Establishing Communist Rule - Lenin

Question 1

How many did the Red Terror execute between September 1918 - February 1919?

Answer 1

between 50k and 140k

Question 2

When were non-Bolshevik newspapers banned?

Answer 2

December 1917

Question 3

What were law courts replaced?

Answer 3

Revolutionary Tribunals

Question 4

When was the Tambov revolt and what was it against?

Answer 4

Autumn 1920 - 50,000 fought against war communism

Question 5

When was the Kronstadt rebellion and what did they want?

Answer 5

March 1921
- wanted a return to democracy
- free trade-unions
- an end to grain requisitioning from peasants

Question 6

What two factions within the communist party did Lenin want to get rid of?

Answer 6

• Workers opposition
• Democratic Centralists

Question 7

How many soldiers did the Red Army have by 1920?

Answer 7

5 million

Question 8

What was the treaty signed in 1918 to exit the war?

Answer 8

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Question 9

What were the effects of the civil war?

Answer 9

• million died
• economy severely weakened
• food shortages

Question 10

What was the length of the working day in 1928?

Answer 10

8 hours

Question 11

What were the successes of Lenin’s New Economic Policy?

Answer 11

• Productivity in farming returned to pre-war levels
• economic growth was particularily strong in 1924 + 25, therefore increasing popularity of Bolshevik leadership
• The electrification program

Question 12

Failures of New Economic Policy

Answer 12

• unemployment remained high as many people moved to towns
• exports to other countries never reached the levels of 1913

Question 13

What was the name of the government in 1918?

Answer 13

Sovnarkom

Question 14

Who could stand for elections under Lenin?

Answer 14

Only members of the Bolshevik party

Question 15

Who were the first members of the Politburo?

Answer 15

Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky and Stalin

Question 16

When did Lenin die?

Answer 16

1924

Question 17

When were opposition parties banned?

Answer 17

1921

Question 18

Why did the Bolsheviks need to defeat their opponents so quickly and violently after the october revolution?

Answer 18

• they were trying to achieve something radical
• their revolution was not very popular
• they had forced their way in through violence and would need to maintain this to stay in power

Question 19

Why is Lenin’s legacy seen as authoritarian?

Answer 19

• because of what came after ; he established the structures which stalin would use to terrorise opponents and create an even more dictatorial style of governing

Question 20

What were the 3 decrees Lenin proposed in late 1917?

Answer 20

• Decree on Land (gave peasants the right to seize land from nobility + church)
• Decree of Peace (committed the government to withdrawing from WW1)
• Workers’ Decrees (established 8 hour maximum working day + minimum wage)

Question 21

Why were Lenin’s early decrees beneficial to establishing communist rule?

Answer 21

• they won popular support from workers, peasants + soldiers
• ending WW1 gave the gov ‘breathing space’ to rebuild the economy + construct the new government

Question 22

Initial pre-civil war failures of Lenin’s Sovnarkom

Answer 22

• Had little real power
• Extremely disorganised
• Stalin’s Commissariat for Nationalities was just a desk in the corner
• The commissariat of Fianance was initially a sofa with a bit of paper bearing the words ‘commissariat of Fianance’

Question 23

How democratic was Russia in 1918?

Answer 23

• Lenin claimed it was more democratic than the West
• Russia was not yet a one party state
• The policies do reflect the wishes of the people

Question 24

How did Lenin use terror?

Answer 24

• Lenin initiated the use of the Secret Police in 1917
• He used the Cheka to crush the contituent assembly on the 5th of January 1918 when the Social Revolutionaries got more votes
• Ordered the arrest of 5000 Mensheviks in 1921
• Kronstadt mutiny - bruttally put to an end by the Red Army

Question 25

How does Lenin’s terror differ from Stalins?

Answer 25

• Lenin did not use terror against his own party members while Stalin did
• He would openly criticise his opponents, such as in his testamnt of 1924, but would not physically harm them

Question 26

What was the one day the Constituent Assembly was open?

Answer 26

5th January 1918

Question 27

How many did the Red Army deport in order to supress the Kronstadt rebellion?

Answer 27

100,000