Chapter 12 - The establishment of Bolshevik government

Question 1

When did Lenin return to Russia?

Answer 1

3rd April 1917

Question 2

What did Lenin do when he first got to Russia?

Speech

Answer 2

• Finland Station in Petrograd
• rousing speech
• the gist of his words were later written down in the ‘April Thesis’ and published in the Pravda

Question 3

What did the April Thesis demand?

Answer 3

• power should be transferred to the soviets
• the war should be brought to an immediate end
• all land should be taken over by the State and re-allocated to peasants by local soviets

Lenin also stressed a no-cooperation policy with the PG, which gave rise to the motto “all power to the soviets”

Question 4

Slogan

Answer 4

“peace, bread and land”

Question 5

What were Lenin’s beliefs on revolution?

Answer 5

• the Russian middle class was too weak to carry through a full ‘bourgeois revolution’
• to allow the middle classes to continue in power was to hold the inevitable proleterian revolution back

Question 6

What were intial reactions the Lenin’s reappearances?

Answer 6

• some Bolsheviks feared that Lenin had grown out of touch and that his radical proposals would do more harm than good
• allegations that Lenin was in the pay of Germans
• Mensheviks feared Lenin would undermine what they had been doing and, by stirring up discontent, would provoke a right-wing reaction
• Some though Lenin’s call to oppose the PG was unrealistic since the Bolsheviks had only 26,000 members and were still in a minority among the socialists
• the Bolsheviks were divided among themselves over whether to cooperate with the PG or not

Question 7

By when had Lenin won over the majority of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party?

Answer 7

The end of April.

He had won majority through his personality

Question 8

What happened at the first ‘All-Russian Congress of Soviets’ in Petrograd on the 3rd of June 1917?

Answer 8

• passed a vote of confidence for the PG
• 543 votes to 126
• however, Trotsky decided to fully support the Bolsheviks

Question 9

When were the July Days?

Answer 9

3rd - 5th of July 1917

Question 10

What were the July Days?

Answer 10

• increase in grain prices (doubled) due to a poor harvest and a shortage of fuel and raw materials
• led to the closing of 586 factories
• also the loss of 100,000 jobs
• 20,000 armed sailors from Kronstadt joined workers and soldiers on the street
• chanted Bolshevk slogans, attacked property, looted shops, and seized the railway stations and other key buildings

Question 11

What was the result of the July Days?

Answer 11

• warrants for the arrests of Bolsheviks
• Lenin had to flee
• rumours about Lenin spread (paid by Germans, for example)
• Bolshevik propaganda was burned
• seemed the Bolsheviks had lost their chance

Question 12

The Kornilov Affair

Answer 12

• Bolsheviks released from prison
• Kerensky (Prime Minister) supplied them with arms over fears of Kornilov
• supposedly defending the PG
• Bolsheviks worked with the Red Guards

Question 13

What was the result of the Kornilov affair?

Answer 13

• Bolsheviks gained the reputation of having been the only group to have opposed Kornilov consistently
• Lenin sent the order from Finland: keep up pressure and set up ‘Committees to save the Revolution’ were set up throughout the country
• Bolsheviks were elected in increased numbers

Question 14

How much did Bolshevik support increase by (%) between June and December 1917?

Answer 14

164%

Question 15

What was the number of the increase in Bolshevik membership Feb-Oct 1917? What were the Bolsheviks doing to increase membership?

Answer 15

23,000 in Feb
200,000 by the beginning of October

At the time, Bolsheviks were:
- producing 41 newspapers
- maintaining a force of 100,000 Red Guards in the capital’s factories

Question 16

Limitation with the Bolshevik party’s effectiveness?

Structure

Answer 16

• weren’t a tightly organised or discpilined group
• tended to go along with events rather than initiate

Question 17

What happened in mid-September 1917 in the Bolshevik party?

Answer 17

• Lenin demanded a revolution and the seizure of power
• Zinoviev and Kamenev feared that Russia wasn’t economucally ready for revolution, so they urged restraint
• on 12th Septemeber Lenin wrote: “History will not forgive us if we do not assume power now”
• but 3 days later, the committee voted against a coup
• Zinoviev and Kamenev suggested that nothing be done before the results of the Constituant Assembly elections

Question 18

What happened on the 7th of October?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 18

• Lenin secretly returns to Petrograd
• attend Central Committee meeting
• win them over in person to the policy of taking power immediately
• appointed commissars to military units - controlled over 200,000 Red Guards, 60,000 baltic sailors and 150,000 soldiers

Question 19

What happened on the 10th of October?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 19

• Lenin attends a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee
• succeeded (vote of 10 to 2) in persuading them that revolution should be immediate
• Zinoviev and Kamenev refused to agree

Question 20

What happened on the 20th of October?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 20

The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet meet for the first time

Question 21

What happened on the 24th-25th of October?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 21

• led by the Bolsheviks and organised by the Military Revolutionary Committee
• armed workers and 5,000 sailors and soldiers from Kronstadt take over key buildings and communication centres in Petrograd
• these key buildings included the telephone exchange, the post office, railway stations, the news agency, the state bank, bridges, and power station
• in the morning 3,000 further troops arrived
• on the evening of the 25th of October, the government met in an emergency session
• Red Guards soldiers and sailors surrounded the palace
• a blank shot from the guns of the battleship Aurora was heard - signal for the beginning of Bolshevik attack

Question 22

What happened on the 26th-27th of October?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 22

• remaining members of the PG are arrested by the Bolsheviks
• revolution is announced at the second Congress of Soviets - where 670 delegates attend
• moderates walk out, leaving a Bolsheviks and SR coalition, which played into the Bolsheviks hands
• the congress adopts Lenin’s decree on peace and decree on land and appoints the first Soviet government - the Council of the People’s Commissars (or Sovnarkom)
• Lenin is the chairman

Question 23

What happened in December 1917?

Bolshevik takeover

Answer 23

the Cheka is established (secret police)

Question 24

Comments on the size of the October Revolution in 1917

Answer 24

• relatively small-scale affair
• Trotsky claimed that 25,000-30,000 were actively involved (5% of all the workers and soldiers in the city)
• may have been smaller
• but it suited the Bolsheviks to claim that it was larger
• much of Petrograd remained unaffected by the disturbances - trams and taxis ran as normal; restaurants, theatres and cinemas remained open

Question 25

The Sovnarkom

Answer 25

• only Bolsheviks
• Lenin = chairman
• one female commissar = Alexandra Kollontai

Question 26

Decrees issued by the Sovnarkom

Answer 26

27th October:
- decree on peace promised to end the war
- decree on land abolished private ownership of land and legitimised peasant seizures without compensation to landlords (reduced peasant support for SRs and provided space for the consolidation of Bolshevik rule)

November:
- nationality decree promised self-determination to the peoples of the former Russian Empire
- new legal system of elected people’s courts
- government outlawed sex discrimination and gave women the right to own property; decree against titles, all to become ‘citizens’

December:
- military decree removed class-ranks, saluting and military decorations from the army; officers were to be elected directly by the soldiers’ soviets
- decrees on the Church nationalised Church land and removed marriage and divorce from Church control
- nationalisation of banks ended the private flow of capital

Question 27

Issues with the Bolshevik positon

issues with the banks

Answer 27

took the state bank 10 days to hand over reserves. And they did this only under the threat of armed intervention.

Question 28

Initial opposition to the Bolshevik rise to power

Answer 28

• Kerensky rallied an army comprising of 18 Cossack regiments and a small force of SR cadets and officers
• the Bolsheviks looked weak against this threat
• Lenin had no direct contact with troops at the front and the Petrograd garrison had returned to their homes in the countryside
• 10 days of fighting
• railway workers and communications workers went on strike in protest against the emergence of a one-party government
• Bolshevik agitators persuaded some of Kerensky’s troops to defect saved the Bolshevik revolution

Question 29

When did Lenin allow left-wing SR’s to join the Sovnarkom?

Answer 29

December 1917
It was made clear to them that they had to follow Bolshevik lead

Question 30

Bolshevik means of combating opposition

Answer 30

• propaganda campaign against political and class enemies - particularly the bourgeoise
• the closure of anti-Bolshevik newspapers
• a purge of the civil service
• the establishment of the Cheka in Dec 1917
• leading Kadets, right-wing SRs and Mensheviks were rounded up and imprisoned in December

Question 31

The Constituent Assembly elections

Statistics

Answer 31

SRs = 21.8million votes; 410 seats; 53%
Bolsheviks = 10 million votes; 175 seats; 24%

Question 32

When did the Constituent Assembly first meet?

Answer 32

5th January 1918.
But Lenin dissolved it.

Question 33

What did Lenin believe

the Bolsheviks understood…

Answer 33

Bolsheviks understood the needs of the proleteriat better than the proleteriat themselves