Why did the Russian Revolution suceed and the German Revolution fail?

[buritobr]

Both Russia and Germany were empires until the WW1, their emperors had to abdicate during the war, these countries surrendered.
In Russia, the bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, took the power. But in Germany, the spartacists, led by Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, were defeated.
Why do you think the revolution suceeded in one country and failed in the other?
Do you think a revolution was more feasible in the russian economy and society than in the german ones? Or do you think the bolsheviks were more competent than the spartacists?

Karl Marx though that the communist revolution would happen in industrialized countries earlier. So, he though the probability of a revolution in Germany was higher than a revolution in Russia. But this is not what happened.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm really not an expert in either revolution, but my best guess would be 1. The German state apparatus remained far stronger than the Russian one (which had already shown plenty of cracks in the past decades and was ridiculously top-heavy) and 2. The demand for radical change in Russia was much stronger, on account of decades of incompetent reactionary rule, economic turmoil, and international humiliations, of which WW1 was only the last straw. The German Empire had, by contrast, done a significantly better job of keeping its population happy up to 1914.

I'd be interested in what more knowledgeable people have to say, though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The German Revolution was successful: the Kaiser was overthrown and a Republic established. The Spartacist uprising was extremely unsuccessful, but it's hard to see how it could have been otherwise. It was a delusional act.

[Big Abraham]

Karl Marx though that the communist revolution would happen in industrialized countries earlier. So, he though the probability of a revolution in Germany was higher than a revolution in Russia.

So this... isn't really true. It's an oft-repeated myth that Marx thought countries like England, France, and Germany were more ripe for revolutionary condition because industry was more advanced in these countries and there was a higher concentration of capital. However, when Marx made that prediction, it was around the time he had co-authored the Manifesto circa 1848, when the only revolutionary potential that was occurring was in Western Europe, and he limited his analysis of economic progression in a "linear fashion" (from feudalism to absolutism/mercantilism of pre-industrial capitalism to liberalism/free trade of industrial capitalism to socialism ultimately to communism) to these countries.

However, he also acknowledged later in life (including in a preface to the Russian edition of the  Manifesto he wrote shortly before his death) that less-industrialized nations like Russia could see the traditional "linear fashion" broken down and that Russia could transition to socialism directly from a pre-industrial capitalist stage. He also acknowledged that socialism was strongest in Germany, but he predicted its victory by more democratic means (by electing the SDP, soon to be the largest political party in the German Reich, to power.) In fact, Marx specifically said later in life that in "democratic" countries like England, France, and the United States, socialism would be more likely to come to victory through elections, and that in countries like Russia, it would be more likely to come through violent revolution, as mass workers' parties capable of realistically competing in elections were impossible in absolutist nations.

So the fact the revolution succeeded in a nation like Russia where electoralism was impossible would not have been a surprise to Marx. In Germany, which had an active workers' party in the Reichstag both before and after the First World War, it seems the electoralist course was destined to take effect. If only the SDP had not abandoned its revolutionary impulses by the time Friedrich Ebert was brought to power, leaving Hugo Haase of the USPD languishing with less than 8% of the vote as the genuine representative of the parliamentary Marxian Socialist faction. (Which itself is quite ironic, given that Haase when he was a member of the SDP was considered a "Revisionist")

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?

I am extremely under-qualified to answer this, which bugs the Hell out of me--because why did I waste so much time reading studies of comparative revolution from the 60s?--but my impression of the Stolypin reforms was that their greatest failure was their incomplete execution, owing to his conveniently-timed assassination.

Perhaps relevant--and possibly contradicting the above--Eric Wolf's view was that revolutionary peasants came from the middle section of their class that was far from content but had enough property and autonomy to risk breaking with the nobility and the state. Perhaps the German situation lacked this arrangement for one or more reasons? I am thinking here maybe successful proletarianization of agriculture, or in the opposite direction a peasantry that was utterly dependent on feudal lords. I don't know enough about Germany to say either.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

The Bolsheviks took power in Russia because the parties of the Provisional Government had discredited themselves through their inability to end the war. In Germany it was the armistice itself that led to the revolution. If we imagine an alternate universe where the SPD leadership have lobotomies and decide to continue the war for another year and the German army disintegrates then I suppose the German communists may have had a shot.

Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?

Desire for land basically, yeah. And widespread illiteracy and remoteness from the state equalling an absence of active patriotic sentiment.

[TheReckoning]

Germany did have a revolution from 1933-1945, just not the one you’re thinking of…

[PSOL]

Germany did have a revolution from 1933-1945, just not the one you’re thinking of…

And they did manage to hold out until the 1980s

[TheReckoning]

Germany did have a revolution from 1933-1945, just not the one you’re thinking of…

And they did manage to hold out until the 1980s

Bro what?

[PSOL]

Germany did have a revolution from 1933-1945, just not the one you’re thinking of…

And they did manage to hold out until the 1980s

Bro what?

On second thought, your right, the Sparticist uprising did last as a hot then cold conflict since 1918.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany did have a revolution from 1933-1945, just not the one you’re thinking of…

Edgy.

[Lord Halifax]

The German Revolution was successful: the Kaiser was overthrown and a Republic established. The Spartacist uprising was extremely unsuccessful, but it's hard to see how it could have been otherwise. It was a delusional act.

But the more radical part of the German revolution also included Max Eisner's People's State of Bavaria and Red Armies in the Ruhr and Thuringia, it wasn't just the Spartacists. In Russia the radicals won and overthrow the moderate pro-democratic government that had replaced autocracy, while in Germany the moderate revolutionaries won (by allying with parts of the right, either directly or tacitly).

One obvious difference is that the reactionaries in Russia weren't willing to tolerate anything resembling a bourgeois democracy and wanted an almost immediate return to autocracy, whereas parts of the German anti-democratic right were willing to tolerate the Weimar Republic as the lesser evil (while always expecting it to fail). The other crucial difference is Kerensky's failure to end the war, if the moderate pro-democratic parties in Germany had tried to continue the war they'd have failed as well.

[PSOL]

A significant part of this story is that the colonies of the Russian empire in the east either were wracked by war or actively seceding from it simultaneously to the revolution. That is a lot of revenue not being sent to Moscow. Comparatively the Polish territories were unsuccessful in seceding in part due to a weak secessionist movement and whose population mainly joined with the Spartacists and KPD, thus getting opposed by the local colonial advisors and Polish middle class. Germany had no other colonies overseas or those as far from its core as Russia, and it’s infrastructure ensured connectivity and lack of development and base areas for guerrilla insurgents to build in.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The Bolsheviks took power in Russia because the parties of the Provisional Government had discredited themselves through their inability to end the war. In Germany it was the armistice itself that led to the revolution. If we imagine an alternate universe where the SPD leadership have lobotomies and decide to continue the war for another year and the German army disintegrates then I suppose the German communists may have had a shot.

Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?

Desire for land basically, yeah. And widespread illiteracy and remoteness from the state equalling an absence of active patriotic sentiment.

True, but it's remarkable how quickly SR agitation seemed to cover up the sort of cultural prochialism seen in the initial "going to the people" nihilist movement.

[PSOL]

The Bolsheviks took power in Russia because the parties of the Provisional Government had discredited themselves through their inability to end the war. In Germany it was the armistice itself that led to the revolution. If we imagine an alternate universe where the SPD leadership have lobotomies and decide to continue the war for another year and the German army disintegrates then I suppose the German communists may have had a shot.

Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?

Desire for land basically, yeah. And widespread illiteracy and remoteness from the state equalling an absence of active patriotic sentiment.

True, but it's remarkable how quickly SR agitation seemed to cover up the sort of cultural prochialism seen in the initial "going to the people" nihilist movement.

The SR’s quickly learned from local leaders that their tactics were failing them. They quickly changed tactics and let the peasant members be an inseparable entity within the party. They also relied on likeminded Decembrist exiles and their descendants who assimilated enough to be a gateway between both intellectuals, workers, and peasants. That’s part of why the Russian Far East still votes heavily for the KPRF and is a hotbed for communist organizing to this day, and also how the split in the SRs formed—declassed intellectuals and middle peasantry did not want compromise within a liberal framework.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't really think it has anything to do with the kind of social forces described or peculiarities of the agrarian classes in Russia relative to other countries. Instead, it had everything to do with opportunity. For the Germans, World War I was over when the Revolution occurred. For the Russians, the war was ongoing and the only ones promising peace were the Bolsheviks. That is what gave them the opportunity to seize power and once they had it, the ruthless leadership provided by Lenin and others is what  enabled them to hold power in the industrial bastions and expand outward from there.

Also Russia had rapidly industrialized before the war and many of its largest cities had massive industrial sectors that provided easy bases from which Bolsheviks could recruit and then dominate said cities and then from there use those to dominate the surrounding countryside. There is this notion that Russia was a stagnant agrarian backwater until the Soviets industrialized it. Of course this is the narrative that the likes of Stalin would insist upon, but it ignores the very industrialization that occurred during the Second Wave Industrial Revolution (late 19th century to early 20th century), which made a Lenin or a Stalin possible.

Certainly a large percentage of the population lived in rural areas still, but this is a country with one of the largest populations in the world at the time. It was still a top ten largest industrial power.

People make the same mistake with regards to the Civil War in the United States when talking about the agrarian South versus the Industrialized North. They fail to consider the population differential that those percentages applied to, a matter that I routinely bring up in such discussions.
Some approximate numbers for that by comparison:

22 Million x 40% =  ~9 million
9 Million x 80% = ~ 7 million.

A similar situation could be applied to Russian and so while a vast percentage of the country is rural, you are still talking cities with millions of people and millions of industrial workers, possibly more than many Western European countries simply because of the sheer size of the population to which those low percentages are applied.

[Georg Ebner]

The angloSaxon inClination to nominalism/pragmatism/individualism does not see, that we have been in a permanent - and usually nonPhysical - revolution of mind for centuries. With an increasing radicalism, what meant, that different nations have fit best to the revolutioning's different stages: 1517 had been Germany's time (the Prussian state with its adoption of French "rationalism" being a special case), whereas 1917 was the turn of Russia (and the Slavs in general - the Czechs let also AustriaHungary fall apart 1918).

[Agonized-Statism]

The short answer is that Germany figured out that allowing parliamentary reform (Bismarck's "Staatssozialismus" social programs) could sate organized labor enough to prevent a communist revolution, which is exactly what happened when the social democrats betrayed the communists. Russia was too little, too late with reforms. The Duma was obviously a sham, the elites were too out-of-touch and too used to crushing dissidents, and their devastated pre-industrial economy couldn't have offered many decent social programs anyway.

[Cassandra]

The short answer is that Germany figured out that allowing parliamentary reform (Bismarck's "Staatssozialismus" social programs) could sate organized labor enough to prevent a communist revolution, which is exactly what happened when the social democrats betrayed the communists. Russia was too little, too late with reforms. The Duma was obviously a sham, the elites were too out-of-touch and too used to crushing dissidents, and their devastated pre-industrial economy couldn't have offered many decent social programs anyway.

Indeed. It didn't help that the German SDP collaborated with bourgeois state to crush the workers revolt, whereas in Russia the Bolsheviks road that revolt into power. I think the key difference was the differing legal status of the workers parties. In Germany the SDP had been legalized. It's leadership was professionalized, and it as an institution had as much to lose as any other institution of the old order. The Russian socialists, meanwhile, saw their movement criminalized. Therefore, the party's leaders and membership had nothing to lose my going over the ledge into revolutionary chaos.