The Bolshevik Consolidation of Power

The Bolshevik Consolidation of Power

The dissolution of the constituent assembly

· Lenin had never thought about winning support from the masses, so he

concentrated on creating a party that could seize power when the time

was right. This was why he didn't join the opposition movements or

support the provisional government.

· Lenin had originally supported the Constituent Assembly but when the

election happened and his party won less than a quarter of the seats,

dissolved the assembly after just one session as he thought it would

have been impossible for his party to govern along side an assembly

that was non-Bolshevik.

· Lenin's move prompted criticism from within his party and from

foreign communists both arguing that he had destroyed democracy and

the idea that the people should have say in the running of the

country.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918.

· The Bolsheviks had been against the war and had promised immediate

peace if they came into power. They couldn't go back on this promise.

· This is where the differences between Lenin and Trotsky become

clear. Lenin wanted peace immediately while Trotsky wanted to wait.

· Lenin realised that with the amount of desertions at the front,

Russia wouldn't mount a serious challenge to Germany for much longer

so a treaty would be a minor set back if Germany lost the war to

Britain and France.

· Trotsky took the middle road between Lenin and some Bolsheviks and

Left revolutionaries who wanted to continue the war. Although he

accepted that Russia couldn't fight on for much longer, in the hope

that Germany would collapse against France and Britain he tried to

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... · The Bolshevik press tried to make the Kronstadt protestors seem like

white agents but really they were loyal socialists who felt betrayed

by Lenin's government.

· Scared by their increasing demands and numbers, Trotsky ordered the

red army to crush them.

· When the last ultimatum was rejects by the protestors, 60,000 Red

troops stormed Kronstadt. The workers/Sailor fought back savagely

before they were overcome.

· Leaders who escaped were hunted down and executed. Lenin justified

this by saying the rising was the work of the bourgeois enemies of the

October Revolution.

· Lenin had learned something however when decided to lessen the

rigours of War Communism in order to avoid another rising.

· This was the prelude to the introduction of the NEP, designed to

reduce famine and opposition to the party.