1A) Lenin's Russia: The establishment of the Soviet Union (1917-1924)

Issues from HL syllabus* in this chapter

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Lenin’s Russia/Soviet Union
Consolidation of new Soviet state
The Russian Civil War
War Communism
New Economic Policy (NEP)
Terror and coercion
Foreign relations

*History of Europe/ Section 12: Imperial Russia, Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union (1855-1924) > Paper 3

Backround: Revolutions & Civil War in Russia

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Why did the Bolsheviks win the Russian Civil War?

(a video presentation)

The Bolsheviks vs the Mensheviks

(powerpoint)

Russian revolutions

(video, 13:40)

Soviet foreign policy during Lenin’s period

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During the three-year period from the spring of 1918 to the spring of 1921, the new Soviet regime had its back to the wall in a vicious struggle to stay alive: the Civil War, with few rivals in history for sheer ferocity; the foreign intervention, notable for its inefficiency; and war with the newly liberated Poland. The role of the Red Army as a means of socialist transformation became evident in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. On Lenin's initiative, and against the advice of Trotsky and others, the Red Army, having first repelled the Polish forces, crossed into Poland and marched on Warsaw; a revolutionary committee of five Polish-Russian Communists was set up in Bialystok as a nucleus of the future Polish government.

In Lenin's eyes Warsaw and, for that matter, all Poland, held a secondary place. The center of his interest was Germany. If Warsaw fell, Soviet troops would have reached the German border; a German Soviet Government would have been formed and kept in readiness, and Communist and semi-Communist forces inside Germany would have been able, in view of the widespread dissatisfaction with the terms of the Versailles Treaty so it was reasoned in Moscow to overthrow the weak government in power.

Lenin announced that the basis of the Versailles Treaty had become shaky. He was looking forward to a Soviet-German military coalition with its own invincible Soviet-German Red Army. Said Zinoviev: "The future development of the world revolution will proceed at the same pace as the march of our Red Army. The Russian proletarian revolution has become the mightiest sovereign state in the world. Menacing the aristocratic white Warsaw, we by that very action tear to scraps the treaty of Versailles."

In the end the Soviet campaign failed. The Red Army was thrown back from Warsaw and retreated into Soviet territory and the attempt at expanding the Soviet system by military means ended. It was not the last experiment of this kind, however; it was to be repeated the next year in Mongolia with a better success [and then, between 1939 and 1948 in Eastern and Central Europe].

It was also during this period that Lenin created the Comintern (the Third International), which was hailed as the headquarters for the world revolution. The new government in Russia was a pariah in the comity of nations, and the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, an aristocrat in the service of the proletariat, showed extraordinary skill in coping with the seemingly impossible task of making Moscow's voice heard in the chancelleries of the world. He followed Lenin's policy to the letter: wait out the period of the greatest weakness and capitalize on any and all conflicts within the bourgeois world.

By March 1921, the Bolsheviks had won the Civil War, made peace with Poland, and were in control of an economically ruined and starving Russia. Even those stalwart revolutionists of the October Days, the Baltic sailors, "rebelled" in their Kronshtadt fortress in early 1921. As a result of all these factors, Lenin promulgated a series of drastic changes in March: the economy was transformed from complete state control into a mixed system in which private enterprise played a major role, and the foreign policy of the nation was directed toward the normalization of relations with the bourgeois states. The New Economic Policy (NEP), the all-embracing name for the changes in policy, lasted until 1928. It was in the NEP period that Chicherin persuaded most of the great powers and a good many small ones to recognize the Soviet Union. His major diplomatic triumph was probably the engineering of the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany on 16 April 1922, a feat accomplished in the teeth of British and French opposition.

By the early 1920s it was obvious that Western Europe was not about to erupt in revolution, and the Bolsheviks turned to the colonial and semicolonial areas as more suitable for Bolshevik-inspired revolution-making. The main thesis of Lenin's Imperialism was that the survival of the great capitalist powers was dependent upon their ability to extract enormous profits from the exploitation of the colonial and semicolonial areas. Therefore, if these areas could be organized to throw out their exploiters, the collapse of capitalism as predicted by Marx would be hastened. Lenin, however, visualized Communist parties as the vanguard of the proletariat, and these areas had little industry and therefore only tiny proletariats.Thus the initial "wars of liberation" would have to be won by the national bourgeoisie, and the embryonic Communist parties should ally with them. Only later, when the industrialization process was proceeding apace, would a Communist take-over be possible.

In the 1920s, as the new Soviet state temporarily retreated from the revolutionary path to socialism, the party also adopted a less ideological approach in its relations with the rest of the world. Lenin, ever the practical leader, having become convinced that socialist revolution would not break out in other countries in the near future, realized that his government required normal relations with the Western world for it to survive. Not only were good relations important for national security, but the economy also required trade with the industrial countries. Blocking Soviet attainment of these desires were lingering suspicions of communism on the part of the Western powers and concern over the foreign debts incurred by the tsarist government that the Soviet government had unilaterally canceled.

In April 1922, the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, Georgii Chicherin, circumvented these difficulties by achieving an understanding with Germany, the other pariah state of Europe, at Rapallo, Italy. In the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany and Russia agreed on mutual recognition, cancellation of debt claims, normalization of trade relations, and secret cooperation in military development. After concluding the treaty, the Soviet Union soon obtained diplomatic recognition from other major powers, beginning with Britain in February 1924. Although the United States withheld recognition until 1933, private American firms began to extend technological assistance and develop commercial links beginning in the 1920s.

(Source:GlobalSecurity.Org)

How the Bolsheviks tried to get support for their rule

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From War Communism to the NEP period

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A. War Communism

A1. Causes
a) as a result of the revolutionary changes, peasants and urban workers controlled over their own labour through a system of land and factory committees > ineffective production > acute shortages (at the same time, pay rises were voted by workers themselves)
> inflation > money bacame almost worthless
b) the pressure of civil war

A2. A command economy in practise
- all factories and businesses were nationalised for the demands of war production
- workers lost their freedom and were forced to work excessive hours without wages but a meagre ration of food, some clothing and lodgings as reward
- workers were bound to the cities they lived by internal passports
- private trade was banned and rationing system was introduced on food and consumer
> rationing system favoured the labour force and the Red Army soldiers who were only given adequate food
- ration tokens replaced money as a form of payment
- peasants had to deliver all grain to the state > soldiers supported by the Cheka agents confisticated crops and livestock > peasants reduced their sowings > an acute food shortage > a terrible famine (In 1921)
- the kulaks were seen as 'the enemies of the people' and the seizure of their stocks was encouraged by the local soviet authorities > the more efficient farmers suffered and grain production collapsed
- as a consequence of hyperinflation money lost all value and in many areas a system of barter replaced the use of money; wages and salaries were paid in kind (< this was welcomed by some War Communism supporters as 'the dying out of money and the breakdown of society and its replacement by a communist system'.)

B. The New Economic Policy (NEP)

* teacher's power point

1) How succesful was the NEP?
2) Study and describe the content of the Scissors Crisis.

'Against the counter-revolution': The beginning of the organised terror

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The Bolshevik secret police, Cheka (abbreviation of Russian words meaning the 'All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage'), was established in December 1917

TASK 1: Read Lenin's letter to Felix Dzherzhinsky on establisment of the Cheka
1.1. What reasons gave Lenin to the need of the new security organisation?
1.2. What were the duties given to the Cheka?

> the beginning of the organised terror

Lenin's orders to Penza communists on 8 Nov 1918

- at the beginning of 1918 the Cheka had recruited 800 agents, at the end of the year there was 40 000.
- about half million people were executed between 1918 - 1921
- in 1920 there was about 50 000 people in prison camps, in 1923 about 70 000 (numbers are estimations)
- the Cheka was renamed the GPU (Main Political Administration) in 1923

TASK 2: The Soviet leaders used a term 'class enemies' to describe people they disliked. Consider the purpose to create such a category.

The treaties and foreign relations of Lenin's Russia

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The Brest-Litovsk Treaty on 3 March 1918
- a separate peace with the Central Powers ending Russia's participation in WW1
- Russia recognized the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; gave up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and ceded some areas to Turkey
- The total losses some 1 million square miles of Russia’s former territory, a third of its population or around 55 million people, a majority of its coal, oil and iron stores and much of its industry
- the treaty was annulled after the allies' victory over Germany
The treaty text

The Treaty of Rapallo on 16 April 1922
- between Soviet Russia and Germany (The Weimar Republic)
- no terrotorial and monetary claims against each other
- friendly relations
- next summer, a secret clause about co-operation in developing the heavy weapons and army training was added
The treaty text

The Comintern was established in March 1919
> primary sources

Primary sources

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Project 1917

The Formation of the USSR, 30 December 1922 (Stalin's speech)

The Kronstadt uprising, March 1921

The Comintern

The Constitution of RSFSR, October 1918