History

• In the countryside, peasants and their Socialist Revolutionary leaders pressed for a redistribution of land
• Land was declared as social property, and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility
• The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)
• Industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917
• The Revolution occurred

  October 1917
• Peasants seized land between July and September 1917, encouraged by the Socialist Revolutionaries
• Seizure of power

  1. Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power

  2. A Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure

  3. The Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers

  4. By nightfall, the city was under the committee’s control and the ministers had surrendered

  5. At a meeting of the All Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action
• Elections were conducted in November 1917 to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed in the majority
• In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly
• In March 1918, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk despite opposition
• Russia became a one-party state after October 1917
• The Russian Army broke up and their leaders moved to south Russia to fight the Bolsheviks (the ‘Reds’)
• The Bolsheviks participated in the elections to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which became the Parliament of the country
• A civil war occurred between the Bolsheviks and the ‘Greens’ and ‘Whites’
• During 1918 and 1919, the Russian Empire was controlled by the ‘Greens’ (Socialist Revolutionaries) and ‘Whites’ (pro-Tsarists), backed by foreign troops
• Experiments in the arts and architecture occurred after October 1917, but many became disillusioned because of the censorship the Party encouraged
• By January 1920, the Bolsheviks controlled most of the former Russian empire
• In the name of defending socialism, Bolshevik colonists brutally massacred local nationalists
• Making a Socialist Society

  1. Industries and banks were kept nationalised

  2. Peasants were permitted to cultivate the land

  3. A centralised planning process was introduced

  4. Officials worked on how the economy will work and set targets for a five-year period
• Most non-Russian nationalities were given political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR) – the state the Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922
• Centralised planning


  • Led to economic growth
• Healthcare provision


  Cheap public health care was provided
• Schooling system development

  Arrangements made for factory workers and peasants to enter universities
• Rapid construction led to poor working conditions
• Centralised planning process


  Officials worked on how the economy will work and set targets for a five-year period
• For women workers

  Crèches were established in factories for the children
• First two ‘Plans’

  Government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth (1927-1932 and 1933-1938)
• Living conditions improvement


  Model living quarters were set up for workers
• Collectivisation of agriculture


  Peasants forced to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz), kolkhoz profit shared
• Event: USSR was formed

  December 1922
• By 1939, over 2 million were in prisons or labour camps
• Between 1929 and 1931, the number of cattle fell by one-third
• Due to bad harvests of 1930-1933, over 4 million people died
• Global influence of the Russian Revolution and the USSR

  Communist parties formed in many countries, USSR gave socialism a global face and world stature
• By the end of the twentieth century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist country had declined