The effects of World War I rippled across the world, impacting each country differently. Citizens’ beliefs were also strengthened, leading to an outburst of, among others, civic nationalism, popular nationalism, imperialism, and communism. Primarily, WWI had the largest success in triggering an outburst of popular nationalism, or the identification with one’s people or religion, because it presented an opportunity for many oppressed groups to rise and rebel. Thanks to WWI, population nationalism gave the people a voice in Russia and India; Russia’s nationalism was anti-rich and pro-poor, a rebellion by the poor peasants and factory workers against the upper class and the tsar, while in India nationalism was anti-British, a rebellion by the Hindus and Muslims against their British rulers. Since Russia’s nationalism was both a positive and negative force, the Russian’s stayed united and eventually created a unified Soviet Union through violent revolution, whereas in India, negatively-defined nationalism, combined with long-standing religious differences between Hindus and Muslims, divided the nation via the Partition.

The nationalist sentiment in Russia was both positive and negative since it gave the people two groups to align themselves with, consequently creating an Us versus Them mentality on both sides.  Being surrounded by those with a similar mindset united the nation because they did not just have a group to fight against, but something to fight for. The autocracy had frustrated the peasants, who “made up almost 90% of the population” in poverty, for a long time, and World War I ignited the revolution of the poor against the autocracy. WWI was a catalyst because in the war, “soldiers were undersupplied and were even sometimes sent into battle without weapons or even boots,” widespread food shortages occurred across Russia due to the 14 million peasants in military service (and thus unable to contribute to the agriculture industry). Because of this, their resentment and frustration grew until all of this frustration, resentment, and anti-rich nationalist sentiment led to the military troops mutinying. In the chaos, a Marxist group known as the Bolsheviks stepped in and took power, led by Vladimir Lenin. The nationalism-fueled idea of taking power from the rich and giving it to the poor ultimately united the citizens around the banner of poverty and against the rich.

The revolution against the bourgeoisie was incredibly violent because it was not just intended to take power from the rich but to completely restructure the economical and political system into a communist state led by the Bolsheviks. During a speech Lenin gave, he stated that “when a revolutionary class is waging war against the possessing classes that resist it, then it must suppress this resistance; and we shall suppress the possessors’ resistance by all the methods which they used to suppress the proletariat,” and thus justifying the cruel acts of the Bolshevik soldiers used during the revolution. A Menshevik opponent of the Bolsheviks noted that “in the chaotic conditions prevailing during the elections to the village soviets, these soldiers seized the soviets, terrorized the peasants, and became the privileged group in the countryside.” While it must be acknowledged that this description is from an opponent of the Bolsheviks, Lenin’s vehement support of the violence his soldiers used suggests that there is some truth to the Menshevik’s words. The brutality of this revolution would have been limited if it were not for the power the Bolsheviks had in leading the revolution and their ultimate goal of transforming Russia into a communist state.

The intention of the bloody revolution was to create a communist state with equal wages and living conditions, thus destroying poverty in Russia, but this could not happen due to the nature of the Bolshevik party, which took power. This is because the poor in Russia could be split into two classes: the peasants and the factory workers. The factory workers, and not the peasants, led the revolution since “many Russian radicals had given up in frustration at trying to radicalize the Russian peasants” and as such when the Bolsheviks took power, an upper class comprised of factory workers was formed, thanks to their higher education and better understanding of Marxist ideals, creating a new class system in a world that was supposed to be rid of class differences. The living situation was not as terrible as it had been under the tsar—“there was virtually no unemployment in the Soviet Union, and no hardcore poverty,”—but the class system remained. Ultimately, however, the Soviet Union stayed united under one banner thanks to the nationalist sentiment that united the poor, a stark contrast to the revolution in India.

India’s nationalist sentiment, which as anti-British and as such did not give the people a party to identify themselves with, but a group to identify themselves against, was ultimately a negative force because it split the nation apart. The Indians had been lobbying for change for years, and WWI provided a foothold by which they could push their efforts further because the “outbreak of the First World War in 1914 forced the British to take a ‘different angle of vision’ toward Indian political affairs.” Furthermore, with no end to the war in sight, the Hindus and Muslims were temporarily united until “in the face of such pressure, the viceroy… and his executive council were willing to introduce some degree of reform” in India. Thus, anger at Great Britain over the war took the anti-British sentiment that both factions felt and temporarily united them against a common enemy. Nationalist, anti-British sentiment had been echoing across India for generations as “the benefits [the Indians] derived from British rule… both encouraged a sense of national unity and provided a means of communication to rally their people to recover their lost sovereignty.” However, this did not solve the main divide in India between the Hindus and Muslims because their nationalism was not with one another, but against the same party, which would ultimately fracture the two groups irreparably.

Due to the lack of nationalist sentiment between the Hindus and Muslims, their temporary alliances against the British were just that: temporary. In fact, in all their lobbying for freedom, the groups never considered a permanent alliance, no matter how hard some tried. Even Mohandas Gandhi, “despite the support of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and a few other leading Muslims, proved unable to develop close ties with the traditional Muslim elite or to sustain Hindi-Muslim unity on a mass level,”: a testament to the wide divide between the two religions that has not been bridged even to this day. The impact of this lack of unifying nationalism was that at the end, when India gained its freedom on August 15, 1947, it came with the disastrous partition that split the two religious groups up along country borders. Borders were hastily drawn, none were pleased with the final result, and geographically, it split Pakistan up with East Pakistan and West Pakistan on each side of India. Thus, despite their temporary alliance against the British, the lack of unification between the Hindus and Muslims ultimately drove the two groups apart.

The revolutions in India and Russia had many similarities and differences since they were both ignited by the same ideology: popular nationalism. Revolution in India was not as violent as the revolution in Russia because Russia was not only revolting against the rich but for a completely new system—communism. Thus, it also led to a brutal revolution because the political party leading the rebellion, the Bolsheviks, were led by Lenin, all of whose ideas involved bloodshed, while in India, one of the main leaders of the revolution was Mohandas Gandhi, who believed in and preached nonviolence. India’s revolution was further not to overthrow the system but simply to change who ruled it. Similarities between the two countries are undeniable, however. WWI catalyzed both revolutions. Both rebelling groups could be split into two categories: Hindu and Muslim, or peasant and factory worker. Both revolutions succeeded, and both ended with some unsavory impacts that have had long-lasting effects—In Russia, the class system still existed and in India, the Partition split up India.

Overall, Russia’s nationalism was both a positive and negative force and thus the Russians stayed united after their violent revolution, while in India the negative nationalism combined with religious differences divided the country. In both countries, the First World War and anger over the countries’ involvement in it boosted popular nationalist sentiment to an extreme, thus allowing the poor in Russia and the Hindus and Muslims in India to break free of the autocracy and the British respectively. However, anger over the partition exists today through the bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, and the Cold War would likely not have occurred if not for the Soviet Union. The effects of nationalism after WWI are present even today in seemingly inconspicuous ways. Neither revolutions would have been possible without the strong nationalist sentiment that existed in the countries both before and after their revolutions, and without those revolutions, the world today would be incredibly different.

Bibliography

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 Vladimir Lenin, Violence against Opponents of Communism, 2nd Convocation of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets, October 1917 – January1918