Lenin Flashcards
Economic conditions leading to rtp
- only 30% of production compared to 70% and 75% in GB and Ge
- 1915- Agri reform under Stolypin, 5m acres given to peasants, emigrated of 3.5m to Siberia for production
- 82% of population were peasantry
Social conditions leading to rtp
- Feb Revolution - Why Was There A Disaster in 1917
- Oct Revolution - Gov’t thats provisional will be killed
- 4 dumas (1906,7,12,17) all dismissed by the Tsar
- Provisional Government and Soviet dual power period
Events in his rtp
- 1917 - Feb 23 - Int’ll women’s day
- Feb 26 - Troops fire on the crowds, mutiny
- Mar 2 - Nick abdicates
- Apr 3 - Lenin returns to petrograd
- Apr 7 - April Theses in Pravda
- June 3 - Petrograd soviet opens
- June 18-July - Brusilov
- July 3-7 - July Days
- Aug 27-Sept 1 - Kornilov Coup
- Oct 10 - Petrograd Soviet backs up a coup
- Oct 23 - Trotsky takes Peter and Paul artillery
- Oct 24 - Kerensky loses vote of non-confidence
- Oct 25 - Kerensky flees, Bolsheviks take winter palace
- Oct 26 - Provisional Government arrested, Decrees on Peace and land
Key events in the consolidation of power
1917
- Nov 6-7 - Bolsheviks seize power
- Dec 15 - Temorary armistice with Germany
- Dec - White armies begin to form
1918
- Jan 5 - Constituent Assembly meets and is broken up
- Mar 3 - Brest-Litovsk
- Mar 13 - Trotsky becomes war commissar
1920 (most of CW)
- Apr 26 - Poland invades Russia
- June - Poland driven back
- Nov - Evacuation of last white forces
1921
- March - Military uprising
- Mar 8-10 - 10th Party Congress, NEP
Key domestic and foreign policy aims
- Establish a dictatorship of the proletariat (yes)
- Spread socialist consciousness (50/50)
- Destroy all socialist/bourgeois though (no)
-Global communist revolution (no)
Key methods to achieve aims
- Allowed peasants to take gentry estates “Kulak problem”
- 1917 “Workers control decree”
- 1917 Nov - “Rights of the people of Russia decree” (equality, self-determination, privileges, minorities)
- ABOVE: went against ideology but created stability
- 1918 May - all other parties banned
- War communism and CHEKA, “war with the peasants”
- Replaced legal system with “Revolutionary justice”
- NEP - against ideology but stabilized economy and saw Western investments
- CW - “Lenin was prepared for CW and … welcomed it to build his parties power base” - Figes
- Assassination attempts were “the start of the Lenin cult” - Figes
Domestic policy successes and failures
Successes:
- Established a dictatorship of the proletariat
- Rights of the people of Russia decree stabilized socially
- NEP stabilized economically
Failures:
- Workers control decree left workers in charge, production fell
- Failed to eliminate all bourgeois thought
- War communism controlled the peasants but brought hunger and strain on the economy
Foreign Policy successes and failures
Success:
- NEP saw foreign investments
Failure:
- Did not spread a world wide communist revolution
PSQs
- “a class of prosperous peasants”
- “wager on the strong and sober”
- “a purely Bolshevik government has no choice but to maintain itself through political terror.” -Martov
- “economic concessions to avoid political concessions”-Bukharin
- Kulaks “Blood suckers[who] have grown on the hunger of the people.”
- “[Kronstadt] the flash that lit up reality better than anything else.” - Lenin
HSQs
- “had the war not intervened, the confrontation would possibly have come sooner than 1917” - McLanley
- “No Russian government had ever been less responsive to pressure form below or less able to impose its will … from above.” - Acton
