The Failure Of The Russian Revolution

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” (Richard Fuller). Revolutions have been used all throughout history. One person becomes unhappy with their government and attempt to enforce new changes. But violence and revolts are not the correct way to make changes. This can be seen throughout all the revolutions in the world’s history. The purpose of this essay is to analyze whether or not the Russian Revolution was a success. To support this five sources were given, but four are being focused on. The sources being used are, Animal Farm by George Orwell, “The Reasons For The Failure of the Russian Revolution” by Anonymous, “Education, Literacy, and

Once the Czar no longer had power, Stalin took charge and began to make the Five Year Plan. But Trotsky had different ideas for Russia, so it was a constant struggle for power between the two. Eventually Stalin was able to overthrow him, but he didn’t use his power like he should’ve. The living and working conditions were similar to those under the rule of the Czar. Stalin wanted to change all aspects of Russian society. In “The Reasons For The Failure of The Russian Revolution” it states, “The ‘reshaping’ had three main aspects…the liquidation of all forms of democracy and of working class and the physical annihilation of millions of peasants” (Text 5). This shows that Stalin took away all forms of democracy, meaning that the people wouldn’t have a say in what they do. They would have to go along with all of Stalin’s commands. Stalin took away the needs of the people so Russia could have a stronger industry. Similarly the Czar had complete power over the people. He twisted the truth and didn’t keep his promises. In Chapter 8 of Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote, “They had thought that Fifth commandment was ‘No animal shall drink alcohol’, but there were two words they had forgotten. Actually the commandment read: ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess’” (Text 1). In Animal Farm, Napoleon changed the rules so that he would be able to do what he wants. Since the other animals

Text 2, “Education, Literacy and The Russian Revolution” was biased towards the revolution being a success. Not only did the article come from a socialist magazine, but also the author didn’t touch upon why it might have been failure. Megan Behrent only has one reason to justify the revolution’s success. She sticks to the education and literacy rates increasing but doesn’t have any other reasons to justify her claim. The blog “The Reasons For The Failure of The Russian Revolution”, Text 5 had limitations as well. The writer decided to remain anonymous, which leads a reader to question how credible the information really is. This blog post focused only on the failures of the revolution. The author included no information about why others might argue that the revolution was a success. In Animal Farm, Orwell discusses the failure of the Russian Revolution. He very rarely wrote about the positive effects of the revolution. From the beginning of the novel it is pretty clear that he didn’t support the revolution. The remaining text that wasn’t used also had limitations, it didn’t include a clear claim and wasn’t useful in supporting the claim. The Russian Revolution was a failure; Stalin was an extremely unfair ruler and didn’t accomplish his goals of making Russia communist. Most revolutions have had the same results. A country gets rid of one rule, puts in another who turns out to be worse; at this point