The peasants, soldiers and workers throughout Russia committees were called the soviets. The most powerful soviet was called The Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet controlled the army, railways and the factories, and in many ways they were more powerful than the Provisional Government, which was another soviet. The Petrograd Soviet was split in two groups. One group contained Mensheviks and the other contained the Bolsheviks. Both groups had different opinions. The Mensheviks believed the working class would have to share power with other groups. And the Bolsheviks, who believed the working class should take and hold power for them. As you can see the Bolsheviks were greedy and wanted power all to themselves and no one else. The Petrograd Soviet challenged the Provisional Government.
In July 1917 Alexander Kerensky took over from Prince Lvor as leader of The Provisional Government. He was a Menshevik and was also a member of The Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government promised the people there would be elections for a new parliament, a constituent assembly and a fairer distribution of land. Meanwhile, even though troops were deserting in there thousands, the government pressed on with the war against Germany. The Provisional Government didn’t give the peasants the land they wanted, and they didn’t solve the problem of the food shortages. They also delayed setting up the elections for the Constituent Assembly, which might, have managed to solve the problems they were facing. The Provisional Government was deeply unpopular and was disliked by many people.
Lenin leader of the Bolsheviks lived and worked outside Russia since 1900 because the authorities of Russia thought he was a dangerous Marxist. Lenin was in Switzerland at the time when the March revolution broke out, and obviously wanted to get back to Russia as quick as he possibly could. The Germans helped Lenin and let him travel to Russia through Germany in a sealed train, which didn’t stop at any stations, so that no one saw him. Germany knew that Lenin wanted to get back to Russia to get them out of the war. Lenin arrived in Petrograd and he was on a roll with lots of ideas in his head, so when he returned he gave out two slogans, which personally I think were very good. The first slogan was “All Power To The Soviet” and the other one was “Peace, Bread, Land”. I think the second slogan was better and more powerful than the first one because it contained everything the Russians wanted in life. Which offered all the Russian people something: Peace for the soldiers fighting in the First World War. Lenin decided to get more people involved so he used a lot of propaganda. Lenin was also plotting on getting rid of The Provisional Government. Lenin was forced to flee again to Finland because The Provisional Government rounded up the prominent Bolsheviks and smashes the Communist Party offices and confiscated their newspaper Pravda. A lot happened to Lenin in the July Days.
Between summer and autumn of 1917 the Provisional Government’s problems mounted. The war was a disaster and food prices were still rising. General Kornilov, a supporter of the Tsar, turned his troops against the Provisional Government. Kerensky was forced to turn to the soviets for help. The Bolshevik railway workers stopped General Kornilov helping the Tsar, and the Bolshevik soldiers formed an armed Red Guard. Lenin had also slipped back into the country. This was known as the General Kornilovs Rebellion.
In October the General Kornilovs rebellion helped the Bolsheviks extremely because The Petrograd Soviet thought the Bolsheviks were on their side. People saw the Bolsheviks as the saviours of the ‘new’ Russia and they grew more and more popular. The Bolsheviks had gained control of The Petrograd Soviet and began to recruit men to the Red Guard. 25,000 joined the Bolshevik military.
By October, the law and order had collapsed, the countryside peasants were looting and burning their landowners’ estates. On the night of 27th October, Trotsky led the Red Guards to take over vital buildings in Petrograd. One of the buildings was The Winter Palace, where the members of the Provisional Government were meeting. Kerensky then managed to escape and fled the country. The powerful Bolsheviks were the new rulers of Russia.
How did Lenin consolidate his power? Lenin consolidated his power in many ways, one of which was when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in the Petrograd, but it wasn’t certain that they could hold the power throughout Russia. The Moscow Soviet, for example, fought for days before they gained control over the city. To gain control of the whole of Russia seemed to be an impossible task.
Lenin knew that The Provisional Government had failed because the people who put it into power weren’t getting the things they wanted so the popularity of supporters of The Provisional Government would decrease. Lenin knowing this didn’t want to make the same mistake. Between November 1917 and February 1918 the Bolshevik Government in The Petrograd issued a series of decrees and declarations. They telegraphed these revolutionary orders to all the towns, cities and villages in Russia. And where relying on local officials to make sure they were put into effect.
The first decree was land reform decree. This decree would take all the land away from the church, nobles and large landowners and shared it out among the peasants. The land reform decree meant that the peasants were in a better position to feed themselves and it also took about half of the kulaks land away from them. Lenin sent troops to seize grain and other foodstuff, this hit the peasants living near towns hard like a stab in the back and frequently left them without seed corn the following year to plant, which meant that they would die of starvation.
Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 with Germany. Lenin knew there was still a small chance that Germany could have tried to invade Russia because the Triple Entente won the First World War. So he authorised a Treaty, which took place in Brest-Litovsk. The Germans agreed and the Germans thought about it and thought of very harsh things. The treaty brought peace to Russia but peace at a tremendous price. The treaty gave Germany one third of Russia’s agricultural land, four fifths of its iron and coal mines, over half of its industry and a quarter of it’s railway system. You may be thinking why Lenin gave up so easily, this was because he thought that Germany was going to be a communist revolution, and then the Treaty could have been renegotiated with the German communist leader. Not a lot of people cared too much about this and didn’t really blame Lenin because they thought he was protecting Russia from being ruled by the Germans. Lenin also showed a bit of cleverness and a lot of thinking because the places where the Germans took were where there weren’t a lot of Bolshevik supporters.
In 1918-1921 a Civil War occurred between to groups. One of the groups was the Bolsheviks, which called themselves the Red army, each individual was called a Red Guard; this group was lead by Lenin. The Bolsheviks were fighting the White army, which include the foreign soldiers from Japan, Great Britain and France and especially included the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries who blamed the Bolsheviks causing an undemocratic act by overthrowing the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks tried to reason with the White army by stating that they were just doing the best for Russia. This didn’t seem to make a difference to the White army and at the start of the Civil War they attacked the main cities and had bought in their army but the Red army had soon sorted them out. The Red army was not lead by Lenin but it was Trotsky who led the Red army to victory. There were disadvantages and advantages to the White army and the Red army. They were, The Red Army had a brilliant unit of force because Trotsky was an excellent leader and was very co-ordinated. His discipline was very important because some soldiers weren’t very enthusiastic so he made them confident and was strict at certain times. The Reds communication was excellent unlike the White’s because they were all from different countries and spoke different languages, so they couldn’t communicate as well. I think the Civil War would most definitely of have been won without Lenin because Trotsky was powerful enough to lead the Red’s to victory.
Although the Red’s won everything wasn’t perfect because the army didn’t have enough food or weapons so Lenin introduced War Communism. The government took over all the factories and controlled the types of goods the factories made. They banned all private trade and introduced food rationing and troops from the Red army were sent into the countryside to confiscate food from the peasants in order to feed those in the cities. By 1921 the situation was chaotic. The winter of 1920-1 was especially hard because there were food shortages in towns and cities and the peasants refused to grow found if the soldiers were at the end of it just confiscate the food. Famine and disease spread from the countryside to the towns and cities. Lenin and Trotsky realized that once the Civil War was over, the policy of War Communism would no longer be practical and they would lose all support. So the War Communism had ended after the Civil War. The war Communism meant peasants starved to death, and at the end of War Communism almost five million people died.
Later on Lenin tried to lift up the agriculture and industry, so he introduced The New Economic Policy. This policy was introduced in 1921; it was a step to equality as Lenin had promised this all along. In order to end the rebellion in the countryside with the peasants Lenin got rid of the requisition squads so the peasants would calm down. Then he thought of a suggestion, which was that the peasants should make the food and the peasants could own the land as long as they pay a small tax. The money that the peasants gave them and the food that they sold from the crops they made went towards building factories and making advanced transport. So things were looking up as small businesses were made and the people who worked in the business were called Nepmen. As you can see Lenin was full of ideas and because of his intelligent ideas including The New Economic Policy he became very popular because Russia was getting a lot of money, which helped everyone.
In January 1924 Lenin died because of a number of strokes, when Lenin had died everyone realised that there was no deputy or vice person to take over his power. Literally everyone thought Trotsky would become leader because he led the Red army to victory. But instead a member of the Bolsheviks called Stalin, who was known as the man of steel, became the person who held power. Trotsky later on was murdered by one of Stalin’s friends.
I think Lenin was a very important person in history because he was a good planner, thinker, had ability to write good speeches and send them to the people in a way that they understood and could relate to. He was a person who Russia looked up to as an idol because when he died they changed Petrograd to Leningrad and preserved his body and at this moment is still there for people to go and thank him for what he did. I think if it wasn’t for Lenin, then Russia would have been in a worse state at that time. At the start of 1905 Lenin promised that everyone would be equal, I don’t think he achieved that but he did boost up the industry and agriculture. The best point about him, I think was that he gave everything he had to the Russian people and experimented and finally got somewhere with what ever he wanted to achieve.
By Zahid Rasul
