The Bolshevik Consolidation of Power 1918-21.

Authors Avatar

The Bolshevik Consolidation of Power 1918-21

The Bolsheviks under Lenin, when they came into power in October 1917, faced immense problems in trying to consolidate their hold over the ex-tsarist empire. Firstly, how were the Bolsheviks, in view of their military resources, to extend their hold over the nation at large? The second, was how could they achieve a speedy end to the war and effect a rapid withdrawal of the German army, which was currently occupying the western part of Russia. Thirdly, how quickly would they be able to stage an economic recovery?

Beset by internal and external enemies, the Bolsheviks were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. Pre-1917, they had been spent in preparing plans for the revolution, and less attention was given to the details of how affairs would be organised once this had been achieved. Trotsky had expressed this simple faith at his time of appointment as commissar for foreign affairs, when h e said that all that was required to be done was ‘to issue a few decrees, then shut up shop and go home’.

An internal threat occurred in 1918, in the form of a civil war, fought between 1918 and 1920, in which the Bolsheviks (the Reds) were confronted by a loose combination of anti-Bolshevik forces (the whites); the external threat came from abroad in 1918-19, with a series of military interventions by a number of foreign powers, including Britain, France, the USA and Japan.

1 The Dissolution of A Constituent Assembly

For Lenin, true democracy was the rule of the Bolshevik Party, the voice of the revolutionary masses. This particular interpretation of democracy, often referred to as ‘democratic centralism’, also left Lenin free to disregard election results, if they did not accord with his perception of the needs of the revolution or the party. His objective was not to win mass support, but to create a party capable of seizing power when political circumstances permitted. After the successful October coup in 1917, he was even more determined not to jeopardise the Bolshevik’s newly-won power by allowing elections to dictate the pace of revolutionary change. The November election, therefore presented him with a problem; the Bolshevik party had won barely a quarter of the seats.

Results of the Constituent Assembly: November 1917

Lenin’s response to this was simple and unscrupulous. In January 1918, after only one day’s session, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved at gun-point by the Red Guards. Without this course of action, the prospects of the Bolshevik’s survival seemed slim. There was strong opposition to them both inside and outside the country. Lenin justified his action with the following speech:

‘To hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie. The Russian Soviets place the interests of the toiling masses far above the interests of the treacherous compromise disguised in a new garb. A musty spirit of antiquity breathed in the speeches of those superannuated politicians, Chernov [leader of the SRs] and Tseretelli [ a leading Menshevik], who continued tediously to whine for the cessation of Civil War. But as long as behind the slogan ‘All power to the Constituent Assembly’ is concealed the slogan ‘Down with the Soviets’, civil war is inevitable. For nothing in the world will induce us to surrender the Soviet power.

And when the constituent Assembly again revealed its readiness to postpone all the painfully urgent problems and tasks that were placed before the soviets, we told the Constituent Assembly, which has the will of the Soviet power, the constituent Assembly, which has refused to recognise the power of the people, is dissolved. The Soviet Revolutionary Republic will triumph no matter what the cost.

Join now!

Many historians disagree as to whether or not Lenin was a violent revolutionary; many of his sympathisers have often argued that the oppressive character of Soviet Communism was the fault of the oppressive figure of Stalin; however, his violent actions in, for instance, the dissolution of parliament.

Many foreign communists condemned this abolishment of democracy; Rosa Luxemburg, a German socialist commented: ‘To be sure, every democratic society has its limitations. But the remedy which Lenin and Trotsky have found, the elimination of democracy itself, is worse than the disease it is ...

This is a preview of the whole essay