Ideology And One Party Government

• Another ideological problem concerned the type of government that should be established. Before taking power, Lenin argued the Marxist government should be in the 'hands of the people' and 'all power to the soviets'.
• Lenin suggested in State and Revolution that 'the people' would readily see that a Bolshevik government ruled In their interests. He spoke of an expansion of democracy, with 'the people' managing their own affairs and a reduction in state bureaucracy.'
• His early decrees, particularly those on land (October) and workers control in factories (November) appear to support his theorising.
• However he had little choice in this regard, since peasants were already seizing land and workers taking over factories. Also, these decrees did not actually help create the conditions necessary for 'socialism'.
• The Petrograd Soviet, whose name the Bolsheviks had taken control, contained non-Bolshevik socialists, so Lenin sidelined it and formed the Bolshevik-only Sovnarkom.
• Lenin showed that he had no intention of sharing power with other socialists: particularly, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, despite their shared Marxist heritage.
• Sovnarkom ruled by decree without seeking the Soviet's approval. While Sovnarkom met once or twice a day, the Soviet met increasingly less frequently. Its power was thus undermined, even though it continued to meet until the 1930s.
• But, Lenin agreed to allow some left-wing Social Revolutionaries to join Sovnarkom in November, following protests about the establishment of a purely 'Bolshevik' state,
• Lenin was so hostile to any further suggestions of 'power-sharing that Kamenev and Zinoviev temporarily resigned. There seemed to be a clash between the Marxist principle that power sprang from the people, and Lenin's determination to retain a dominant voice.
• Lenin dissolved the Consituent Assembly on January 1918 after one day.
• In the ensuing months, the coalition  government broke up, and the left-wing Social Revolutionaries walked out of Sovnarkom in protest at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In March 1918 the Bolsheviks formally adopted the title of 'Communist Party' and from then on governed alone.