The Bolshevik Consolidation of power 1917-21.

• The dissolution of the constituent assembly and the subsequent banning of all other political parties made it obvious that the Bolsheviks did not want to share power with anyone else.  This situation made civil war inevitable.
• But the civil war wasn’t as simple as Red’s versus White’s.  There were different factions of the white army and they weren’t united.  
• The only common belief within the White army was a common hatred of the Bolsheviks.  The white army was made up of lots of different parties and people who each held different beliefs about what should be done if they won against Bolshevism.
• Also they was another army known as the Greens that consisted of Russia’s national minorities such as the Ukrainians and the Georgians who fought in the war to establish their independence.
• There are 4 easy reasons why the Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil war: -

1. The red army had control over the main industrial area in Russia, i.e. around Moscow.  This meant that they had access to munitions factories, which meant they were better prepared for combat.
2. The red army had control over the railways, which meant they could call in supplies from all over Russia.
3. The red army had strong leadership under Trotsky and Lenin.  This meant they were united and organised with well thought-out plans of action, with Trotsky as war commissar and good use of propaganda against the White army by Lenin.
4. The white army was terribly divided.  They were different parts of the white army scattered outside red territory.  Each of these parts of the whites didn’t pose a challenge to the reds but when they did try to band together it wasn’t success as they mostly argued amongst themselves instead of uniting against the common enemy.

The Foreign Interventions

• When Tsardom fell the western allies wondered whether the new regime would keep Russia in the war, as if they pulled out and made a separate peace Germany could pull resources from the eastern front and create more of a challenge for them.
• To prevent this Britain and France gave Russia resources in return for a guarantee that Russia would continue to fight.
• Once the Bolsheviks came into power however Germany’s hopes and the Allies feared came true.  Germany, of course, wanted Russia out of the war and tried to get the Bolsheviks in power to get this.
• The British Prime minister declared that his wasn’t anti-Bolshevik, only anti-German and decided to give help to anti-German Russians.
• But this help went towards anti-Bolshevik causes and therefore made it look to Lenin that the Allies were anti-Bolshevik.
• However once the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been signed then the first priority for the Allies was protecting the resources they had given Russia from Germany so that Germany didn’t use their own resources against them.
• So in March 1918, following the signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, British, French and American forces occupied the ports of Murmansk in Arctic and Archangel in the White Sea.
• Armed forces were to be present here for the next 2 years but the different countries weren’t cooperating but each declared they were protecting their own interests.
• However, the Bolsheviks made no distinction between the aims of the Whites and the foreign interventionists.
• The seeming spread of the communist revolution throughout Europe (Germany and Hungary) scared anti-Bolsheviks like Churchill who wanted to start another war against them just after WW1.
• But it wasn’t just that the Bolsheviks were communist.  They had declared that they had no intention of paying back the debt owed by the old Tsarist regime.  
• But the truth was, the interventionists couldn’t handle another war yet not just after the 4 year struggle with Germany.
• However the foreign inventions were never a serious threat to the Bolsheviks, there attempted to cooperate with the Whites were half-hearted and had no effect anyway.
• So the Bolsheviks used their withdrawal as propaganda, portraying themselves as the saviour of the nation from foreign conquest.  

The Effects of the Civil War

• The Bolshevik victory in the civil war encouraged them to try and spread the revolution to Poland by marching the Red Army in hoping that Polish workers would rise up.  
• However it was seen as an invasion and the Bolsheviks were forced back.
• This showed Lenin that the world wasn’t ready for a world revolution.  So he softened his foreign policy with the aim to avoid conflict with Europe but comintern would continue to call for the international revolution.
• The civil war also shaped how the communist party would rule in years to come.  As the communist party had learned how to rule during a war, it had made them more willing to use force to impose themselves.  This would appear as a style of rule later.
• The move towards centralism in government increased as the civil war continued.  War meant that important decisions had to be made day to day.  The need for quick decision meant that the Politburo and the Orgburo had power as they could make quick decisions.
• The renaming of Russia from RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic) to USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) represented an extension of the central authority of Moscow.

The Terror

• Lenin had always accepted terror as an instrument of political control and as he regarded Marxism-Leninism as being superior to all other ideologies repression became necessary.
• Lenin also made it clear that without crushing their enemies a Marxist revolution couldn’t have taken place.  There were two organisations through which the Bolsheviks exercised their policy of terror, the Cheka and the Red Army.

a) The Cheka

• The Cheka were a more efficient and well organised version of the Okrana (Tsarist secret police).  The Cheka’s full name was “The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Fighting Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Speculation”.
• The cheka were led by a remorseless Polish intellectual called Felix Dzerzhinsky.  He came from a privileged background and set to atone for this by absolute dedication to the Bolsheviks.
• In July 1918, a German ambassador was assassinated in protest of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and a month later there was an attempt on Lenin’s life.  Then barely after that, the Petrograd Cheka leader was murdered.
• These incidents were used as an excuse for more Cheka terror.  They were also used as justification for the shooting of the ex-Tsar and his family in July 1918.
• The execution of people without trial was typical of how the Cheka operated.  There was protest from within the Bolshevik party about the lack of legality in the Cheka’s method but no attempt was made to limit the Cheka’s power.
• Most Bolsheviks accepted that in the time of war repression was necessary for the government’s survival.  Dzerzhinsky believed that the proletarian revolution couldn’t be saved except by ‘exterminating the enemies of the working class’.
• Dzerzhinsky’s work was complemented by Trotsky, the leader of the Red Army.

b) The Red Army

• Lenin gave complete control of the red army over to Trotsky and he turned it from an unpromising collection of Red Guard veterans and new recruits into a formidable army.
• He enlisted many ex-Tsarist soldiers into the red army although he did attach commissars to each of them.  The commissars made sure they were being politically sound.
• Trotsky tolerated no opposition from within the red army.  The punishment for desertion and disloyalty was death.
• He also enforced conscription in Bolshevik controlled areas, he even conscripted men whose social/ political background made them suspect and made them do labour service behind the lines.
• Peasants recruits were the most unreliable, deserting often.  So the Bolsheviks concluded that the most dependable units came from the workers.
• Workers units became, in practise, the elite corps within the Red army.
• There were some who joined the Red army because they sincerely believed in the communist cause and they boosted morale and gave the Reds a sense of purpose that their opponents lacked.
• Both sides were guilty of committing atrocities in the areas they controlled and the Reds gained recruits by offering defeated troops and uncommitted civilian enlistment or execution.
• Trotsky’s basic plan was to defend the reds internal lines of communication and prevent the whites from maintaining regular supplies and concentrating their forces in one area.
• Trotsky also maintained control of the railways which gave the reds an advantage because they were able to transport large numbers of troops quickly to key areas of attack or defence.
• With that strategy the reds exhausted the whites as an attacking force and they surrendered.
• Trotsky’s organisation and leadership of the Red Army was a major factor in the survival of Bolshevik Russia.  

The Kronstadt Rising, 1921.

• Bolshevik victory in the civil war didn’t stop Bolshevik coercion.  War communism continued and so did the Bolsheviks drop in popularity.
• If the opposition remained with the peasants and political enemies, it was containable.  However when opposition developed within the party, Lenin became concerned.  
• Two prominent Bolsheviks, Shlyapnikov and Kollontai (Leading lady) led a “workers opposition” movement against war communism.  Kollontai produced a leaflet which accused the Bolshevik leaders of losing touch with the proletariat.
• So in early 1921 groups of workers in Petrograd went on strike and by Feb thousands of them had crossed to the naval base on Kronstadt where they linked up with sailors and dockyard workers to demonstrate for greater freedom.
• By early March the sailors and workers of Kronstadt elected Petrechenko as the leader of a 15 man committee.  His job was to present their problems to the government.
• Petrechenko presented the 10 point manifesto to the government.

1. New elections to the soviets, to be held by secret ballot.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press.
3. Freedom of assembly
4. Rights for trade unions and release of imprisoned trade unionists.
5. Ending of the right of Communists to be the only permitted socialist political party.
6. The release of left wing political prisoners
7. Ending of special food rations for Communist party members.
8. Freedom for individual to bring food from the country in the towns without confiscation
9. Withdrawal of political commissars from factories.
10. Ending of the Communist party monopoly of the Press.

• The government’s chief concern was the source of the demands as the workers and sailors of Kronstadt had supported the Bolsheviks.
• The Bolshevik press tried to make the Kronstadt protestors seem like white agents but really they were loyal socialists who felt betrayed by Lenin’s government.
• Scared by their increasing demands and numbers, Trotsky ordered the red army to crush them.
• When the last ultimatum was rejects by the protestors, 60,000 Red troops stormed Kronstadt.  The workers/Sailor fought back savagely before they were overcome.
• Leaders who escaped were hunted down and executed.  Lenin justified this by saying the rising was the work of the bourgeois enemies of the October Revolution.
• Lenin had learned something however when decided to lessen the rigours of War Communism in order to avoid another rising.  
• This was the prelude to the introduction of the NEP, designed to reduce famine and opposition to the party.