When the 1917 Revolution was successful completed, the Bolsheviks controlled Petrograd. but that was only a small part of Russia! The officials in the Provisional Government in Moscow sought cover in the Kremlin. It took several days of heavy shelling to get them to surrender. Throughout Russia, the Provisional Government fell and the Bolsheviks took control. Some areas put up a good fight. Kiev, the ancient capital of the Ukraine, tried to resist the Bolshevik takeover. Bolshevik control was tenuous in the border regions of Siberia. It was strongest in Central Russia and in the big cities in general where the were lots of workers.

RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY

On November 25, elections were held in Russia to elect a constituent assembly. The Social. Revolutionary Party obtained double the number of votes received by the Bolshevik Party. The peasants voted against the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks wanted to nationalize the land. The peasants voted for the Social Revolutionary because they wanted the peasants to own the land themselves. The Bolsheviks lacked a plan to gain the favour of the peasants who formed the greatest part of Russia's population. Many of the Social Revolutionaries were in favour of establishing, through a democracy (elections), a governing body that would rule accordion to the wishes of the people. The Bolshevik' especially Lenin, opposed that idea.
When the constituent assembly met in Petrograd on January 18, 1918, trouble broke out because of the recent elections, the Bolsheviks were a minority in the assembly but they were determined to win control. The entrance to the Taurid Palace, in which the government was to meet, was heavily guarded by Bolshevik soldiers and sailor Social Revolutionaries and other party members had difficulty entering the building. They were pushed and crowded by the Bolsheviks. Once the meetings were started, the Bolsheviks were so disorderly that it became impossible for the new government to function. The Bolsheviks had succeeded in closing down the assembly. Russia' chance at democracy was short lived.

RUSSIA TAKEN OUT OF WORLD WAR I

The Bolsheviks needed the support of the peasants to stay in power. So badly did Lenin need their loyalty that he was prepared to do almost anything to get it. He decided that the best way was to take Russia out of the war. To do that, however, he had to make great sacrifices.
In March of 1918, the Treaty of Brest / Litovsk was signed between Germany and Russia. According to the terms of that peace treaty, Russia lost more than one quarter of her agricultural land (Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltics), about a third of the nation's population, almost all of her coal mines, more than half of her industries and a large part of the nation's income.

In 1918:
· The Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party.
· The Russian Empire ceased to exist. The country was now called
RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC.

IN CONCLUSION

The Communist Party, under the direction of Lenin, had triumphed over tsardom in Russia. They had replaced centuries of monarchic rule with a Communist government. Lenin and his Party followers had the enormous task of introducing and establishing Communism in Russia. However, their first task was to establish effective control of the country.

CIVIL WAR

A CIVIL WAR is a war between groups of citizens of one nation. A long and bloody civil war occurred in Russia from 1918 to 1921. The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in November of 1917 was partly responsible for the civil war. Many Russians disliked the policies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Many non-Russian nationalities within the empire saw this as an ideal time to gain their independence. Many world powers such as Britain, France and the United States opposed Lenin's promise to withdraw from World War I. The civil war was more than a fight to remain in power. It also was a fight by the Bolsheviks to overthrow the current political and economic system and establish Communism.

WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THE CIVIL WAR?

THE REDS (BOLSHEVIKS) VS THE WHITES
MADE UP OF:

Monarchists and Conservatives . Moderate Democrats
Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks
1. RED ARMY
The Red Army, the former Red Guards of the November Revolution, became a well-organized, well disciplined and effective fighting instrument under the capable leadership of Trotsky. (For information on Trotsky go to Biographies.html By means of conscription the army's size was greatly increased. Many former tsarist soldiers were in this army.
The main goal of the Bolsheviks was to stay in power and to spread Communist rule to all parts of the old Russian empire. The individual workers and peasants tended to support the Bolsheviks. Because land was given to the peasants after the November Revolution, they favoured the Bolsheviks. They suspected that if the Whites won they would have to give up their land.
The Whites were mostly middle and upper class people. Some of the Whites wanted to return to the old ways, prior to the 1917 Revolution. They favoured control by the nobility. Some of this group wanted the Tsar to return to the throne. Some wanted to set up a parliamentary system through the Duma. Others wanted a military dictator. This mixed group of anti Bolsheviks supported a number of military forces collectively known as the WHITE ARMY.
The Whites were not a united group. There was a wide range of opinions among them. They all wanted change. But they didn't want change brought about by the Bolsheviks. Because the Whites often hated each other, cooperation among them was difficult to achieve. Their common goal was to get rid of Lenin. Poor organization and lack of cooperation were major causes of their defeat by the Bolsheviks.

2. BOLSHEVIKS VS NON-RUSSIA NATIONALITIES
This group was made up of Moslems of Central Asia, Ukrainians, people of the Caucasus (the Georgians), and the Baltic people. These peoples had been forced to become part of the Russian Empire during Tsarist times. Now they felt they could use the revolution to free themselves of Russian rule in order to gain their independence.

3 . BOLSHEVIKS VS FOREIGNERS (ALLIED TROOPS)

The foreigners who opposed the Bolsheviks included the Canadians, British, French, Czechoslovaks, Americans and Japanese. They opposed Russian withdrawal from World War I as the Russians had done a great deal to hold back the Germans. By supporting the Whites they hoped to have Russia re-enter the war against Germany. The foreigners were also concerned with the type of government Lenin was trying to introduce to Russia. In 1918 Allied troops invaded Russia. Allied participation only served to prolong the civil war.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The Bolsheviks gained control of the cities in European Russia and the central regions of the country. Their opponents controlled Siberia and areas to the south. The Bolsheviks were able to defeat the White Armies one by one. This was due to the Whites' disorganization, the lack of support among the general population, and the Red Armies' eventual superiority. By 1920 the Bolsheviks had established control over all of Russia.

WHAT WAS THE RESULT OF THE CIVIL WAR?

Russia was exhausted. The war had lasted for over three years. Slowly the Bolsheviks had been able to defeat their opponents and to gain control of almost all of the former Russian empire. The country itself was in ruin-from World War I, the 1917 Revolution and the civil war. Therefore, the Bolsheviks had the huge task of rebuilding their country. The methods they chose to use were based on Communist philosophy. During the civil war, Nicholas and his family were taken prisoner by the Red Army. As the White Army approached the place at which the romanov's were held captive the entire family was executed and their bodies dumped at an unknown location. The likely reason for their execution was to prevent them from rally the Russian peasants to oppose Bolshevik rule.

Go toFate of the Romanov's.html

War Communism

The policies followed by the communist government in Russia between 1918 and 1921 have become known as War Communism. The central government took control of all industry and economic activity. All factories which had more than ten workers were taken over and run by the government. The death penalty was introduced for anyone who went on strike. All private trade was banned. The aim was to keep the Red Army supplied with food and weapons so that it could win the civil war. In this respect it succeeded. However, the civil war had a terrible effect on Russia. Of the ten million people who died in the civil war, over half are thought to have died from starvation.

Famine

The main reason there was a famine in Russia during the civil war was the policies followed by Lenin's government. They desperately needed food for the Red Army and the workers in the cities. Therefore the Cheka were ordered to take all spare grain from the peasants. The Cheka met with considerable opposition, and killed thousands of peasants. As a result, the peasants realised that there was no point in growing more food than they needed, since they would not be paid for any extra which they grew. This meant that much less grain was being grown by the end of the civil war. To make matters worse, there was a drought in 1920 and 1921, so the peasants' crops were poor. There was not even enough for the peasants themselves to eat, let alone a surplus for the people in the towns. The total amount of grain produced in 1921 was less than half that grown in 1913.

Crisis and protest
Famine was not the only problem faced by the Bolsheviks. Industry was also in crisis. With so little food in the cities, workers moved to the countryside where they thought there would be more food. The population of Petrograd dropped from 2.5 million in 1917 to 0.6 million in 1920. With so few workers left in the cities, industrial production collapsed.
This catastrophic situation was not what the workers and peasants had fought for. Anti-Bolshevik protests spread across the country. The most important of these was at the Kronstadt naval base near Petrograd. The sailors of Kronstadt had been loyal Bolshevik supporters throughout the revolution, even during the July days. They had been described as 'heroes of the revolution' by Trotsky.
So the NEP was to be the crutch to allow Russia to recover from the crisis. To those of his critics who accused him of reintroducing the hated capitalist system, he replied:

'Let the peasants have their little bit of capitalism, as long as we keep power. The Proletarian government is in no danger as long as it firmly holds transport and large-scale industry in its hands.'

Lenin referred to these as 'the commanding heights of industry'.
The story of the NEP is not one of complete success. Certainly agricultural production recovered quickly. The peasants were willing to grow more food now they could make a profit by selling their surplus produce, and the good weather of 1922 and 1923 led to much better harvests. However with so much more being grown the price of food naturally dropped.
In contrast, industry did not recover at the same speed. The workers who had fled the cities in search of land and food did not quickly return. Therefore, factories could not produce enough and so there were shortages of many goods. This led to the price of these goods going up. In other words, the price of industrial goods was going up at the same time as agricultural prices were going down. Trotsky called this the 'scissors crisis', because the gap between agricultural and industrial prices was widening like an opening pair of scissors.
It was a serious crisis because there would soon be no reason for the peasants to grow surplus food, since they would not be able to afford any industrial goods. Russia would then slide back into the terrible famine from which she had only just recovered. Lenin believed that unless the standard of living of the people improved, the Bolsheviks would lose power, and if the Bolsheviks lost power then the Revolution would be over.
But in March 1921, at the very moment that leading Bolsheviks from all over Russia were meeting in Petrograd for the Tenth Party Congress, the sailors of Kronstadt revolted, demanding 'Soviets without Bolsheviks'. Many workers from Petrograd crossed the frozen Neva river to join them. Trotsky now described the sailors as 'tools of tsarist generals' and White agents. While the Neva was still frozen he ordered General Tukhachevsky to storm the base with 60 000 Red Army troops. After fierce fighting the Kronstadt rebels were defeated and the leaders shot.
Lenin had feared that if the Kronstadt sailors had been successful in their protests, it would have encouraged workers all over Russia to rebel and the Bolsheviks would have been unable to cope. The crushing of the Kronstadt revolt showed just how ruthless Lenin could be. However, at this point he once more displayed the ability to change his policy to meet new circumstances, an ability that enabled the Bolsheviks to overcome so many problems. Lenin decided to abandon the policy of War Communism which had caused the revolt, and he replaced it with the New Economic Policy.

The New Economic Policy

Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in March 1921. He was aware that War Communism had failed because the peasants had no incentive to grow more food. The NEP dealt with this problem in two ways:

· Peasants were to be allowed to sell any surplus food which they produced.This meant that the more food they grew, the more money they could earn.

· However, this would not work unless there were goods for them to buy. Therefore, factories which had fewer than 20 workers were to be given back to their owners.

Some Bolsheviks, such as Trotsky, were not happy with the NEP. They felt that the state control of War Communism was the correct way to produce a communist society. However, Lenin, as ever, was a realist. Unlike Trotsky, he was willing to abandon a strictly Marxist approach in order to remain in power.

Trotsky and his supporters believed the scissors crisis proved that the NEP was a disaster, since it reintroduced capitalism but did not make sure that the peasants grew enough food to supply the rest of Russia. However, after October 1923 the blades of the 'scissors' began to close as industrial production continued to grow and prices fell as a result.

STRUGGLE FOR LEADERSHIP
During Lenin's years of illness before his death in 1924, the Soviet Union (see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the Glossary) was governed collectively by a group. Included were Joseph Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. A power struggle for leadership occurred after Lenin's death. The main contenders were Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.
Stalin and Trotsky disagreed violently over the spread of Communism. Trotsky felt Communism must be spread throughout the world (world revolution). Stalin favored world revolution too but first he wanted to make the Soviet Union strong. Stalin became the victor in the struggle. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party and eventually from the country. (See Biographies.html) Stalin proceded to establish a totalitarian regime.

FIVE YEAR PLANS

The Soviet Union was well behind the other major powers in the world in industrial development. Stalin and the other Communist leaders were concerned with the comparative weakness of their country. They believed that they had to build a powerful state very quickly or they would be taken over and crushed by the capitalist powers in the world. Stalin decided he would have the country caught up in ten years-he had to. To do this he began a series of five year plans. The dates of these plans were:
1. 1928-1932 First Five Year Plan.
2. 1933-1937 Second Five Year Plan.
3. 1938-1941 Third Five Year Plan. This plan was interrupted by World War II.
4. 1941-1945 World War II. There were no plans put into action during this time.
5. 1946-1950 Fourth Five Year Plan.
6. 1951-1955 Fifth Five Year Plan. Stalin did not see the end of this plan. He died in 1953.

There were basic proposals for all the plans. They stressed heavy industry in order to make the Soviet Union a great industrial nation. New areas of the Soviet Union were opened up and new industrial fields developed such as energy and chemicals. The plans also called for COLLECTIVE FARMING or farms owned and operated by the state. There was also a heavy emphasis on the construction of war machines and weapons.

The first Five Year Plan (1928-1932) was a vast success for Stalin and had a considerable impact on the economy. But the plan was less than successful in the eyes of the peasants. Many of their private farms were taken away from them to form kolkhozy. This was called COLLECTIVIZATION. These kolkhozy were large farms owned collectively by the workers but under state control. Many peasants had prospered when they owned their own land. With the first Five Year Plan the land came under state control. The police and the army forced the peasants to work on the collectives. A strong resistance movement began. The peasants, ordered to give their crops and animals to the state to help feed the army and people in the cities, slaughtered the animals and burnt their crops rather than give them up. Stalin ordered that all opposition be stopped. His secret police, the OGPU, arrested millions of people. Many were beaten, were sent to prison or to concentration camps on false charges or were killed. An estimated five million people disappeared.See - Letter to Bolshevik.html

A serious drought in 1931-1933, combined with a man-made famine, left the country in a desperate condition. In the Ukraine, the bread basket of the Soviet Union, people were starving to death. Millions died because there was nothing for them to eat. Due to the serious food shortage, Stalin was forced to allow the peasants to use small private plots. Crops produced on those plots belonged to them and the peasants worked very hard to produce food to sell. The money from the sales was their own but it was not much for they were heavily taxed.
From 1931, prices for agricultural production were set by the State. The peasants now had no choice in the prices given them for grain. No job changes could occur within the kolkhoz without official approval and anyone missing work was severely punished.
There was a significant increase in heavy industry in the Soviet Union. Over 1500 new factories were built and many new cities were built at the factory sites. Stalin also had schools built to teach the people to read, to write and then to train them to run the new machinery brought in from the West. The schools also taught that Stalin's dictatorship was a good one and that the Communist government was bringing them many benefits.
Despite the increase in industry, the people suffered greatly. There were consumer shortages and rationing. Many of the goods that the people bought were expensive but of a very poor quality. They worked long hours to meet the quotas assigned to them in the kolkhoz but, when the numbers demanded were produced, Stalin increased the quotas.
The second Five Year Plan began in 1933 and ended in 1937. The third Five Year Plan began in 1938. It was interrupted by the war and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Like the first plan, the second and third plans were both very successful for Stalin. They continued the development of heavy industry and completed collectivization. The state now controlled all private industry. Military development became very important. Stalin wanted to build a strong state quickly in order to defend his country from Western capitalists.
The question has often been asked: were Stalin's first Five Year Plans successful? From his point of view, they were staggering successes. The Soviet Union had made significant gains, especially in heavy industry. It had progressed from producing 2.6% of world production in 1913 to 13.7% in 1937. There was progress made in agriculture but the new quotas that Stalin assigned were not yet being met. Waste was common, and there were many failures. The peasants were more interested in working on their private plots of land than on the collectives and the state farms. The Soviet people paid a great price for the country's success in agriculture and industry. They were made to suffer many hardships with the rationing, the shortage of consumer goods and the poor quality of available goods. The peasants could not leave their jobs without official permission which was rarely granted. They worked long hard hours under demanding conditions and were asked to do things that were almost impossible without the help of machinery. To help out the industry, millions were forced to work in labour camps to build canals, dams, lumber camps and mines. (An excellent story of typical life in a prison labour camp can be found in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich).

Why did Stalin force the rapid collectivization of agriculture?
How did collectivization affect Russia?

Stalin's plan was to encourage peasants to join collective farms, where groups of peasants would give up the right to own land in return for sharing the produce of the collective. Such farms would be large enough to own modern machinery. It was planned that by 1933 20 per cent of all farmland would be farmed by collectives.
While Source B suggests that Stalin was going to use peaceful methods, Source C (Post Revolution Documents.html) shows the reality was very different. While peasants who did not own any land might find collectives attractive, most peasants did not want to lose the land which they had gained after the Revolution. Stalin responded by launching all out warfare on the richer peasants or kulaks.
A force of 25 000 workers, the first of many, were sent into the countryside to encourage' the peasants to join the collectives. Kulak families were thrown off their land, which was then given to the collectives.
Many kulak families were deported to distant regions of the country. It is impossible to find an accurate figure, but possibly as many as ten million people were deported in the war against the kulaks. Even those peasants who were not deported saw no point in handing over their animals to the collectives. Therefore they killed and ate them. The scale of the slaughter was staggering. From a total of 60 million cows 30 million were killed, while 16 million horses died from a total of 34 million. The novelist Sholokhov describes a typical scene in Source D (Post Revolution Documents.html).
Stalin's response was to do what Lenin had done during the civil war. Squads of men were sent out into the countryside to seize grain and the peasants were left to starve. Of course the government kept accurate figures, but between six and ten million peasants probably died during the famine of 1932-3. However, Stalin got his way. By 1932, 61.5 per cent of all peasants were living in collectives, three times as many as originally planned. By 1936 89.6 per cent of peasants were on collective farms.

Go to A Peasants Story

Why did Stalin want to industrialise the Soviet Union?
What were the effects of industrialisation'?

The survival of communism
Lenin had seen technology as vital to communism. He wanted to be able to convince everyone of the benefits of communism, and technology was to be one way of doing this. Lenin hoped to bring electricity into every home for people to see that communism led to a better life (Go to Source L - Post Revolution Documents.html). Stalin had very different aims when he decided to speed up the development of industry. Stalin adopted Trotsky's argument that industrialisation was necessary to build up a revolutionary proletariat. However, to this he added a new argument, adapting industrialisation to the new policy of Socialism in One Country.
Stalin believed that the already industrialised capitalist countries of the world were preparing to destroy Soviet Russia, and so Russia must build up her industry to their level within ten years, to ensure that the Russian army would be well enough equipped to repel the capitalist forces. Stalin turned industrialisation into a heroic crusade to ensure the survival of communism.

The Five Year Plans
In 1928 a series of target production figures were set for Soviet industry to reach by 1933. Very high targets were set for iron and steel as well as oil, since these would be crucial to the development of the armed forces. By contrast, very little importance was placed on consumer goods. It was not the aim of industrialisation to raise the living standards of the workers. They had to sacrifice such things for the good of the state. Electricity was developed with the building of huge hydroelectric plants on the many major rivers of Russia, but its main purpose was to power factories, not homes. Stalin declared that the first Five Year Plan had met its targets a year early (see Source M Post Revolution Documents.html), and so a new Five Year Plan was begun. This ran the full five years, while the third Five Year Plan was brought to a sudden end by the German invasion of Russia in 1941.

How accurate are the figures?
The last column of Source M (Post Revolution Documents.html) shows the estimated production figures for 1932. The official Russian figures show production much higher, but these are very inaccurate. This is because many of the targets were unrealistic, but local factory managers would be punished and branded as enemies of socialism if the targets were not met. Therefore, they would send false figures rather than risk being sent with their families to labour camps or mines in Siberia.

Working conditions
As industry expanded it needed a much larger work force. This mainly consisted of unskilled peasants from the countryside. Stalin did not concern himself with the quality of what was being produced. For him, quantity was everything. Millions of young workers belonged to 'shock brigades', who competed with one another to increase their output. They would work on their rest days and never be late. They put pressure on other workers to work harder. Stalin also allowed some people to earn far more than others if they worked harder. He used higher wages to encourage greater production.
Huge new industrial centers such as Magnitogorsk were built. These new centers were built despite the shortage of modern equipment (Source F Post Revolution Documents.html). Workers often lived in tents, and many died in the Siberian winters. However, as these cities grew, they provided a standard of living previously unknown to Russian workers. An English visitor to Magnitogorsk in the early 1930s reported that it had 'ten theatres with a total seating capacity of 9000, all attached to clubs with drama classes, chess, art and reading groups'.
Life was hard for workers. A seven-day working week was introduced so that factories never stopped production. Absenteeism or being late for work became crimes against the state. Accidentally damaging tools was treated as 'sabotage'. Eor this workers could be sacked and so lose the housing provided by the factory. While many new factories were built, far less was spent on building houses for workers. Therefore, there was terrible overcrowding in the cities, with flats often having a family in each room.

Beyond the Urals

Virtually all Russian industry had previously been located to the west of the Ural Mountains. By locating new industry in Siberia and the east of the Soviet Union, Stalin was ensuring that Russian industry would survive an invasion from Western Europe.

Was Russian industrialisation a success?

Go back to the start of this unit to remind yourself of the aims of industrialisation, and then look at Sources F and G ( Post Revolution Documents.html). This will help you decide whether or not industrialisation in Russia achieved its aims. Remember that Russian economic growth took place when western countries were undergoing the Great Depression, with millions of people out of work.

Stalin's Achievements
by Sidney Hook
For good or for ill, under Stalin's leadership the Soviet Union reached the first rank of the world powers. From being one of the most backward countries in the world, the Soviet Union became one of the most highly industrialized. Although agricultural productivity per capita is not much higher than it was in pre-Revolutionary days, it is more reliable. Poor harvests no longer give rise to famine. Great strides tave been made in wiping out illiteracy. Educational facilities have been enormously developed and,where questions of political reliability and social origins do not enter, careers are open to talents. Wornen are treated as equals of men even in respect to the most back breaking and onerous work in mines and factories. Except for citizens who run afoul of the secret police because of their criticism of the regime, theirfailure to perform the tasksset for hem, their social origins or their family associations with those proscribed under these categories, all have an opportunity towork. They are free to criticize themselves and each other for not doing nough work. But they are not free to criticize the government. '
Under Stalin not only did the Soviet Union grow economically but geographically. Impressive explorations have been undertaken in the Arctic and new lands have been settled with captive peoples as well as native elements uprooted from their local regions. In area and population the Soviet Union has increased beyond any point attained in the past. It has the largest military force on earth. It no longer need fear armed intervention from without. The entire non-Communist world now lives in fear of it.
For these achievements the Soviet people have paid a price in blood and tears and loss of freedom immeasurably greater than that paid by any other nation for its modernization.

STALIN AND THE WORLD

Near the end of the 1930s with the threat of war hovering about the world, the Soviet Union began making pacts of peace with other countries. Stalin signed a peace pact with Hilter so that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union. It was broken in June, 1941. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Government propaganda began stressing again Russian nationality and pride. The people were urged to rally together to protect their country. (The government had been stressing Communism before.) Stalin promised a better way of life after the war.
Britain and the United States came to the aid of the Soviet Union. Successful offensive moves were made against Germany largely because of the weapons and war machinery that had been built during the Five Year Plans. The weather, the effectiveness of the Soviet soldiers and the assistance received from the Allies helped greatly. Close contacts were established with Britain and the United States during the war. In spite of this Stalin restricted the movements of foreigners in his country. Not all contacts with foreigners were under his control, however. Many of the Soviet people looked upon the invaders as liberators. Thousands of prisoners of war and slave labourers did all they could not to return home when they were freed from European concentration camps by Allied forces in Europe after the war.
Propaganda called for an increase in sacrifices for the mother country. The people looked to Stalin for a better life. After the defeat of the Nazis the allied powers (Britain, USSR, United States, Canada) divided up contol of Europe. Under the terms of this agreement the western powers contolled western Europe and eastern Europe came under the influence of the USSR. This resulted in East Germany, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Yugoslavia become what became known as the Iron Curtain. These countries grew closer and closer to the Soviet Union and eventually became dependent upon the USSR for trade and defence.

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