Early Bolsheviks - dealing with opposition 1917/1918

• Soldiers, workers + peasants

  Sent petitions for coalition government

  Postal + railway strike
• What was Lenin’s response to soldiers, workers and peasants

  • Send representatives to manufacture a collapse of terms
  • Conceded by allowing some socialist revolutionaries into Sovnarkhom
  • agrees for constituent assembly elections to continue
• What was Lenin’s response to opposition parties - Mensheviks + SR + Kadets + Trudevichs 


  • Shuts down opposition press - Liberals and Kadets then socialist revolutionaries and marxists
  • Outlaws existence of other political parties - members were imprisoned and chekha became instrument of terror
• How does Lenin deal with unwilling civil servants 


  • Purges civil service and promotes nepotism and loyalty to Bolsheviks over experience
  • Beurcracy becomes incredibly inefficent but obedient
• Why did the middle classes and burszhui ppose a threat

  opposed communism beyond Belief

  • didn’t work with Bolsheviks at all
• how does Lenin deal with middle classes nd bourgeoise?

  • Intrinduces class warfare between them and workers
  • Encouraged civil disarray and looting the ‘looters’
  • Bourgoise dress as workers to be invisible
  • replaced justice system with revolutionary justice = no help
• how do elections and the constituent assembly pose a threat

  • direct competition for Sovnarkhom
  • first free election provides people with mandate over Lenin
• how does Lenin deal with elections + constituent assembly?

  • Bolsheviks gain 24% of seats whilst Sociallist revolutaniaries gain 53% as there’s much more peasants than workers
  • Allows assembly to meet on 5th January 1918 and accuses it of being bourgeoise - period of capitalist and democracy and Constituent assembly is behind
• how does Lenin deal with demonstrations outside of Sovnarkhom as CA is sent home?

  Shot them - mirroring tsar
• How does Lenin dela with the war with Germany and desertion?

  March 1913 - signs treaty of brest-litovsk