RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

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RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

• BOLSHEVIK CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

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BREAD, LAND, PEACE, AND ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS

• Population not all converted to Bolshevism in
  aftermath of revolution
• revolutionaries bore responsibility of moving
  revolution forward, and maintaining power for
  themselves
• in French Revn had done this through the Reign
  of Terror

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Lenins plan

• October symbolized a Bolshevik triumph
• Bolsheviks considered the revolution over
• Lenin considered himself in power
• Lenin had no use for parliaments, elected or not

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Conditions in November 1917

• Russian state in a shambles
• Some Bolsheviks call for election of a
  Constituent Assembly
• Lenin compelled to hold elections on Nov. 25,
  1917
• Bolsheviks win 25, mostly in cities
• other socialist parties 62, mostly rural

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• Lenin maintained that advanced elements had
  voted Bolshevik
• Assembly met in January 1918 for first only
  time
• Dissolved when Lenin prevented future meetings by
  issuing the Draft Decree and sending heavily
  armed guards to prevent members from gathering
• Members upset, but no public outcry
• Why Bolsheviks had acted on publics desires for
  bread, land and peace

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THE PERIOD OF WAR COMMUNISM Nov. 1917-Dec. 1920

• Military events determine main features of period
• Russia enters into civil war
• Foreign powers on Russian soil
• Lenins party initiates drive to Bolshevize the
  population
• party is renamed Russian Communist Party
  (Bolsheviks)
• captial moved from Petrograd to Moscow

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Incipit vita nova

• Bolsheviks convinced world revolution imminent
  Germany--England--US
• Believed they were model state, and needed to get
  socialist state established as capitalism
  imploding
• focused on Russia, therefore, rather than
  international affairs

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Early reforms

• Govt took over all businesses w/ 10 workers
• Labour compulsory strikes outlawed!
• Barter system replaces free market
• Internal trade made illegal
• Govt commissary had monopoly on foodstuffs
• Church and state separated
• Judges replaced by members of local soviets
• Nine opposition parties liquidated
• Severe requisitioning introduced poorer peasants
  strike out at kulaks
• Class hatred results in rural uprisings

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Establishment of the CHEKA

• Lenin saw upheaval as threat to revolutions
  security
• Est. the All-Russian Commission for fighting
  counter-Revolution and Sabotage aka CHEKA
• Headquartered at Lubyanka St. in Moscow
• HQ was a prison combined w/offices in charge of
  administering state security
• Job of the CHEKA was to protect the revolution
• It moved from targeting individuals to whole
  segments of society
• CHEKA was hated and feared by almost everyone
• Introduced concept of killing people not for
  actions, but for WHO they were
• 100s of families simply disappeared in the
  Lubyanka

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Dealing with the West

• Complicating governance was continued involvement
  in WWIwould not hold onto power if war continued
• Negotiated w/ Germany and A-H while hoping for a
  revolution in Germany
• Signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on Mar. 3, 1918
• Lost the Ukraine, Baltic provinces, Finland and
  other territory 33 of popn 80 of Iron
  deposits 90 of coal
• Not accepted by many communistsprotest
  resignations occurred
• Civil War worsenedallies saw treaty as a betrayal

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Civil War

• Cossacks and a number of army officers saw
  Brest-Litovsk as a betrayal portrayed Bolsheviks
  as German agents
• Opposition White Army formed to fight against
  the Red Army led by Trotsky
• White Army characterized by insufficient
  organization, uncoordinated actions, and
  competing political goals
• Supported by materials and 100,000 troops sent by
  Allied governments including the USA, Britain,
  France, and Japan
• Fighting lasted 3 years

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Impacts of the Civil War

• Shaped a suspicious perception of the capitalist
  world
• Lenin had to strengthen the dictatorial powers of
  the Bolsheviks to maintain the state
• State police used to suppress all opposition
• Peasantry refused to support the Whites as they
  restored property to landlords in their areas
• Due to involvement of foreign troops, Red Army
  could portray itself as protectors of Russia,
  throwing off charge of being foreign puppets
  after Brest-Litovsk

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Civil conditions

• Famine rampant
• Infrastructure destroyed resulting in poor
  sanitation
• Class hatred rampant
• Industrial production down to 12.5 of pre-war
  level
• Agricultural production fell 30
• Hardship waning support for the new regime
• Anarchist rebellion broke out in early 1921not
  suppressed until mid-1922
• Kronstadt sailors mutiny in March 1921 calling
  for soviets without communists
• Lenin feared for future of his revolution

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Trotskys perceptions

• Trostsky recognized the public was actually
  opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat
• Believed the key was education
• Saw that revolution was not coming in Europe
  European govts actively working to root out
  Bolshevik sympathizers and activists
• Perceived Russia as an island of revolutionary
  socialism that could not survive alone
• Needed to help revolutions happen elsewhere so
  not alone

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Lenins reaction

• Key to saving the revolution was reconstruction,
  not education
• Wanted to appease the peasants
• Without world revolution, outside aid was not
  coming, so he needed to work with the capitalists
  to gain resources

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New Economic Policy

• Began the New Economic Policy (NEP) and
  negotiated the Anglo-Russian trade treaty
• Under NEP stopped requisitioning entire crops
  peasants had to pay heavy tax but could sell
  their portion of crop to the state or private
  buyers
• Rich peasants did well under this system poorer
  peasants became a mere hired labourer
• Lenin himself saw the NEP as a partial return to
  capitalism
• 2-3 decades before the peasants would accept
  collectivized agriculture
• NEP represents a sort of Thermidor (period
  after the Reign of Terror in the French Revn) a
  return to normalcy after a violent period of
  revolution

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Impacts of the NEP

• Industrial and agricultural output return to
  pre-war levels
• 40 of business privatized by 1924
• Bitterly disliked by ideological communists
• Factional dispute emerges w/in the party
• Right-deviationistsincrease private enterprise
  and fully supported NEP
• Left-deviationistsend NEP, liquidate those who
  profited from it, get back to Marxism, and work
  for world revolution
• Trotsky joined the left-deviationists needed to
  work to make revolution occur elsewhere

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The Power Struggle

• Lenins health begins to fail in 1922
• Dies in January 1924

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The candidates

• Lenin knew that there would be a struggle for
  power between Trotsky and Stalin
• Power struggle began in 1922, and lasted until
  1928
• Read Trotsky as able but arrogant
• Read Stalin as not knowing how to use the power
  he had accumulated
• Thoughts on the succession were revealed in his
  Testament

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Lenins Testament

• By the stability of the Central Committee, of
  which I spoke above, I mean measures against a
  split, as far as such measures can at all be
  taken. For, of course, the whiteguard in Russkaya
  Mys (it seems to have been S. S. Oldenburg) was
  right when, first, in the whiteguards' game
  against Soviet Russia he banked on a split in our
  Party, and when, secondly, he banked on grave
  differences in our Party to cause that split. Our
  Party relies on two classes and therefore its
  instability would be possible and its downfall
  inevitable if there were no agreement between
  those two classes. In that event, this or that
  measure, and generally all talk about the
  stability of our C.C., would be futile. No
  measures of any kind could prevent a split in
  such a case. But I hope that this is too remote a
  future and too improbable an event to talk about.
  
• I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a
  split in the immediate future, and I intend to
  deal here with a few ideas concerning personal
  qualities.

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• I think that from this standpoint, the prime
  factors in the question of stability are such
  members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I
  think relations between them make up the greater
  part of the danger of a split, which could be
  avoided, and this purpose, in my opinion, would
  be served, among other things, by increasing the
  number of C.C. members to 50 or 100.
• Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General,
  has unlimited authority concentrated in his
  hands, and I am not sure whether he will always
  be capable of using that authority with
  sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the
  other hand, as his struggles against the C.C. on
  the question of the People's Commissariat for
  Communications has already proved, is
  distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He
  is personally perhaps the most capable man in the
  present C.C., but he has displayed excessive
  self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation
  with the purely administrative side of the work.

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• These two qualities of the two outstanding
  leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently
  lead to a split, and if our Party does not take
  steps to avert this, the split may come
  unexpectedly.
• I shall not give any further appraisals of the
  personal qualities of other members of the C.C. I
  shall just recall that the October episode with
  Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident,
  but neither can the blame for it be laid upon
  them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can
  upon Trotsky.
• Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say
  a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They
  are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures
  (among the younger ones), and the following must
  be borne in mind about them Bukharin is not only
  a most valuable and major theorist of the Party
  he is also rightly considered the favorite of the
  whole Party, but his theoretical views can be
  classified as fully Marxist only with the great
  reserve, for there is something scholastic about
  him (he has never made a study of dialectics,
  and, I think, never fully appreciated it).

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• December 25. As for Pyatakov, he is
  unquestionably a man of outstanding will and
  outstanding ability, but shows far too much zeal
  for administrating and the administrative side of
  the work to be relied upon in a serious political
  matter.
• Both of these remarks, of course, are made only
  for the present, on the assumption that both
  these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail
  to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge
  and amend their one-sidedness.
• Lenin, 24 December 1922
• Stalin is too rude and this defect, although
  quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among
  us Communists, becomes intolerable in a
  Secretary-General. That is why I suggest the
  comrades think about a way of removing Stalin
  from that post and appointing another man in his
  stead who in all other respects differs from
  Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage,
  namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal,
  more polite, and more considerate to the
  comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance
  may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think
  that from the standpoint of safeguards against a
  split, and from the standpoint of what I wrote
  above about the relationship between Stalin and
  Trotsky, it is not a detail, or it is a detail
  which can assume decisive importance.
• Lenin, 25 December 1922
• Source Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 36 (Moscow
  Progress Publishers, 1966), pp. 594-596.

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Trotsky argued for

• A more highly trained managerial force in
  industry
• Economic planning as an instrument to control
  social change
• Mechanization of agriculture and weakening of
  peasant individualism
• World revolution necessary for success of Russian
  socialism

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Trotskys opposition

• Nikolai Bukharin, editor of Pravda, acted as
  spokesman
• Believed socialism could be achieved gradually
  over time
• Supported the NEP
• Favoured peasant cooperatives rather than
  collectivization
• Eager to cooperate with non-Communist groups in
  foreign affairs

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Stalin

• Used Bukharins ideas to discredit Trotsky, and
  then discarded them, took on Trotskys policies,
  and eliminated Bukharin!
• Stalin was not a theoretical or ideological
  Communist he was a quoter not a thinker!