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Russia Chapter 5
Lenin's Government of Russia 1917-1924. OCR A Level History, Russia 1894-1941
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Distribution of power in Russia | Power appeared to be balanced in Russia with the Sovnarkom at the top, appointed by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, however the Bolsheviks were in fact in control. |
| Distribution of power in the Bolshevik Party | The body with control was the Bolshevik Central Committee, which (although officially elected by Bolsheviks) was in practice under the control of Lenin. |
| State capitalism | Lenin was pragmatic, and introduced 'state capitalism' to help the transition towards full socialism, as the war had caused high levels of famine, inflation and material shortages. |
| Lenin's Decrees | Lenin issued decrees on Peace, Land and Worker's Control, and Nationalisation. The Decree on Nationalisation brought nearly all major Russian industrial enterprises under government control in two years. |
| Vesenkha | Although the Bolsheviks did not fully control Russia, it created Vesenkha in December 1917 to regulate the economy. Initially without full authority, it led to the nationalisation of banks and transportation, and the cancellation of foreign debts. |
| The results of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly election | The Bolsheviks only had around a quarter of the seats, while the SRs had around twice their number and were the largest party. |
| Lenin's issue with the constituent assembly | Lenin saw it as useless, as the Bolsheviks had already taken power. In fact, the mostly non-Bolshevik assembly meant that there was the threat of a public mandate to remove the Bolsheviks from power. |
| Lenin's destruction of the constituent assembly | In January 1918, after one day in session, Lenin had the Red Guards forcibly dissolve the assembly. Lenin argued that the creation of a Soviet government had already represented all Russian people. He also stated that the elections were rigged by SRs. |
| Reactions to Lenin crushing the constituent assembly | Some supporters of the Bolsheviks such as Maxim Gorky criticised it, while foreign communists (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg) also criticised it. Lenin saw its dissolution as necessary to consolidate Bolshevik control, which relied on absolute obedience. |
| Lenin's view on peace with Germany | Lenin saw the Russia could not retake its lands, and Germany would hold onto them if it won in the west. However if it lost Russia would regain their land anyway. Therefore it was better to negotiate to end the war. |
| Trotsky's view on peace with Germany | Trotsky hoped that the German western front would collapse and revolution could begin in Germany, allowing Bolshevik risings, so wanted peace talks to be a slow process. |
| Bolshevik tactics at the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk | Trotsky followed a 'neither peace nor war' slogan, and would be rude or disruptive during negotiations, making revolutionary speeches instead of addressing debates. |
| The final agreement of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk | The Soviets signed a devastating treaty, as Germany was considering marching on Petrograd itself. Trotsky attempted to portray the treaty as a diktat on Russia. It lost 45 million people and 3 billion roubles in reparations. |
| Why did Lenin sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? | Lenin knew that Russia did not have the material strength to defeat Germany, so had to buy time for a future revolutionary struggle. Lenin and Trotsky saw the treaty as insignificant in the face of a coming global class revolution. |
| Left Communists | Some 'left communists' were Bolsheviks who saw driving back Germany as a core part of the revolution, so condemned the treaty. Lenin called for unity in a time of crisis, and when Germany collapsed and removed their troops, Lenin expelled the Left. |
| Why did Lenin want a civil war? | Lenin preferred to take out all rivals at once rather than facing constant rebellions. He feared that the assembly gave other parties the mandate to govern, and insisted that the Bolsheviks rule alone. |
| The Red, White and Green armies | The Reds were the Bolsheviks. The whites were a mix of monarchists and other parties suppressed by the Bolsheviks. The Greens were national minorities (e.g. Ukrainians, Georgians) who sought independence from Russia. |
| The main reason for people joining sides in the civil war | Most civilians just joined sides based on local disputes, and cared less for politics. |
| The issue of hunger in the civil war | Lenin's loss of Ukraine to Germany cut off a large wheat supply, while the transport system was broken. By June 1918, workers in Petrograd received 50g of bread a day, and the workforce shrunk by 60%. Hunger led to many turning against the Reds. |
| The SR Challenge | The SRs were removed from government after the treaty, so planned a coup in Moscow (the new capital). They joined the Whites, but were crushed when their 2000 troops were scattered by Red artillery in July 1918. |
| Assassination attempts on Lenin | The SRs attempted assassinations on Lenin - the second (in August 1918) left Lenin with a bullet in the neck, contributing to his later death. |
| The Czech Legion | 40,000 Czechoslovak troops who had fought for Russia in WW1 made a trip along the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok to escape, harassed by the Bolsheviks along the way. |
| The White Resistance | Multiple generals formed armies in Siberia, central Russia, Ukraine and other areas outside of Russia. The Siberian force was led by Admiral Kolchak, the self-proclaimed ruler of Russia. |
| White army weaknesses | The armies fought separately so were repelled individually; they did not have a single aim; generals were unwilling to sacrifice personal goals to form a united front; they were scattered geographically and were reliant on supplies from abroad. |
| Red army strengths | The Reds were concentrated in areas of western Russia with strong communication and supply lines; Petrograd and Moscow remained in their hands; the strongest industrial and munitions centres were in the west; Trotsky was a key organiser |
| Trotsky's role | Trotsky's strategy depended on lines of communication, denying the Whites the ability to concentrate forces and preventing them from maintaining supplies. Trotsky focused on controlling railways, consolidating power around the west before pushing out. |
| The brutality of the Reds in the civil war | The Reds would give captured soldiers or civilians the choice of joining them or execution. The Whites also tortured Reds and civilians, providing the Reds with propaganda. Morale was better for the Reds, as Trotsky instilled a belief of an eventual win. |
| The grain issue with the Reds | Grain requisitioning lost the sympathy for the Reds from the peasants, however they pointed out that if the Whites won then all land would go back to the previous owners. |
| Effect of the civil war on the Bolshevik party | It strengthened the party in loyalty and obedience, with many veterans later in government. The war also made the party more authoritarian, with top down administration and summary justice. Power was centralised in the Central Committee. |
| How did the civil war end? | The war never officially started or ended, the White leaders merely gave up over time. The final revolt was defeated in June 1923. |
| Russian relations with the Western Allies | The PG had been funded by the allies to stay in the war, but when the German-funded Bolsheviks took power they made peace. Prime Minister LLoyd-George had tried to offer the Bolsheviks the same support as before, saying he was not pro or anti Bolshevik. |
| Hardening attitudes of the Allies and Bolsheviks | When Lenin signed Brest-Litovsk, the allies became determined to retrieve their supplies again. Quickly after the treaty, British, French and U.S. troops occupied parts of northern Russia. They saw revolutions appearing in Europe as a threat. |
| How did the Bolsheviks force other countries into intervening in the civil war? | After taking power, they declared foreign debts void, nationalised foreign companies and froze foreign assets. This angered France in particular, as many foreign investors were from there, so the French led the campaign. |
| Foreign interventions and occupations | French, British, Italian, American, Japanese and various other groups intervened, with occupations in the north, Caucasus and eastern Siberia. No real push was made to depose the Bolsheviks and they rarely worked with Whites, so gradually removed troops. |
| Bolshevik portrayal of foreign interventionists | The Bolsheviks portrayed the foreign withdrawals as a huge military victory - Lenin had saved Russia from foreign conquest. This credited the view that the Whites were controlled by foreign powers, intent on restoring the Tsar. |
| The war against Poland | The victory against foreign armies had encouraged the Bolsheviks to try to retake Poland, expecting them to join their cause. However, the Poles saw the invasion as Russian aggression and repelled it, weakening the prospects of a global revolution. |
| The Cheka are established | The Cheka were established weeks after the revolution to destroy 'counter-revolution and sabotage'. Their leader Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat, said that they aimed to prosecute based on class, not evidence. |
| Cheka powers | The Cheka had unlimited power to arrest and torture any anti-Bolsheviks, to terrorise Russians to conform. In July 1918, they executed the Tsar and his family. Some party members were unsure of the brutality, but accepted it as necessary for resistance. |
| Labour camps | Over 300 labour camps were established by Lenin's death, containing White POWS, SRs, political prisoners and peasants. The camps were harsh with beatings and severe hunger. |
| Show trials | Show trials were put on by the Cheka, including in 1922 when many party leaders and clergy were put on trial. The law was effectively used to extend political control, legitimising terror. |
| Trotsky taking control of the Red Army | Trotsky took the role of War Commissar after Brest-Litovsk and led the Red Army, imposing Bolshevik control on the Russian population. Trade unions were crushed, as Trotsky argued the workers should be militarily organised. |
| Trotsky's organisation of the Red Army | His commands included a ban on protesting orders, ending negotiation over pat or conditions and penalties for poor workmanship. Trotsky turned a bunch of veterans and recruits in 1918 into a 3 million strong army in two years. |
| War Communism: Impact on industry | Centralisation increased Bolshevik influence in the factories by infiltrating workers' committees with commissars. Nationalisation had brought major enterprises under control, although they had shrunk due to conscription or people fleeing. |
| Moscow and Petrograd populations | The populations of Moscow and Petrograd halved from 1918 to 1921 |
| Hyperinflation | The rouble was worth 1% in 1920 to what it was in 1917 |
| War Communism: Impact on agriculture | Lenin saw the main purpose of war communism as controlling agriculture and forcing peasants (who were resistant) to provide food. The government blamed shortages on Kulaks for hoarding grain, although there was no hoarding. |
| Kulaks | Allegedly rich, peasant exploiting farmers who hoarded grain. The reason for the myth was that peasants were simply uninterested in producing food for the government until they paid a fair price for it. |
| Requisition groups | From July 1918, the Cheka were sent to requisition grain by force. From 1918 to 1921 they terrorised the countryside, executing 'kulaks' in public. However peasants started to only produce the bare minimum to feed family, causing shortages. |
| The famine | By 1921 there was a famine - harvests in 1920 and 1921 had produced less than half of the grain gathered in 1913. A government newspaper admitted that 1 in 5 were starving. The US provided grain to feed 10 million, but Lenin ordered this to end in 1923. |
| Casualties caused by famine | Half of the 10 million casualties in the civil war were from starvation. |
| Lenin's approach to the Orthodox Church | Lenin used the famine as a guise to destroy the Orthodox Church. In 1922, Lenin ordered the Politburo to have priests shot in areas hit by famine. |
| War Communism: Enforcement | Despite its grim situation, leading Soviet economists argued for permanent war communism. They saw true socialism as centralised industry, and the Cheka used terror to continue war communism after the war's end. |
| War Communism: Resistance | There were outbreaks of resistance in 1920, with the Cheka being involved in 120 separate uprisings. |
| The Tambov Uprising | Led by Antonov (an SR) in 1920, 20,000 peasant guerrillas fought grain requisitioning squads and executed Reds. However, Red detachments were sent to crush the peasants with executions and kidnap of families. By summer 1921 the uprising was over. |
| The Kronstadt Rising: Cause | Opposition to War communism developed within the party in 1921. The labour commissar and Kollontai (a leading female intellectual) led a 'workers' opposition' by criticising Lenin, going on strike and crossing the ice to reach Kronstadt. |
| The Kronstadt Rising: The manifesto | The rebels called for elections, free speech, free assembly, free press, rights for unions, a multiparty system, ending of extra rations for communists, freedom for individuals to carry food and the withdrawal of political commissars from factories. |
| The Kronstadt Rising: The rising is crushed | Trotsky ordered a general to lead the Red army across the ice bridge to crush the rising. Artillery bombarded the base and 60,000 Red Army troops stormed it, although faced fierce resistance from workers who fought to death. |
| The Kronstadt Rising: Aftermath | Surviving leaders were executed, and escaped rebels were hunted by the Cheka. Lenin justified this by referring to the fact that Mensheviks and SRs supported the rising. Lenin also said that the rising stemmed from severe war communism, leading to the NEP |
| The New Economic Policy (NEP): Purpose | Its main intent was to meet the need for food that terror and war communism were not providing. Peasants could not be forced to make food, so persuasion was better. Lenin faced some support in introducing NEP measures. |
| NEP: Terms | Relaxation of economic centralisation, end of grain requisition and its replacement with a tax, permission for peasants to sell surplus food and the establishment of money and markets. Lenin called the NEP a temporary concession (to maintain power). |
| NEP: Objections | Lenin was putting economy before political theory, worrying Bolsheviks like Trotsky who saw war communism as part of the revolution. He called the NEP the 'first sign of degeneration of Bolshevism'. The return of money and trade caused the most objection. |
| NEP: 'NEPmen' | Some Bolsheviks saw that money and trade could cause a new class of profiting traders/rich peasants. Left Bolsheviks saw the situation as a Bolshevik state ruling over capitalist cities. |
| NEP: The ban on factionalism | The NEP became so contentious that Lenin issued a resolution 'On Party Unity', calling for the end of factions within the party, preventing criticism of government decisions. Lenin also banned all socialist parties other than the Bolsheviks. |
| NEP: Bukharin | Party unity was boosted when Bukharin, a leading economist, abandoned his opposition and supported the NEP. He appealed to peasants to 'enrich yourselves', and believed that excess money could stimulate the economy. He became Lenin's right hand man. |
| NEP: Economic results | From 1921 to 1924, grain went from 38 to 51 million tonnes, heavy factory output more than doubled, electric output tripled and the average wage of an urban worker doubled. The Bolsheviks still commanded the economy, but less so agriculture and trade. |
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