Theme 1- Lenin

Sovnarkom

• The new Russian cabinet

• made up of 13 peoples commissars, including Leon Trotsky(head of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs) and Joseph Stalin(People's commissariat of Nationality Affairs)- all of whom were revolutionaries

• Lenin was head of sovnarkom

Decrees

• The Decree on Land(October 1917)-giving peasants the right to seize land from the notability of the church

• The Decree of Peace(October 1917)-committed the new government to withdrawing from the First World War and seeking peace

• The Worker's Decree(November 1917)- established an eight hour maximum working day and a minimum wage

• The Decree of Worker's Control(April 1918)- allowed workers to elect committees to run factories. -allowed Lenin to establish control over Russia by gaining support from the peasants and soldiers and also by shifting the focus away from war so that economic rebuilding and government reconstruction could be prioritised.

The Constituent Assembly

• election results in November 1917 created Constituent Assembly with bolshevik minority

• met for the first time in January 1918 Lenin closed the constituent Assembly after only one day with force as he believed that it posed a threat to the power of the Soviets

--Consolidate Bolshevik control

Treaty Of Brest-Litovsk

• gave away a significant proportion of Russian territory to the central powers in order to end Russia's involvement in the First World War

• extremely unpopular- bolsheviks did not win elections in April and May 1918

• Lenin ignored these results to retain power Mensheviks and socialists revolutionaries removed from soviets

--consolidating bolshevik power

Civil War

• ‘battle between Communist Reds and reactionary Whites’

• senior methods of the Russian army wanted to re-establish Tsarist rule

• others wanted a military dictatorship or a democratic system like France or America.

• The SRs and Mensheviks wanted a more democratic type of socialist government

• anarchists wanted to abolish government altogether

• January 1918-General Kornilov organised anti-Bolshevik army in Don region

• SRs and liberals set up a rival government in Siberia, others based in city of Ufa tried to revive Constituent Assembly

• Summer 1918- civil war broke out

• Following failure of anti Bolshevik forces to capture Petrograd and Moscow in the summer of 1919, the Red army began to win the war

Civil War Impact

• Lenin’s government became increasingly centralised and authoritarian

• The communist party became increasingly powerful

• A One Party state could be justified( Bolsheviks portrayed themselves as the only defenders of the revolution)

Civil War Methods

• Lenin’s prime method of ensuring victory was to centralise power

• He centralised control of the economy with policy of war communism- which supplied the army with food through grain requisitioning and rationing

• relied on political centralisation- working through loyal party nomenklatura

• using terror to supress opposition

• Trotsky made the Red Army more authoritarian by introducing conscription, harsh punishments and relied on former Tsarist generals to lead army. quickly raising army of 3000 men

• all politics were passed through Politburo rather than sovnarkom

• —This centralisation ensured that the government, economy and army were able to win the war BUT also took away the power from the workers, peasants and soldiers who communism claimed to represent.

Popular Unrest

• the civil war had ruined Russia’s economy, droughts in 1920 and 1921 made situation worse and threatened famine.

• January 1921- 50,000 anti communist fighters and Peasants in Tambov,led by Aleksandr Antonov begun a rebellion against grain requisitioning and cheka brutality.This was stopped by gov sending 100,000 people to labour camps and attacking peasant villages with poisonous gas.

• March 1921- peasant attacks on government grain stores all along the Volga river

• Early 1921- strikes against communist policies. This was met by The Red Army in Petrograd opening fire on unarmed workers.

• This led to Kronstadt sailors demanding a series of reforms( freedom for political prisoners, restoration of free speech, abolition of cheka and end of war communism), ultimately a return to soviet democracy. By mid march, the Red Army had stopped this.

One-Party State

• February 1921-Lenin authorised the Cheka to destroy opposition political parties.

• All Mensheviks in Petrograd and Moscow, including one of the Monshevik’s leaders, Fyodor Dan, were arrested and sent to Butyraka prison.

• 22 leaders against SRs were put on trial in early 1922 and sentenced to prison or exile.

• —the communists dominance between 1921 and 192 was consolidated by the crushing opposition political parties.

The 1921 Congress

• Lenin recognised that the unrest in Tambov, Petrograd and Kronstadt were deeply dissastisfied with regime.

• So Lenin pushed through series of reforms in 1921 Part Congress

• NEP introduced to liberalise economy

• ‘On party unity’ banned factions inside party- strengthened power

• faced opposition by workers( wanted to reintroduce worker’s control of industry) and democratic centralists: a group who wanted to make communist party more democratic.

political centralisation under Lenin

• Political centralisation under Lenin

• By 1921, the soviets lost power to the Communist PartyThis caused a form of government known as the one-party state

• Political authority became increasingly concentrated in the PolitburoThis side-lined the larger Central Committee and Sovnarkom

• Real power lay in the hands of a few senior leaders

• Lenin became General Secretary of the Communist Party

• Other senior members included Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Stalin

• The principle of Democratic Centralism meant decisions, once made, could not be challenged

Lenin’s use of terror

The Role Of The Cheka

• The Cheka, created in December 1917 under Felix Dzerzhinsky, became the main instrument of repression

• It had powers of arrest, censorship, execution, and operated outside the courts

• By 1922, the Cheka was reorganised into the GPU, marking the permanent embedding of political policing

The Red Terror (1918–21)

• The Red Terror began in autumn 1918 as a campaign of mass arrests, executions, and hostage-taking against 'class enemies'

• Targets included former tsarist officials, priests, landowners, rival political groups, such as the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries

• Tens of thousands were executed without trial

• More people were sent to labour camps

• In the countryside, grain requisitioning caused the Russian Famine of 1921-1922.This resulted in death of millions of peasants.

Significance of Terror

• Terror became a normal feature of Soviet government, not just a temporary Civil War measure

• It eliminated political opposition and enforced Bolshevik control

• The methods of terror created under Lenin created the framework for Stalin’s later system of mass repression