Bolsheviks before the seizure of power Flashcards
What is Bolshevik ideology?
- people would be equal
- no poverty
- goods are produced by machines rather than manual labour
- no repression
- no state
- people would only take what they needed
- people would contribute to the best of their ability
Who was Karl Marx
- involved in revolutionary activity in 1848
- published volume 1 of ‘Das Kapital’ in 1867
Who was Friedrich Eagels
- deeply involved in the problems of England’s new working class in 1840s
- assisted Marx financially and in literature
- completed Marx’s Das Kapital
What was The Communist Manifesto (1848)?
The stages of human society shifting to communism
1. There would be conflict between the oppressor and oppressed classes
2. The oppressed would resent the power and wealth of the oppressors
3. This causes them to gain consciousness of this inequality and eventually rise up against their oppressors
4. New stage of society is created
5. New conflict produced and process repeats
6. The dictatorship of the working class would reach a point where workers controlled the stage, causing society to reach communism
What were the two major policy initiatives of the Bolsheviks?
- They were the only party consistently opposing the continuation of the war
- They argued for the immediate seizure of landed estates, not redistribution at some future date as the Provisional Government advocated
What was the Kornilov Revolt?
Kornilov (army commander-in-chief), ordered troops to march on the capital, however, Soviet agitators persuaded them to disperse. A mass of soliders suspected their officers supported Kornilov which resultsed in a sharp decline in army discipline and great increase in desertions.
What was the result of the Kornilov revolt?
It allowed Bolsheviks to win their first majority in the Petrograd Soviet and set up the Bolsheviks for the seizure of power, with 40 000 armed men during the crisis.
Why did Bolsheviks have rising support?
They were the only major party that stood uncompromisingly for Soviet power.
What is a Soviet Government?
They had faith in the need for a bourgeois stage of the revolution which kept the coalition going but after the Kornilov revolt, the socialist parties deiced to break and make a government of their own
What happened during the Bolshevik’s seizure of power?
People had the belief that they wouldn’t last long, allowing the Rightists to impose their own dictatorships. The Petrograd garrison switched their allegiance to the Bolsheviks and the Provisional Government lost military control and it only remained fro the Bolsheviks to walk into the Winter Palace and arrest the minister
The November Revolution,
Bolsheviks: Jan 1917 - few thousand, Sept 1917 - 250 000
- Lenin urged a coup against the government but was ignored
- 23 October he returned to Petrograd and went into hiding
- 6 November groups of Bolshevik Red Guards aided by sailors from the Baltic fleet were moving through the city taking over building with government resistance of 2000 soldiers
- 7 November Kerensky borrowed a car and left the city in search of loyal solider
- The Cruiser Aurora: fired a blank shell towards the Winter Palace
- Lenin came out of hiding and organised the new Bolshevik state
