Consolidating Bolshevik Power

Constituent Assembly elections

Bolshevik won 24% of the vote and ¼ of seats in assembly

Outvoted 2:1 by SRs

Opening of Constituent Assembly

50,000 Anti-Bolshevik demonstrators gathered

10 killed

Right SR members

Left Petrograd and established a base in Eastern Russia

Formed Committee of members of the constituent assembly

German demands

Wanted Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and parts of Armenia

Cost of German demands

Threw bolshevik party into disarray

26% of Russia’s population

27% of its arable land

74% of its coal and iron ore

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Signed in March 1918

Upper Class and Army Officers

Congregating in south-eastern part of European Russia

National Minorities

Finland, Estonia, Ukraine and then Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all declared independence

Cheka

Political Police Force

Suppression of counter-revolutionaries and Sabotage

Punish without trial

Cheka in 1921

150,000 members

Leader of Cheka

Felix Dzerchinsky

Wanted Cheka to be feared as ‘the sword and shield of the revolution’

Attack on Bolshevik Opponents

Shut down hostile newspapers

Outlawed Kadet Party

Middle-Class denied a vote in Soviet Elections

Mid 1918 Mensheviks and SRs expelled from the Soviet

Red Terror Target

Bourgeois Wreckers

Nicholas II execution

July 1918

Red Terror

1918 - 10,000 killed

1917-23 - 200,000 Killed

Industrial Production after the war

2/3 of 1914 level

Grain Shortage

13 million tonnes short of nation’s needs

State Capitalism

Industry remained under private ownership but actions were monitored by the state

Limited programme of nationalisation

Decree on Land

Legitimized peasant land seizures

Decree on Workers’ control

Gave industrial workers a say in how factories were run