Initial challenges, new decrees + state capitalism Flashcards
1
Q
Initial challenges: lack of experience + state of collapse
A
- believed in imminence of worldwide revolution (‘I shall issue a few revolutionary decrees and then shut up shop’ Trotsky)
- lootings, drink pogroms after october
- industrial output was 2/3rds of 1914 level
- grain supplies 13 million tonnes short
2
Q
Initial challenges: civil servants strike
A
- major ministries, railways, post and telegraph, courts, unis
- the Anichkov Palace (where food supply is administered) civil servants removed all the office furniture and locked away the account books in a palace safe
- took 10 days to get State Bank and Treasury to hand over money
- strike leaders arrested
- political commissars were appointed to oversee bureaucracy
- junior officials willing to serve the bolshevik rulers were promoted to senior posts (promoted ‘third party hacks, corrupt opportunists and semi-literate elements into positions of real power’ Figes)
- upper echelons remained largely the same
3
Q
Initial challenges: moscow fighting
A
- 27th bols pushed out of Kremlin to industrial suburbs
- Vikzhel ceasefire, demanded inter-party talks (or would cut off Petrograd supplies)
- Mensheviks and SRs wanted compromise, broaden membership
- Trotsky demanded at least 75% Bols in soviet executive
- ‘there was no point organizing the insurrection if we don’t get the majority’
- broke down 6 November
- 5 man minorty rsigned from Central Committee 4 November (Rykov, Kamenev, Zinoviev)
- letter of protest from 5 People’s Commisars and a third of Lenin’s cabinet saying that a purely Bol govt could be maintained only by ‘political terror’ and would lead to ‘the establishement of an unnaccountable regime and to the destruction of the revolution and the country’
4
Q
Initial challenges: reasons for sucess - absence of military opposition
A
- “absence of a serious military opposition during this critical period… no doubt helps explain their success” Figes
- main anti-Bol forces are Cossacks, located on periphery of empire
- SRs and Kadets were so convinced of the regime’s imminent collapse that they neglected to organize against it
5
Q
Initial challenges: reasons for sucess - dualism of thought
A
State building - centralize power in hands of party - wipe out opposition - democratic centralizm "It was the death sentence of the CA"
Destruction of state at lower levvels
- encourages the dustruction of old state hierarchies, throwing all power to the local soviets, factory orgs and workers committees
- workers control: dismatles capitalist infrastructure, shifts blame for industrial crisis to workers themselves
- soldier intiatives: undermine the plans of the old army commanders to mobilize troops against regime
- Soviet rule in the countryside, peasant self-govt = don’t need CA
- masses themselves neutralized by the exercise of power over their old class enemies
- vacuum of power which this created would help undermine democracy at the center
6
Q
Initial challenges: reasons for success - master plan?
A
- “everything was improvised, as it had to be in a revolution, yet Lenin, at least, had an instinctive sense of the general direction
- “Lenin’s conception of the rev state had always been centralist in essence. He merely used the energies of these localist movements to destroy the ancien regime”
- In everything he did, lenin’s ultimate purpose was the pursuit of power. Power for him was not a means - it was the end in itself. he made a revolution to establish the dictatorship”
7
Q
Decree on Courts
A
24 November 1917
- “The mob trials of bourgeois were institutionalized through the People’s Courts and the crude system of ‘revolutionary justice’ they administered
- 12 judges guided by ‘revolutionary conscience’ “little more than formalized mob trials”
- in Feb 1918, during German invasion, Lenin issues ‘The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger’ calling for courts to shoot ‘on the spot’ all enemy agents.. counter-rev agitators’
- inefficient, could be bribed - taken over by Cheka
8
Q
Decree on Land
A
26 October 1917 (Second Soviet Congress)
- It gave a carte blance to peasants to seize private land
- ‘Private ownership of land shall be abolished forever, confiscated without compensation’
9
Q
Decree on the Press
A
27 October 1917
- ‘For the bourgeoisie, freedom of the press meant freedom for the rich to publish and for the capitalist to control the newspapers’
- Bolshevik moderates voted against it in Soviet Executive on 4 Nov, Printers Union threatened national strike
- MRC sent in Bolshevik squads to smash opposition presses and arrest memories
10
Q
Declaration of the Rights of the Nations of Russia
A
2 November 1917
- ‘Right of the peoples of Russia of a free self-determination, including secession and formation of a separate state’
- effect of rallying some of ethnic non-russians behind Bols. Latvian riflemen were important supporters of Bols in the early days of Russian Civil War
11
Q
Worker’s Control Decree
A
14 November 1917
- workers can form self-management committees that regulate pay, hiring and dismissals
12
Q
Decree on Civil Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage
A
18 November 1917
- women get equal property rigts
- the Russian Republic from now on recognizes only civil mariages
- efforts made to combat prostitution and increase state provision of child care
13
Q
Decree on the Separation of Church and State
A
20 January 1918
- 19 Jan Kollontai sent detachment to occupy Alexander Nevsky Monastry
- wanted to make sanctuary for war invalids, scuffles, priest shot dead
- decree published earlier than planned
- religious instruction in schools was also outlawed
14
Q
Formal ranks
A
and saluting abolished 16 december, democratization of armed forces
15
Q
State capitalism reasons
A
- need to manage economy
- workers attempoted to regulate production, workers bodies voted themselves huge pay rises, increased inflation
- workers dissilusioned; protested
- ‘The Soviet regime, having been established in our name,
has become completely alien to us. It promised to bring the
workers Socialism but has brought them empty factories
and destitution Surmovo striking workers - formed Extraordinary Assemblied of Factory and Plant Representatives in March, several hundred thousands owkrers, Vyborg district distributed propaganda, defeated Bols in several city elections soviet
- 9 may Cheka fired on demonstrating workers in Kolipno (petrograd)
- Special Communist detachments had occupied the factories and up to 1,000 workers had been arrested.
- general striike planned for 2 July
