To what extent did the Bolsheviks use terror tacticts in the years 1918-1921 only because of their need to achieve victory in the Russian civil war?

Authors Avatar

To what extent did the Bolsheviks use terror tacticts in the years 1918-1921 only because of their need to achieve victory in the Russian civil war??

        The White campaign that opposed the Bolsheviks consisted of mainly Tsarist sympathisers, constitutionalists and the Socialist Revolutionaries. These groups, although all fighting against the Bolsheviks, had different reasons and motives for getting involved.

        A view which is put forward by the Western Liberals is that the Bolshevik use of terror tactics between the years of 1918 and 1921 was just a continuation and natural extension of the already created Bolshevik coup. Western Liberals say that the Bolsheviks came into power in a minority coup and that nothing really changed significantly in the way that they tried to maintain power from October 1917 to 1924. They claim that this use of terror began at the time of the revolution in 1917 carried on until the Lenin had imposed a total control over the Russian people. This means that the Western liberals argue that the Bolsheviks were not using terror to only win the civil war but were also using it to make Russia an authoritarian state under their rule. This is backed up by the fact that once the civil war had been won by the Bolsheviks, Lenin became dictator and banned all other opposition parties. This view tells us that we should not be too surprised by the extent of Bolshevik repression or at the scale of the terror imposed as it was due to the autocratic nature of the party that had always discouraged democratic debate. Overall this tells us that the Western Liberals truly believe that the Bolsheviks didn’t only use terror tactics in the years 1918-1921 because of their need to win the civil war because they had already been using terror beforehand.

Join now!

        A view which stands close to the Bolsheviks is that of the Soviets. They argue that the terror used was necessary for the Bolsheviks to remain in power and that they only used terror and repression when it was needed the most. The soviets also claim that for the Bolsheviks the use of terror during the civil war was much less important than the amount of popular support they had. They also believed that a successful Bolshevik leadership would ‘trump’ all use of terror. For example the Bolsheviks employed other methods that lead to victory such as War Communism. The ...

This is a preview of the whole essay