Book One, Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven: The October Revolution and the Russian Civil War
Flag of Soviet Russia in 1917-1918.
Part I: The October Revolution.
First Days of the October Revolution, painting by Georgy Konstantinovich Savitsky, 1949.
Night to the 25th of October, the Bolsheviks initiated the coup that would send shockwaves across the world, and would forever change history. From the headquarters in Smolny, a former convent school for aristocratic girls, the leaders left for the districts where they would occupy strategic chokepoints and hubs in the Metropol, all according to a detailed plan. "I remained back, all alone", Trotskij later said. "Later came Kamenev. He was against the uprising, but on this fateful night, he wanted to be with me. We were in that small corner room on the third floor, that during this fateful night was some sort of command bridge. In the big, empty side room stood a phone, that rung continuously midst of matters of urgency. The ringing emphasized the lurking quietly. Image of the nightly, desolate, poorly illuminated Petrograd in the autumn's wind drew itself clearly for us. The Bourgeois and civil servants laying huddled in their beds and attempting to guess what is going on out in those secret and dangerous streets. The workers' neighborhoods sleep lightly, they are like watchful field encampments. Members of the government's commissions and public committees, who are close to plunge out of exhaustion, negotiate and confers in the Tsar palaces, where the living ghosts of democracy interleaves with the monarchy's dying specter. In the space of time the halls' silk and gilding away off in deep darkness: the electricity fail, it is a lack of coal. Around the districts units of workers, sailors, and soldiers stand guard. The young proletarians carry rifles, and some have bandoleers to machine guns hurled over their shoulders. Street patrols warm themselves over small firepits. Within a score of phone calls, the entire spiritual life in this capital, that during the autumn's night go from one era to another ..."
A unit of the "Women's Battalion", or the "Battalion of Death", was formed of dreamy volunteers that wanted to do their part in Holy Russia's War. October of 1917 it was under the command of the Petrograd Garrison and was supposed to defend the Kerenskij Cabinet that during the Bolshevik coup d'etat sought refuge in the Winter Palace, where also a class of War Academy cadets had taken position. The Winter Palace was during the night of the 25th bombarded by blanks from the cruiser Aurora in the Neva, and the Peter and Paul Fortress. When the Red Guards later stormed the palace they could disarm the defenders with almost no bloodshed.
The coup went according to plan and was met with almost no resistance. Bolshevik patrols occupied railroad stations, telephones and telegraphs, barracks, newspapers, departments, and other key positions. There was almost not necessary to fire a single shot, in the crack of dawn, the Bolsheviks held power in Russia's capital. Only in the Winter Palace did some ministers and civil servants hold their ground, defended by a few units of Cossacks, cadets, and the women's "Battalion of Death". The last stronghold of the old regime held out... for a nychthemeron. A few salvos from the cruiser, laying in the Neva, and guns from the Peter-Paul Fortress demoralized the defenders, that in advance lacked both a will to fight and belief in their cause. They gave up and routed, by the sound of blank shots. Night to October the 26th the assaulters entered the Winter Palace from multiple directions; they disarmed the defenders with almost no bloodshed and arrested the politicians they found. Kerenskij was nowhere to be seen. He left early in the morning of the 25th to the front, to try and rally reinforcements, but to no avail; later he fled abroad, to the life of an emigree the revolutionaries so often was confined to. Now, the upheaval was completed, and it is characteristic that the bourgeois-democratic government broke down almost as helpless and defenseless as the Tsardom, not so much due to the strength of the revolutionaries, but more due to its own inherent weakness and incompetence, lack of will and a lack of a plan. As a famous historian said, paraphrased: The Bolsheviks were not the Russian Revolution's originators; they simply realized collapse and anarchy would enter 12 o'clock, and proclaimed five minutes on 12 the Bolshevik insurrection - with that they made the impression of calling forth that mighty event.
Lenin speaks to the Second All-Russian of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on the 26th of October. Drawing by V.A. Serov. During this congress, Lenin was elected Chairman i.e Prime Minister. Stalin that can be seen behind him was made the People's Commissar for Nationalities.
Simultaneously with the Bolshevik coup, a congress of the representatives for workers' and soldiers' councils had convened. Here the Bolsheviks maintained a majority and it was the Soviet Congress Lenin leaned on to somewhat legalize the coup. Though it should be noted the Bolsheviks did not have a majority alone, of the 670 delegates 300 were Bolsheviks, thus Lenin was at the mercy of the 100 Left Social-Revolutionaries who also wanted to overthrow Kerenskij. "We shall now set to work to build the socialist society", he said to the congress that, among other things, decreed to extend a real olive branch to all the warring governments and make peace without annexation and reparations, and to redistribute the estate lands and church's lands among the peasantry without compensation. It was the same land politics the peasants and deserted soldiers had already by themselves started to execute across the countryside, and it was in reality in stark contrast to Bolshevik policy. It is in the character of Lenin to declare himself disagreeing with it - according to theory, all land would become state property - but let the new governance accept it. Only in this way could he bind the peasantry to the revolutionary cause, and the peasants were Russia. Over 90% of its population. So without support from them, they could wave and kiss goodbye to the revolution. Furthermore, under the reign of chaos, it would be practically impossible to implement any other form of agricultural production; it was catastrophically low. The Soviet Congress also elected a new government, and transferred all power to it, - to mark the complete break from the past - who got its name the Council of People's Commissars, Sovjet Narodnisj Kommisarov, abbreviated "Sovnakom". Lenin, who said the name "smells of revolution", was elected chairman, i.e premier, Trotskij the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, i.e foreign minister. Among the fifteen other members of the Aleksej Rykov, Anatolij Lunatsjarskij, Nikolaj Kryleno, and Stalin; the latter became commissar of nationalities; he made them his special field and he claimed in 1917 that he fully supported the principle of self-determination; if for an instance the Polish, Finnish, and Ukrainians wanted to secede from Russia and form independent states, they would be allowed to do so. Lenin, Trotskij, Sverdlov, and Stalin formed an informal foursome leading the government.
Part II: Anti-Soviet Sentiment and Civil War.
"Help Russia!" Drawing by Käthe Kollwitz, the famous German artist who primarily made motives based on the urban proletariat's life. This drawing was used on a poster during a fund-raiser for the starving Russia in 1921.
If the communist - violent - transfer of power went smoothly and the coup itself in the capital was achieved with down to no human losses, the new regime soon faced difficulties and hard resistance from several sources. In Moscow and many other places grim, bloody fighting erupted, which ended with Bolshevik victory only after hundreds of casualties. In many of the cities in central and northern Russia, the revolution was victorious, however, the Bolsheviks and their Left-SR allies only won it harsh combat and bitter resistance from rival revolutionary parties, counter-revolutionary generals, and public functionaries on strike, and others. In multiple areas in the country, the enemies of communism stood their ground and organized armed resistance against the Peoples' Commissars' regime. In Kyiv there was even made an own government, after all in theory in line with Bolshevik politics on nationalities, that wanted to make Ukraine independent, among the Don-Cossacks it was organized a counter-revolutionary under the leadership of Tsarist officers, among them the still unknown Pyotr Wrangel, and here and many other places the civil war ravaged the country and was between the "red" - i.e communists - and the "white" forces - a mix of anti-communists revolutionaries, liberal-democrats, to Tsarists and counter-revolutionaries. It became a prolonged and bloody war, where all parties displayed savage brutality, often even inhumane cruelty and atrocity.
One of the initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings, the Kerenskij-Krasnov Uprising. Following the October Revolution Kerenskij tried to retake power from Pskov and appointed Pyotr Krasnov to command his army. Albeit being supported by a revolt by officer cadets in Petrograd, the uprising was brutally put down and Kerenskij left Russia, and thus headed into the dustbin of history.
However, the new government faced not only opposition externally but faced enormous difficulties internally. Doubt, wavering, and will inclination to compromise set in - even among the ranks of the old Bolshevik leaders, and Lenin and Trotskij had to manifest all their strength to maintain the irreconcilable line over the competing parties, primarily the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries that did not follow the Bolsheviks. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk created huge ripples and shook society. Every day was a struggle against hunger, destitution, and disaster in the exhausted country that was on the brink of collapse.
The Soviet peace delegation is received of German officers during their arrival to Brest-Litovsk, in the closing days of February 1918. Drawing by F. Matania after photography. Behind Lev Trotskij, who shake hands with a German, you can see the Soviet diplomat Adolf A. Joffe who led the delegation until Trotskij took leadership.
A small sidestep to Brest-Litovsk. When the Bolsheviks took power they could finally execute their radical peace program; at the beginning of December they initiated negotiations with the Central-Powers in Brest-Litovsk of a ceasefire, and around Christmas (war is over by Christmas!) they commenced negotiations of a separate peace. The Central Powers made far-reaching demands, and it was a hotly contested debate within the Soviet leadership if they were to accept the terms of not. Trotksij, who disagreed with the terms in the first place, tried to weasel his way out by declaring that Russia would have war without peace! Naturally, the Germans answered by initiating a renewed offensive that rapidly covered huge swaths of land, and on the 3rd of March 1918 the German dictated peace was signed in Brest-Litovsk; it was ratified by the Russians on the 16th of March. It was harsh, much harsher than the Entente negotiated peace over Germany, peace; Russland had to give up Finland, the Baltics, Polen, Ukraine, and the various areas the Central Powers' troops occupied in southern Russia, the Black Sea coast, and the Caucasus depriving the unstable Soviet government of grain, oil, and other vital raw materials from the area.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotskij, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich. Democracy was allowed as long as it suited the Soviets. Next on the chopping bloc were the Soviets themselves.
Away from Brest-Litovsk, and back to Petrograd. Another issue was the Russian Constituent Assembly that was elected on the 12th of November, that is after the communist coup. In the assembly the communists were in a clear minority with Left-SRs and the Bolsheviks having less than a fourth of the delegates, the moderate socialists - the Mensheviks and SRs - had nearly a 2/3 majority; the rest of the delegates was the various liberal and right-wing groups. Lenin quite easily solved the problem by letting his Red Guard of soldiers, workers, and deserted sailors led by Trotskij dissolve the Assembly on the 6th of January, the day after they met to discuss the democratic principles of the New Russia. Cheka was also formed a few days earlier. All power was transformed to the Congress of Soviets. But even the latter would not survive the test of time. The Soviets more or less became a dead letter from the start, ever since 1917 the Bolsheviks were just a part of a broader revolutionary left-wing. The Menshevik-Internationalists, who previously was 1/3rd of the Mensheviks joined Bolshevik forces, but the Left SRs remained the biggest component. The Left SRs also disagreed with the signing of Brest-Litovsk. Most wanted, and ironically Lenin, to keep waging a war in the hopes of turning it into a 'revolutionary war' in which the Soviet forces could occupy territory in Eastern Europe and install revolutionary governments on their own model. Since the SR's still held a majority presence in most Soviets, this meant that if the Bolsheviks had acceded to democracy in the Soviets, that they would lose power. So Lenin more or less usurped the Soviets and ignored the electoral majority of the SRs and started issuing orders to them. At that point, the Soviets became more or less rubber stamp institutions where results were decided in advance by the Party. In Trotsky's mind, this usurpation of the Soviets was supposed to be temporary expedience, that it was a necessary sacrifice to win the Civil War, and that eventually it should be undone, along with Lenin's infamous ban on party factions.
While many during the first period had almost apathetically accepted the new regime in the chaotic situation, in time a more conscious resistance emerged. The frontlines were drawn during the first half of 1918. The communists made peace with the Central Powers on terms many meant was harsher and more humiliating than what was needed to accept, and after a series of decrees from Sovnarkom contours drew clearer of the socialist society Lenin heralded. Hence aversion and resistance grew against Bolshevism, in Russia and abroad. Among the Entente there was now deep resentment when Russia pulled out of the war, and the shock and indignation did not subdue when the Peoples' Commissars with the stroke of a pen repudiated all foreign debt - colossal sums the British, and least but not last the French had put into Russian state bonds and Russian commerce and industry. Equally radical upheavals were made on the home front. The industry and control of factories were given to the soviets and after a while socialized, armed military and red guard units raided the countryside to confiscate grain for the cities, all banks were nationalized, private bank accounts were expropriated, all private property was nationalized and their rooms rationed out, and a shorter eight-hour working was introduced. During the summer of 1918, the antagonism became so irreversible, that civil war again flared up in full force, and the time to the summer of 1919 became the most critical the communist rule went through until the end of the '30s.
Anton Ivanovitsj Denikin, that in February 1917 was made commander-in-chief for the Russian forces. When Kerenskij made his provisional government, Denikin reported for service and became a "white" general. He took the fight to the Bolsheviks, but in March of 1920, he had to give up. Denikin fled to Istanbul, later to France, before he ended up in in USA where he also ended his days in 1947, 75 years of age.
The Soviets had for a long time only grip on Central Russia - crucially this was also both the heartland of Russia and the communications hub - with Moscow as its center and new capital instead of Petrograd that the Germans had threatened in the winter of 1917-1918. Moreover moving the capital away from Petrograd also signaled a break with the old Russia, away from the Holy Tsars' City. The area was like a besieged fortress, cut off from the grain districts and the industrial centers, from the oil and the coal, threatened in the south from Cossack Generals such as Pyotr Wrangel, Pjotr Krasnov, and Anton Denikin, from the west by General Nikolaj Judenistsj whose troops were in the Baltic provinces, from the north a white rival government based in Arkhangelsk, from the east of counter-revolutionary forces in the Urals and Siberia under the leadership of Admiral Koltsjak. In addition to all this Ukraine declared independence, Polish and Romanian forces after the peace of November in 1918 sought to expand their territories at Russia's expense, and that Russia's former allies among the great powers intervened against the communist regime, propped up White generals and sent in expeditionary forces to the country. The British landed an expeditionary force in Arkhangelsk and sent warships to the Black Sea. Here there were also French forces. Japanese and American troops made landfall in Siberia, and Japan was the only serious contender and wanted to expand their influence in Manchuria, China, and Siberia, and the Americans' real purpose was to police the Japanese more than support Koltsjak.
The Tsar and his children in Yekaterinburg photographed a summer's day of 1918. It was in the cellar of this house that they were shot on the 16th of July 1918. From the left Olga, Anastasia, Nikolai, Maria (standing), Aleksej, and Tatjana.
Content Warning, There will be controversial topics and some graphical content for some in this paragraph.
When the British and French governments intervened, it was primarily to force Russia to resume the war effort, but after the peace with Germany it was to strike against the world revolution the Bolsheviks proclaimed and now did whatever they could to ignite across in the Central Powers and the Western powers alike. It became clear that whatever was going on it in Russia, it was a social revolution, a complete upheaval of the old society and its very fabric, a revolution that not only attacked private property but also the democratic, parliamentary system, on religion that according to Marx was mere "opium for the masses", on the "bourgeois" moral norms, etc. The world had not witnessed anything like it since the Reign of Terror by the Jacobins during the great French Revolution. The abyss that now revealed itself, was just so horrible because this was the proletarian, the masses, not a middle-class revolution. Following the February Revolution the Tsar and his family were held captive in Tsarskoje Selo Castle close to Petrograd, in August of 1917 - while Kerenskij was still in power - they were exiled in Tobolsk, Siberia, and was further transferred to Yekaterinburg, today's Sverdlovsk, in the Urals in April 1918. When White forces during the summer advanced toward the city, the Tsar family was in the cruelest fashion gunned down in a cellar, ordered by Yekaterinburg Soviet, and most likely approved by Moscow - by Lenin and Trotskij, the latter would later argue why it was moral to execute the children. Both White and Red forces committed acts of terror, known as the White Terror and Red Terror respectively, and took horrible revenge over enemies when a city or rural region changed masters. How many who were executed is unknown, but estimates range from a "few" thousands (unlikely) to hundreds of thousands. The White Terror is estimated to have been between 20.000 and 100.000, while some fantastical claims make it to be even higher than 300.000. The Red Terror ranges from 50.00 to 140.000 and 200.000, while the most reliable estimates are at 100.000. Some even claim that with all repression and pacification campaigns the numbers can be up to 1.3 million. In any case, even as much a humane catastrophe it was, even these numbers are sadly enough small when compared to the millions that died during the civil war due to hunger and epidemics.
Some pictures speak more than a thousand words.
It often looked like the Soviet government would break down under the dreadful and frightfully battle, against apparent dominating adversaries. That it did not happen, have many reasons. One of them was that the Soviets had one permanent, unified leadership and that this leadership was possessed by a fanatical will; they fought with their backs against the wall, and among the leadership and the commoners many fought with an unprecedented spirit of self-sacrifice, and desperately for the revolutionary cause. The counter-revolutionary forces were split, lacked a unifying idea and a constructive plan. Some fought for a non-Bolshevik socialist revolution, others a liberal democracy, many a renewed Tsarist regime, and others again a military dictatorship. Add in the mix the many national forces, green and black armies. Many of the leaders were shockingly incompetent and ignorant on matters of politics, it was internal struggle and rivalry between them, and they seldom understood how to win the population. That being said, the peasantry was at best apathetic to the Soviet regime, and after the Bolsheviks redistributed land, breaking up big estates and parceling out the land the peasantry had no real reason to support the Soviets. More on this another time, however, that being said the peasants had poor reasons to support many of the reactionary elements within the White Army.
More importantly one must take into consideration that it was comparatively primitive warfare, with relatively small, poorly equipped forces, spread over vast areas; hence not much was needed to turn the fortunes of war. Characteristically during the Polish-Soviet War, that interleaved with the last phase of the civil war and in a way became a part of it, the Polish took Kyiv in 1920, while the Soviets led by Trotskij and Tuchatjevskij threatened Warsaw in August that very same year - and were dealt with a decisive military defeat. The western powers' military interventions with regular forces could under these circumstances easily have become the decisive factor if it had been carried out with consistency and strength - but that is precisely what it was not. It was half-hearted and ineffective, partly because they were war exhausted, and in part, because the Workers' Movements in the west on political grounds opposed the support to the Whites and actions against the revolutionary soviet government. It was also doubt and dissension between the governments in question, and the result was that the various interventions got a very modest character - nonetheless it was sufficient enough that the Soviets could play on national strings within the populace, and in turn it led to a persistent suspicion to the West in the new Soviet state.
Commissar of War Lev Trotskij inspects a unit with Mikhail Kalinin during the Polish-Soviet War. January 1925 Trotskij lost his position after Stalin undermined his position.
The great hero of the people on the Red side was above all Trotskij. He was made the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, or simply but Commissar of War, in March of 1918, and he was primarily responsible for creating the "Red Army", the regime had decreed to create in January that same year. In a few months, he had more and less pulled out an army of 800.000 men up from the soil. Tirelessly he was on the move in his armored train from one front to the other to enflame, organize and lead his troops from the front. He was even at one time during the initial phases of the war surrounded in a pocket and held out for days leading his troops personally. He was a revolutionary leader, minister of war, and field commander all at the same time. The tide of the war swung back and forth like a pendulum throughout 1918-19; soon the White forces advanced and threatened Moscow! Only for then to suffer surprising defeats at the hands of the Red Army, and not before long they were crippled by peasant uprisings in the rear echelons because they were afraid they would once more lose their lands. The war ground to 1919 and the counter-revolutionaries moved to Moscow from nearly every direction, and would just an extreme effort did the Red Army succeed to rout Koltsjak's forces to the east of the Urals again, meanwhile the Red Army barely managed to hold the frontlines in west and south. During autumn, in October of 1919, the tide of war turned in all seriousness; the White Army under Koltsjak received a decisive blow and was forced on a horrific winter retreat, east through the vast scapes of Siberia; it ended with the complete dissolution of the White Army and Koltsjak himself was executed by the Reds in February of 1920. During autumn of 1919, Judenitsj was also decisively beaten and Denikin repulsed, thus giving the Bolsheviks dominion over most of Ukraine and South Russia - the breadbasket and industrial heartland of Russia. By 1920 the White Army had practically speaking given up, and the communist regime in Russia stabilized; the fighting continued to rage on, however, until 1922.
Stay tuned, the armored train will return in No Step Back!
Part III: From War Communism to the New Economic Policy.
Famine, by Ivan Vladimirov.
The Communists' victory was a costly victory. To put it mildly. Production neared a total collapse, the transportation system likewise, famine and epidemics cost millions of people their lives. There had been little to no opportunity to "build the socialist society". Lenin had initial intention was to slowly and steadily embark upon his great work of socialization in the backward, faintly industrialized, half feudal country, to not expose the production apparatus for too severe shocks. This was in Trotskij who wanted rapid state industrialization. Nevertheless, the desperate conditions of the civil war led to the state taking control over more or less all production and distribution of goods, otherwise, it would all come crashing down in further disarray. It became a very primitive economic system, "War communism". In practice, they attempted to abolish money and establish a natural economy, where the state directed the production and distributed after some sort of a grand rationing and accounting system. In turn, this led to an awfully extensive bureaucracy, and effectivity plummeted massively. The centralized leadership naturally lost oversight in this clutter of paper and red tapes, and things were not made any better by the fact that many of the communists who were placed in leading roles< missed all professional prerequisites to attack their tasks at hand. It was accepted as long as the revolutionary regime was fighting for their very life, as long as war discipline and the revolutionary terror reigned supreme. However, once the civil war ebbed out, without any signs of improving living standards, the political discontentment once more rose and took form in violent uprisings against the Soviets. Even the Left SR betrayed their erstwhile Bolshevik allies when they called for a "Third Russian Revolution", assassinated the German ambassador, and intended to resume the war against Germany. This was but one of many uprisings from the left against the Bolsheviks - and this was in 1918 nonetheless at the onset of civil war.
Anarchist sailors during the Kronstad rebellion.
Back to the end of the war. The situation dramatically came to a head when sailors of the military port of Kronstadt, the brave soldiers who had been the stormtroopers, nay vanguards, of the Bolshevik revolution, rebelled in March of 1921. This potentially new March Revolution, the Bolsheviks introduced the Georgian Calendar making the February Revolution happening in March, had its background in a deep dissatisfaction among industrial workers and peasants alike; they began to nourish some of the same feelings against the commissars as against their old masters. While the sailors' uprising was brutally repressed by Trotskij in a matter of weeks, Lenin nonetheless gave the immediate signal of political retreat. It was not difficult to retreat for him, as it meant a return back to his own moderate policy in the field of economics, rationalizing primitive rural Russia was not mature for the complete socialist revolution.
The New Economic Policy - NEP - signified a complete withdrawal. Lenin did not even try to hide that fact, but now as ever, he bent to necessity. Peasants got to, after paying a fair tax, sell the surplus of their production on the free market, and in a number of other fields private initiative once more got a free hand in production and turnover, to bring goods forward again, to stimulate individual drive, appealing to profit motive. It was also a success; hidden reserves emerged, new production was initiated, new roads were laid, simultaneously it laid the foundation for widespread speculation and partly direct fraudulence. NEP is concerned nevertheless, besides agriculture, primary production and turnover of consumer goods. The state kept the "economical command heights": Banking, heavy industry, transportation, and foreign trade. And more importantly: The communists tightened their political grip on the country. Not only was all political power, with the former Left SR and Mensheviks-Internationals purged or absorbed by the Bolsheviks, during the civil war and the NEP hoarded by the party, while every other direction was persecuted; even the inner-party democracy, the open debate, was relieved by a leader-dictatorship. As Lenin said: "When an army is in retreat a hundred times more discipline is required than when it is advancing". With the ban on factions, Lenin created what were called purge committees in which every member of the party had to appear before and argue that they were genuine revolutionaries who belonged in the party. Those that failed to convince the committee were expelled from the party. These purges happened regularly in the 20's and had no lethal consequences or connotations as they would later have in the 1930s.
The first flag of the USSR. Notice its international focus.
It was not only NEP that heralded a new era for Soviet Russia in 1921. The regime's view and relation to the world abroad also changed. Originally the Soviets had viewed themselves as the avant-garde for the world-revolution, both in line with theories of Marx and Engels and the Permanent Revolution formulated by Trotskij, and believed the Soviet system in Russia could only survive if the revolution managed to ignite in other countries, primarily the West's great industrial nations. For a while, revolution seemed to lurk in the beaten, starved, and frozen Germany, where the Empire had collapsed just as totally like the Tsardom in Russia. Yet, during the first years in the wake of the revolution, it was clear Germany would follow a different path, and the same was true in other countries where the council's movement for a time appeared to have taken hold, like in Hungary. In the western powers the abiding society, despite a wave of radicalism in the scars of war, proved to be even more resilient. There, a communist revolution was simply not possible. The Russian communists realized it and accepted its consequence. Do not be fooled, they in no way or shape abandoned the dream of world revolution, but understood that it was not nigh, perhaps not even in the distant future. Consequently, it led to the Soviets primarily focusing on work that needed to be done on the home front, on the endeavor to consolidate the regime, and rebuild Russia in their image, to a new Russia, a modern and industrialized Russia. The new constitution that was admitted in 1923, and made the country to a federal state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the U.S.S.R., underlined simultaneously the political foundation at the expense of the national, the Russian: any state that accepted the Soviet system, could join the union.
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern. Several delegates in this picture, among them Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, and Bukharin. Spot them if you can.
While this was more form than reality, Moscow maintained contact with the communist parties of the west and directed their affairs through the Communist International, also known as the Comintern or the Third International, its first secretary being Zinoviev; it was organized in Moscow in March 1919, with the aim to combat and relieve the so-called - social democratic - Second International, that the war had busted, but was reorganized come July 1920. After a short time a bitter and piercing confrontation emerged in the international workers' movement, with communists on one hand, and social-democrats on the other, in particular after the Comintern on its second congress in 1920 formed their guidelines and terms of admission in 21 Conditions, the "Moscow Thesis". The thesis' was under the impression of the expectance of impending revolutions and civil wars, and represented as such not only warlike rhetorics watchwords of armed insurrection, but demanded also strict discipline, and total compliance under the centralized leadership of the Comintern, i.e Moscow. Mirroring the internal discipline among the Soviets and even the party itself. Time, however, ran away from rhetorics, and the martial, power-hungry language they spoke. They contributed in the coming years to split the workers' movement in the West and most areas it only meant to reduce communist parties to a small, isolated political cult. In Moscow, her interests always superseded those of the Comintern.
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Flag of Soviet Russia in 1917-1918.
Part I: The October Revolution.
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First Days of the October Revolution, painting by Georgy Konstantinovich Savitsky, 1949.
Night to the 25th of October, the Bolsheviks initiated the coup that would send shockwaves across the world, and would forever change history. From the headquarters in Smolny, a former convent school for aristocratic girls, the leaders left for the districts where they would occupy strategic chokepoints and hubs in the Metropol, all according to a detailed plan. "I remained back, all alone", Trotskij later said. "Later came Kamenev. He was against the uprising, but on this fateful night, he wanted to be with me. We were in that small corner room on the third floor, that during this fateful night was some sort of command bridge. In the big, empty side room stood a phone, that rung continuously midst of matters of urgency. The ringing emphasized the lurking quietly. Image of the nightly, desolate, poorly illuminated Petrograd in the autumn's wind drew itself clearly for us. The Bourgeois and civil servants laying huddled in their beds and attempting to guess what is going on out in those secret and dangerous streets. The workers' neighborhoods sleep lightly, they are like watchful field encampments. Members of the government's commissions and public committees, who are close to plunge out of exhaustion, negotiate and confers in the Tsar palaces, where the living ghosts of democracy interleaves with the monarchy's dying specter. In the space of time the halls' silk and gilding away off in deep darkness: the electricity fail, it is a lack of coal. Around the districts units of workers, sailors, and soldiers stand guard. The young proletarians carry rifles, and some have bandoleers to machine guns hurled over their shoulders. Street patrols warm themselves over small firepits. Within a score of phone calls, the entire spiritual life in this capital, that during the autumn's night go from one era to another ..."
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A unit of the "Women's Battalion", or the "Battalion of Death", was formed of dreamy volunteers that wanted to do their part in Holy Russia's War. October of 1917 it was under the command of the Petrograd Garrison and was supposed to defend the Kerenskij Cabinet that during the Bolshevik coup d'etat sought refuge in the Winter Palace, where also a class of War Academy cadets had taken position. The Winter Palace was during the night of the 25th bombarded by blanks from the cruiser Aurora in the Neva, and the Peter and Paul Fortress. When the Red Guards later stormed the palace they could disarm the defenders with almost no bloodshed.
The coup went according to plan and was met with almost no resistance. Bolshevik patrols occupied railroad stations, telephones and telegraphs, barracks, newspapers, departments, and other key positions. There was almost not necessary to fire a single shot, in the crack of dawn, the Bolsheviks held power in Russia's capital. Only in the Winter Palace did some ministers and civil servants hold their ground, defended by a few units of Cossacks, cadets, and the women's "Battalion of Death". The last stronghold of the old regime held out... for a nychthemeron. A few salvos from the cruiser, laying in the Neva, and guns from the Peter-Paul Fortress demoralized the defenders, that in advance lacked both a will to fight and belief in their cause. They gave up and routed, by the sound of blank shots. Night to October the 26th the assaulters entered the Winter Palace from multiple directions; they disarmed the defenders with almost no bloodshed and arrested the politicians they found. Kerenskij was nowhere to be seen. He left early in the morning of the 25th to the front, to try and rally reinforcements, but to no avail; later he fled abroad, to the life of an emigree the revolutionaries so often was confined to. Now, the upheaval was completed, and it is characteristic that the bourgeois-democratic government broke down almost as helpless and defenseless as the Tsardom, not so much due to the strength of the revolutionaries, but more due to its own inherent weakness and incompetence, lack of will and a lack of a plan. As a famous historian said, paraphrased: The Bolsheviks were not the Russian Revolution's originators; they simply realized collapse and anarchy would enter 12 o'clock, and proclaimed five minutes on 12 the Bolshevik insurrection - with that they made the impression of calling forth that mighty event.
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Lenin speaks to the Second All-Russian of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on the 26th of October. Drawing by V.A. Serov. During this congress, Lenin was elected Chairman i.e Prime Minister. Stalin that can be seen behind him was made the People's Commissar for Nationalities.
Simultaneously with the Bolshevik coup, a congress of the representatives for workers' and soldiers' councils had convened. Here the Bolsheviks maintained a majority and it was the Soviet Congress Lenin leaned on to somewhat legalize the coup. Though it should be noted the Bolsheviks did not have a majority alone, of the 670 delegates 300 were Bolsheviks, thus Lenin was at the mercy of the 100 Left Social-Revolutionaries who also wanted to overthrow Kerenskij. "We shall now set to work to build the socialist society", he said to the congress that, among other things, decreed to extend a real olive branch to all the warring governments and make peace without annexation and reparations, and to redistribute the estate lands and church's lands among the peasantry without compensation. It was the same land politics the peasants and deserted soldiers had already by themselves started to execute across the countryside, and it was in reality in stark contrast to Bolshevik policy. It is in the character of Lenin to declare himself disagreeing with it - according to theory, all land would become state property - but let the new governance accept it. Only in this way could he bind the peasantry to the revolutionary cause, and the peasants were Russia. Over 90% of its population. So without support from them, they could wave and kiss goodbye to the revolution. Furthermore, under the reign of chaos, it would be practically impossible to implement any other form of agricultural production; it was catastrophically low. The Soviet Congress also elected a new government, and transferred all power to it, - to mark the complete break from the past - who got its name the Council of People's Commissars, Sovjet Narodnisj Kommisarov, abbreviated "Sovnakom". Lenin, who said the name "smells of revolution", was elected chairman, i.e premier, Trotskij the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, i.e foreign minister. Among the fifteen other members of the Aleksej Rykov, Anatolij Lunatsjarskij, Nikolaj Kryleno, and Stalin; the latter became commissar of nationalities; he made them his special field and he claimed in 1917 that he fully supported the principle of self-determination; if for an instance the Polish, Finnish, and Ukrainians wanted to secede from Russia and form independent states, they would be allowed to do so. Lenin, Trotskij, Sverdlov, and Stalin formed an informal foursome leading the government.
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Part II: Anti-Soviet Sentiment and Civil War.
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"Help Russia!" Drawing by Käthe Kollwitz, the famous German artist who primarily made motives based on the urban proletariat's life. This drawing was used on a poster during a fund-raiser for the starving Russia in 1921.
If the communist - violent - transfer of power went smoothly and the coup itself in the capital was achieved with down to no human losses, the new regime soon faced difficulties and hard resistance from several sources. In Moscow and many other places grim, bloody fighting erupted, which ended with Bolshevik victory only after hundreds of casualties. In many of the cities in central and northern Russia, the revolution was victorious, however, the Bolsheviks and their Left-SR allies only won it harsh combat and bitter resistance from rival revolutionary parties, counter-revolutionary generals, and public functionaries on strike, and others. In multiple areas in the country, the enemies of communism stood their ground and organized armed resistance against the Peoples' Commissars' regime. In Kyiv there was even made an own government, after all in theory in line with Bolshevik politics on nationalities, that wanted to make Ukraine independent, among the Don-Cossacks it was organized a counter-revolutionary under the leadership of Tsarist officers, among them the still unknown Pyotr Wrangel, and here and many other places the civil war ravaged the country and was between the "red" - i.e communists - and the "white" forces - a mix of anti-communists revolutionaries, liberal-democrats, to Tsarists and counter-revolutionaries. It became a prolonged and bloody war, where all parties displayed savage brutality, often even inhumane cruelty and atrocity.
One of the initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings, the Kerenskij-Krasnov Uprising. Following the October Revolution Kerenskij tried to retake power from Pskov and appointed Pyotr Krasnov to command his army. Albeit being supported by a revolt by officer cadets in Petrograd, the uprising was brutally put down and Kerenskij left Russia, and thus headed into the dustbin of history.
However, the new government faced not only opposition externally but faced enormous difficulties internally. Doubt, wavering, and will inclination to compromise set in - even among the ranks of the old Bolshevik leaders, and Lenin and Trotskij had to manifest all their strength to maintain the irreconcilable line over the competing parties, primarily the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries that did not follow the Bolsheviks. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk created huge ripples and shook society. Every day was a struggle against hunger, destitution, and disaster in the exhausted country that was on the brink of collapse.
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The Soviet peace delegation is received of German officers during their arrival to Brest-Litovsk, in the closing days of February 1918. Drawing by F. Matania after photography. Behind Lev Trotskij, who shake hands with a German, you can see the Soviet diplomat Adolf A. Joffe who led the delegation until Trotskij took leadership.
A small sidestep to Brest-Litovsk. When the Bolsheviks took power they could finally execute their radical peace program; at the beginning of December they initiated negotiations with the Central-Powers in Brest-Litovsk of a ceasefire, and around Christmas (war is over by Christmas!) they commenced negotiations of a separate peace. The Central Powers made far-reaching demands, and it was a hotly contested debate within the Soviet leadership if they were to accept the terms of not. Trotksij, who disagreed with the terms in the first place, tried to weasel his way out by declaring that Russia would have war without peace! Naturally, the Germans answered by initiating a renewed offensive that rapidly covered huge swaths of land, and on the 3rd of March 1918 the German dictated peace was signed in Brest-Litovsk; it was ratified by the Russians on the 16th of March. It was harsh, much harsher than the Entente negotiated peace over Germany, peace; Russland had to give up Finland, the Baltics, Polen, Ukraine, and the various areas the Central Powers' troops occupied in southern Russia, the Black Sea coast, and the Caucasus depriving the unstable Soviet government of grain, oil, and other vital raw materials from the area.
![Protecci%C3%B3n_del_Palacio_Tauride_durante_el_Segundo_Congreso_Regional_de_los_Soviets.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Protecci%C3%B3n_del_Palacio_Tauride_durante_el_Segundo_Congreso_Regional_de_los_Soviets.jpg)
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotskij, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich. Democracy was allowed as long as it suited the Soviets. Next on the chopping bloc were the Soviets themselves.
Away from Brest-Litovsk, and back to Petrograd. Another issue was the Russian Constituent Assembly that was elected on the 12th of November, that is after the communist coup. In the assembly the communists were in a clear minority with Left-SRs and the Bolsheviks having less than a fourth of the delegates, the moderate socialists - the Mensheviks and SRs - had nearly a 2/3 majority; the rest of the delegates was the various liberal and right-wing groups. Lenin quite easily solved the problem by letting his Red Guard of soldiers, workers, and deserted sailors led by Trotskij dissolve the Assembly on the 6th of January, the day after they met to discuss the democratic principles of the New Russia. Cheka was also formed a few days earlier. All power was transformed to the Congress of Soviets. But even the latter would not survive the test of time. The Soviets more or less became a dead letter from the start, ever since 1917 the Bolsheviks were just a part of a broader revolutionary left-wing. The Menshevik-Internationalists, who previously was 1/3rd of the Mensheviks joined Bolshevik forces, but the Left SRs remained the biggest component. The Left SRs also disagreed with the signing of Brest-Litovsk. Most wanted, and ironically Lenin, to keep waging a war in the hopes of turning it into a 'revolutionary war' in which the Soviet forces could occupy territory in Eastern Europe and install revolutionary governments on their own model. Since the SR's still held a majority presence in most Soviets, this meant that if the Bolsheviks had acceded to democracy in the Soviets, that they would lose power. So Lenin more or less usurped the Soviets and ignored the electoral majority of the SRs and started issuing orders to them. At that point, the Soviets became more or less rubber stamp institutions where results were decided in advance by the Party. In Trotsky's mind, this usurpation of the Soviets was supposed to be temporary expedience, that it was a necessary sacrifice to win the Civil War, and that eventually it should be undone, along with Lenin's infamous ban on party factions.
While many during the first period had almost apathetically accepted the new regime in the chaotic situation, in time a more conscious resistance emerged. The frontlines were drawn during the first half of 1918. The communists made peace with the Central Powers on terms many meant was harsher and more humiliating than what was needed to accept, and after a series of decrees from Sovnarkom contours drew clearer of the socialist society Lenin heralded. Hence aversion and resistance grew against Bolshevism, in Russia and abroad. Among the Entente there was now deep resentment when Russia pulled out of the war, and the shock and indignation did not subdue when the Peoples' Commissars with the stroke of a pen repudiated all foreign debt - colossal sums the British, and least but not last the French had put into Russian state bonds and Russian commerce and industry. Equally radical upheavals were made on the home front. The industry and control of factories were given to the soviets and after a while socialized, armed military and red guard units raided the countryside to confiscate grain for the cities, all banks were nationalized, private bank accounts were expropriated, all private property was nationalized and their rooms rationed out, and a shorter eight-hour working was introduced. During the summer of 1918, the antagonism became so irreversible, that civil war again flared up in full force, and the time to the summer of 1919 became the most critical the communist rule went through until the end of the '30s.
Anton Ivanovitsj Denikin, that in February 1917 was made commander-in-chief for the Russian forces. When Kerenskij made his provisional government, Denikin reported for service and became a "white" general. He took the fight to the Bolsheviks, but in March of 1920, he had to give up. Denikin fled to Istanbul, later to France, before he ended up in in USA where he also ended his days in 1947, 75 years of age.
The Soviets had for a long time only grip on Central Russia - crucially this was also both the heartland of Russia and the communications hub - with Moscow as its center and new capital instead of Petrograd that the Germans had threatened in the winter of 1917-1918. Moreover moving the capital away from Petrograd also signaled a break with the old Russia, away from the Holy Tsars' City. The area was like a besieged fortress, cut off from the grain districts and the industrial centers, from the oil and the coal, threatened in the south from Cossack Generals such as Pyotr Wrangel, Pjotr Krasnov, and Anton Denikin, from the west by General Nikolaj Judenistsj whose troops were in the Baltic provinces, from the north a white rival government based in Arkhangelsk, from the east of counter-revolutionary forces in the Urals and Siberia under the leadership of Admiral Koltsjak. In addition to all this Ukraine declared independence, Polish and Romanian forces after the peace of November in 1918 sought to expand their territories at Russia's expense, and that Russia's former allies among the great powers intervened against the communist regime, propped up White generals and sent in expeditionary forces to the country. The British landed an expeditionary force in Arkhangelsk and sent warships to the Black Sea. Here there were also French forces. Japanese and American troops made landfall in Siberia, and Japan was the only serious contender and wanted to expand their influence in Manchuria, China, and Siberia, and the Americans' real purpose was to police the Japanese more than support Koltsjak.
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The Tsar and his children in Yekaterinburg photographed a summer's day of 1918. It was in the cellar of this house that they were shot on the 16th of July 1918. From the left Olga, Anastasia, Nikolai, Maria (standing), Aleksej, and Tatjana.
Content Warning, There will be controversial topics and some graphical content for some in this paragraph.
When the British and French governments intervened, it was primarily to force Russia to resume the war effort, but after the peace with Germany it was to strike against the world revolution the Bolsheviks proclaimed and now did whatever they could to ignite across in the Central Powers and the Western powers alike. It became clear that whatever was going on it in Russia, it was a social revolution, a complete upheaval of the old society and its very fabric, a revolution that not only attacked private property but also the democratic, parliamentary system, on religion that according to Marx was mere "opium for the masses", on the "bourgeois" moral norms, etc. The world had not witnessed anything like it since the Reign of Terror by the Jacobins during the great French Revolution. The abyss that now revealed itself, was just so horrible because this was the proletarian, the masses, not a middle-class revolution. Following the February Revolution the Tsar and his family were held captive in Tsarskoje Selo Castle close to Petrograd, in August of 1917 - while Kerenskij was still in power - they were exiled in Tobolsk, Siberia, and was further transferred to Yekaterinburg, today's Sverdlovsk, in the Urals in April 1918. When White forces during the summer advanced toward the city, the Tsar family was in the cruelest fashion gunned down in a cellar, ordered by Yekaterinburg Soviet, and most likely approved by Moscow - by Lenin and Trotskij, the latter would later argue why it was moral to execute the children. Both White and Red forces committed acts of terror, known as the White Terror and Red Terror respectively, and took horrible revenge over enemies when a city or rural region changed masters. How many who were executed is unknown, but estimates range from a "few" thousands (unlikely) to hundreds of thousands. The White Terror is estimated to have been between 20.000 and 100.000, while some fantastical claims make it to be even higher than 300.000. The Red Terror ranges from 50.00 to 140.000 and 200.000, while the most reliable estimates are at 100.000. Some even claim that with all repression and pacification campaigns the numbers can be up to 1.3 million. In any case, even as much a humane catastrophe it was, even these numbers are sadly enough small when compared to the millions that died during the civil war due to hunger and epidemics.
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Some pictures speak more than a thousand words.
It often looked like the Soviet government would break down under the dreadful and frightfully battle, against apparent dominating adversaries. That it did not happen, have many reasons. One of them was that the Soviets had one permanent, unified leadership and that this leadership was possessed by a fanatical will; they fought with their backs against the wall, and among the leadership and the commoners many fought with an unprecedented spirit of self-sacrifice, and desperately for the revolutionary cause. The counter-revolutionary forces were split, lacked a unifying idea and a constructive plan. Some fought for a non-Bolshevik socialist revolution, others a liberal democracy, many a renewed Tsarist regime, and others again a military dictatorship. Add in the mix the many national forces, green and black armies. Many of the leaders were shockingly incompetent and ignorant on matters of politics, it was internal struggle and rivalry between them, and they seldom understood how to win the population. That being said, the peasantry was at best apathetic to the Soviet regime, and after the Bolsheviks redistributed land, breaking up big estates and parceling out the land the peasantry had no real reason to support the Soviets. More on this another time, however, that being said the peasants had poor reasons to support many of the reactionary elements within the White Army.
More importantly one must take into consideration that it was comparatively primitive warfare, with relatively small, poorly equipped forces, spread over vast areas; hence not much was needed to turn the fortunes of war. Characteristically during the Polish-Soviet War, that interleaved with the last phase of the civil war and in a way became a part of it, the Polish took Kyiv in 1920, while the Soviets led by Trotskij and Tuchatjevskij threatened Warsaw in August that very same year - and were dealt with a decisive military defeat. The western powers' military interventions with regular forces could under these circumstances easily have become the decisive factor if it had been carried out with consistency and strength - but that is precisely what it was not. It was half-hearted and ineffective, partly because they were war exhausted, and in part, because the Workers' Movements in the west on political grounds opposed the support to the Whites and actions against the revolutionary soviet government. It was also doubt and dissension between the governments in question, and the result was that the various interventions got a very modest character - nonetheless it was sufficient enough that the Soviets could play on national strings within the populace, and in turn it led to a persistent suspicion to the West in the new Soviet state.
![Kalinin_Trotsky_Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Kalinin_Trotsky_Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War.jpg)
Commissar of War Lev Trotskij inspects a unit with Mikhail Kalinin during the Polish-Soviet War. January 1925 Trotskij lost his position after Stalin undermined his position.
The great hero of the people on the Red side was above all Trotskij. He was made the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, or simply but Commissar of War, in March of 1918, and he was primarily responsible for creating the "Red Army", the regime had decreed to create in January that same year. In a few months, he had more and less pulled out an army of 800.000 men up from the soil. Tirelessly he was on the move in his armored train from one front to the other to enflame, organize and lead his troops from the front. He was even at one time during the initial phases of the war surrounded in a pocket and held out for days leading his troops personally. He was a revolutionary leader, minister of war, and field commander all at the same time. The tide of the war swung back and forth like a pendulum throughout 1918-19; soon the White forces advanced and threatened Moscow! Only for then to suffer surprising defeats at the hands of the Red Army, and not before long they were crippled by peasant uprisings in the rear echelons because they were afraid they would once more lose their lands. The war ground to 1919 and the counter-revolutionaries moved to Moscow from nearly every direction, and would just an extreme effort did the Red Army succeed to rout Koltsjak's forces to the east of the Urals again, meanwhile the Red Army barely managed to hold the frontlines in west and south. During autumn, in October of 1919, the tide of war turned in all seriousness; the White Army under Koltsjak received a decisive blow and was forced on a horrific winter retreat, east through the vast scapes of Siberia; it ended with the complete dissolution of the White Army and Koltsjak himself was executed by the Reds in February of 1920. During autumn of 1919, Judenitsj was also decisively beaten and Denikin repulsed, thus giving the Bolsheviks dominion over most of Ukraine and South Russia - the breadbasket and industrial heartland of Russia. By 1920 the White Army had practically speaking given up, and the communist regime in Russia stabilized; the fighting continued to rage on, however, until 1922.
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Stay tuned, the armored train will return in No Step Back!
Part III: From War Communism to the New Economic Policy.
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Famine, by Ivan Vladimirov.
The Communists' victory was a costly victory. To put it mildly. Production neared a total collapse, the transportation system likewise, famine and epidemics cost millions of people their lives. There had been little to no opportunity to "build the socialist society". Lenin had initial intention was to slowly and steadily embark upon his great work of socialization in the backward, faintly industrialized, half feudal country, to not expose the production apparatus for too severe shocks. This was in Trotskij who wanted rapid state industrialization. Nevertheless, the desperate conditions of the civil war led to the state taking control over more or less all production and distribution of goods, otherwise, it would all come crashing down in further disarray. It became a very primitive economic system, "War communism". In practice, they attempted to abolish money and establish a natural economy, where the state directed the production and distributed after some sort of a grand rationing and accounting system. In turn, this led to an awfully extensive bureaucracy, and effectivity plummeted massively. The centralized leadership naturally lost oversight in this clutter of paper and red tapes, and things were not made any better by the fact that many of the communists who were placed in leading roles< missed all professional prerequisites to attack their tasks at hand. It was accepted as long as the revolutionary regime was fighting for their very life, as long as war discipline and the revolutionary terror reigned supreme. However, once the civil war ebbed out, without any signs of improving living standards, the political discontentment once more rose and took form in violent uprisings against the Soviets. Even the Left SR betrayed their erstwhile Bolshevik allies when they called for a "Third Russian Revolution", assassinated the German ambassador, and intended to resume the war against Germany. This was but one of many uprisings from the left against the Bolsheviks - and this was in 1918 nonetheless at the onset of civil war.
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Anarchist sailors during the Kronstad rebellion.
Back to the end of the war. The situation dramatically came to a head when sailors of the military port of Kronstadt, the brave soldiers who had been the stormtroopers, nay vanguards, of the Bolshevik revolution, rebelled in March of 1921. This potentially new March Revolution, the Bolsheviks introduced the Georgian Calendar making the February Revolution happening in March, had its background in a deep dissatisfaction among industrial workers and peasants alike; they began to nourish some of the same feelings against the commissars as against their old masters. While the sailors' uprising was brutally repressed by Trotskij in a matter of weeks, Lenin nonetheless gave the immediate signal of political retreat. It was not difficult to retreat for him, as it meant a return back to his own moderate policy in the field of economics, rationalizing primitive rural Russia was not mature for the complete socialist revolution.
The New Economic Policy - NEP - signified a complete withdrawal. Lenin did not even try to hide that fact, but now as ever, he bent to necessity. Peasants got to, after paying a fair tax, sell the surplus of their production on the free market, and in a number of other fields private initiative once more got a free hand in production and turnover, to bring goods forward again, to stimulate individual drive, appealing to profit motive. It was also a success; hidden reserves emerged, new production was initiated, new roads were laid, simultaneously it laid the foundation for widespread speculation and partly direct fraudulence. NEP is concerned nevertheless, besides agriculture, primary production and turnover of consumer goods. The state kept the "economical command heights": Banking, heavy industry, transportation, and foreign trade. And more importantly: The communists tightened their political grip on the country. Not only was all political power, with the former Left SR and Mensheviks-Internationals purged or absorbed by the Bolsheviks, during the civil war and the NEP hoarded by the party, while every other direction was persecuted; even the inner-party democracy, the open debate, was relieved by a leader-dictatorship. As Lenin said: "When an army is in retreat a hundred times more discipline is required than when it is advancing". With the ban on factions, Lenin created what were called purge committees in which every member of the party had to appear before and argue that they were genuine revolutionaries who belonged in the party. Those that failed to convince the committee were expelled from the party. These purges happened regularly in the 20's and had no lethal consequences or connotations as they would later have in the 1930s.
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The first flag of the USSR. Notice its international focus.
It was not only NEP that heralded a new era for Soviet Russia in 1921. The regime's view and relation to the world abroad also changed. Originally the Soviets had viewed themselves as the avant-garde for the world-revolution, both in line with theories of Marx and Engels and the Permanent Revolution formulated by Trotskij, and believed the Soviet system in Russia could only survive if the revolution managed to ignite in other countries, primarily the West's great industrial nations. For a while, revolution seemed to lurk in the beaten, starved, and frozen Germany, where the Empire had collapsed just as totally like the Tsardom in Russia. Yet, during the first years in the wake of the revolution, it was clear Germany would follow a different path, and the same was true in other countries where the council's movement for a time appeared to have taken hold, like in Hungary. In the western powers the abiding society, despite a wave of radicalism in the scars of war, proved to be even more resilient. There, a communist revolution was simply not possible. The Russian communists realized it and accepted its consequence. Do not be fooled, they in no way or shape abandoned the dream of world revolution, but understood that it was not nigh, perhaps not even in the distant future. Consequently, it led to the Soviets primarily focusing on work that needed to be done on the home front, on the endeavor to consolidate the regime, and rebuild Russia in their image, to a new Russia, a modern and industrialized Russia. The new constitution that was admitted in 1923, and made the country to a federal state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the U.S.S.R., underlined simultaneously the political foundation at the expense of the national, the Russian: any state that accepted the Soviet system, could join the union.
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The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern. Several delegates in this picture, among them Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, and Bukharin. Spot them if you can.
While this was more form than reality, Moscow maintained contact with the communist parties of the west and directed their affairs through the Communist International, also known as the Comintern or the Third International, its first secretary being Zinoviev; it was organized in Moscow in March 1919, with the aim to combat and relieve the so-called - social democratic - Second International, that the war had busted, but was reorganized come July 1920. After a short time a bitter and piercing confrontation emerged in the international workers' movement, with communists on one hand, and social-democrats on the other, in particular after the Comintern on its second congress in 1920 formed their guidelines and terms of admission in 21 Conditions, the "Moscow Thesis". The thesis' was under the impression of the expectance of impending revolutions and civil wars, and represented as such not only warlike rhetorics watchwords of armed insurrection, but demanded also strict discipline, and total compliance under the centralized leadership of the Comintern, i.e Moscow. Mirroring the internal discipline among the Soviets and even the party itself. Time, however, ran away from rhetorics, and the martial, power-hungry language they spoke. They contributed in the coming years to split the workers' movement in the West and most areas it only meant to reduce communist parties to a small, isolated political cult. In Moscow, her interests always superseded those of the Comintern.
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