bolshevik aims

When the Bolsheviks were established

Bolshevik Party had been established in 1903 as one of several revolutionary groups that wished to bring about change in Russia.

The Bolsheviks main target

the increasingly outdated and repressive Tsarist regime that ruled Russia and was, after 1894, in the hands of Tsar Nicholas II.

Why the Tsarist regime collapsed

The Tsarist regime collapsed in February 1917 under the strains of the First World War, to be followed by a period of great uncertainty.

Bolsheviks seize of power

The chaos of 1917 provided the Bolsheviks with an unexpected opportunity to seize power and put their aims into practice: to get rid of the upper and middle classes who exploited the workers and peasants under the capitalist system that had developed with the Industrial Revolution

The Bolsheviks believed that this system should be replaced by socialism, through which a government representing the workers would improve the living and working conditions of the people as a whole

Eventually communism would be established, when the people would have control over their own lives.

The Bolsheviks vs Karl Marx

• Karl Marx wrote extensively on the economic system that had developed during the Industrial Revolution and his ideas were the basis of much socialist thought

• According to Marx, a process of historical change leading from capitalism to communism was inevitable

• The Bolshevik leader, Lenin, however, believed that - where possible - this process of change should be helped along

• The Bolshevik Party was used as the vanguard of the Revolution. Lenin believed that a highly centralised and disciplined party should seize power on behalf of the proletariat

• Power would then be taken away from the bourgeoisie and placed in the hands of the Bolshevik Party, who would act as a dictatorship of the proletariat to promote socialism by government control over the economy in the interests of the workers

• When the risk of counter-revolution was dealt with, then Lenin believed that the state would wither away and communism would develop

The October Revolution, 1917

• The Bolsheviks seized power in October using a well-planned and well-executed uprising

• The Provisional Government, which had been set up after the fall of the Tsar, was forced from power

• At the time the Bolsheviks were still a small party of about 300,000 members, but in order to justify Bolshevik rule as representing the interests of the workers, the Revolution was portrayed by the Bolsheviks as a mass uprising of the workers

• Propaganda presented the event as a heroic storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd with mass support

• The reality was different

• The only troops left guarding the palace by this time were the Women's Death Battalion, who opened the gates to let the Bolsheviks in

• The nature of the Revolution determined much of what the Bolsheviks did next

• They had seized power with a very limited base of support

• Force would be required to ensure the Bolsheviks, a minority party, held on to power