To what extent is it fair to say that with the impact of the Civil War the Bolsheviks were able to consolidate their hold over Russia?

To wipe out all their opponents, military and political, Lenin thought that a short, brutal struggle in the form of a civil war would help them to consolidate their power. The war began in 1918 and lasted approximately for a year. It was a conflict between three political groups called the Reds, the Whites and the Greens. The Bolsheviks came out victorious, but this was by no means evident. A period of “protective war” against the Greens followed after the Whites were destroyed in 1920. Their way to recruit members to the Red Army was by conscription, and any disloyalty was rewarded with the death sentence. Desertions were yet commonplace. 

As a result, about ten million people died during the civil war period, and more than half because of the starvation that followed.  Due to the widespread famine Lenin had initially introduced the policy of War Communism, which ended private ownership and started the state requisitionings. This meant that any surplus grain was taken away from the richer peasants, who were thought to hoard it in order to force up the price.  The troops of the newly formed Cheka confiscated all kinds of grocery products, which led to bloody revolts and people being even more hungry. 

By 1918 the Ckeka had assassinated more than 10 000 “counterrevolutionaries”. It also organized public hangings. Labour- and concentration camps were established. Everyone who was considered as a threat to the new regime was sent into one of them. Revolutionary courts, whose main task was not to exercise justice but to fight against the counterrevolutionary forces, were set up. These courts legalised terror and were not used to protect society or individuals.

The disintegration of the tsarist regime caused a rapid growth of national self-consciousness among minorities. This was particularly important since they formed about half of the Russian population. The Bolsheviks allowed them the right of self-determination, but it turned out that the attempts of the neighbouring countries to gain independence from Russian control was considered “counterrevolutionary”. 

The Bolsheviks also loathed the Orthodox Church that had a long tradition of supporting the tsarist rule. During the Civil War the Church supported the Whites. The Bolsheviks attempted to turn Russia into an atheist state. Priests were mercilessly shot and the Church property was confiscated. But, since religion was so deeply rooted in the Russian people, this aim was never achieved, and the Church authority was not completely destroyed.

By 1921 there was a constant threat from the uprisings of peasants and soldiers, and the workers had started to go on strikes. These manifestations were suppressed by using the most brutal means. The most serious uprisings occurred in Astrakan, Tambov and Kronstadt. The Kronstadt uprising was particularly serious, because it was a protest of the sailors, who had been the most enthusiastic supporters of Bolsheviks in 1917.  There were also several attempts on Lenin’s life, so successful that he barely avoided death. 

Alarmed by the risings, Lenin realised that he had to make concessions to save the government and the economic situation and to prevent people from starving. The result was the NEP. Requisitionings were ended, the peasants were allowed to make profit from trade and public markets were restored.  This resulted in three million peasants who had previously owned no land at all receiving some when the landlord’s lands were redistributed. Some stability was reached, but the eradication of the other political parties continued, even more fiercely than before. By 1920 the Bolsheviks remained the only real political party in Russia.

        

3. Evaluation of Sources

Robert Service, the author of Lenin: A Biography, is a well-known British professor of Russian History in the university of Oxford. He was one of the first historians to explore the previously secret documents that were made public when the USSR collapsed in 1991. The use of this information accounts as an essential value. Books written about Bolshevism before these records were available tend to portray Lenin as a great political leader and humanist, which we now know is not the truth. Service’s work, published in 2000, is therefore the first attempt to write a full biography of Lenin with a neutral and critical style. Both the public and the private life of Lenin are covered in detail, providing a very complete picture of his character.

The Black Book of Communism is the combined work of Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek and Jean-Louis Margolin. It covers the whole history of communism from the Communist Revolution to its fall in 1991. It was published in 1997, and the authors had access to the information published after the disintegration of the USSR. The purpose of this work is to provide an unembellished picture of the crimes committed in the name of communism. The focus of the study is in the life of ordinary people and the terrorist actions committed against them. The work can be considered as very objective, since it consists of information from official documents and records from the time of USSR. The slight weakness of this work might lay, as the writer of the foreword suggests, in the fact that the work group consists only of French researchers, which tends to affect the use of material. Russian documents are widely used and introduced, but other literary sources tend to be French. It should also be kept in mind that the whole sphere of communism is a tremendously large area for one single book.

4. Analysis

The Bolshevik methods used during the Civil War indicate that they were not prepared to share power or tolerate any threats to their authority. And it is understandable that any party attempting to take control in its hands is determined to face opposition. The determination and the brutal ways that the Bolsheviks were ready to resort in was a key element that enabled them to survive. When taking into account the dire circumstances Russia was facing at the time, it seems that any weaker government would have been done out.

For ordinary people, the results of the Civil War were disastrous. It had an immeasurable cost in human lives and suffering. Again, violence created more violence: the peasants stored their harvests, the state responded with terror, the peasants refused to till more land than was necessary for their own living and started to rebel. For them, the Civil War was a fight for their lives. The uprisings that increased during the war demonstrate how discontent the people were. Because the Whites had been won in 1920, the government could no longer claim that they were fighting against the counterrevolutionary forces. The peasants understood that it was them who would be destroyed. The broad definition of kulak meant that the government could execute anyone they held dangerous.

The peasants, most backward class in Russia, were not interested in politics or who the leader of the country was. What they really wanted was to cultivate their lands and be left alone. For them, it seemed that they were being more suppressed than in the tsarist times. The fact that the government was so isolated from the largest social group that was scattered around the country made it difficult to lead effectively. Given Russia’s great size, taking over with military control is understandably difficult and time-consuming. Furthermore, the Red Army was made up of peasants and workers, who had to fight against their own kind. Obviously, this made them very untrustworthy fighters. People were not happy with being forced to join the Red Army, since most of them shared no common ideology with the Bolsheviks. Even the greatest supporters of the Bolsheviks, the sailors, turned against them. The contribution of national minorities that seeked independence made the already weakening government control even weaker. The fact that the attempts on Lenin’s life had been so easy to commit showed how weak this control was – he was a leader of a dictate after all, but the subjects had no respect for him, and he could even be killed.

The War Communism helped the Bolsheviks to survive through the Civil War, but at the same time it ruined the economy and caused revolts that threated to overthrow them. It seems quite clear that it would have been impossible for the Bolsheviks to stay in power if they had continued this policy. They had no majority support in 1917, and clearly they did not have it in 1921 either. The famine that followed the Civil War benefitted the government, since the people had no strength to fight anymore. The rebellions ceased when a large proportion of the population died. Had there been no such dire famine after the civil war, and had the government continued the War Communism (which was a real communist practice, unlike the NEP), it is possible that the Bolsheviks would not have been able to consolidate their power. The NEP managed to bring some stability to the country. While it did not end the repression from the state, it brought social levelling and equality with it.

Whether it was mainly the famine or the NEP that helped the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power remains an open question. Both of them were caused by the Civil War. By 1920, however, the Bolsheviks had come over all the major obstacles, and faced no severe political opposition to their rule. Their systematic methods in purging their enemies resemble those used later by Hitler in Nazi Germany, and seemed to pave the way for Stalin’s even more outrageous manoeuvres.

The Bolsheviks were waging a war against the ancien regimé. For them, an old institution like the Orthodox Church was a feature of backwardness that they wanted to destroy. Superstitious nonsense would not help to educate the people. The Church also possessed considerable influence among Russians. This attempt to destroy the Church and killing priests created great hostility towards the government, since religion was an integral part in the lifes of the Russian people.

     

5. Conclusion

The Civil War gave the Bolshevik government an excuse to use extraordinarily brutal violence against their political opponents and the citizens of Russia to establish a new regime and to secure their position. Any presumed enemies to their rule were killed or sent to concentration camps. This, together with the introduction of War Communism caused uprisings throughout the country, and the government was close to collapse. By the end of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks faced no political opposition, but the peasant armies continued to be a threat for them for a long time. After the establishment of NEP and the famine that killed a great quantity of the population, the opposition grew weak. The improvements in the economy helped the lives of those who survived and people gradually got more satisfied. After these years of struggling, Bolsheviks had consolidated their power and managed to carry out the revolution.

           

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6. Bibliography

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/russia/mett/petro_eve.html

Courtois, Stéphane, The Black Book of Communism, Paris: Èditions Robertn Laffont, 1997

Karlsson, Klas-Göran, Vaino ja vaikeneminen – Neuvostoliiton sota omia kansalaisiaan vastaan, Keuruu: Otavan kirjapaino, 2005

Kenez, Peter, A History of Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, New York: Cambridge University press, 1999

Lowe, Norman, Mastering Modern World History, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Lynch, Michael, Reaction and Revolution: Russia 1894-1924, London: Hodder and Stoughton Educational, 2005

Lynch, Michael, Stalin’s Russia, 1924-53, London: Hodder Education, 2008

Service, Robert, Lenin: A Biography, London: Macmillan Publishers LTD, 2000

G.  Appendix

Having heard the reports of the representatives sent by the General Assembly of the Fleet to find out about the situation in Petrograd, the sailors demand:

1. Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, solders and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political sections various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
8. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
9. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
10. The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
11. The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
12. We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
13. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
14. We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it does not utilise wage labour.

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