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 supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come the correction of all the shortcomings of social institutions. The source is the active, untrammelled, energetic, political life of the broadest masses of people.’
2 The Treaty of Brest Litovsk 1918
Lenin wanted immediate peace in the war with Germany; Trotsky wanted a delay. Lenin thought that Russia is suffering from military exhaustion, and if Germany won the war on both fronts she would retain the territory she possessed. There is a strong likelihood that Lenin’s readiness to make peace with Germany was not wholly ideological. The German Foreign Office had given regular financial support to the Bolsheviks in the hope that if they achieved their revolutionary aims, they would pull Russian out of the war. What was kept quiet however, the German army continued to finance Lenin even after the October Revolution and the armistice of December 1917; thus, Lenin would not want to dry up this considerable source of Bolshevik revenue, by unnecessarily offending his paymasters.
Trotsky wanted to try and make the German armies collapse on the western front and he hoped that revolution would follow in Germany. In effect, Trotsky took a middle position between Lenin, who wanted peace immediately, and those Bolsheviks and Left Revolutionaries who were pressing for the continuation of war as a revolutionary crusade against imperialist Germany. Trotsky deliberately frustrated the German delegation at the summit for peace held in Brest Litovsk, Poland, and Germany’s chief negotiator and stated, ‘Lenin and Trotsky behaved more like victors than the vanquished, while trying to sow seeds of political dissolution within the ranks of our army.’
For them however, they felt they were on the verge of a victory; they believed that a great political victory was imminent. It is important to remember that Lenin and Trotsky, as international revolutionaries had limited loyalty towards Russia as a nation. Their first concern was to spread the anticipated proletarian revolution elsewhere. Before signing the treaty on March 3, 1918 Sokolnikov, the Soviet representative, declared, under instruction from Trotsky, that it was not a freely negotiated settlement but a German Diktat imposed on a helpless Russia. About a square kilometre of land, containing about 45 million people, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and including the Ukraine, as handed over to the Germans.
Despite Lenin’s argument that Russia could offer physical resistance after the three years was with Germany, he still faced great difficulty in convincing his colleagues, and gained his way only by threatening to resign. Lenin and Trotsky were primarily internal revolutionaries, and for them Russia was a means to an end – world-wide proletarian revolution. Not all Bolsheviks shared this vision. There remained those in the party (LRs) who were convinced that their first task was to drive out the German imperialists. However, Lenin insisted on political unity, and his points of view were accepted.. Lenin’s gamble that circumstances would soon make the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk meaningless had paid of. It strengthened his hold over the party, and provided the opportunity to expel the Left SRs from the Government and to outlaw them politically.
- The Civil War 1918-20
The Bolsheviks presented the Civil War in Russia as a class war; but it was never merely this. A number of Russian’s national minorities, such as the Ukrainians and the Georgians, fought in the war, in order to establish independence. As in all civil wars, the disruption provided a covet for settling old scores., as it was not uncommon for villages or families to be divided against each other. The dislocation of supplies that had occurred during the war against Germany had still to be rectified.
In addition to the problems of a fractured transport system, Lenin’s government was faced with the loss of Russia’s main wheat-supply area., the Ukraine. By June 1918, the workforce in Petrograd had shrunk by 60 per cent, and the overall population had declined from three to two millions. The Bolshevik boast that October 1917 had established worker-control of Russian industry, meant little now that the workers were deserting the industry.
These dire circumstances encouraged open challenges from both right and left. Lenin only narrowly escaped two SR attempts on his life. In their desperation at being denied any say in government, the SRs, despite their deep ideological differences with the Whites, joined them in common cause against Lenin’s Reds in the Civil War.
A contingent of 40,000 Czechoslovakian troops who had volunteered to fight on the side of the Russian troops in the First World War as a means of gaining independence from Austria-Hungary, found themselves isolated after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. They formed themselves into the Czech Legion and decided to make a long journey eastward to Vladivostock. Their aim was to eventually rejoin the allies on the western front in the hope of winning international support for the formation of an independent Czechoslovakian state. Local Soviets began to challenge the Czech Legion and fierce fighting accompanied its progress along the Trans Siberian railway.
The SRs organised a number of uprisings in Central Russia and established an anti-Bolshevik Volga ‘Republic’ at Samara. In Siberia, the presence of a Czech Legion encouraged the formation of a White army under Admiral Kolchak, the self-proclaimed ‘supreme ruler of Russia’. The criss-cross of political, regional and national loyalties inside Russia, together with the added complication of foreign interventions, made the Civil War a complex affair. It was because the Bolsheviks were largely successful in their desperate fight to maintain control of the railway lines that they were able to keep themselves supplied, while denying the Whites the same benefit.
Apart from their obvious desire to overthrow the Bolsheviks, the Whites were never bound together in a single aim. Due to their reluctance to form a single; anti-Red front, it enabled the Reds to pick off the White armies one by one. The Reds remained in control of a concentrated central area of Western Russia which they were able to defend by maintaining their inner communication and supply lines. Petrgorad, Russia and the railway network remained in their hands throughout the war. The dependence of the Whites on supplies from abroad appeared to prove the Red accusation that they were in league with the foreign interventionists. The Civil War had produced a paradoxical situation in which the Reds were able to stand as champions of the Russian nation as well as the proletarian revolutionaries.
To the ordinary Russian there was little to choose between the warring sides in regard to their brutality. IT was not that the Reds were genuinely popular in the Civil War, rather, the Whites failed to present themselves as a better alternative. The Reds continually pointed out that all the lands which the peasants had seized in the Revolutions of 1917 would be forfeit if ever the Whites regained power. It was this fear more than any other that stopped the peasants from giving their support to the Whites.
Trotsky may have been extreme in his methods, but he created an army which proved capable of fighting with an unshakeable belief in its own eventual victory. Set against this, the Whites were never more than an uncoordinated collection of separate forces, whose morale was never high. Throughout the Civil War, the White cause was deeply divided by the conflicting interests of those who were fighting for local separatism and those who wanted a return to strong central government, No White leader emerged of the stature of Trotsky or Lenin around whom an effective anti-Bolshevik army could unite.
- The Foreign Interventions
When Tsardom collapsed in Russia in 1917, the immediate response of the western allies was shaped less by political considerations, but by military one; they wanted a firm commitment that Russia would continue the war against Russia. Lenin’s unwavering determination to withdraw Russia from the war excited German interest; up until this point he and the Bolsheviks had received little attention. The German secret services provided the Bolsheviks with aid and resources, and the Bolshevik coup had precisely the effect hoped for by Germany and feared by the Allies. The British and French response was cautious.
Lloyd George, the British prime minister, declared that he was neither for or against Bolshevism, but simply anti-German. With Lenin refusing to consider a renewal of the fight against Germany, it so happened that any given by Britain to anti-German Russians went necessarily to anti-Bolshevik forces.
- In March 1918, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the British, French and United States’ detachments occupied the ports of Murmansk in the Arctic and Archangel in the White Sea. The declared motive of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA was the legitimate protection of their individual interests. In April 1918 Japanese troops occupied Russia’s chief far-eastern port of Vladivostok. Four months later, they were joined by units of France, Britain, the USA and Italy. In 1919 Japanese and United States troops occupied parts of Siberia. Britain and France attacked using warships in 1918 and 1919.
These were not co-operative ventures. From that point on, the Bolsheviks made no distinction between the aims of their internal enemies, the Whites, and those of foreign interventionists. With the close of the Western Front in November 1918, there was a boisterous demand from anti-Bolsheviks, such as the British Cabinet Minister, and the French military leader, that the wartime allies should unite in a major offensive against the Bolsheviks. They pointed at the Bolshevik terror tactics, highlighted by the murder of the ex-tsar and his family in July 1918.
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia were given independence because British troops occupied these areas, and in a bid to restrict Lenin’s dominance over Eastern Europe, occupied these areas, and wouldn’t allow Lenin to dominate these areas. Eventually, in 1920 all western troops withdrew and Japan left in 1922.
- The Effects of the Civil War
On Soviet Foreign Policy
The Bolsheviks, in 1920, believed they could expand their authority and influence, and invaded Poland in 1920. The Bolsheviks thought that the Polish workers would aid them to rebel against their government, but this was not the case; the Red army was driven back. After this, (perhaps resulting from this), Lenin said that it was not time for a Communist revolution. Thus, Lenin stated that Russia would segregate itself from Capitalism, and aptly adjusted their foreign policy, and decided not to try to expand (the whites were backed by the west).
On Internal Affairs
Due to the brutal circumstances of entering into power during the war, then facing a civil war and defending itself from international invasion, this may have shaped the way that they ruled domestically. The power shifted from the Bolsheviks to two sub-committees: the Politburo and the Orgburo. These were small groups of people, that could act fast. In 1922, the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was the name to replace Russia.
The terror
Lenin was able to impose terror due to the numerous political rebellions, after he took power; he firmly believed he needed to instate political terror in order to maintain political control; he quashed opposition.
a) The Cheka
This was a secret police, who proved to be far more brutal than the Okhrana under the Tsarist regime. Its purpose was supposed o be to fight against counter revolutions, but in practice they appeared to suppress most forms of political opposition. Lenin gave them his full backing; in 1918 they executed the ex-Tsar and his family. They were ruthless, and never felt the need to operate via trials. Even some Bolsheviks members felt that the Cheka was unnecessary, although the majority thought it was, but merely to subdue revolutions.
b) The Red Army
Trotsky took up the position as a commissar of war. In many respects, what he did was a great achievement; within two years he turned an uncompromising collection of tired Red Guard veterans and raw recruits into a formidable army of 3 million men. Although some ex-Tsarists held high positions in the army they had to answer to the Bolsheviks who were commissars. The death penalty was enforced for deserters. Soldiers’ committees and the practice of electing officers was abandoned. Conscription was introduced by the Bolsheviks.
The red army was still not as good as European armies however, mainly due to their lack of finance. The Red Army maintained control over the railways; there were a lot of conflicts between reds and whites here. Stalin and Trotsky had a major dispute, for the first time, and began to question his authority, proceeding (his triumphant success in) the Civil War. The majority of Bolsheviks knew that Trotsky was responsible for the success in the War.
Despite the success of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, there was still varying degrees of political opposition left. There was a development of opposition to war communism within the party itself. Workers’ opposition groups began to encourage workers in Petrograd to strike, and the peasants wanted more control and freedom. Essentially, they wanted to be better off under the Bolsheviks than under the Tsarist regime.
The Kronstadt Rising 1921
The workers set up a committee and demanded new elections, freedom of speech and press, assembly, trade unions, more political parties, the release of left-wing prisoners, the end of food rations, the removal of commissars from factories, and the allowance of food transfers. They wanted collective human rights. The fact that the people who were revolting against communism were the very people who founded it, meant that Trotsky had to sit up and take note. Trotsky ordered 60,000 red troops to storm the base, where ruthless fighting took place, and the workers and soldiers eventually surrendered; this marked the height of the political unrest.
The leaders of the demonstration were said to be Whites (whether this was true or not is unclear), and they were executed. Lenin decided that it was time to be more lenient of war communism ideals.