Problems posed to Lenin

Issues from the Decree on Peace in October 1917

• Decree of peace was a plea to other nations for an immediate truce with no harsh peace treaty

• Russian army at the Front disintegrated, soldiers had no desire to die, German army was free to walk into Russia

• Western allies ignored the Decree on Peace

Dealing with war

• January 1918, Bolsheviks are opposed to Lenin’s policy of peace at any price

• Central Committee vote 9-7 to accept Trotsky’s policy of ‘neither war nor peace’

• Lenin threatens to resign in February 1918, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signd in March

Consequences of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• Russia lost control of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Finand and land in the Baltic

• Amounted to 1/6th of the population, over ¼ of farm land and railways and almost ¾ of iron ore and coal

• Left SRs resigned from Sovnarkom in protest, assassinated German ambassador in July

• Throughout Russia was seen as a shameful peace

Consolidation of the one-party state

• Red Guards demobilised and a new Red Army of workers and peasants was formed

• Separation decree removed the Church’s judicial powers, religious printing presses were closed down

• Decrees nationalised industry and abolished land ownership, land was given to those wished to cultivate it for the benefit of the community

• From May 1918 Bolsheviks enacted a policy of War Communism as part of the effort to win the Russian Civil War