Paper 2: Lenin's Consolidation and maintenance of power

Foreign Policies 1917 → 1922

• failure to export the revolution abroad scares lenin

• March 3rd: signs the Brest-Litovsk Treaty to get out of the war

• failure of a war against independent Poland who had backing from France, UK, US and Ukraine

• Poland gains significant amounts of land in the Treaty of Riga 1921

• bolsheviks win the Russian civil war despite foreign intervention (Churchill was v. against the bolsheviks)

• 1921: Treaty of Rapallo between russia and germany

• march 1921: British-USSR trade agreement

• February 1924: Ramsay MacDonald formally recognised the Bolshevik Government

Treaty of Rapallo

• they denounce all war-claims against each other

• Germany pays Russia to allow German military tests and education

• flight school at Lipetsk

• trade agreement: russia exports grain to Germany

• 1926: renewed by stresseman as treaty of berlin

Zinoviev Letter

• daily mail forged a letter 4 days before the election saying:

  • a labour government would enable a Bolshevik style revolution in britain

• 1924: relations breakout for the inter-war years

Constituent Assembly

• bolsheviks had won barely a quarter in the November elections

• so lenin had the assembly dissolved at gun point by the red guard

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• 3 march 1918

• Lenin had been bankrolled by germany for many years and continued to be after the revolution so he felt it was a ‘safe’ move

• should germany win russia woulnd’t be worse off and should germany lose russia stood to gain more territory

• Trotsky took a middle ground between lenin and left Revolutionaries who felt the war should continue as a revolutionary crusade against germany

• sokolnikov declared as instructed by trotsky that the treaty was not freely-negotiated and rather a diktat

• terms were humiliating for russia → 3 bil. roubles reparations + lost 1/3 of European Russian land

Russian Civil War

• 1918-20

• bolsheviks were seen to be forcing Russian authority over the country like the tsars

• national forces in Georgia and Ukraine → greens

• SRs joined the whites angry they didn’t have a say in government

• June 1918: Petrograd population decreased by 1/3 due to famine

• whites had nothing to offer ordinary Russian people and their reputation of brutality was as great as the red’s

• bolsheviks maintained control of railways and industrial centres so had access to munitions

• white and green armies were not united so bolsheviks could defeat them one by one

the Cheka

• secret police

• created Dec. 1917 under Felix Dzerhinsky

• trotsky ended the independence of trade unions and brought workers under martial discipline on the same term as soldiers

red army

• Trotsky created the Red army as commissar for war

• within two years he had raised an army of 3 mil men

• death sentence was imposed for desertion or disloyalty

• he enforced conscription with the slogan “Everything for the Front” using the dangers russia was facing as justification

introduction of war communism

• centralisation of power in a time of crisis

• forcible grain and livestock seizure with no compensation

• state control of industry

Kronstadt Rising

• March 1921

• 15 man revolutionary committee, led by Petrechenko, drew up an official manifesto demanding:

  • free elections

  • freedom of speech, press, assembly

  • trade union rights

  • more equality in food rationing

• these were genuine communists disgusted with the way lenin was running the country

• Trotsky sent 60,000 Red Army soldiers and Cheka members

• Leaders were shot as white reactionaries

• this leads to Lenin introducing NEP

Three constitutions (spans Lenin and Stalin)

• 1918: formally recognised working class and ruling class

  • they would have political power by transfer of ownership to the state → Lenin would rule “on their behalf”

• 1924: officially creates USSR → brought russia into constitutional arrangement with Ukraine, Belorussia and Transcaucasia

• 1936: banned all formal political party oppositions

  • two years after coming into force, chief architect Nikolai Bukharin was executed proving pomise of basic civil rights a lie