Russian Revolution AoS 2 - Short Flashcards VCE History Revolutions

L1+2: Challenges in Consolidating Power (Bolsheviks)

• WW1

• Food + fuel

• Britain and other foreign power (opposition)

• Political instability

• Other oppositions

• Expectations of peace, bread and land + all power to the Soviets

• Threats of a counter-cunter revolution

• Internal division

The New Decrees

• 8 November 1917

• The Decree on Land (8 November 1917)

• “Private ownership of land shall be abolished for ever” (all land owned by the state and passed onto those who need it)

• Land use shall be determined by the state

• “Land tenure shall be on an equality basis”

• Decree on Peace (8 November 1917)

• Caused government to seek immediate peace terms with Germany

• Workers’ Control Decrees (14 November 1917)

• Gave industrial labourers the ability to apply to the government to form self-management committees in their factories (higher expectations from government)

• Follows the eight hour work day introduction on 29 October

• Press Decree (27 October 1917)

• Banned publication of newspapers belonging to political groups that represented the bourgeoisie (Kadets)

Creation of Sovnarkom

• Made up of 16 of the topp memebers of the Bolshevik party

• Each member called a People’s Commissar (official) rather than minister

• Lenin was chairman, Trotsky was Commmissar for Foregin Affairs

• All-Russian Congress of Soviets were made up entirely to Bolsheviks after the revolution

• Basic Law (constitution) was passed in July 1918

• Basic Law created the Central Executive Committee, which was originally the highest political authority, but was rendered politically impotent in a few weeks

L3: Constituent Assembly and its Dissolution

• Dismissal of the Constituent Assembly (18-19 January 1918)

• November 1917: Election for a Constituent Assembly was arranged by the Bolsheviks to occur

• Eligible for all Russian citizens aged 20+ (including women

• 47 out of an eligible 80 million Russians voted (largest election in the world at the time) despite chaos and disorder

• Bolsheviks gained 23.6% of the vote

• Socialist Revolutionaries were the largest party, securing 42% of the vote

• 18-19 January 1918: Elected members had their first and only meeting

• Viktor Chernov (leader of the Right SRs) was elected Chairman of the Assembly

• First proposal put forward by the Bolsheviks (to endorse the New Decrees) was voted down 273 vs 140 votes

L4: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• 3 March 1918

• 15 December 1917: Ceasefire granted by Germany

• 18 February 1918: 700,000 Germans troops helped launch an offensive, causing Bolshevik troops to flee

• 89% of iron ore and coal reserves lost

• 54% of industrialenterprises lost

• 26% of railways given up

• 34% of European Russia’s population (62 million people) no longer under Russian control

• 32% of farmland given up on

• 3 billion roubles in war reparations

• Factions within the Bolshevik party formed

L5: State Capitalism

• 1917-1918: Economic policy in place

• Government would exercise tight control over key industries, have a monopoly on trade and financial policy would be directed through a state-owned bank

• Owners and managers were allowed to continue to run enterprises as ‘bourgeois specialists’

  • 2 December 1917: The Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) was set up as a central body coordinating economic activity.

L6: The Civil War

• 1918- 25 October 1922 (begun on the closure of the Constituent Assembly until the defeat of White forces in Vladivostok)

• April 1918: Kornilov killed, causing Denkin to take full control of army

• September 1918: Viktor Chernov’s government in Siberia was overthrown by a conservative (General Miller)

• October 1919: General Yudenich led a small army of released pow that attacked Petrograd but was defeated by city militia

• April 1920: Denkin retired after defeats and handed control of General Pyotr Wrangel, ‘The Black Baron’

• Admiral Kolchak led an army in eastern Siberia, fielding 100,000 troops, 1 million rifles and 700 heavy g*ns. Surrendered (Janary 1920) when 80% of his peasant army deserted

• Black Army, an anacharist movement which fielded over 110,000 soldiers

• Throughout the Civil War, 9.5 million died to starvation and disease, and 500,000 died in combat

• Roughly 70 million people in Soviet Russia vs 8-10 million in White-held areas

• Trotsky organised the Bolsheviks’ Red Guards into a profession army of 5 million men

• Propaganda depicted the conflict as a class war against capitalist bourgeoisie and exploitative kulaks

• White Army factions included ‘The Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR)’ (in November 1919 came within 300 kilometres of Moscow, but were defeated by early 1920), Kolchak’s Siberian Forces (leader, Kolchak, executed on 7 Feruary 1920), and North-Western Army (which numbered only 14,400 men at its peak)

• Japan sent 70,000 soldiers into eastern Siberia by November 1918

Soviet-Polish War

• April 1920: Poland invaded Ukraine

• Following Battle of Warsaw (12-25 August 1920), Red Arm was routed and forced to retreat

• October 1920: Communists negotiated an armistice with Poland

• 18 March 1921: Treaty of Riga (peace treaty) was ratified

• It granted Poland 30 million in gold roubles, Ukrainian + Belorussian territory and material for railways

• Enabled Soviets to stop fighting Poland and deal with other short-term concerns

L7: The Cheka

• Created on 20 December 1917

• 23 men in 1917 to 100,000 in 1921

• 1918 alone: Killed 8389, arrested 87,000

• During Civil War: 140,000 killed by the Cheka brutally

• 17 July 1918: Tsar Nicholas and his family, their cook, maid, doctor and dog were executed by the Cheka, dissolved in sulphuric acid

L8: The Red + White Terror

• The Red Terror (September 1918-1922)

• 30 August 1918: Fanya Kaplan’s assassination attempt of Lenin + assassination of Moisei Uritsky (head of Petrograd Cheka) escalated Cheka atrocities until 1922

• 5 September 1918: Launched officially with Sovnarkom decree “On Red Terror”

• The White Terror: 50,000 to 200,000 Jews murdered

• Major General William S. Graves testified that anti-Bolshevik forces killed 100 for every 1 person killed by the Bolsheviks

L9+10: War Communism

• 1918-1921

• Industrial output plummeting to 15% of pre-war levels

• Number of industrial workers fell from 3.02 million in 1917 to 1.48 million in 1921

• 1917-1921: Amount of land under cultivation dropped 40%, harvests around 37% of the usual yield

• The state took control of all industrial production. Confiscating all factories employing over 10 people throughout Bolshevik controlled areas

• Factory jobs were allocated, not chosen

• Food rations based on a person’s work

• Artificial hyperinflation

• Meat was 3000 roubles a pound

• Petrograd workers’ purchasing power was diminished by 20 times

• Pipes estimates in the winter of 1919-1920, 66-80% of foodstuffs in Russian cities came from black markets.

• 11 June 1918: Kombeds (Committees of the Poor) established to acquisition food from kulaks.

• 1918-1919: 131,637 different kombeds were established

• December 1918: Committees of the Poor were abandoned

L11: 1921 Famine

• 2-5 million deaths from the famine

• 1921: Rainfall in some areas decreased from 38.8 to 0.3 millimetres

• 1913: Russia produced 80.1 million tonnes of grain

• 1920: Dropped to 46.1 million tonnes

• One canton in the Volga region had 2 orphanages at the start of the famine which grew to 12 orphanages by 1922

• 1921-1922: 1127 trains of Ukrainian grain were sent out of Ukraine despite 200,000-1 million who died in Ukraine from famine

• Up to 1.6 million people had died of staation in Petrograd by the time foreign aid arrived

• The America Relief Administration (ARA) wanted to provide relief for Russians but they rejected it until it eventually got too bad. It fed 10 million daily by the end of its first year of operations

L12: Peasant Uprisings

• 1920-1921

• 1921: 4.4 million peasant conscripts were demobilised from the Red Army, beginning to rebel against War Communism

• 50 major peasant uprisings took place

• Tambov Revolt was the largest peasant rebellion against Bolsheviks

• Tambov Revolt demanded political equality, end of Civil War, Constituent Assembly, supply of necssities, partial denationalisation of factories etc.

• 20,000 soldiers and 20,000 peasant militiamen took part in the armed struggle

• Bolsheviks diverted 100,000 Red Army soldiers to crush rebellion

• 50,000 supporters (mostly women and children) were placed in concentration camps, where 15-20% died in a month

• Total losses among population of Tambov region (war, executions and imprisonment) equalled 240,000

L13: Kronstadt Revolt

• Early 1921:

• Income per head had been reduced to 1/3 of levels in 1913

• Industrial production reduced to 1/5

• Coal mining was 1/10

• Iron production was 1/14

• Feb 1921: Over 118 separate peasant uprising reported

• Jan 1921: Government announced bread ration for Moscow + Petrograd to be reduced by 1/3

• First two weeks of February 1921: No trains with grain had arrived in Moscow warehouses

• 26 February - 17 March 1921

• Kronstadt sailors took part in the 1905 Revolution, the February Revolution, October Revolution and the Civil War (loyal supporters of the Bolsheviks)

• 60% of large factories had closed by February 1921

• 1 March 1921: Kronstadt Sailors published a document titled “What We Are Fighting For”

• 1 March 1921: Published the Kronstadt Petition, demanding new elections for soviets, free speech, freedom of assembly, abolition of Cheka and freedom for peasant’s land

• 17 March 1921: Trotsky orders army to crush the revolt.

• 16,000 Kronstadt sailors vs 60,000 Red Army and Cheka troops

• 5000 sailors killed vs 10,000 Reds killed

• 2329 Kronstadt Sailors were captured and executed, 6459 captured and sent to forced labour camps

L14. Tenth Party Congress

• 8-16 March 1921

• Bolshevik Party Congress was an annual meeting held since the party’s split in 1903

• As early as 1905: Lenin began to formulate policy called ‘democreatic centralism’ (fully defined by 1917). It meant every party member was free to debate + vote although decisions made by the Party would need to be followed

• Attended by 1000 party delegates representing 750,000 Communist Party members

• 1920: Worker’s Opposition, formed by Alexandra Kollontai (who founded the Women’s Department of the Party in 1919) and Alexander Shlyapnikov was founded

• Key Resolutions include ‘On the Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in Our Party’ (passed in 1921 at 10th Party Congress)

• It labelled the Workers’ Opposition as anarcho-syndicalist (movement that wanted unions to control society, rather than the party)

• ‘On Party Unity’ (passed at 10th Party Congress) made it illegal to form factions within the Party

L15: New Economic Policy

• March 1921

• Introduced at Tenth Party Congress

• Currency re-established in the form of gold back chervonets

• Grain requisitioning abonded, replaced with tax and only a certain percentage of harvest to be collected

• Markets legalised, businessmen could open trading stores, causing NEPmen to emerge (small private traders who profit from this trade)

• Small factories rented out to private owners (bourgeoisie)

• Trade re-opened with foreign companies

• Food rationing phased out, cash wages reintroduced

• Labour armies, volunteer shifts and troops stationing in factories abolished

• ELECTRIFICATION OF RUSSIA (1920-1930)

• 1920: GOELRO (State Commission for the Electrification of Russia) carried out long-term development of Russia’s economy

• GOSPLAN (State General-Planning Commission) given the task of organising introduction of electricity in industry

• Achieved through construction of large hydroelectric dams (only 3/10 were built before 1930) + expansion of electric network

• 1 billion gold roubles invested in this project

• Electricity output increased from 520 million kilowatts in 1920 to 3508 million kilowatts in 1926

• EFFECTS OF NEP

• 1921-1925: Grain production doubled

• By 1922: Livestock production surpassed pre-war levels

• By 1927: Steel and coal production returned to pre-war levels

• SCISSORS CRISIS (1923)

• Early 1923: Food prices halved because of an oversupply of food

• By 1923: Industrial goods cost almost tripled from 1913 prices

• Food prices were at 90% of 1913 levels

• Industrial prices were at 300% of 1913 levels

• By 1924: Industrial prices began to fall, gap narrowed