had survived the 1905 revolution without resolving its underlying tensions. Military defeat and economic collapse eroded the Tsarist order. The February Revolution of 1917 ended the Romanov dynasty, but the Provisional Government continued the war and delayed land reform, while workers' and soldiers' councils called soviets emerged as rival centres of authority. Vladimir Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 demanding 'all power to the soviets'; by September the Bolsheviks held majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. On October 25-26, 1917 (Julian calendar, corresponding to November 7-8 in the Gregorian calendar), Bolshevik-led forces took the Winter Palace in Petrograd.
China's path began with the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, followed by warlordism and foreign intervention. The May Fourth Movement of 1919, a protest against the post-war peace settlement's treatment of China, radicalised a generation of intellectuals toward Marxism, and the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in 1921, partly under the Russian Revolution's intellectual influence.
Bolshevism rested on a disciplined vanguard party claiming to act for workers and soldiers through the soviets. The new government's decrees on peace and land won support, but the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, civil war, and the coercive apparatus of the Soviet state meant the legitimacy of this transfer of power remained permanently contested: supporters saw it as power passing to workers and peasants, critics saw the seizure of power by a disciplined minority leading to one-party rule.
China's revolution took a different road. After Chiang Kai-shek broke with the communists in 1927, the movement was pushed into the countryside, and here lay Mao Zedong's central innovation: placing the peasantry, not the industrial proletariat, at the heart of revolutionary strategy. Rural organisation, land reform, and guerrilla warfare became the instruments of mobilisation, a departure from orthodox Marxist theory that privileged the industrial working class. …
Explain how the foundations of the modern world were laid by the American and French Revolutions.
The French Revolution has enduring relevance to the contemporary world. Explain.
Consider the following statements regarding the Russian Revolution of 1917:
1.The Bolshevik seizure of power took place in October according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.
2.The same event corresponds to November in the Gregorian calendar.
3.The February Revolution directly established Bolshevik rule in Russia.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Match List-I (Event in Chinese history) with List-II (Year) and select the correct answer using the codes below:
List-I:
A.Fall of the Qing dynasty
B.Founding of the Communist Party of China
C.May Fourth Movement
D.Long March
List-II:
1.1919
2.1921
3.1911
4.1934-35
With reference to Mao Zedong's revolutionary strategy in China, consider the following statements:
1.Mao placed the peasantry, rather than the industrial working class, at the centre of revolutionary strategy.
2.The Long March strengthened Mao's leadership within the Communist Party.
3.The Kuomintang and the Communists cooperated continuously and without rupture from 1927 to 1949.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Where and on what date did Mao Zedong proclaim the establishment of the People's Republic of China?
Consider the following statements regarding the Communist International (Comintern):
1.It sought to link socialist revolution with anti-colonial struggles across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
2.Soviet practice always matched its anti-imperialist rhetoric in reality.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
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