Lenin - Terror and Suppression of opposition

Question 1

Immediate opposition to the bolshevik government

Answer 1

-civil servants refused to serve + bankers refused finance
-10 days to persuade state bank to hand over reserves
-kerensky set up hq at gatchina with an army of 18 cossack regiments, sr cadets and officers
-railway and communications workers strike in protest

Question 2

Lenins suppression of immediate opposition

Answer 2

-agreed to inter-party talks
-bolsheviks persuaded some kerensky troops to defect
-allowed lw srs to join the sovnarkom in december

Question 3

Other methods of combating opposition

Answer 3

-propaganda campaign against political/class enemies
-closure of anti-bolshevik newspapers
-purge of the civil service
-cheka formed december 1917, felix dzerzhinsky
-leading kadets,srs and mensheviks imprisoned in dec

Question 4

Kronstadt rebellion

Answer 4

-30,000 sailors at the kronstadt naval base rebelled
-march 1921 sent a manifesto demanding end to one party communist rule
-red army sent, took 15,000 prisoner and leaders shot
-denounced as ‘white traitors’

Question 5

Beginning of the red terror

Answer 5

-assasination attempt encouraged attack on bourgeois
-sep 1918, cheka allowed to arrest/kill suspected traitors
-all srs and mensheviks branded traitors, 500 shot in petrograd
-tsar and family shot 17th july 1918

Question 6

Escalation of the red terror

Answer 6

-merchants, traders, professors, prostitutes, kulaks
-8000 priests 1921 as well as jews, catholics and muslims
-500k-1million shot in 1918-21 period, others tortured or sent to labour camps where they died

Question 7

Party terror

Answer 7

-1920-21 discussions about economic/political policy
-ban on factions 1921, all party members must accept central committee decisions