Lenin Flashcards
Slogan of the April thesis:
Peace, bread, land and all power to the soviets
Lenin ruled from…
1917-24
Lenin put ‘the cause’ before…
Civil and legal rights
Abolition of titles and class distinctions in…
November 1917
Number of orphans under 13 in the 1920s?
7-9 million
Lenin banned opposition press in…
October 1917
A ‘decree on the press’ was issued…
Less than 48 hours into the revolution
Political propaganda was spread under Lenin by…
Films, plays and other media
Who was in charge of woman’s policy under Lenin?
Kollantai
Women were declared equal to men and able to own property in…
1917
Women allowed to file for divorce in…
December 1917
By the mid-20s the USSRs divorce rate was…
The highest in Europe, 25x higher than in Britain
How many marriages ended in divorce in 1927?
1/2
What % of divorces were initiated by men?
70%
What % of divorces were initiated by mutual consent?
7%
When did Russia legalise abortion on demand?
1920
% of women in industrial labour by 1929 compared to 1913?
Practically the same
What did a survey in the 1920s find out about working hours for proletarian women?
8 hour day outside the home plus an extra 5 in domestic tasks
What % of party membership did women form in 1917?
10%
What % of party membership did women form in 1928?
12.8%
Rise in woman party membership 1917-28?
10% to 12.8%
When was Zhenotdel set up?
1919
What was Zhenotdel?
The women’s department - focused on practical help such as social services, education and training, making sure laws on women in factories were enforced etc.
What was the women’s department called?
Zhenotdel
When was Zhenotdel abolished?
1930
When was the peoples commissar for social welfare set up?
1917
Who headed the peoples commisar for social welfare?
Kollantai
Peoples commisar for social welfare guaranteed paid maternity leave..
For 2 months before and after birth
Lenin gave each child how many years free universal education?
9
9 years free universal education introduced…
1919-20
Liquidation of illiteracy was in…
1919
Two main strands in Lenin’s curriculum were…
General education (eg communism and the history of revolution) and practical education (eg technical subjects and industrial training)
When were schools placed under the commissariat for enlightenment?
1919-20
What did the commissariat for enlightenment do?
Encouraged schools to follow a more liberal line
When were traditional methods of teaching restored and universal schooling abandoned?
1921
Numbers of schools and pupils in 1923 compared to 1921?
Numbers in 1923 barely half the totals of 1921
What did a school survey of children 11-15 find?
They’d become increasingly negative towards communist values as they got older and nearly 50% still believed in god
When was the survey of children 11-15?
1927
Union of the militant godless was established in…
1921
What was the union of the militant godless’s plan?
5 year plan to remove all forms of god and promote communism as the new religion
What happened to public and private holidays under Lenin?
Bolshevised, eg Komsomol Christmas, children were Octobered, Red Weddings etc.
How many bishops and priests executed in 1922?
28 bishops and 1215 priests
When was the decree on the separation of church and state?
January 1918
What did the decree on the separation of church and state entail?
Church couldn’t own property, buildings had to be rented, religious instruction in schools outlawed
Who was allowed in the Komsomol?
15-23 year olds
How many members did the Komsomol have in 1925?
A million (4% of 15-23 year olds)
Who made up the Young Pioneers?
5-14 year olds
The young pioneers was established in…
1922
The young pioneers created…
‘The children of 1917’
How many soviet children were enrolled in the young pioneers by 1925?
About 1/5 of soviet children aged 10-14
What % of the votes did the Bolsheviks get in 1918? And what % did the SRs get?
Bolsheviks got 24%, SRs got 38%
When was the kadet party outlawed?
1918
What happened to the kadet party in 1918?
It was outlawed and it’s leaders were arrested
When was the constituent assembly dissolved?
1918
What was the new constitution?
Gave powers to central over local authorities
How did the new constitution restrict voting rights?
On the basis of social origins and political attitudes (withheld from the lishentsy, or disenfranchised)
When was the new constitution?
January 1919
What was the politburo?
Centre of power, collegiate feeling
When was the ban on factions?
1921
Lenin said that ‘electricity will…
Take the place of god’
When did Lenin nationalise industry?
February 1918
When did Lenin nationalise banks?
December 1917
When did Lenin hand control of the factories over to the workers?
November 1917
When did Lenin hand control of the railways over to the workers?
January 1918
When was the socialisation of land?
February 1918
When did the railway union threaten to strike under Lenin?
October 1917
When was the decree on land?
1917
What did the decree on land promise?
Peasants land ‘without payments’ - seized landed estates and the land of the crown and church
When was the decree on workplace?
1917
What did the decree on workplace do?
Regulated control in workplaces so it was next to impossible for capitalism to exist
When was the NEP?
1921-28
How did Bukharin describe the NEP?
“Economic concessions to avoid political concessions”
What did the NEP do?
Abolish grain requisitioning, remove ban on private trade, reopen small businesses, state control of heavy industry
Under the NEP by 1925-26 industry had…
Recovered to it’s pre-1913 levels
Increase in cereal production under the NEP?
23%
Increase in industry 1920-23?
200%
How did peasants make money on the side during the NEP?
Nepmen
NEP encouraged which foreign powers to make trade agreements?
Germany in 1922 and Britain in 1924
What did workers call the NEP?
The new exploitation of the proletariat
What happened to unemployment in the first two years of the NEP?
Rose steeply as state-controlled trusts had to cut their workforce to make profit
What was the scissors crisis?
In 1923 there was so much food that prices began to drop and the shortage of industrial goods meant that their price began to rise
How much of the retail trade did nepmen handle?
By 1923 they handled as much as 3/4
How many private traders in Moscow in the first two years of the NEP?
25,000+
What happened to working conditions in October 1917?
Max 8 hour day for workers, social insurance (for old age, unemployment, sickness, etc)
When did Lenin introduce a max 8 hour day for workers and social insurance (for old age, unemployment, sickness, etc)?
October 1917
What happened to the declaration of rights of the toiling and exploited masses?
Defeated in a vote in 1918
When was the treaty of Brest litovsk signed?
March 1918
How much of the population was lost under Brest-litovsk?
About 1/4
How much of industry was lost under Brest-litovsk?
About 1/4
How much of European russia was lost under Brest-litovsk?
About 1/3 (45 million people)
What countries did russia give up under Brest-litovsk?
Poland, Georgia, Finland, the Ukraine, the Baltic States, etc.
How much in reparations did russia have to pay under Brest-litovsk?
3 billion roubles
When was the civil war?
1918-20
What was war communism?
A policy that geared every part of the economy towards assisting the war effort and where workers and peasants were sacrificed in favour of the red army
What did wheat battalions carry out?
Grain requisitioning
Who carried out grain requisitioning?
Wheat battalions
What happened to private property under war communism?
Banned
What happened to industry under war communism?
Nationalised/brought under state control
What happened to workers committees under war communism?
Replaced by single managers reporting to central authorities
Labour discipline under war communism?
Fines for lateness and absenteeism, internal passports to stop people from fleeing the country, work books needed to get rations
Rationing under war communism was…
Class based, with red army soldiers and labour forces being given priority before civil servants and professional people, and the smallest ratio being given to the middle class (bourgeois)
During war communism the Cheka killed…
13,000 officially, in reality 30,000
When was self-determination granted to all parts of the former Russian empire?
November 1917
Lenin said that ‘a revolution without a firing squad is…
Meaningless’
When was the march on the tauride palace?
1918
How many marched on the tauride palace?
50,000 unarmed civil servants, students and others from the educated classes
In 1918 Lenin demanded that revolutionary tribunals now be…
Mercilessly harsh in dealing with counter revolutionaries, hooligans, idlers and anarchists
Lenin told communists to ‘hang…
No fewer than one hundreds kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers’
When was ‘100 rich kulaks’?
1917
When was the supreme measure introduced?
June 1918
When was the assassination attempt on Lenin?
August 1918
When was the NKVD established?
1918
What were concentration camps replaced by?
‘Forced labour’ camps
When were forced labour camps introduced?
1922
When were concentration camps introduced?
1918
How many concentration camps at the end of 1921?
21
How many concentration camps at the end of 1922?
107
Rise in concentration camps 1921-2?
21 to 107
Number of NKVD camps in September 1921?
117 camps with 60,000+ prisoners
When was the Cheka set up?
December 1917
When was the execution of the Romanov family?
1918
How many members did the Cheka have by June 1918?
1,000
By June 1918 the Cheka had how many members?
1,000
By what date did most provinces and districts have a Cheka branch?
September 1918
By mid-1918 the Cheka was…
Organised in every district and armed with extensive power to stop counterrevolution and fight class enemies
How many in the Cheka by 1919?
37,000
How many in the Cheka by mid-1921?
137,106 with an additional 94,288 frontier troops
How many did the Cheka kill 1918-20?
300,000
When did the Red Terror start?
September 1918
The red terror called for…
“An open, mass, systematic terror against the bourgeoisie and it’s agents”
When were 25 tsarist ministers and high civil servants shot out of hand in Moscow?
1918
Who was shot out of hand in Moscow in 1918?
25 former tsarists and high civil servants
What happened during the red terror?
Birth of state-sanctioned concentration camps, gave the secret police the right to execute suspects on the spot, advocated mass shootings
The red army was created in…
December 1917
What happened to the army under Lenin?
Democratised - officers elected, army to be controlled by the army soviet, abolition of ranks, saluting, decorations etc.
When did the Kronstadt sailors rise up against Lenin?
March 1921
How many Kronstadt sailors rose up against Lenin?
16,000
What did the Kronstadt sailors demand from Lenin?
Greater democracy, release of political prisoners, freedom of speech and assembly
What happened to the Kronstadt sailors in 1921?
Crushed by 60,000 red guards, led by tukachevsky, and were shot or deported
When was the kadet party outlawed?
1918
What happened to the kadet party in 1918?
Outlawed
When was the civil war?
1918-20
Who intervened during the civil war?
Over 200,000 troops from 14 capitalist nations
How many died in the civil war?
7-10 million
Who was the civil war between?
The reds (Bolsheviks), whites (liberals, tsarists, nationalists, seperalists, SRs, other moderate societies), and the greens (peasants wanting to protect their own local areas)
The cult of the party?
Leadership was portrayed as an anonymous collective body making joint decisions
Under war communism industrial production sunk to…
1/6 of 1913 levels
