In between revolutions Flashcards
What was the provisional government?
- A group of wealthy aristocrats, political members and groups who favored a constitutional monarchy (liberals, moderate socialists and kadets) led by Prince Lvov
- It was meant to be temporary as elections were going to be held for a new constituent assembly
- It was legitimate as it had Mikhail’s blessing
- It was set up in the Duma chamber in the right wing of Tauride palace
What was the Petrograd soviet?
- The believed the provisional government was tainted by tsardom and saw themselves as the more democratic organisation
- They were located in the left wing of Tauride palace with intellectuals, Mensheviks, SRs and some Bolsheviks
- Out of the first 42 committee authority only 7 members were workers
- it lacked confidence to assume direct control and only had a sense of unity with the provisional government through Kerensky
Whilst they made no attempts to redistribute land, what did the provisional government agree upon?
- amnesty for political prisoners
- civil liberties
- the abolition of legal distributions on class, religion and nationality
- freedom to organise trade unions and to strike
What additional freedoms were given in April?
- freedom of press and religion
- abolishment of the death penalty on the front
- replaced the tsarist police force with people’s militia
- dismissed provincial governors giving their work to the Zemstva
What did the Dual authority agree on?
- The soldiers and workers should obey them through the order no 1
- They should work together
How did their attitudes differ on army deserters?
- Government wanted to discipline them and restore order to the countryside
- Soviets wanted them to defy authority and assert their rights
How did their attitudes differ on war?
- Government wanted an all - out effort to win the war as they felt bound to the triple alliance and French loans
- Soviets wanted the war to end as soon as possible without annexation of territory by the Germans
What happened in April 1917?
Milyukov announced that Russia would continue to fight in the war leading to protests by the soviet and the people pushing Milyukov and Guchkovto to resign. They were replaced by socialists as Chernov became minister of agriculture and Kerensky as minister of war. By July, Kerensky became prime minister
Why didn’t the elections proceed?
By July, it was clear that the SR and soon Bolsheviks would win the votes of the people as well as policy changes such as land redistribution. The soviet offered no alternate forms of leadership as their priority was protecting the rights of the workers and peasants to proceed onto stage 5 of Marx theory
What as the Bolshevik party like by the revolution?
There were 23,000 members with only 40 representatives in the soviet of 1500 as the major leaders were in exile
Who returned by mid - march?
Kamenev and Stalin (man of Steel) returned from Siberia taking control of the party newspaper Pravda (truth) which reflected left - wing socialist beliefs as they supported the provisional government
How did Lenin return on the 3rd of April?
He travelled to cheering crowds in Finland station where he gave a speech from Switzerland after enlisting the help of Germans to provide a sealed carriage with 31 comrades
Why did the Germans help Lenin?
They saw him as a military tactic as he would stir up trouble diverting Russia from the war
What has Figes proposed?
Workers cheered Lenin for the prospect of free beer on Easter weekend rather than for him
What were Lenin’s letters from afar?
From the 7th - 26th of March, he wrote these letters pushing a second revolution to take Russia into stage 5 of Marx theory
How did Lenin’s ideology differ from other socialists?
He believed that the Russian middle class was too weak to carry through a full bourgeoise revolution and that to allow the middle class to continue in power prevented revolution therefore he pushed a permanent revolution
What did the April thesis state?
- No support for the provisional government
- give power to the soviets
- to end the war
- all land should be taken over by the state and re - allocated to peasants by local soviets
which can be summarised as peace, bread and land
What did peace symbolise?
- There wasn’t a leader to push the war
- Experienced leaders are dead
- Less debt to France if they didn’t go to war
- Largest impacts felt by the lower classes as they were the ones on the frontline
- Less casualties, damaged national pride and identity
What did bread symbolise?
- Bread is being rationed causing queues and it acted as a catalyst for the February revolution
- Creating socialism
- They saw the tsarist influenced provisional government as less democratic as them so Lenin called for the people not to support them
- Aligning with the original sims of the Soviet as they organised food supplies for Petrograd
What were the benefits for the upper class?
- challenging autocracy
- he provided the responses to the problems that the provisional government needed to solve
Why did the social democrats criticise Lenin?
- He was out of touch as his radical proposals would do more harm than good
- He was in pay of the Germans
- It was undermining the February revolution and according to Mensheviks provoke a right - wing reaction
- It was unrealistic to oppose the provisional government
How did Lenin manage to get his way?
- Skills of persuasion and compromise
- Threats of resignation
- Appeals to the rank and file
- He wore a worker’s cap to party and factory meetings wearing a worker’s hat and changing his ideals away from a civil war as many people did not want it
- A shift towards the left in government
- Sheer force of personality allowed him to win the majority of the central committee of the Bolshevik party
- The Bolsheviks did well in the June elections as a consequence
What did Lenin claim personal credit for in his speeches?
- The peasant’s seizure of land in the countryside (occurred in the absence of authority)
- The anti - war demonstration in Petrograd (following Milyukov’s announcement
What happened at the All Russian congress of Soviets on the 3rd of June?
543 to 126 voted in confidence of the provisional governemnt
What happened in the June demonstrations?
It was called by the leaders of the Petrograd soviet to attempt the out maneuver of the Bolsheviks however Bolshevik banners still dominated the march
What had happened between February and June 1917?
- Working class members of the Bolsheviks became difficult to manage
- prices had doubled
- shortages in fuel and raw materials saw 586 factories to close
- 100,000 people became unemployed
What happened on the 3rd of July?
20,00 armed sailors from the Kronstadt naval base marched on Petrograd gaining support from workers who wanted price control and soldiers who began chanting Bolshevik slogans, attacking property, looting shops, seizing railway stations and other key buildings and tried to invade Tauride palace demanding for soviet power. Many Bolsheviks joined and started to fire shots in the street tarnishing Lenin’s reputation
Why was Lenin in a difficult situation?
He couldn’t condemn the actions of the revolutionaries but he knew a premature revolution could be disastrous. When it happened, he was holiday so he had to claim it as spontaneous
How were the July days resolved?
- The provisional government (supported by the Mensheviks and the SRs) called in reinforcements to crush the revolutionaries
- The Bolsheviks helped force demonstrators out of Peter and Paul fortress and played a part in negotiating the disarming and arrest of soldiers
What happened to the Bolsheviks?
- Lenin did return but his reputation was damaged so much that he went into exile in Finland until October
- Bolshevik propaganda was burned
- Pravda newspaper offices were closed and arrest warrants were given to the leaders
- Stalin fled
- Trotsky and Kamenev were imprisoned
- The Bolshevik newspaper Izvestia (news) denounced the roles of their leaders suggesting Lenin was working in pay of the Germans against Russia’s best interests
What happened on the 8th of July as a consequence?
Kerensky became prime minister
What was the condition in Russia like in summer of 1917?
- People lost faith in the provisional government as food supplies were chaotically managed and despite granting eight hour days, real wages fell as prices continued to rise
- In august, factory workers could dismiss workers who went on strike and meetings of factory soviets during working hours were forbidden
- Failure to redistribute land and rising war casualties cause those in the countryside to lose faith and moral pushing peasants to seize land
- An electoral commission was established in may for elections in November, people thought government was delaying democracy to preserve it own power pushing people towards the Bolsheviks
By October, what percentage were prices above pre - war levels?
c755%
What happened in Galcia?
There was a major military offence led by Brusivov to rally the nation but it increased military losses as 350,000 more deserted
Who became commander - in - chief of the army?
General Lavr Kornilov who was a Cossack
What was brought back to control troops?
The death penalty
How did people view Kornilov?
- Kerensky’s state conference in Moscow calling for political unity was boycotted by the Bolsheviks who organsised a general strike as well as Mensheviks and SRs calling out Kornilov
- Right wing landowners and businessmen felt the provisional government had done little to protect land, property and interests so they saw him as a savior
- Moderates like Milyukov and Kadets wanted Kornilov to overthrow the government not socialists
What did Kornilov do?
At the end of August, he order six regiments of troops to march on Petrograd to establish a military dictatorship. It failed as Kerensky lost faith in him so he released prisoners, gave workers weapons from the government’s armoires, cut supply lines and arrested coup leaders
What happened to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov coup?
- They led the red guards helping to establish a more effective paramilitary unit out of the various militia groups attached to factories that had previously defended workers interests
- They used propaganda to criticise Kerensky’s government
What did Lenin order?
He urged his followers to keep up the pressure and committees to establish revolution
How many Bolshevik members were there by October?
200,000
How many newspapers were there?
41
How many red guard forces were there before the revolution?
100,000
Where did Bolsheviks win a majority?
In the Moscow and Petrograd soviet in September
What happened on the 26th of September?
Trotsky became chairman of the executive committee of the Petrograd soviet
What happened to Kerensky from the 5th of October?
- On the 5th of October, Kerensky sent more radical army units out of Petrograd to prepare for front - line service but it was done in fear of a Bolshevik uprising in an increasing political atmosphere
- Claiming that Kerensky was abandoning the capital to allow it to fall to Germans on the 9th of October, the soviet adopted a resolution written by Trotsky to create a ,military revolutionary center to protect Petrograd from the attacks prepared by civil Kornilovites
What was Lenin doing from mid - September?
- He bombarded the 12 - man committee through letters about seizing power through a revolution as on the 12th of September he declared, “history will not forgive us if we do not assume power now,”
- 3 days later, the committee voted against the coup
- Lenin threatened to resign which further didn’t convince them
What did Kamenev and Zinoviev believe?
Russia was not economically ready pushing them to burn some of Lenin’s letters and they believed they should wait for the constituent assembly elections
What did Trotsky believe?
They should work through the Petrograd soviet and wait for the congress of soviets which was due to be convened on the 26th of October as he believed they could win support from all socialist parties
What did Lenin do when he returned to Russia on the 10th of October?
He pushed the committee to vote for the revolution 10 to 2 in which Zinoviev and Kamenev refused to agree to pushing them to publish their views in the Novaia Zhin (new life) newspaper
What did Trotsky do to organise the revolution?
- He sent Bolshevik speakers around factories for support
- On the 16th of October, a military revolutionary committee was sent up with Dzerzhinsky in accordance to the Soviet with 66 members and 48 were Bolsheviks
- Massed troops at the Bolshevik headquarters in the Smolny institute and since Mensheviks and SRs rejected to cooperate, it was made up of Bolshevik red guards, former soldiers and policemen
- 15 of the 18 Petrograd garrison units declared allegiance to soviets through commissars who also ensured loyalty, issued orders and organsised weapon supplies
- They also controlled 200,000 red guards, 60,000 Baltic sailors and 150,000 from the remaining Garrisons
- The go - ahead for the revolution was eventually given on the 25h of October
