1917, the world is on its heels. The Great War has been spurring on for three years, and Russia was not faring well. The leader of the Russian Empire, Tsar Nicholas II, was a ruthless leader. He suppressed political dissent, and cared not for the starving peasants that he ruled. These peasants, still sore from a massacre in 1905 which left hundreds wounded in the streets. Winds of change were high, and the political surge of communism left many workers feeling the need for revolution. The leaders of these communists were bright thinkers such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Pavel Dybenko. To revolutionaries, obedience is key to political unrest. In order to gain anything in the revolution, one must hound obedience away from traditional
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The Russian people, revolted against the tsarist regime, hoping for to make things better for them. These same people wanted freedom and democracy, but the leaders of these people did not want the same. They wanted to make things better for the people, while having an iron grip on them at the same moment. After the revolution, great political purges, infighting, and a newfound form of obedience took hold of the Russian people. The Russian Revolutions might seem like a textbook example of disobedience; however the proletariat merely adopted a redesigned form of obedience that was being veiled from them.
First, we must look at the initial acts in the eve of the revolution. Where these men first shed the cloak of oppression and engaged in disobedience. The Tsar crushed opposition that he deemed a threat, which was almost anything that was not correlated to him directly. Therefore, to …show more content…
However, these mindsets had a falsehood all of their own. These men, in order to seize power all for the people, with themselves at forefront. They thought that the most efficient way to liberate these people from the crushing weight of economic burden was to be the authoritarian leader that they never had, one that cared for the peasants. This is explained in Erich Fromm’s 1961 essay Marx’s Concept of Man, “But it hardly needs such proof from Marx's psychological ideas to show that the popular assumption about Marx's materialism is utterly wrong. Marx's whole criticism of capitalism is exactly that it has made interest in money and material gain the main motive in man, and his concept of socialism is precisely that of a society in which this material interest would cease to be the dominant one. This will be even clearer later on when we discuss Marx's concept of human emancipation and of freedom in detail.” (Ch.2 Paragraph. 10). While this seems like a noble concept in theory, the way that Lenin took this, was that he had to make sure everything was followed his ideals to the letter. Effectively, Lenin’s bid for power made him the authoritarian danger that he fought valiantly to dismantle. In Theodore Dalrymple’s article Just Do What The Pilot Tells You, Dalrymple says “To such a person, all human relationships are essentially expressions of power. An order given by
The Russian people, revolted against the tsarist regime, hoping for to make things better for them. These same people wanted freedom and democracy, but the leaders of these people did not want the same. They wanted to make things better for the people, while having an iron grip on them at the same moment. After the revolution, great political purges, infighting, and a newfound form of obedience took hold of the Russian people. The Russian Revolutions might seem like a textbook example of disobedience; however the proletariat merely adopted a redesigned form of obedience that was being veiled from them.
First, we must look at the initial acts in the eve of the revolution. Where these men first shed the cloak of oppression and engaged in disobedience. The Tsar crushed opposition that he deemed a threat, which was almost anything that was not correlated to him directly. Therefore, to …show more content…
However, these mindsets had a falsehood all of their own. These men, in order to seize power all for the people, with themselves at forefront. They thought that the most efficient way to liberate these people from the crushing weight of economic burden was to be the authoritarian leader that they never had, one that cared for the peasants. This is explained in Erich Fromm’s 1961 essay Marx’s Concept of Man, “But it hardly needs such proof from Marx's psychological ideas to show that the popular assumption about Marx's materialism is utterly wrong. Marx's whole criticism of capitalism is exactly that it has made interest in money and material gain the main motive in man, and his concept of socialism is precisely that of a society in which this material interest would cease to be the dominant one. This will be even clearer later on when we discuss Marx's concept of human emancipation and of freedom in detail.” (Ch.2 Paragraph. 10). While this seems like a noble concept in theory, the way that Lenin took this, was that he had to make sure everything was followed his ideals to the letter. Effectively, Lenin’s bid for power made him the authoritarian danger that he fought valiantly to dismantle. In Theodore Dalrymple’s article Just Do What The Pilot Tells You, Dalrymple says “To such a person, all human relationships are essentially expressions of power. An order given by