10. Period of Forced Concessions

Question 1

Timeline - October

Answer 1

October, 1917 - The Land Decree
* Gave peasants the right to take over estates without compensation and decide on land division.
* Land no longer bought, sold, or rented.
* Not what the Bolsheviks wanted, privately owned land not part of socialist vision.

Question 2

Timeline - October 2

Answer 2

October, 1917 - The Workers Control Decree
* Controlled production and finance.
* Supervised management.
* Didn’t grant direct management to workers.
* Overstepped Bolshevik leaders’ expectations, but faced pressure from workers for reform.

October, 1917 - Maximum 8 hour work days

Question 3

Timeline - After

Answer 3

November 15th, 1917 - The Rights of the People of Russia decree signed
* Gave the right of self-determination to the national minorities in the former Russian Empire
* Bolsheviks did not have control of the areas in which most of these people lived, so this was nothing more than a paper measure.

December 7th, 1917 - The Cheka is established (credit to Lenin)
January 5th, 1918 - The Constituent Assembly was disbanded by Lenin

Question 4

Sovnarkom

Answer 4

• Founded in the Russian Republic soon after the October Revolution in 1917
• Role formalised in the 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR to be responsible to the Congress of Soviets of the RSFSR for the “general administration of the affairs of the state”.
• Initially exclusively composed of Bolsheviks, later invited some left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries (No intention to share power with other socialist groups)

Question 5

Constituent Assembly

Answer 5

• The Bolsheviks won only 175 seats in the 1918 election, compared to 410 for the Socialist Revolutionaries and nearly 100 for other parties.
• Lenin argued that his Soviet government represented a higher level of democracy than an elected assembly.
• The Constituent Assembly was declared redundant, leading to its closure and deputies’ expulsion.
• A crowd supporting the Assembly was shot down by soldiers loyal to the Sovnarkom, marking the first such incident since February 1917.

Question 6

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Answer 6

• Ceded Baltic States to Germany.
• Ceded Kars Oblast to Ottoman Empire.
• Recognized Ukraine’s independence.
• Agreed to pay six billion German gold marks in reparations.

Question 7

Evidence

Answer 7

First Hand Quotes
Lenin - “…control into the hands of workers and peasants”

Historian Interpretations
Acton - “…responsive to pressure from below or less able to impose its will upon society.”
Tucker - “The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator.”