Consolidation of the Bolshevik state

Question 1

How the new government worked

2 decrees: Land, Workers

Answer 1

Lenin formed the Sovnarkom so he didn’t have to share power
Lenin still couldn’t ignore the masses so he brought in decrees:
- Land decree: gave peasants right to divide land
- Worker’s control: factory committees controlled production y workers

Question 2

How did Bolsheviks cope with threats from people

• Cheka
• Political opponents

Answer 2

All opposition newspapers were closed down
Kadet party was denounced
Leading Kadets, SRs y Mensheviks jailed
Cheka was set up on 7th Dec
Class warfare - attacks on bourgeois
Most opposition was weak and uncoordinated

Question 3

How Bolsheviks death with other socialists

- issues for Lenin

Answer 3

There was enormous pressure on the Bolsheviks to form a coalition - most notably from Kamenev and Zinoviev
Lenin made an alliance with the Left SRs - meant he could claim he represented a large part of society
Lenin asserted the idea that the Soviet government represented a higher stage of democracy than that CA

Question 4

3 Bolshevik ideologies to do with WW1

- Lenin, Left, Trotsky

Answer 4

Lenin: believed in peace at any price
Left: (Bukharin) wanted to turn the war in a war that encouraged a EU socialist revolution
Trotsky: neither war nor peace - major disagreement with Lenin

Question 5

Consequences on Brest - Litovsk

Answer 5

Seen as a ‘shameful peace’

Half the human, industrial y agricultural resources of Nicholas II’s empire was lost