USSR: Topic 1 - Government Flashcards
October 1917 (3)
October Revolution
Decree on Land – peasants can seize land
Decree on Peace – withdrawal from WW1
Lenin’s tenure
1917-1924
All Russian Congress of Soviets
A congress made up of representatives sent by small local elected Soviets
Sovnarkom (4)
Council of People’s Commissars (or the Russian Cabinet)
Responsible to the All Russian Congress of Soviets
Ostensibly, governed on a day-to-day basis
Rubber stamped the decisions of the Politburo
November 1917 (3)
Workers’ Decree – 8-hour max. day and min. wages
Decree of Workers’ Control – workers elect committees in factories
Nationwide election – Bolshevik minority in Constituent Assembly
January 1918
Lenin closes Constituent Assembly
3 March 1918
Unpopular Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
April-May 1918
Bolsheviks loses general election
Summer 1918 - 1921
Russian Civil War
Lenin’s Politburo (3)
A committee made up of Lenin and around 7 of his most loyal supporters
The primary organ of government
Dictated policy to the Sovnarkom and the All Russian Congress of Soviets
Nomenklatura (3)
Party members trusted by senior officials to implement government policy
The former educated middle class of the pre-revolutionary government
Superseded the local soviets
December 1917
Creation of the Cheka
1920-1921
Droughts threatening famine
January 1921
Tambov Uprising
Tambov Uprising (3)
Led by Aleksandr Antonov
Rebellion against grain requisitioning and the Cheka
A force of 50,000 anti-communist fighters
March 1921
Peasant attacks on government grain stores along the Volga River
Kronstadt Mutiny
Mutiny by sailors at Kronstadt naval base
Demanded a series of democratic reforms
“Soviets without Communism”
Mid-March 1921
Kronstadt Mutiny crushed by Red Army
May 1921
Tambov Uprising repressed with 100,000 people deported to gulags
February 1921
Cheka destroys opposition political parties
22 leading Social Revolutionaries were sentenced to prison or exiled
The 1921 Party Congress (2)
Introduction of the New Economic Plan (NEP)
“On Party Unity” introduced banning factionalism within the Party
“On Party Unity”
A resolution that meant party members found guilty of forming factions, such as the Workers’ Opposition or the Democratic Centralists, would be expelled from the party
Socialism in one country
1924: Bukharin and Stalin believed that socialism should first be established in the USSR instead of waiting for a global revolution
Collectivisation and Industrialisation
1928: Stalin argued peasants should work on state-owned farms and that the USSR should be industrialised at a rapid pace
1923
Stalin issues his first “approved list” of party members
May 1924
128.000 new members to the Party via Stalin’s Lenin Enrolment initiative
Party of 1928
Less revolutionary and more career-driven members who owed their jobs to Stalin
Stalin’s tenure
1928-1953
Stalin’s powers in 1928 (2)
General Secretary – able to give powerful jobs to Party members
Head of Central Control Commission – able to investigate and sack Party and government officials
Apparatchiks
Party members, or apparatus, who implemented orders and nothing else
Sergei Kirov
Head of the Communist Party in Leningrad who was challenging Stalin’s authority