internal opposition

• dissenting Bolsheviks

  • Threatened strikes by railwaymen's union (predominantly Menshevik) and post and telegraph union if Bolsheviks didn't hold talks with other parties
  • Lenin opposed power sharing, threatened moderates with Red sailors from Kronstadt for forceful Bolshevik control -moderates, including Kamanev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and Milyutin resigned from the Central Executive Committee when the Committee voted for Lenin's proposal to suppress all bourgeois newspapers (smacked of the beginnings of dictatorship).
• Party split


  1. Left SRs supported Lenin on 25 Oct

  2. Left SRs more radical, aligned with Bolsheviks in late 1917
• Lenin's Land Decree


  Banned private ownership, redistributed land amongst peasantry
• Lenin's Land Decree 26 oct


  Led Left SRs to support Bolsheviks (rights tended to be land owners so more to lose)
• Peasants were killing landowners anyway after February
• Main body of SRs

  Lost radicalism by aligning with Provisional Government
• Kerensky's actions undermined SR Party's credibility
• Lenin exploited split


  Withholding food rations from Right SR assembly
• Left SRs


  Allowed to join government
• Left SRs included in Central Executive Committee


  • 3 became commissars
  • 108 peasant delegates
  • 100 army/navy delegates
  • 50 trade union delegates
• Left SRs prevented railwaymen's strike, satisfied peasants, appeased moderate Bolsheviks
• Zinoviev reinstated in Central Committee, followed by others
• Lenin's tactical cunning


  • Evident
  • Land Decree showed pragmatism
• Lenin didn't want to share power but saw benefits of Left SR inclusion due to peasant support
• The soviets

  • Bolsheviks controlled local soviets, providing state legitimacy
  • Soviets acted as local governments
  • Other parties existed, allowing Lenin to claim it was a soviet state
  • Control over provincial Soviets established through rigged elections for second-tier Soviets
  • Chairman and executive committee always Bolsheviks
  • Local Bolshevik Party boss had greater authority than local soviet, often became Chairman
  • Right SRs + Mensheviks resented central control, so inc withdrew from soviets in protest, leaving Bols total control