How were the Bolsheviks able to consolidate their power up
to 1921
v Bolshevik reforms and the establishment of a dictatorship
The aftermath of the October Revolution
§ Lenin needed to ensure survival of his party after the fall of the
Provisional Government
§ Needed a period of stability to create a socialist state
§ Still at war
§ Petrograd – civil servants went on strike paralysing the
institutions of government
§ Fighting continued and the hold the Bolsheviks had was
weakening
§ Railway union – Vikzhel – threatened to cut off supplies unless
the Bolsheviks agreed to form a government with the
Mensheviks
§ The main governmental body was the Council of People’s
Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin,
§ declared that it had the right to pass laws independently of the
Petrograd Soviet.
§ Alongside this was the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party, the body that had directed the October Revolution under
Lenin’s leadership.
§ It was the highest authority within the party between its annual
congresses.
§ From 1919, it appointed a five-member body, the Politburo,
which became the real centre of power in the Soviet Union.
§ The new government’s first acts were attempts to pass into law
elements of the Bolshevik slogan, ‘Peace, Land and Bread’.
§ The ‘Decree on Land’ urged the break-up of large estates and
the transfer of land to the peasants, something which was
already happening unofficially in the countryside.
§ The ‘Decree on Peace’ stated that Russia aimed to withdraw
from the war without ‘payment of indemnities or annexations’.
, § This was an appeal to the war-weary soldiers still fighting at
the front. The ‘Decree on Workers’ Control’ recognised the
takeover of factories by workers’ committees.
The Red Terror and the police state
§ Bolsheviks intended to construct a police state.
§ The opposition press was banned and members of other
parties were arrested.
§ The Left SRs were admitted to the Sovnarkom for opportunistic
reasons: they had broken away from the Social Revolutionaries
to accept the October Revolution, and their links to the
peasants made them useful.
§ The functions of the MRC were transferred early in December
1917 to a new body, the Cheka, a secret police force modelled
on the tsarist Okhrana.
§ Its leader, the Polish-born Felix Dzerzhinsky - ruthless
§ Undertook the ‘battle to the death’ against supporters of
counter-revolution. This was the beginning of the terror
§ The confiscation of property, under the slogan ‘Loot the
looters’, accompanied physical abuse and murder.
§ One of the most violent episodes was the killing of the former
tsar and his family in July 1918.
§ The family had been kept under house arrest since the
revolution and in their final months were moved to
Ekaterinburg in Siberia.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, January 1918
§ Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in November
1917, using the secret ballot and with all Russian citizens over
the age of 20 allowed to vote.
§ The Bolsheviks did well in Petrograd and Moscow but they
polled poorly in rural areas,
§ The Socialist Revolutionaries emerged as the largest party
§ The breakaway Left SRs, who were still allied to the Bolsheviks,
to 1921
v Bolshevik reforms and the establishment of a dictatorship
The aftermath of the October Revolution
§ Lenin needed to ensure survival of his party after the fall of the
Provisional Government
§ Needed a period of stability to create a socialist state
§ Still at war
§ Petrograd – civil servants went on strike paralysing the
institutions of government
§ Fighting continued and the hold the Bolsheviks had was
weakening
§ Railway union – Vikzhel – threatened to cut off supplies unless
the Bolsheviks agreed to form a government with the
Mensheviks
§ The main governmental body was the Council of People’s
Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin,
§ declared that it had the right to pass laws independently of the
Petrograd Soviet.
§ Alongside this was the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party, the body that had directed the October Revolution under
Lenin’s leadership.
§ It was the highest authority within the party between its annual
congresses.
§ From 1919, it appointed a five-member body, the Politburo,
which became the real centre of power in the Soviet Union.
§ The new government’s first acts were attempts to pass into law
elements of the Bolshevik slogan, ‘Peace, Land and Bread’.
§ The ‘Decree on Land’ urged the break-up of large estates and
the transfer of land to the peasants, something which was
already happening unofficially in the countryside.
§ The ‘Decree on Peace’ stated that Russia aimed to withdraw
from the war without ‘payment of indemnities or annexations’.
, § This was an appeal to the war-weary soldiers still fighting at
the front. The ‘Decree on Workers’ Control’ recognised the
takeover of factories by workers’ committees.
The Red Terror and the police state
§ Bolsheviks intended to construct a police state.
§ The opposition press was banned and members of other
parties were arrested.
§ The Left SRs were admitted to the Sovnarkom for opportunistic
reasons: they had broken away from the Social Revolutionaries
to accept the October Revolution, and their links to the
peasants made them useful.
§ The functions of the MRC were transferred early in December
1917 to a new body, the Cheka, a secret police force modelled
on the tsarist Okhrana.
§ Its leader, the Polish-born Felix Dzerzhinsky - ruthless
§ Undertook the ‘battle to the death’ against supporters of
counter-revolution. This was the beginning of the terror
§ The confiscation of property, under the slogan ‘Loot the
looters’, accompanied physical abuse and murder.
§ One of the most violent episodes was the killing of the former
tsar and his family in July 1918.
§ The family had been kept under house arrest since the
revolution and in their final months were moved to
Ekaterinburg in Siberia.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, January 1918
§ Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in November
1917, using the secret ballot and with all Russian citizens over
the age of 20 allowed to vote.
§ The Bolsheviks did well in Petrograd and Moscow but they
polled poorly in rural areas,
§ The Socialist Revolutionaries emerged as the largest party
§ The breakaway Left SRs, who were still allied to the Bolsheviks,
