Explain why these policies aroused opposition within the Bolsheviks within the USSR?

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Sophie Lakes March 2nd 2005

(B) Explain why these policies aroused opposition within the Bolsheviks within the USSR?

The policies introduced by Lenin in an attempt to solve the problems facing the Communist party in 1918 had varying degrees of success and aroused opposition with various members within the party as well as across Russia. Lenin faced a massive task if he was to revive the economy and gain a more widespread support. Unfortunately for Lenin, he was unable to please everybody all the time and so faced conflict with each of his decisions.

Lenin's initial measures after the seizure of power, in particular the disbanding of the constituent assembly, caused friction inside the party. Maxim Gorky, a leading Bolshevik party intellectual, was particularly unhappy with Lenin's actions. He revealed his despondency at the time, writing that 'The best Russians have lived for almost a hundred years with the idea of a Constituent Assembly as a political organ...and now the 'people's' commissars' have ordered the shooting of this democracy'. Lenin's defence for this was that 'to hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie', allowing him to maintain already his weak grasp on power my playing on pre-existing tensions between the oppressive upper classes and the oppressed lower classes.
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It was during War Communism when the cracks within the party really began to show. The Kronstadt sailors, 'the pride and joy of the revolution', so called by Trotsky, began to show their annoyance with Lenin's way of rule. Their sympathetic response to the workers strikes was unexpected, as it would normally have been the Kronstadt sailors that quashed such uprisings. The sailors were making requests for fresh elections, demanding 'equal rations for all working people' and an end to grain requisitioning. Lenin knew that he satisfy the nation by simply labelling the sailor's counter-revolutionaries, because of their ...

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