British politician Winston Churchill said he wanted to strangle the Bosheviks at birth. why do you think politicans across Europe were so angry and scared of the russian revoloution
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transferred to the soviets across the country, ousting the Provisional Government which had ruled since the overthrow of the Tsar during the February Revolution earlier in the year. The newly formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic declared a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ posing a dramatic new challenge to international relations.
As G. H. Bennett succinctly summarises, Soviet Russia was ‘viewed with such concern because it existed in a variety of potential forms: internal subversion within Britain or the Empire; a victorious advance by the Red Army across Europe; hostile action against Britain’s Asian Empire; the undermining of established conventions of international behaviour with the repudiation of Russia’s debts and nationalisation of foreign investments; and the danger that the economic and social collapse of Russia would spread to other countries.’
The fear induced by the October Revolution amongst British policymakers will be explored throughout this paper, with a focus on Winston S. Churchill’s attitude and policies towards various significant events which took place during this period, in an attempt to understand the psyche of the upper-class during this period of instability. Born in 1874, Churchill was, in David Cannadine’s words, ‘by birth and by connection, a member of Britain’s charmed “inner circle”’. Churchill became probably the most significant British politician of the first half of the 20th century, best known for leading Britain in the Second World War and later for his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech. But during the Lloyd George Coalition Government of 1918-1922, he came to be ‘widely regarded as a reactionary’––seemingly a departure from his prior reputation as a ‘radical’ in favour of social progress––and made a name for himself as the foremost anti-Bolshevik and anti-socialist in Government.
Anti-communism in the interwar period is a relatively neglected topic, overshadowed by the ‘Red Scare’ after 1945. Many who have explored this area conclude that Churchill’s hostility toward the nascent Bolshevik state was strategic, and focused on British national interests. Yet, while strategic considerations of course played a significant role, there were fundamental ideological reasons for Churchill’s attitude and policies at this time. Though some have referred to this period as a ‘small cold war’, this paper will support the less popular view that the Cold War truly began when the Bolsheviks came to power, and that this is vindicated by Churchill’s position during this period.
This paper will argue that Churchill, as a representative of the ruling capitalist class, embodied a militant expression of British ruling class fears of, and reaction to, the Bolshevik Revolution and the prospect of communism spreading throughout Europe and Britain. Churchill’s attitude and policies during this time convey how ideologically polarised politics had become in Britain and Europe––due in large part to the effects of the Russian Revolution––and reveal the some of the seeds that sowed the growth of fascism throughout Europe.
The October Revolution and the Great War
The Bolshevik Revolution presented more than simply a military or diplomatic challenge to the western liberal democracies. It took place at a moment in history when social order was extremely fragile across all countries that had fought in the Great War, and presented a radical ideological challenge to the capitalist world system. As G. H. Bennett writes, ‘the execution of Czar Nicholas II, the nationalising of property, and the anti-capitalist and international revolutionary nature of the Bolshevik state’ caused deep anxiety amongst not only the British ruling classes, but, indeed, amongst the rest of the ruling class across Europe.
Churchill epitomised this attitude. He had a ‘primal hatred of the Bolshevik revolution’, and ‘his emotions overcame him’ when he spoke of the Bolsheviks, employing his most venomous rhetoric against them. He considered the Bolsheviks ‘the enemies of the human race and must be put down at any cost’. Lloyd George remarked at