Early Bolshevik control - up until 1918

• Menshevik leader stated they’d last a few weeks

  • civil servants strikes and banks withheld cash
  • Laughed in trotskys face
  • Told Alexandra to go home and make tea
  • This was solely Petrograd - rest of Russia would be socialist revolutionaries
• • petitions came from Moscow opposing one party takeover
  • workers strike - raikway, postal and telegraph unions force Lenin’s hand
  • agrees to constituent assembly elections and socialist revolutionaies in Sovnarkhom
• anarchy :

  • Winter palace wine raided and thousands drunk on streets
  • Crime increased with vandalism, theft and violence
  • Gorky - pogrom of greed, hatred and violence
• took 10 days for army to make staff open vaults
• Anarchy 


  -no control in countrysides and villages

  • loses control over Petrograd
  • robbing bourgeoise houses and stealing
  • Damage being done to Russian culture