The consolidation of the Communist dictatorship Flashcards
What is the Sovnarkom?
The cabinet, made up of key government ministers who, between them, would run the country.
What was the Workers’ decree?
Established a maximum 8 hour day.
What was the Social insurance decree?
Provided old age, health and unemployment benefits.
What was the Press decree?
Banned the opposition press
What was the Decree on Peace?
Promised an end to war ‘without annexation and indemnities’.
What was the Decree on Land?
Abolished private ownership of land and legitimised peasant seizures without compensation to landlords.
What was the Rights of the people of Russia decree?
Abolished titles and class ranks.
What was the Nationality Decree?
Promised self-determination to the peoples of the former Russian Empire; in December, Finland became an independent state, and an elected rada (parliament) was set up in the Ukraine.
What was the Decree on Workers’ Control of Factories?
Gave workers the right to ‘supervise management’.
What was the Judicial Decree?
Established a new legal system of elected people’s courts.
What was the Decree to outlaw sex discrimination?
Gave women equality with men and right to own property.
What was the Decree to establish the ‘All-Russian Commission for the Suppression of Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Speculation?
Created a secret police force, known as the Cheka, after its initial letters, to root out opposition.
What was the Bank decree?
Nationalised banks and ended the private flow of capital.
What was the Military decree?
Removed class ranks, saluting and military decorations from the army and placed the army under the control of soldiers’ soviets, which would elect officers.
What were the Decrees on the Church?
Nationalised Church land, removed marriage and divorce from Church control and gave women the right to initiate divorce.
What was Lenin’s ‘state capitalism’?
There would be a degree of state control over economic affairs but private markets would remain as an important feature of economic life.
What council was set up to supervise and control economic development under Lenin?
Veshanka
How did the early months of Bolshevik leadership saw steps to combat opposition?
A propaganda campaign mounted against political and ‘class’ enemies - particulalarly the bourgeois. From November 1917, it was decreed that everyone had to be addressed as a ‘Citizen’ and party members as ‘Comrade’.
Anti-Bolshevik newspapers were closed down.
There was a purge of the civil service.
The Cheka was established as a secret police body in December 1917.
Leading Kadets, right-wing Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were rounded up and imprisoned in December.
What happened to the constituent assembly under Lenin?
After the elections in November 1917, in which Bolsheviks got 24% of the vote compared with 53% of the Socialist Revolutionaries (Kadets: 5%, Mensheviks 3%), Kadets were already outlawed by the time the Assembly met in January and was later closed and never opened again.
What did Lenin declare after the Constituent Assembly elections in November 1917?
‘We must not be deceived by the election figures. Elections prove nothing’.
What happened to the civilians that demonstrated against the action of closing the Constituent Assembly?
They were fired on and 12 killed.
Which groups of people lost their right to vote in the new soviet government structure July 1918?
The ‘bourgeois’
This included: employers, priests, anyone who was regarded as ‘middle-class’ and in practice anyone the Bolsheviks decided was untrustworthy.
When were all other political parties banned?
1921
