Nicholas faced his first revolution in 1905, after his army lost a war to Japan. In addition to losing the war, Russia was consumed with economic problems and bureaucratic inefficiency. A group of unemployed workers began demonstrations in St. Petersburg, while some enlisted men in the Russian Navy mutinied. Their actions were brutally repressed, but the spirit of revolution burned below the surface. Russian revolutionaries needed another national disaster to create the atmosphere for victory. It came in 1914, when Russia entered World War I.
By 1917, the Russian people were tired of their economic woes and their czar. In February, a general strike in St. Petersburg turned into a revolution. Unlike 1905, the Russian Army joined the workers, and a new Russian government was formed. The Russians assured their allies that they would remain in the war, and they envisioned a period of capitalist economic expansion to save the beleaguered Russian economy. Workers Councils (Soviets) were established in major Russian cities.
The primary mistake of the February revolutionaries, called Mensheviks, was that they kept Russia in an unpopular war. This had two immediate ramifications. It created unrest at home, and it inspired the Germans to seek a way to remove Russia from World War I. The Germans found their answer in Vladimir Ilich Lenin. He promised to take Russia out of the war if the Germans would help him obtain power. After the German High Command assisted Lenin in returning to Russia and gaining control of the Bolsheviks (Communist revolutionaries who opposed the Mensheviks), Lenin orchestrated a second revolution in October 1917 and removed Russia from the war.
The Russian Revolution utilized terrorism in a new manner, and this had an impact on the way people viewed terrorism in the twentieth century. Lenin and one of his lieutenants, Leon Trotsky, believed terrorism should be used as an instrument for overthrowing middle-class, or bourgeois, governments. Once power was achieved, they advocated terrorism as a means of controlling internal enemies and a method for coping with international strife. Russia was very weak after the revolution. It faced foreign intervention, and it was torn by civil war. By threatening to export terrorism, Lenin and Trotsky hoped to keep their enemies, primarily Western Europe and the United States, at bay.
It is important to understand the connection between the Russian Revolution and terrorism for two reasons. First, by threatening to export terror, Lenin and Trotsky placed the fear of Communist revolution in the minds of many people in the West. To some, terrorism and Communism became synonymous. Though the Russians and later the Soviets were never very good at carrying insurrection to other lands, Western leaders began to fear that Communist terrorists were on the verge of toppling democratic governments. Despite the fact that Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin (who ruled from 1922 to 1953) were most successful at another form of terror, murdering their own people, fear of Communist insurrection lasted well into the twentieth century, and some people still accept this belief as doctrine.
Some terrorist analysts accept it, too. For example, in 1986, Neil Livingstone described terrorism as a form of war sponsored ultimately by client states of the former Soviet Union. Adding the voice of journalism, Claire Sterling, in the same year, wrote that all terrorism was part of a Communist plot. Although there is no doubt the Soviets tried to support terrorist groups every time they got a chance, it is a gross simplification to assume a problem as complex as international terrorism could be blamed on a single source. To be fair to analysts like Livingstone, Soviet rhetoric did little to disprove his idea. In addition, Livingstone’s analysis of state-supported terrorism is very good.
There is a valuable lesson to learn from ascribing too much power to terrorist conspiracies. Today, many respectable terrorist experts encourage American leaders to believe most terrorism is a result of militant Islam or the Islamacist movement. Salam Al-Marayati (1994) cites Yoseff Bodansky as an example. Al-Marayati says labeling Islam as a cause of terrorism misrepresents the principal tenets of the religion. Furthermore, it distorts the complex issues behind international terrorism. In the same way, the Russian Revolution was not the source of terrorism in the twentieth century, despite popular opinions. Modern terrorism is more complicated than this and cannot be blamed on a single demon.
A second reason for considering the Russian Revolution is that Lenin’s victory and subsequent writings have inspired terrorists from 1917 to the present. While Communist terrorism was not part of an orchestrated conspiracy, it did influence behavior. Some terrorists scoured the works of Lenin and Trotsky, as well as other Russian revolutionaries, to formulate theories, tactics, and ideologies. Although not a simple conspiracy of evil, this influence was real and remains today.