3.2 - Consequences of Russian Revolution INTERPRETATIONS

Question 1

Interpretations
Early Bolshevik Rule
x4

Answer 1

• “the only people in Russia who had a definite programme of action” (Reed)
• Decrees “were designed to inspire, to excite and to instigate” (Service)
• “marked a reversion to the autocratic practices of Tsarist Russia” (Pipes)
• October Revolution “generated an exhilarating sense of a new world” (Smith)

Question 2

Interpretations
Significance of Dissolution of Constituent Assembly
x2

Answer 2

• “The machine gun became … the principle instrument of political persuasion” (Pipes)
• “passed almost unnoticed” (Serge)

Question 3

Interpretations
Impact of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
x4

Answer 3

• “Lenin’s insistence … had paid off and his reputation as the Party’s wise and eminent leader grew” (Ryan)
• “a device … to trade space for time which they needed to consolidate their revolutionary rule” (Crompton)
• “The division of opinion led… to the worst crisis in the history of the Bolshevik Party” (Pipes)
• “made civil war almost inevitable” (Corin)

Question 4

Interpretations
Origins of Civil War
x1

Answer 4

• “The claim to absolute authority by the Bolsheviks made civil war unavoidable” (Lynch)

Question 5

Interpretations
Reasons for Bolshevik Success in Civil War
x2

Answer 5

• Trotsky “provided political linkage and political oversight… [and] was also a spellbinding speaker, able to galvanise dispirited troops” (Pipes)
• Bolsheviks “had geography on their side” (Service)

Question 6

Interpretations
Impact of Civil War on Bolsheviks
x1

Answer 6

• “created a tradition of military obedience and loyalty” (Lynch)

Question 7

Interpretations
Bolshevik Use of Terror
x5

Answer 7

• “measure designed to nip in the bud any thoughts of resistance” (Pipes)
• “believed that over-killing was better than the risk of being overthrown” (Service)
• “implicit in the regime from the start… to silence their political critics and subjugate a society that they could not control by other means” (Figes)
• “The Cheka continued a long tsarist political police tradition” (Leggett)
• “Lenin himself was the patron saint of the Cheka” (Volkogonov)

Question 8

Interpretations
State Capitalism
x1

Answer 8

• “stressed the importance of drawing on the skills of old managers and owners… supervision, not replacement of them was needed” (Wade)

Question 9

Interpretations
War Communism
x3

Answer 9

• “a siege economy with a communist ideology. A partly organised chaos” (Nove)
• “a leap into socialism” (McCauley)
• “an instrument of struggle against [the Bolshevik’s] social or ‘internal’ enemies” (Figes)

Question 10

Interpretations
Great Famine of 1921
x2

Answer 10

• “a problem which, for the first time, they could not solve with resort to force” (Heller)
• “a major embarrassment” (Figes)

Question 11

Interpretations
Kronstadt Revolt
x3

Answer 11

• “a symbolic parting of the ways between the working class and the Bolshevik Party” (Fitzpatrick)
• “a senseless and criminal agony” (Serge)
• “repudiated some of the utopian… goals of the revolution” (Kenez)

Question 12

Interpretations
New Economic Policy
x6

Answer 12

• “a leap out of socialism” (McCauley)
• “A strategic retreat… forced on the Bolsheviks by desperate economic conditions” (Fitzpatrick)
• Bolsheviks viewed the NEP as “a malignant cancer” (Service)
• “a serious attempt to build socialism on the basis of a mixed economy” (Figes)
• “New Exploitation of the Proletariat” (Figes)
• “a large-scale retreat, another breathing space, a Brest-Litovsk on the economic front” (Hill)

Question 13

Interpretations
Show Trials
x1

Answer 13

• “polished, political production” (Ryan)

Question 14

Interpretations
Use of Propaganda
x1

Answer 14

• “surrogate reality” (Ryan)

Question 15

Interpretations
Education Reforms
x1

Answer 15

• “education became a hotbed of anarchists” (Pipes)

Question 16

Interpretations
First Soviet Criminal Code
x1

Answer 16

• “hardly possible to have gone further in the destruction of law and due process” (Pipes)

Question 17

Interpretations
Role of Women
x1

Answer 17

• “engaged in all the activities that prepared the way for the party’s seizure of power in October” (Clemens)

Question 18

Interpretations
Role of Kollantai
x1

Answer 18

• “fought single-mindedly for the socialist course. But… having established herself as an oppositionist, she was isolated from decision making” (Farnsworth)

Question 19

Interpretations
On Party Unity
x1

Answer 19

• “the logical climax of the policy… of suppressing all opposition to Bolshevik rule” (Lynch)

Question 20

Interpretations
Impact of Russian Revolution
x6

Answer 20

• “the Russian Revolution is the greatest event of its kind in history… there emerged a new state order, a new economic system, a new world outlook, a new economic conception of life and ethics” (Chamberlin)
• “a harbinger of social justice and reform” (Smith)
• “hideous inhumanities” (Smith)
• “Their promises rapidly changed into coercion, limitation, alteration, a different ‘reading’ or outright denial” (Volkogonov)
• “the gap between intentions and reality was extraordinarily wide” (Kenez)
• “The proletarian coach that had brought Cinderella to the revolution had turned into a pumpkin” (Fitzpatrick)

Question 21

Interpretations
Failure of Revolution
x1

Answer 21

• “a monumental failure: it succeed in one thing only – staying in power” (Pipes)

Question 22

Interpretations
Lenin and Power
x1

Answer 22

• “He enjoyed power, he lusted after it. He yearned to keep his party in power” (Service)