SGQ #5

QW's:

1. “The aims and policies of single-party state rulers rarely followed their declared ideology.” To what extent do you agree with this assertion?
2. Compare and contrast the rise to power of two rulers of single-party states, each chosen from a different region.

MWH 349-358

How successfully did Lenin and the Bolsheviks deal with their problems (1917-1924?)

I. How much support did the Bolsheviks have from the people?
a. the elections of November 1917
i. Bolshevik seats - 175 out of about 700
ii. Social Revolutionary seats - 370
iii. Mensheviks seats - 15
iv. "left wing" groups - 40
v. nationality groups - 80
vi. Kadets - 17

b. How did Lenin respond to the election results?
He was determined that the Bolsheviks were going to stay in power... after some anti-Bolshevik speeches at the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly, Lenin dispersed it with Bolshevik Red guards, claiming he was doing the ultimate form of democracy because the Bolsheviks knew what the workers actually wanted

II. What was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (which Lenin supported because he thought it was worth it), and what were its conditions?
a. It was a treaty between... Russia and the Central Powers

b. Russia gave up
Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia and Finland. This included:
i. 1/3 of Russia's farming land
ii. 1/3 of her population
iii. 2/3 of her coalmines
iv. 1/2 of her heavy industry

III. Why did the Bolsheviks resort to violence?
a. Violence from others (or from desperate situations ?)
i. Petrograd and Moscow - by Jan. 1918 severe food shortages. Lenin thinks Kulaks are hoarding huge quantities of grain to jack up the price; the Cheka was given the job of dealing with these criminals
ii. Ukraine - loss of Ukraine (important wheat sources) from signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk contributes to food shortages
iii. Social Revolutionaries - did their best to wreck the treaty and began a campaign of terror: assassinated German ambassador and a Bolshevik leader of the Soviet... tried to usurp power or cause an uprising to make Bolsheviks change their policies
iv. violence aimed at Bolshevik leaders - Aug 30, 1918: head of Petrograd Cheka was assassinated, and a woman shot Lenin twice

I_> Suggests that Bolsheviks became violent in response to desperate conditions

b. Lenin's flawed reasoning
i. Marx's predictions
1. That the collapse of capitalism would take place in 2 stages: first middle class bourgeois would set up a democracy,
2. then once Russia was industrialized, the proletariat industrial workers would create a classless society
ii. Russia's reality
1. Bolsheviks gained power too soon before full industrialization and before their most reliable supporters - the industrial workers - had become a big enough class to support them -> Bolsheviks are a minority gov't uncomfortably dependent on the support of the peasants
2. Law and order were breaking down and local soviets simply ignored the government's decrees
iii. Lenin's expectations for the rest of Europe
revolutions would soon follow in central and western europe, so that the new Soviet government would be surrounded by sympathetic neighboring governments
c. Liberal historical interpretation
Lenin and Trotsky were committed to the use of violence and terror from the beginning ("absolutely vital element of revolutionary government" -> e.g. CHEKA set up in December 1917, a time of no opposition)

IV. The Red Terror
a. against peasants - Red Army was used to take extra grain, Cheka suppressed peasant uprisings with thousands of killings/executions [in 1919 over 3000 more executions]
b. against political opponents - Social Revolutionaries etc. were rounded up and shot; people not guilty of any particular crime but seen as "Bourgeois" or "enemies of the people" were arrested and executed
c. against the former Tsar - July 1918: Lenin orders Cheka to shoot members of the royal family which were being babysat, because he didnt want the Whites to capture the Tsar and use him as a rallying point for all the anti-Bolshevists

V. Civil War
a. Which groups made up the "Whites"? Social Revolutionists, Menskeviks, ex-tsarist officers and any other groups who didnt like the Bolsheviks
b. What was the Whites' main goal? not to the restore the tsar, but to set up a democratic government on western lines
c. What was the role of other nations? Czechs had control of the TransSiberian Railway; Russia's allies from WW1 intervened to help the Whites: USA, Japan, France, and Britain sent troops and sent Kolchak to take over Moscow, but the well-trained Red Army forced Kolchak back and he was later captured and executed
d. What was the result of the Civil War? Bolsheviks won, although polish and french had taken Ukraine and White Russia
e. How were the communists able to win the Civil War?
i. the Whites were not centrally organized (strained lines of communication and lost peasant support because of their brutality and the peasants fear of losing their new land)
ii. the Red armies had more troops (outnumbered whites about 10:1, had leadership of Trotsky, and controlled modern industry -> supply of armaments)
iii. Lenin's War Communism (factories nationalized, private trade banned, food and grain seized from peasants to feed workers and troops) was successful at first to get them through the civil war
iv. popularity because of how Lenin presented the Bolsheviks as a "nationalist government fighting against foreigners"

VI. What were the effects of the Civil War?
a. civilian deaths - at least 8 million
b. economic changes - ruined; Rouble=1% its value in October 1917

VII. What was done about economic problems?
a. effects of war communism
i. peasants saw it pointless to produce more food that would just get seized, so they only produced enough for themselves -> worse food shortages aggravated by droughts in 1920-1.
ii. industry almost at a standstill. Mutiny at Kronstadt in march 1921 convinces lenin that a new approach was needed (hence, NEP)
b. reforms of the New Economic Policy
i. peasants were now allowed to keep surplus produce after a tax
ii. reintroduction of private trade
iii. Small industries returned to private ownership; foreign investment encouraged to help develop and modernize russian industry
c. successes of the NEP
i. revived incentive and food production increase
ii. production levels improving (most commodities not far from where they were in 1913)
iii. industrial workers who had a job were being payed real wages and had benefits
disadvantage: unemployment was higher than before, and there were still frequent food shortages