The establishment of Bolshevik government

• He returned from Switzerland on April 3rd 1917 who was helped by the Germans who expected him to seize power and bring peace. He travelled in a seal train 


  When did Lenin return to Russia
• • Lenin travelled with 31 comrades on a German train
  • The train had only one carriage and it was sealed so much so there was no passport or luggage inspections
  • Lenin had his own compartment to do work while his companions stayed in the corridor drinking and singing 


  Sealed train
• • He gave a speech and from this an 'April These' was written but some of them were written in May after Trotsky had returned
  • This was published in their party's official newspaper, Prawda
  • It demanded:
  • power should be transferred to the soviets
  • war should be brought to an immediate stop
  • all land should be taken over by the State and re-allocated to peasants by local soviet 


  Lenin's speech when he arrived in Petrograd
• • Peace, bread and land
  • Lenin stressed a policy of non-cooperation with the Prov Gov 'All Power to the Soviets'
  • He believed, unlike Marx, that the Russian middle class was too weak to carry through a full revolution and to maintain their power there needs to be a proletarian revolution. 


  Moto of April These
• • Some Bolsheviks feared that Lenin had grown too out of touch and that his radical proposals would cause more harm than good
  • Allegations that Lenin was in the pay for the Germans
  • Mensheviks feared Lenin would undermine what they were doing because provoking discontent would result in a right-wing reaction
  • Call to oppose Prov Gov was unrealistic as Bolsheviks had only about 26,000 members and were a minority
  • They were divided on whether they should cooperate with the Prov Gov or not.


  Reaction to Lenin's reappearance
• • Son of Georgian cobbler
  • One of few Bolshevik leaders who had peasant roots
  • He was exiled to Siberia a few times but always came back
  • He came back in 1917 and became the editor of Prawda 


  Who is Joseph Stalin
• • He built it up from his speeches where he claimed credit for much that was already happening such as the peasants seizing land for themselves
  • By the end of April Lenin won a majority of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party by force of personality 


  How did Lenin gain support
• The first 'All Russian Congress of Soviets' on June 3rd were voted into the Prov Gov by 534 votes to 126. Lenin also benefited from Trotsky coming back and committing fully to the party. 


  How did the Soviets get into Congress
• • Grain prices had doubled between Feb and June, following a bad harvest, shortages of fuel and raw materials forced 586 factories to close with loss of 100,000 jobs
  • Workers wanted price controls but gov was afraid to act against industrialists
  • So, 20,000 armed sailors joined workers and soldiers on the street and chanted the Bolshevik slogan as they were looting and attacking properties 


  July Days
• • Bolsheviks were arrested such as Trotsky for stirring up troubles
  • It is unclear whether or not the rebellion was actually stirred up by them but they claimed that this was spontaneous

  What was the response to July Days
• • Troops who were loyal to the Soviets published in a Soviet newspaper Izvestia denounced the role of the Bolsheviks and said that Lenin was behind this due to being in pay of the Germans, working against the Russian interest
  • Bolshevik propaganda was burned, Prawda offices closed
  • Lenin's reputation fell for fleeing rather than leading while others leaders were in prison. 


  What damage to the Bolsheviks was caused by July Days
• Loyal, volunteer soldiers who had been recruited from the factory workers in the city; they included young and old ppl 


  Red Guards
• • Son of a Jewish railway engineer who joined the SDs in 1901
  • He had been arrested many times, he was a propagandist until 1914 when he was exiled to Siberia where he met Stalin in 1915

  Kamenev
• • Jewish origin who also joined the SDs in 1901
  • He was close to Lenin in exile and returned with him in 1917
  • He wanted to work with other socialist groups unlike Lenin who wanted the Bolsheviks to seize control 


  Zinoviev
• The Kornilov coup when Bolsheviks were released from jails when the workers, soldiers and sailors took the streets again but this time in defence of the Prov Gov with Kerensky even providing them with the arms. 


  What saved the face of the Bolsheviks
• • The only group that opposed Kornilov consistently
  • Lenin sent orders from Finland to consistently keep the pressure up and 'Committees to save the Revolution' were set up


  What reputation did the Bolsheviks gain
• • They were elected in greater numbers to soviets throughout urban Russia and Dumas in elections in Moscow
  • Between June and December, their support increased by 164%
  • Their membership: increased from 23,000 in Feb to 200,000 in October
  • At the same time, they had 41 newspapers and 10,000 Red Guards in capital's factories. 


  What happened after the Bolsheviks fixed their reputation
• • New elections were held in Petrograd Soviet where Bolshevik won a majority thanks to their control in the Moscow Soviet
  • September 21 Trotsky even became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet 


  September and Bolshevik power
• • Although it looked like Lenin's tactics were paying off, the party was still divided and disorganised
  • They tended to go with ends rather than initiate anything themselves so in mid-September Lenin bombarded the 120man Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party with demands to start a revolution and seize power
  • However, Zionviev and Kamenev urged Lenin that Russia was not in the economic position to do so yet and to hold fire, even going as far as burning some of Lenin's letters 


  Downside of the Bolshevik party
• • 'history will not forgive us if we do not assume power now'
  • 3 days later the committee voted against a coup 


  What did Lenin plea about the revolution in Sep 12th
• That they should not act before the results of the Constituent Assembly elections were known but the date of these were still unknown. 


  What did Kamanev and Zionviev believe about the revolution
• That they should work through the Petrograd Soviet and wait for the Congress of Soviets which was due to convene on 26th October. He believed that at this congress, they could win the support of all socialist parties for a Soviet government without having to resort to violence 


  What did Trotsky think about the revolution
• • 1th Oct: Lenin takes control of the Bolshevik Central Committee and his call for a Bolshevik-led revolution is agreed
  • 20th Oct: Military Rev Commitee of the Pet Soviet meets for the first time
  • 24-25th Oct: armed workers and soldiers led by the Bolsheviks and organised by the Military Committee take over key buildings and communication centres in Petrograd 


  October- December Bolshevik takeover 1917
• • 25-27th Oct: remaining members of the Prov Gov are arrested and the 'revolution' is announced at the 2nd Congress, Lenin adopts a decree of peace and land and the first Soviet gov is established with Lenin as chairman
  • December: cheka is established 


  October- December Bolshevik takeover 2
• Bolshevik Secret Police 


  Cheka
• A representative appointed by a soviet, or the Communist Party to be responsible for political indoctrination during and after the 1917 revolution in Russia.


  Commissar
• • sending more radical army units out to the capital
  • this provided the excuse for thr Bolshevik-controlled Soviet, which claimed that Kerensky was abandoning the capital to allow it to fall to the Germans, to set up a 'Military Revolution Committee' under Trotsky and Felix Dzerzhinski on October 9th
  • This composed of 66 members, 48 of which were Bolsheviks, which appointed commissars to military units to issues orders and organise weapon supplies 


  What did Kerensky do in response to Lenin trying to get the Bolsheviks to seize power
• • Controlled 20,000 Red Guards, 60,000 Baltic sailors and 150,000 soldiers
  • Its declared purpose was to control movement of troops to be prepared of the German threat and its existence was also justified by the fear that it caused which was thought to somewhat prevent the fear of a right-wing coup in the gov.

  How powerful was the 'Military Revolutionary Committee'?
• On October 10th Lenin had harangued the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party all night and finally succeeded (with a vote of 10 to 2) as he persuaded them that 'an armed rising is the order of the day'. Zionviev and Kamenev disagreed and published that 'if we take power now and we are forced into a revolutionary war, the mass of soldiers will not support us' 


  When did Lenin persuade the Bolsheviks to use the armed forces they had available
• • He tried to close down the Bolshevik newspapers and restrict the Military Committee power
  • He ordered that the bridges linking the working-class areas to the centre of Petrograd should be raised.
  • However, Bolshevik propagandists suggested that his actions were a betrayal of the Soviet and an abandonment of the principles of the Feb Revolution and used them as an excuse to act 


  How did Kerensky respond to Lenin in Oct 10th
• He had a good amount of the power in the Military Revolutionary Committee, supported by a Bolshevik Sverdlov, to organise the final stages. So on these dates, 5,000 sailors and soldiers from Kronstadt moved into the city and Bolshevik Red Guards seized key positions around the capital. These include: telephone exchange, the post office, railway stations, news agency, state bank, bridges and power stations. Except for resistance at the main telegraph office, troops on duty gave in without resistance. 


  What did Trotsky do for the Bolshevik Revolution on 24-25th Oct
• He couldn't reply on the Pet troops to reply on to defend the Prov Gov so he left from the front. He borrowed a car from the American embassy and disguised them as a nurse. He hoped that he could get in contact with loyal troops who would march into the city to defend it. On the evening of Oct 25th, Red Guards soldiers and sailors surrounded the palace. 


  What did Kerensky do after the seizure of major troop positions in Kronstadt
• • It was when the power passed on to Bolshevik Communists, thus proved a small-scale affair
  • Trotsky claimed there was about 25,000-30,000 'at most' involved (around 5% of all the workers and soldiers in the city)
  • There may have been 10,000-15,000 in the square in front of the Winter Palace but there was many bystanders and those who were just watching
  • So there are only a few sources to suggest it was small.
  • But it suits the Bolsheviks to claim there were more people involved so it looks like a 'popular' revolution.

  How big was the October Revolution in reality
• Petrograd was largely unaffected by the disturbances because Trotsky claimed that the revolution was essentially a series of 'small operations, calculated and prepared in advance'. Trams, taxis ran as normal and restaurants, theatres and cinemas were opened as normal. 


  How big was the actual revolution
• In 1927, Sergei Eisenstein made a film called October, which perpetuated the myth that the storming of the Winter Palace was a heroic was a heroic popular uprising. The dramatic images of the masses breaking down the gates and storming in was entirely fictious. In reality, when the Aurora fired, the Women's Battalion at the palace became hysterical and left, while the army cadets offered little resistance. 


  The storming of the Winter Palace
• • Soviet historians idolise Lenin's role and treat him as a hero
  • Some British historians also accept that Lenin was the centre of the revolution who built up the April These, built up Bolshevik membership and persuaded the Central Committee to take action in Oct
  • However, it was Trotsky who organised the Red Guards, took command in Petrograd Soviet and dominated the Military Revolutionary Committee as well as organising the the actual seize of power. 


  Was Lenin really involved in the Revolution
• • Some have argued that Lenin was largely absent in 1917 and he simply reacted to and was not a driver of the revolution
  • Robert Service argued that there was a socialists movement that about to happen anyway in 1917, Lenin just ensured that it was the Bolshevik took the power.


  Was the October Revolution Lenin's success or Prov Gov failures
• • On 26th Oct 1917, 670 delegates arrived for the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets in the Smolny Institute held their first session
  • The Bolsehvik action the day before was not universally accepted and even Bolshevik Kamanev and Zionivev spoke out against the coup
  • The Menshevik leader predicted that their leadership would only last about 3 weeks while the SR were split
  • On the left, ppl congratulated Lenin while the on the right, they criticised Lenin for using violence to seize power illegally. 


  Consolidation of Bolshevik Gov
• 500 voted in favour of a socialist gov, the Mensheviks and right-wing SRs were dismayed to find that the majority of seats of the new executive committee went to the Bolsheviks and more extreme-left wing SRs. 


  SRs and the Bolsheviks
• • They walked out to the congress, leaving the Bolshevik and left-wing SRs in coalition to govern
  • This played to the advantage of the Bolsheviks and Trotsky who who was able to use the retiring as these delegates as 'You're finished, you pitiful bunch of bankrupts, Get out of here to where you belong - in the dustbin of history' 


  Opposition to the socialist government