LENIN

1. VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV, CALLED LENIN,

I. His life.

1. Lenin was born on 22nd April 1870 in the town of Simbirsk, modern Ulyanovsk, on the Middle Volga, the third of six children born to Ilya Ulyanov, a maths and physics teacher who had worked his way up to being the regional director of primary schools, a post which brought the rank of minor nobility with the title of "Excellency" and made possible a well-to-do house with servants and servants quarters. His mother, of Kalmyk Buddhist stock, came from an upper-class landowning family. Ironically, Alexander Kerensky, 1881 - 1970, (see below) lived in the same town and his father, the school headmaster, had the young Lenin as a pupil.

2. In 1887, when Lenin was 16, his elder brother Alexander was hanged for involvement in a bomb-plot, one of many, to assassinate the Tsar, Alexander III (1881-1894) and the family was generally ostracized, although not by the Kerensky family and Kerensky senior gave Lenin a glowing reference for university entrance. The previous year, Ilya Ulyanov had died from a cerebral haemorrhage, which was what also called Lenin's death.

3. Later in 1887, he was expelled from Kazan University after only 3 months for attending an anti-government demonstration, not that he was at the time a revolutionary. Fortunately, his mother (his father had died in 1886) was able to use her influence with the Ministry of Education to enable him to sit the law exams at St. Petersburg University in 1891, although he was banned from all tuition throughout the four-year course. It is an indication of Lenin's ability that, studying on his own, he took the exams in 1891 and gained the highest marks for that session. He then worked for liberal-minded lawyers, first in Samara and then in St. Petersburg, but soon took up journalism and until seizing power in 1917 considered himself a writer. Increasingly influenced by the writings of Karl Marx (whose works were banned in Russia only in 1894), he turned to revolutionary politics, joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic (SD) Party when it was founded in 1898 and, among other things, making contact with revolutionaries in exile, for example, Gheorghi Plekhanov, who had founded the first Russian Marxist Party in exile in Geneva in 1883. (The Tsarist regime, unlike other European governments, continued to suppress even peaceful moderate opposition so that in Russia opposition generally retained a violent approach.)

4. He was arrested in 1895 for his revolutionary activities and imprisoned, spending the years 1897 to 1900 in exile in Siberia, where his stay was not unpleasant as he was billeted with a peasant family, was given 8 roubles a month, and was allowed reading material. In addition, his girlfriend, Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869 - 1939, who was from a poor aristocratic family and had trained as a teacher), after her arrest in 1899, was allowed to live in the same house on condition they married, a status Lenin did not believe in at the time, preferring "free love".

5. On his release in 1900, he went into exile, with typical single-mindedness, leaving Krupskaya (as she was usually called) to complete the remaining year of her sentence in Siberia. He moved between Berlin and other German towns, Brussels, Geneva (living near the Botanical Gardens and in Plainpalais, where the Landolt café became the main meeting point of emigr‚ Russian revolutionaries) and Zurich, London and Paris, earning his living from writing, especially newspapers and pamphlets stirring revolution, and from donations from revolutionary sympathisers, and gradually becoming recognized as one of the principal SD leaders. In particular, in conjunction with Yuli Martov, he produced from 1901 the paper "Iskra" (Russian for "spark"), which he hoped would be the spark for revolution. In 1903, he took the pseudonym Lenin, in honour of miners who were striking for better conditions in the Lena region of Siberia, often affixing the letter N. before hand (but never writing Nikolai, despite the popular myth that that was what N stood for).

6. In 1905, at the SD Conference, held for safety in London, the Party split in two, with Lenin becoming the recognized leader of the Bolshevik wing. (See below.)

7. On the outbreak of the spontaneous 1905 Russian Revolution, which took him by surprise, he went, in November 1905, to St. Petersburg, where for 3 months he helped to organize workers before once again being forced in 1906 to flee into exile.

8. He was again taken by surprise by the outbreak of the spontaneous February/March 1917 revolution in Russia, having said only 6 weeks before in Zurich that his generation would never live to see the longed-for revolution! (Unlike Marx, Lenin was notoriously wrong in his predictions.) As soon as possible, on Easter Sunday, 3rd April 1917, he returned to Russia from Switzerland, with the assistance of the German government which allowed him transit in a sealed train in the hope that he would, as indeed he did, stir trouble for the Russian government and so help bring Germany victory in the Great War.

9. On his return, he stopped Stalin and other SDs from co-operating with the new democratic provisional government, issuing his April Theses calling for the overthrow of the new republican democratic regime and the imposition of a Marxist government. However, he opposed those Bolsheviks who attempted a coup in July 1917 on the grounds that the conditions were not right. When this coup failed, he went into exile in Finland, returning in October and in October/November, from his headquarters in the Smolny Institute, inspired the Bolshevik seizure of power, which was carried out largely under the leadership of Lev (or Leo) Trotsky. As a result, Lenin became Chairman of the Council of Commissars, that is Prime Minister of Russia.

10. Because of the Great War until March 1918 (when Russia accepted the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans) and then the Civil War against the opponents of Bolshevism, from December 1917 until 1922, Lenin had no chance to establish a peace-time system. The short time from 1922 until his death in January 1924 is no guide to the system he would have created as Russia was in complete chaos and he was unwell. In May 1922, he suffered his first stroke, brought on by overwork and the assassination attempt in 1918 by the Socialist Revolutionary (SR), Vera Kaplan who shot him. Consequently, there has been much debate about how Russia would have fared had Lenin lived longer. Winston Churchill's view was that "The worst thing was Lenin's coming. The next worse was his going". As he had had no experience in government (or indeed anything except revolutionary journalism) before 1917, he would have had a hard time and yet he was pragmatic.

11. He failed to arrange for a successor, partly as his death in January 1924, despite his ill-health, was unexpected since he had recently rallied, and a power struggle ensued, with Stalin emerging as the winner by 1927.

II. The man.

1. He was short, thickset, with reddish hair, bald and bearded, with Mongol eyes inherited from his mother who was of Kalmyk descent.

2. He was very hard working, idealistic, intelligent and pragmatic (for example, in 1921 replacing War Communism with the New Economic Policy - see below), with "colossal concentration" (Krupskaya). He lived simply, even after seizing power, when he shared his home with his extended family. He did not bear grudges, gave credit where it was due and headed a collective leadership.

3. However, he was distant, never developing friendships, and unlike Trotsky and even Stalin, he was not good with and had no interest in ordinary people, speaking in abstractions, putting things in a complicated way and never visiting a farm or factory. Also, unlike Trotsky, and to some extent Stalin, he was not a man of action and could never have gained power without Trotsky. He was also obstinate, quarrelsome, authoritarian and convinced of his own rightness, having a plaque, which Stalin later adopted, with the legend "Go your way and let the people talk" (although Like Calvin in Geneva [1536 - 1564}, Robespierre in France {1793 - 1794} and Mao in China {1949 - 1976} he ran a collective leadership and dictatorship, in which he was primus inter pares and, like them usually, but not always, getting his way by the strength of his arguments). He was also given to rages and depression.

4. His main attributes were his fanaticism, ruthlessness and single-mindedness. Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) in his Memoirs quotes Lenin as saying " I cannot listen to music often because... it makes me want to say tender and foolish things, to stroke the heads of people who, while living in this filthy hell, can create such beauty. But today, you must not stroke anyone's head - you might have your hand bitten. You have to knock, knock heads without pity, though in theory we are opposed to any violence against the individual". Thus, he gave up his pleasures of chess, music, skating and reading Latin to concentrate on politics; at the age of 22, he tried to dissuade people from giving aid to famine victims as hunger performed the progressive function of promoting revolution; on his return to Russia in 1917, he did not greet those, including his sister, who went to meet him but immediately berated them for making a mess politically; he showed no gratitude to the Prime Minister he ousted, Alexander Kerensky, whose family had helped him so much in his youth, and Kerensky and his family were lucky to escape with their lives (although, in 1921, Lenin apparently connived at the escape of his old friend Yulii Martov, the Menshevik leader, despite his own orders to the secret police). And apparently, when Stalin's second wife asked him why he had been responsible for a death, he replied that it had been "regrettable but necessary". (Admittedly, the times were desperate, with assassination attempts and the life and death struggle of the Civil War, which the Bolsheviks were not expected to win.) He was also ready to change his views, for example adopting Trotsky's idea that they should seize power rather than wait for the inevitable revolution Marx had predicted.

5. He was Russian rather than Western, for example, effecting a palace revolution and having no belief in democracy (although according to A.J.P.Taylor, he was "a reluctant dictator").

B. BACKGROUND TO LENIN'S SEIZURE OF POWER IN 1917.

1. Causes.

i. There was mass discontent, with great discrepancies between rich and poor. This is well illustrated by the writings of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), especially his novel Anna Karenina, and by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) in his novel "Dr. Zhivago".

a. The peasants, the bulk of the population, were in a distressed state. Above all, they suffered from landhunger, not so much because 30,000 nobles still held 200,000,000 acres, which was about the same amount as was held by the poorest 10,500,000 peasants (and was in fact a relatively small proportion of the total area of farmland), but because the population had increased considerably. For example, there were 13,000,000 people in 1700, 36,000,000 in 1800, 87,000,000 in 1871, and 174,000,000 in 1914 (with 170,000,000 in 1939).

In addition, the primitive farm system was not very productive, being based on strips and open fields, with the land held since the abolition of serfdom in 1861 by the Obshchina (or village), run by the Mir (council). As the Mir could and did redistribute the land from time to time according to the needs of individual families (if a family increased in size it gained more land to work and if it decreased in size, it surrendered land), there was no incentive for peasants to try to improve the land since it was not their property.

There was general resentment at the redemption payments they had to make for the land their family had gained in 1861 when serfdom had been abolished.

The years 1891-2 saw especially severe crop failures and famines, affecting about 30,000,000 people; the government failed to alleviate the distress, which was followed by a severe cholera epidemic.

The peasants became less passive, but it was hard for revolutionaries to organize the scattered rural population.

b. The growth of industry after 1861, and especially between 1890 and 1900, not only made Russia the third industrial country in Europe by 1913, but created an exploited and discontented industrial proletariat. For example, between 1890 and 1900, iron and steel production increased by 110%, and by 1914, about 6% of the population worked in industry, trade, and communications. Between 1861 and 1917, the urban population increased from 3,500,000 to 16,500,000.

Living and working conditions were generally poor, with overcrowding in hastily built towns, long working hours, poor and often dangerous conditions, and low pay. Discontent was increased by the way many factories and mines were foreign owned. Wages were in fact slowly rising and the government was beginning to pass social legislation. For example, in 1897 the 11« hour working day, with 10 hours maximum for night work, was made law. In 1902, some unions were authorized, the remainder becoming legal as a result of the 1905 revolution. 1903 saw the start of accident insurance and by 1912, there were sickness and accident schemes for almost all industrial workers.

However, as the French political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville, pointed out in the 1830s, the most dangerous time for a regime is when it starts to reform as aspirations have been raised. Moreover, not only was the pace of reform too slow but the number of industrial workers increased, so that by 1917, some 3,000,000 worked in factories and another 1,000,000 in mines. Unlike the 160,000,000 peasants, urban workers were easily organized, especially so in Russia as the factories and mines were among the most modern in Europe, with workers concentrated in large plants; for example, in 1900, 25% of the Russian workforce was in factories with over 1,000 employees, in contrast to 8% in Germany. Despite the fact that workers generally mistrusted unions, not without good reason, regarding them as government tools, infiltrated by the secret police, there were not surprisingly more and more strikes, often instigated by revolutionary groups (see below). The first great wave of strikes had occurred in St. Petersburg in 1895 and then, in the early 1900s, and especially in the years 1912-1914, Russia, like much of Europe, experienced in its industrial centres a flood of strikes which were often very violent and, in Russia's case, often apparently caused by agents provocateurs.

c. There was also the discontent of the 20 or so national minorities, for example, Armenians, Finns, Latvians, and Poles, who resented Russification, and of the religious minorities, such as Catholics, Jews, Moslems, and Protestants, who resented the privileged position of the Orthodox Church. The Jews often had a hard time, serving as scapegoats and suffering from attacks ("pogroms" in Russian), which were often officially inspired; not surprisingly, many prominent Marxist revolutionaries, such as Lev Trotsky and Lazar Kaganovich, were of Jewish origin.

ii. The government was inefficient and inadequate, largely as everything depended on the Emperors, who, after Alexander II (1855-81), failed to give the necessary leadership. In particular, they failed to realise that times were changing and that concessions had to be made to democracy; thus, unlike their Austrian and German counterparts, there was no progress to a constitutional empire. "No-one made the revolution, unless it was the Russian autocracy itself... it was elemental" (Sir Bernard Pares).

a. Alexander III (1881-94), influenced by revolutionary outrages such as political assassinations, not only opposed reform but sabotaged those of his father Alexander II, known as "the Tsar Liberator". For example, he raised the voting qualification in the provincial and municipal councils (in Russian, respectively zemstvo and duma) and reduced their powers.

b. Nicholas II (who was born in 1868, reigned from 1894 to 1917, and in 1918 was shot with the rest of his family by revolutionaries) was weak, indecisive and politically unwise, believing that his position came from God, that autocracy was right, and that liberalism was wrong. Admittedly, he was kindly and well-meaning, although he did sanction the use of force in 1905 and 1917 against protesters, even if they were peaceful.

He was influenced by his German wife, Alexandra of Hesse Darmstadt, the grand-daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria; she advised her husband to "show them (the Russian people) the power of your fist, and remember Russia loves to feel the whip". He was also under the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostev, Procurator of the Holy Synod, and, between 1906 and 1916, of Gregori Rasputin (1871-1916); unfortunately, the Tsarevich (the heir apparent) Alexei (1904-18), suffered from haemophilia, which only Rasputin, called "The Mad Monk", could help. Rasputin's debauched conduct and his influence in appointments and decisions, which was not always bad, discredited the monarchy.

The Tsar was responsible for the co-ordination of ministers but generally there was little co-ordination and contradictory policies were pursued by different ministries.

Before the 1905 revolution, Nicholas rejected all demands for a constitutional system and, in 1895, described a petition for political reform as "senseless dreams". After 1905, he gradually reduced the power of the duma (parliament) which the 1905 revolution had forced him to accept, and in 1906, he asserted that "the supreme autocratic power belongs to the All-Russian Emperor". All suggestions for political reform were rejected, despite Russia's failure in the 1904-5 war with Japan. He did not learn the lesson of 1904-5 that an unreformed Russia was likely to be defeated in war, and that war was likely to lead to revolution. As a result of his insistence on autocracy, disturbances and demonstrations were the only way for opposition to make itself heard.

bureaucracy was corrupt (partly because of low pay), inefficient, arrogant, often foreign (especially Germans, who tended to be better educated) and generally unpopular.

The government was insufficiently tough on the revolutionaries, exiling them to Siberia rather than executing them, although those found guilty of involvement in political murder were executed.

c. Yet, even in 1914, there was still considerable popular support for the Tsar and his regime, for his forebears had saved the people from the Mongols and Turks, made Russia a great power, and generally provided unity.

iii. Revolutionaries encouraged mass discontent in order to promote revolution.

a. The revolutionary movement began in the 1830s in the universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. It was broadly divided into Westernizers like Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) and Slavophiles like Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76), the latter being the archetypal bomb-carrying revolutionary. Both groups were divided into those favouring peaceful methods like Herzen and those favouring violence like Bakunin.

b. In the late 19th century, the "Narodniki (Russian for "To the People") Movement tried in vain to win over the peasants to revolution. Their failure caused many to turn to the "Will of the People", which used violent methods, including the assassination in 1881 of Alexander II, the Tsar Liberator.

c. The largest revolutionary party, the heir to the Narodniki, was the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party established in 1901 to represent the interests of the peasantry primarily but appealing to all "labouring people". Socialist Revolutionaries, led by Viktor Chernov (1873-1952), a Moscow law graduate, embarked on a campaign of violence, for example between 1906 and 1907 assassinating 4,000 officials. In 1917, Chernov served as Minister of Agriculture under Alexander Kerensky, the SR Prime Minister from July to the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917.

Russian Marxist group, "Liberation of Labour", in the safety of a Genevan exile. However, the main party promoting the interests of the urban proletariat was the Marxist Social Democratic (SD) Party, founded in Russia in 1898 (although the leaders were mostly in exile).

In 1903, the SD Party split into the "Bolsheviks" (meaning majority in Russian although they were in fact a minority) led by Vladimir Ulyanov, (who, for security reasons, used the nom de guerre of Lenin), and the "Mensheviks" (meaning minority, although they were in fact the majority) led by Iuli Zederbaum, who took the nom de guerre of Martov. The initial difference was that Lenin wanted a small group of professional revolutionaries to help bring the bourgeois revolution while Martov wanted more general membership and concentration on union activities. Lenin's policy of limited membership made sense in view of the ubiquity and efficiency of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana; even with the limited membership, there were police agents in important posts (see d. below).

Later, in 1917, Lenin adopted the policy outlined first by Trotsky in 1905 in a pamphlet produced in Geneva, advocating what came to be called "Permanent Revolution"; by this was meant proletariat co-operation with the bourgeoisie in seizing power, after which the proletariat leaders would immediately go on to seize power from the bourgeoisie and impose communism, without waiting for the eventual inevitable spontaneous proletarian revolution Marx had predicted. Martov and the Mensheviks remained loyal to the Marxist view of awaiting the spontaneous rising of the masses. Lenin too, until 1917, opposed "Permanent Revolution", criticizing it for advocating an "immoral dictatorship" and for trying to push the proletariat beyond what they were ready for.

e. Revolutionary movements were financed in a number of ways in addition to what might be earned legally (for example by Lenin's 55 volumes of writings!). In particular there were gifts (including those from the two Tikhomirnov brothers, heirs to a Kazan merchant millionaire , who donated 100,000 roubles in 1912 to establish the Bolshevik daily newspaper, Pravda) and "appropriations" (the euphemism for bank raids, which is how Stalin first made his name).

f. The Tsarist secret police (the Okhrana) was effective, and agents provocateurs were active, as a result of the desire to satisfy superiors and perhaps gain promotion.

Thus, for example, between 1905 and 1909, some 2,390 terrorists were executed, and Stalin was arrested and exiled six times. Admittedly, Stalin escaped five times (the sixth time he was released after the March 1917 revolution had occurred) and the police did not seem to realise that they had arrested the same man six times, apparently being deceived by the false names Stalin used. However, this apparent slackness may have been because Lenin and the Bolsheviks seem to have co-operated with the secret police, in order to remove rivals; as the Bolsheviks were working against the more violent socialists, they were largely left alone by the police, or treated leniently. Possibly the leniency was because the Okhrana failed to take the Bolshevik threat seriously.

The Bolsheviks, like other revolutionary parties, were deeply infiltrated; for example, Malenkovsky, a Bolshevik deputy in the duma and editor of the party newspaper Pravda (Russian for Truth), was apparently an Okhrana agent.

iv. The Constitutional Democrats (the "Cadets") were the main moderate group in opposition to the Tsar. The group was formed in 1903, although it only became legal in 1905, and was led by Paul Miliukov, Professor of History in St. Petersburg.

v. Improved communications, especially the Trans-Siberian Railway, made it easier for reformers and opponents of the regime to co-ordinate their activities.

vi. The immediate cause was the 1904-5 war against Japan. This conflict resulted from competing Russian and Japanese expansionist policies in the Far East. In 1898, the Russians had acquired from China a lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, including the port of Lushun (Port Arthur), but it was competition for domination of Korea that brought war in 1904.

The war was a humiliating Russian defeat. In particular, Russian forces lost on land at Shenyang (Mukden) in March 1905, and at sea in the Tsushima Straits in May 1905. There was almost war against Britain in October 1904 after the Russian Baltic fleet, on its way round the world to the Pacific, sighted a British fishing fleet off the Dogger Bank in the North Sea and, mistaking it for the Japanese fleet, sank it.

In addition, the war meant increased hardships and above all, gave opposition the chance as the Russian army was away at the front and unable to preserve order.

2. The revolution developed after, if not because of, the peaceful demonstration of 9th/22nd January 1905. (Until 1918, Russia used the old Julian calendar and was 13 days behind Western Europe, which after 1582 had adopted the more accurate Gregorian calendar. Thus, while Russia was on 9th January, Western Europe was on 22nd January.)

i. On 9th January, Father Gapon, a priest and union leader, and possibly an Okhrana agent, headed a peaceful crowd of 200,000 or so, with the goal of marching to the Winter Palace in the capital, St. Petersburg, to petition the Tsar for reforms that would improve living conditions and bring greater civil and political freedom. Prior to this, there had been many strikes by workers, and the middle class had organized reform banquets. Now, on 9th January, things began to get serious, when troops were ordered to fire by the Tsar's uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, and perhaps 200 of Father Gapon's followers were killed, in what came to be called "Bloody Sunday".

ii. Another of the Tsar's uncles, Grand Duke Sergius, Commander of the Moscow Region, was soon assassinated and a nationwide wave of strikes occurred, inspired in the towns by the SDs and in the country by the SRs. The crisis reached its peak in October 1905 when a national railway strike and then a general strike, from 20th to 30th October (Julian calendar), paralysed the country. In St. Petersburg, the "soviets" (meaning committees for organizing strikes), the first of which was formed on 26th October 1905 (Julian calendar), had taken over many of the functions of government; the Peasant Union, meeting in Moscow from August 1905, was less successful as the peasants were harder to organize.

iii. However, the revolution now came to a rapid end. This was partly because the Tsar won over the peasants by agreeing to end peasant redemption payments (for the land they had gained in 1861) and by restoring the right, lost in 1870, to elect the zemstvos; won over the urban workers by allowing trade unions to operate; and won over the liberals by conceding the October 1905 constitution, which established a legislative duma (parliament), with a nominated upper Council of State, and a lower Chamber of Deputies elected by household suffrage. More important though, was the fact that the war ended and troops were available to keep order; by the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) of 5th September 1905 (Julian calendar), the Japanese were recognized as being the dominant influence in Korea, which by 1910 they had annexed. (See below.)

3. The war had apparently put Russia on a new course, with the creation of unions and a legislative duma. However, Nicholas II refused to accept the loss of his autocratic powers and gradually reduced the duma to insignificance through Pyotr (Peter) Stolypin, Prime Minister from 1906 to 1911. Stolypin was ruthless, executing some 4,000 in the "Stolypin Neckties", but he also realised the need for reform.

i. With his "Wager on the Strong" policy, Stolypin tried to solve the land problem by modernization, permitting the consolidation of strips and the withdrawal of individual peasants from the village. By 1914, about l in 10 had withdrawn from the village, and 1 in 2 had taken the first steps, thereby producing the "kulak" (Russian for fist) class of wealthy peasants. These reforms, plus government loans, advice, good weather, and the establishment of co-operatives meant that the farmers' yield in 1913 was double that of 1900. Stolypin also undertook industrial reforms, for example, legalizing all trade unions and initiating a sickness insurance scheme, in operation in 1912, with benefit at 2/3 to 3/4 pay. He also made concessions to minorities. Unfortunately his reforms were rather late in the day and anyway, he was assassinated in 1911.

ii. As elsewhere in the industrialising world in the early 1900s, there was a spate of strikes. Especially serious were those in the Lena gold mines area of Siberia which were British owned; they began with protests at bad food and ended with the police opening fire. It was in honour of the Lena strikers that Vladimir Ulyanov (1870-1924) took the name "Lenin".

iii. Stolypin as a result of the war and the obvious Japanese penetration of Korea, which in 1910 was made a Japanese protectorate, had decided to come to terms with Britain. This resulted in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Entente, which went a long way to settling colonial differences in Afghanistan and Persia.

iv. Nicholas failed to learn the lesson that war was likely to lead to defeat and revolution. Admittedly, Russian forces had been improved by 1914, but they were still no match for the Germans. Thus the events of 1904-5 were to repeat themselves in 1914-1917, and Lenin was right to describe the revolution of 1904-5 as "the dress rehearsal".

1. The long term causes were much the same as for 1905, with the people in a discontented state, despite Stolypin's reforms. In addition, revolutionaries had an easier time, as the 1905 revolution had increased the freedom of the universities and the press and had brought about the legalization of trade unions and the creation of soviets, which facilitated the co-ordination of the proletariat. Even so, especially in the countryside, there was little popular interest in the revolutionary parties generally and revolutionaries for the most part remained intellectuals. One revolutionary, Kravalinsky, lamented that "they (the people) listen to me as they do to a priest". Indeed, the revolution in 1917 March came as a surprise with the revolutionary leaders being outside Russia. Lenin, in his Swiss exile, in January 1917, a mere six weeks before the revolution began, expressed his opinion that "We old people will probably not live to see the decisive battle of the coming revolution".

2. As in 1905, the immediate cause of the revolution was the Russian involvement in war, this time the First World War. Nicholas and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Sazonov, made no effort to delay war in 1914, and Russia was the first to mobilize its troops. However legitimate the Russian cause, it might have been wiser to have delayed. This was in fact Rasputin's advice, but he was in hospital in the crucial days of 1914 and unable to influence Nicholas.

i. The war brought defeat and hardship, as workers were conscripted away from the fields and factories, and communications were disrupted. As in 1905, troops, who might have kept order, were away at the front.

ii. Nicholas naturally reaped the harvest of blame for defeat, for he, not the Duma, ran the country. In addition, after September 1915, he took command of his armies at the front, so that he was held personally responsible for military defeat. To make matters worse, he left Rasputin and Alexandra apparently running the government. His wife was widely suspected of being a German spy. (According to Kerensky later, "Without Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin.")

3. As usual with revolutions, there are the "conspiracy theories". These claim that the March 1917 Russian revolution was not spontaneous but the result of a plot. The Germans, it has been alleged, organized the revolution, working through the Tsarina and providing money for strikes and demonstrations. There is no evidence for this view, although revolution was to German advantage and the German government did help Lenin to return to Russia by providing him with a "sealed train".

i. Alexander Guchkov, a moderate liberal Octobrist (that is, a supporter of the constitution conceded by the Tsar in October 1905) in the Duma, and an industrialist (and Chairman of the Federation of War Industries Committee) began to organize a coup against Nicholas II to secure a government "enjoying the confidence of the people", but he could not have influenced the 240,000 strikers and 160,000 soldiers who were involved in the revolution, and no evidence has been found that he was involved.

ii. Nor is there any evidence of a Bolshevik or Menshevik plot in March 1917, although individual Bolsheviks and Mensheviks did take part once revolution began.

4. As in 1905, a spark was needed, and that was provided by a demonstration by women on International Women's Day, 23rd February/8 March 1917, although the main goal that day was to march to the Palace to demand food rather than rights for women; the shortages had in fact been brought on by overbuying caused by rumours of shortages. When demonstrations and disturbance spread, General Khabalov, Governor of Petrograd (the new name for St. Petersburg during the war) declared martial law. At first, the troops obeyed orders; for example, on 26th February/11 March, the Volynsky Regiment cleared the Nevsky Prospect, shooting 40 people in the process. Then, on 27th February/12 March, some soldiers began to mutiny, refusing to keep order and some even shooting their commanding officers.

i. On 26th February/11th March, the Duma refused to dissolve when ordered by the Tsar, and on 27th February/12th March, declared itself the Provisional Government, with the liberal Prince Lvov as Chief Minister. The conservative Duma was challenged by the establishment on 27th February/12th March by factory soviets of the Central Petrograd Soviet, composed mainly of Menshevik SDs (Social Democrats) and SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries). This dualism was a source of weakness as both the Duma and the Central Petrograd Soviet claimed to be the government; however, a link between the two was provided by Alexander Kerensky, a leading socialist, who was both Vice-Chairman of the Soviet and also important in the Provisional Government, first as Minister of Justice, then from May as Minister of War, and ultimately from July, as Prime Minister. Eventually, the Soviet had a Bolshevik majority which gave Lenin his power base and so his chance to seize power.

ii. As in the German revolution of November 1918, the Russian generals and other leaders decided that the emperor would have to be sacrificed if order was to be restored. Nicholas was persuaded to abdicate, on 2nd/15th March, for himself and his son, in favour of his brother, Michael. However, the plotters had failed to consult Michael, who in view of the lack of support from the Duma, on 3rd/16th March declined the offer of the throne, upsetting the plotters' plans and leaving a power vacuum which the Duma filled. The royal family was allowed to stay at their residence at Tsarkoye Selo (modern Pushkin) outside St. Petersburg, although 1st/14th August 1917, they were moved to Tobolsk, and then, on 30th April 1918 to Ekaterinburg, where on 16th July 1918 they were murdered. (From 1918, Russia was using the Gregorian calendar.)

iii. At first, Alexander Kerensky had been the sole representative of the left-wing in the government but, increasingly, the composition became more left inclined, including Menshevik SDs. In June 1917, the Octobrists left the government; in July, following an unsuccessful Bolshevik uprising, Kerensky became Prime Minister, and in August, the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) left the government. One reason for the leftward swing was the return of exiles following the revolution. Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 and in May 1917, Lev Trotsky arrived from New York. Until the arrival of Lenin and the publication of his "April Theses", the Bolsheviks, including Joseph Djugashvili (alias Stalin), as orthodox followers of Marx, had supported the Provisional Government, regarding it as the bourgeois phase that Marxists believed necessary before the proletariat took over.

iv. Although the Provisional Government undertook some reforms, for example, the relaxation of censorship, and arranged for elections in October 1917 for a Constituent Assembly, the revolution had meant little change, for the Provisional Government, including Kerensky, understandably favoured continuation of the war, and a solution to problems, especially that of the landhunger of the peasants, only on the return of peace.

1. The February/March Revolution had been a bourgeois victory and had not sparked off a proletarian attempt to seize power, as Lenin had hoped it might. Indeed, the Bolsheviks inside Russia, such as Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, supported the provisional government until April 1917 when Lenin, back from exile in Switzerland, ordered an end to Bolshevik co-operation with the Provisional Government, and issued his "April Theses". In the "Theses", Lenin was clearly influenced by Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution" (see above, B. I.1.iii.d.), despite his earlier condemnation of the idea, for he advocated not just "peace, bread, land, and freedom" but also power to the Soviets in a Republic of Workers and Agricultural Labourers. He did not at that stage envisage a seizure of power for, as he said, "only that government is stable which is supported by a majority of the population", but he hoped that the peasants and workers, led by the Bolsheviks and working through the Soviets, would take over the government, possibly by force. However, there was no sign that the peasants and workers were ready to accept Bolshevik leadership; for example, the First All Russian Congress of Soviets in June 1917 had few Bolsheviks and rejected the Bolshevik call for a seizure of power. Consequently, Lenin played down the role of the Soviets and called for the establishment of a Revolutionary People's Dictatorship which he did not define.

2. Following the July Bolshevik rising, Lenin thought that the only chance for revolution was a seizure of power by the proletariat, but by September, he had become convinced that the peasants and proletariat would not act, and that only the Bolsheviks would and could seize power. Thus, in a pamphlet entitled "The Bolsheviks must take power", he argued that, unlike July, the time was right for a Bolshevik seizure of power. For example, there were now Bolshevik majorities in both the Petrograd and the Moscow Soviets, and the Germans seemed likely to capture Petrograd, which would deny the Bolsheviks all chance of power; once in power, peace could be arranged and a genuine proletarian revolution could follow. Inexorably, Lenin overcame the opposition of other Bolshevik leaders, including Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were convinced that a Bolshevik coup would make the capitalists in the West make peace and unite to crush Bolshevism.

3. On 20th October/2nd November, Lenin secretly returned to Petrograd from Finland and pressed for revolution, to come just before the All-Russian Congress of Soviets planned for 25th October/7th November, so that the Congress could sanction the Bolshevik takeover. Not only was there now a Bolshevik majority on the Petrograd Soviet, but Trotsky had been its chairman since 30th August/11th September (and was also head of its sub-committee, the Military Revolutionary Committee). Lenin also feared that if they did not act in time Kerensky might let the Germans take Petrograd in order to destroy the Bolsheviks in their stronghold or that elections would be held for a Constituent Assembly, in which the Bolsheviks would lose.

On the other hand, there were strong arguments against attempting a coup. Apart from ideological objections to seizing power, there were a daunting 350,000 troops (mainly reservists) under General Bagrateni in the Petrograd Military District. Opposition came from important quarters, notably Zinoviev and Kamenev, who opposed a coup before the scheduled elections for the Constituent Assembly, on the assumption that the Bolsheviks would win them.

4. As a result of Lenin's pushing plans were made for a coup starting on 24th October/6th November, timed for just before the All Russian Congress of Soviets was due to meet, in the expectation that the Congress would approve Lenin's seizure of power. Trotsky, head of the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee, was in overall charge although the details were largely the work of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko (1884-1938). Lenin had set two earlier dates for a coup but nothing had happened, largely as many Bolsheviks, including Zinoviev and Kamenev, opposed the idea of a coup. According to A.J.P.Taylor, nothing would have happened the third time had it not been that Kamenev and Zinoviev wrote an article opposing a coup, thereby causing Kerensky to take seriously the possibility of an imminent Bolshevik coup. Consequently, in a belated show of force, he closed down the Bolshevik printing press (at 5.30 a.m. on 6th November), issued orders for the arrest of Bolshevik leaders, ordered troops to Petrograd, and set off for Northern Army Headquarters to bring back loyal troops. This in turn prompted Trotsky and the others to obey Lenin's orders and so the revolution got under way!

One important prerequisite for the coup was Trotsky's subverting of the vast bulk of the Petrograd Military District troops, which was accomplished by pointing out that although they were mainly reservists too old for the front the Duma had plans - as indeed it had - to send them to the front.

5. During 24th October/6th November, Bolsheviks, with Lenin and Trotsky directing from their headquarters in the Smolny Institute, took control of the bridges across the Neva, meeting little resistance. Then during the night of 24th-25th October/6th-7th November 1917, Bolsheviks took over the Peter and Paul Fortress, again meeting little resistance, following this by the seizure of the Post Office, the Central Telegraph Office, the News Agency, railway stations and other key points. By 2 p.m. on 7th November, Bolshevik forces - some 2,000 middle-aged factory workers supported by a few sailors from the Baltic fleet - had surrounded the Winter Palace where the government was meeting, but firing began only at 9.30 p.m. as Antonov-Ovseyenko was hesitant and wanted to limit bloodshed. At 9.40 p.m. the cruiser Aurora, moored a short distance up the River Neva, fired in the hope of intimidating the Duma's defenders, and gradually, group by group, the defenders of the Winter Palace - 300 Cossacks, some 2,000 cadets and 500 Amazons (women soldiers) - , who had no stomach for real resistance, negotiated their exit, so that by 11 p.m., when Chudnovsky went to negotiate with the defenders, he found there were only a few cadets left. Consequently, the order for the attack was given and cautiously, room by room, the Palace was taken over, although it was only 1.50 a.m. on 8th November when the attackers reached the Malachite Room where the Provisional Government was waiting. Antonov-Ovseyenko promptly arrested the ministers, saving them from being lynched.

A.J.P. Taylor pointed out that only six were killed, all on the Bolshevik side, and of these, at least five were apparently killed by snipers from their own side. (The great Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein, 10 years later caused more damage making the celebratory film "October" !) The Provisional Government was arrested and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress, although Kerensky escaped, having gone to Northern Army Headquarters.

The coup had been planned to seize control of not just the capital but Russia as a whole and Bolshevik groups took over elsewhere, especially Moscow where the fighting was more prolonged and bitter than in Petrograd, continuing until 15 November. By 17 November, fighting had ended in most areas although it was only in early 1918 that Archangel was in Bolshevik hands and the Caspian Sea area was secure only by March 1918.

6. The last resistance in Petrograd had been mopped up by 29th October/11th November. By this time, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had, as Lenin had planned, met on 25th October/7th November and sanctioned the Bolshevik takeover and the replacement of the Provisional Government (by this time in the prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress) by the 25-member Council of People's Commissars, which was nominated by and chaired by Lenin and in which the majority (15) were Bolsheviks. (The non-Bolsheviks, mostly Mensheviks, soon walked out.) The Commissars, who were like the Tsar's Council of Ministers, were authorised to govern until the Constituent Assembly was elected. The old ministries and personnel were retained, Lenin seeing them as the simplest means to impose Bolshevik authority, which he hoped would be generally accepted.

7. The Bolsheviks had given little thought to what should be done after the revolution but Lenin had hoped that his revolutionary regime would be peacefully accepted, or at least tolerated, by the country as a whole, just as the French Revolutionary government had been (apart from the opposition in the Vend‚e). However, this was not to be, although he was fortunate in that he retained the loyalty of the rank and file of the armed forces and the masses were won over by Congress of Soviets on 9 November decreeing "Peace and Land".

At once, he was opposed by the civil servants throughout the country who refused to co-operate (the leaders were arrested and drafted into the army) so that new commissariats had to be created. As serious, the railway workers threatened to stage a strike although in the event this never materialised. Indeed, the Bolshevik hold on power was insecure until 1920 or even 1921 (if one counts the Kronstadt Rising - see below).

The elections on 12th/25th November 1917 for the Constituent Assembly failed to produce the hoped-for majority and a popular power-base. Instead, the Socialist Revolutionaries gained 17,490,000,000 votes (370 seats) out of the 41,686,000 cast, more than the Bolsheviks (9,844,000) and Mensheviks (1,248,000 - 16 seats) together; the Bolsheviks, in the only free Bolshevik election ever, thus won a mere 25% of the vote. The Assembly, of whom a mere 175 out of 717 were Bolsheviks, met in January 1918, but was promptly dispersed after 24 hours by forces of the Bolshevik-dominated Congress of Workers' Soviets.

Then the Civil War had to be waged (see below), December 1917 to 1922, during which at times it seemed that the Bolsheviks would be defeated, although ultimately they triumphed.

8. There were good reasons why Lenin and the Bolsheviks, though few in number, were able to seize control.

i. The Great War meant both little support for the government and no loyal soldiers to crush revolution. Ordinary soldiers were easily persuaded, if persuasion were needed, not to act and the officers had no enthusiasm for Kerensky, especially after his failure to support Kornilov in September 1917 (see above).

ii. The Bolshevik leadership was capable and ruthless, and with the destruction of the old system, was the only organized body at a time when, as Lenin realised, there was by chance a power vacuum. (cf. Germany in 1918-1919 when the weak communist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, faced the strong leadership of Ebert, Scheidemann and Groener.)

iii. Above all, there was Lenin, a single-minded idealist and the driving force once in April 1917 he had been converted to Trotsky's idea of "permanent revolution". For example, he showed no gratitude to Kerensky, whose father, almost alone in the village of Simbirsk where by chance the two families lived, had helped the Lenin family when they had been ostracized following Lenin's brother's involvement in an assassination attempt on the Tsar. At the same time, Lenin was practical, adopting popular policies of "land and peace", almost alone of the SDs realising the importance of the peasants. He did not believe in individual land ownership, but was aware that the land could be nationalised later once the Bolsheviks were in power (and anyway, as a Marxist of sorts, he believed that a period of bourgeois rule was historically necessary). He was prepared to make peace with the Germans, despite the massive losses this entailed; admittedly he hoped that the Russian example would lead to revolution in Germany, and the losses being recovered. He was ready, as was Trotsky, to use former officers from the Tsarist army to fight for, and to train the Bolsheviks. He was ready to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, which saved the revolution, even if many Russians called it treason.

iv. Almost as important as Lenin was Lev (Leo) Trotsky, 1870 - 1940. He was not only the author of "Permanent Revolution" (the pamphlet first being published in Geneva in 1905) but also the orator and man of action, able to win over the masses. He was one of the creators of the Central St. Petersburg Soviet in 1905 (which had the goal of co-ordinating the local factory strike committees, the soviets) and from 11 September 1917 its Chairman, thus providing Lenin with a power base and a link with the people. He was also the man who built the Red Army and, more than anyone else, won the Civil War.

According to Trotsky later, the main reasons for success were "the refusal of the Petrograd garrison to side with the government, the creation of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and the infiltration by Bolshevik commissars of the key divisions of the army". Sukhanov, a Menshevik eye-witness in November 1917, commented that 500 men could have crushed the Bolsheviks.Trotsky agreed with this view but asked where 500 loyal men could have been found! The fact that the Provisional government failed to retain the loyalty of the armed forces was very much due to Trotsky.

Trotsky, born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, was the son of a Ukrainian Jewish peasant who had worked himself up to becoming a petty landowner, which enabled him to finance his son's education.

When Lenin died, Trotsky was the apparent heir but he was outmanoeuvred by Stalin, who arranged his expulsion from the Party in 1927, his exile from the Soviet Union in 1919 and his murder (with an ice-axe) in Mexico in 1940.

v. Kerensky was politically inexperienced, was not a charismatic single-minded leader and made a number of mistakes. For example, it was sensible not to try to solve the landhunger problem during wartime, but it might have been wise to have done something in view of the peasant unrest, which Lenin almost alone seems to have taken into account. (Even Viktor Chernov, leader of the SRs, also wanted to wait until the end of the war.) He also underestimated Lenin, saying "I must educate Lenin gently in the ways of democracy".

vi. German support was useful, Berlin providing cash for propaganda and a train for Lenin to return to Russia.

9. The Bolshevik Revolution produced great optimism and idealism among many people, even if it was opposed by many. For example, the famous United States muckraking writer, Lincoln Steffens, after a visit to Petrograd in 1919, wrote to a friend "I have seen the future and it works", and the mining engineer, Nikita Khrushchev, later Stalin's aide and ruler of Russia from 1957 to 1964, gladly accepted a cut in pay and living conditions following the coup.

D. THE AFTERMATH: 1917-24.

Armistice talks were begun with the Germans on 3rd December 1917 at Brest-Litovsk (Brzesc Litowski, in Poland until 1921, then in the Soviet Republic of Belorussia, and since 1991 in Belarus). Lenin favoured immediate peace as he hoped for German money and took the view that Russia was in no position to fight. In contrast, Trotsky wanted delaying tactics - "no peace, no war" - as he anticipated revolutions in Germany and elsewhere, which would make unnecessary concessions to the Germans in any peace talks.

Abram Ioffe, the Bolshevik negotiator, procrastinated in the talks with General Hindenburg in the expectation that Western revolutions would make any Russian concessions unnecessary. However, in February, the Germans, in view of Bolshevik procrastination, recommenced their advance, and on 3rd March 1918, with the German armies about 100 miles from Petrograd, Trotsky, who had replaced Ioffe, agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (with Grigori Sokolnikov actuqlly signing) . Acceptance of the terms split the Bolsheviks as Russia had to agreed to pay 3 billion roubles in reparations and surrender 34% of its population (45 million people), 1/3 of its European land area, 54% of its industry, and 89% of its coal. For example, Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky and Kamenev opposed acceptance of the treaty unlike Lenin, Stalin and Zinoviev who reluctantly concluded there was no alternative.

The treaty terms were harsh, "a robber peace" according to Lenin, but ending the war helped Lenin stay in power as peace was popular in the country. He was fortunate that with the final German defeat in November 1918, Brest-Litovsk became a dead letter.

The Bolshevik government had many opponents, who were collectively called "Whites" (who should not be confused with the White Russians as the people of the Soviet Republic of Belorussia were sometimes called in English), although they were very divided, ranging from Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (who were expelled from the government in March 1918), through liberals, moderates, monarchists (although most Whites did not want to restore the monarchy) and nationalists (also called "Greens") fighting for independence from Russia. Each group, for different reasons, fought to overthrow the new regime and was reluctant to co-operate with other groups. Lenin was especially interested in areas like Ukraine which provided Russia with grain.

3. Factors.

i. The conflict was the most massive European civil war up to that time, involving over 2,000,000 combatants fighting over a 6,000 mile front and comparable even to the Chinese Civil War (1925 to 1949), except in the latter's final stages, from the point of view of numbers if not distances. It was also increasingly and frighteningly brutal, with both sides committing atrocities.

ii. There was the complication of foreign involvement. Not only did subject nations such as the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians take the opportunity to seize independence, but, for various reasons, Americans, British, Czechs, French, Germans, Japanese and Poles all intervened. (British Cabinet papers show that the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, had hoped for Lenin's friendship to keep Russia in the war and only intervened when Lenin negotiated peace with Germany, and especially after accounts of Bolshevik savagery, including the attack on the British Embassy in August 1918 and the murder of the ambassador lent credence to Jan Smuts' assertion that "Bolshevism was a danger to the whole world", being tyrannical. There was also the possibility of economic concessions in Russia. Even so, Lloyd George was well aware that British people were tired of war and so after November 1918 saw the end of the Great War eschewed a crusade against Bolshevism.)

iii. There were 5 main areas of fighting.

a. The Don region (peopled by the Cossacks) and the Caucasus area where Generals Lavr Kornilov, Anton Denikin and Piotr Wrangel commanded. The Cossacks hoped for independence and the others were mainly supporters of Tsarism and the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats).

b. The Urals region of Central Russia where the Czechs and Socialist Revolutionaries fought the Reds for control.

c. Siberia where the right-wing Admiral Alexander Kolchak and the Japanese opposed the Reds. Kolchak, a Tsarist, styled himself "Ruler of Russia".

d. The Baltic region where the Tsarist general, Nicolai Yudenich, led the Whites.

e. The White Sea, where White forces were predominantly Socialist Revolutionaries.

iv. The Bolsheviks were surrounded and not expected to win. Moreover, Lenin had to cope with peasant uprisings in 1920, caused mainly by severe famine, and the Kronstadt naval mutiny of 21st February -17 March 1921, both of which were brutally crushed.

v. From September 1918, Bolshevik forces were run by a Revolutionary War Council and then from November 1918 by a Defence Council headed by Lenin. Trotsky served as War Commissar, with General Ioakim Vatsetis (or Vacetis), a Latvian, Commander-in-Chief from September 1918 to July 1919, when he was replaced by the former Tsarist staff colonel, Sergei Kamenev.

4. Events.

i. In a sense the civil war began when Lenin seized power in October/November 1917, with the first fighting the half-hearted attempt between 9th and 14th November (on the Gregorian calendar) 1917 by Alexander Kerensky and General Peter Krasnov, with one division of demoralized Don Cossacks, to restore the authority of the Duma. After inconclusive fighting near Petrograd (in which government forces seized Tsarskoye Selo, modern Pushkin), the 28-year old soviet minister and former sailor, Pavel Dybenko, won over the Cossacks and arranged an armistice. By this, the Cossacks agreed to hand Kerensky and Krasnov over to the Bolsheviks, who in return promised that Lenin would be excluded from the government. Not surprisingly, however, the armistice was broken almost at once. Krasnov was handed over to the Reds, who released him after he gave his word he would fight no more (a promise he broke); Kerensky, who had escaped with Krasnov's help, fled the country; and Lenin remained as Chief Commissar (Prime Minister).

ii. The civil war proper began on 9th December 1917, with the rising of the Don Cossacks (led by Generals Lavr Kornilov and Aleksey Kaledin) when Lenin tried to end Cossack independence, which had been seized in November 1917, although Lenin was also anxious to destroy what had become a base for anti-Red refugees. The fighting against the Don Cossacks encouraged a German offensive (leading on 15th December to an armistice) and declarations of independence by nationalists, who saw the chance to follow the example of the Cossacks and Estonians who had already declared independence in November. The Baltic peoples, (Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians), Finns and Poles were eventually between 1920 and 1921 recognized as independent, unlike the peoples of the Don, Moldavia, Transcaucasia (the brief union of Armenia, Azerbajan and Georgia, September 1917 to May 1918) and Ukraine who were forced back into the Russian Empire. Fortunately for Lenin, other Whites did not take advantage of the Red preoccupation with the nationalists. Matters were further complicated for Lenin when, in February and March 1918, the Germans resumed their offensive in view of Russian procrastination in making a peace treaty, forcing him to accept the terms of Brest-Litovsk.

iii. When Lenin, by means of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 with Germany, took Russia out of the Great War, an Anglo-French force, eventually numbering 22,000, was landed in Murmansk on the White Sea in March. In April 1918, a French force was expelled from the Ukraine but later, in November 1918, with the goal of supporting General Krasnov and his 50,000 strong force, an Anglo-French force was landed in the Black Sea area, where they seized ports such as Sevastopol and Odessa.

Western leaders generally were alarmed by Communism, with Sir Henry Wilson, the British Chief of Imperial Staff, saying that "the Bolshies not the Boches" were the main problem. There was also growing dislike of the brutality and tyranny of the Bolshevik regime. In addition, there were hopes of commercial gain, so much so that already, in late 1917, a conference in Paris had envisaged the Caucasus as a "sphere of special interest to Britain", the Ukraine and Crimea as French interests and Siberia and the Far East "placed at the disposal of the US and Japan". However, Lloyd George, Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Western leaders concluded that the Bolsheviks were not expansionist as, at the time, they accepted self-determination for the nations of the Russian Empire and so a cordon-sanitaire would suffice against Bolshevism. Furthermore there seemed little to recommend White government. For example, Admiral Kolchak refused to approve the surrender of Finland, as well as refusing to hold elections, and Denikin was anti-Semitic, equating Jewry with Bolshevism and massacring Jews when he got the chance. What caused the West to intervene in support of the Whites was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which took Russia out of the war against Germany. Intervention it was hoped would establish a regime that would take Russia back into the war. Eventually in October 1919, the Anglo-French force left Murmansk, having failed in their purpose. (In addition, London dockers supported the Reds by refusing to load ships with supplies for the intervention force.)

Admittedly, once Western troops had been committed and the war against Germany had ended in November 1918, Western troops were kept in Russia, and the goal (especially on the parts of Churchill and Foch) now was the overthrow of Bolshevism if possible.

The Anglo-French force was not in fact the first to intervene as already, from December 1917 and especially from April 1918, a Japanese force, eventually numbering 100,000, landed in Siberia with a view to seizing land and raw materials. If the Japanese were the first to intervene, they were also the last to leave, their departure in 1922 marking the definite end of the Civil War.

A US force was also present in the Vladivostok area of Siberia between August 1918 and January 1919. President Wilson's goal was not to help the Whites, whom he disliked, but to create a democratic Siberia to contain Bolshevism and to promote liberal capitalism and democracy. Wilson also wanted to prevent any foreign power taking over in any part of the former Russian Empire. Thanks to Wilson's opposition, French proposals for an international intervention focre to overthrow Bolshevism gained no ground. After January, the US relied on diplomatic and economic aid.

iv. The Civil War really got underway (and according to some commentators only began) in May 1918 with a revolt by 50,000 Czech prisoners of war in the Urals.

As a result of negotiations by Tomas Masaryk, leader of the Czech nationalists, the Red Russian government, after signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, had given permission for their Czech prisoners-of-war to leave Russia via Vladivostok. These Czechs had fought in the Habsburg armies, had been captured, but had then volunteered to fight in the Russian army for the cause of Czech independence from Austria.

However, mutual suspicions between Czechs and Reds about the other's intentions led to clashes, which encouraged a broadening of fighting as Whites saw and seized the chance. For example, Krasnov took the offensive and by December 1918 had won control of the Don region. However, the most active of the Whites were the Socialist Revolutionaries, for, in June 1918, the Socialist Revolutionary rump of the Constituent Assembly established a government, shielded by Czech troops, an event followed later in the summer of 1918 by a general Socialist Revolutionary rising, especially in the Kazan, Moscow and Vladimir regions, and including the August 1918 shooting assassination attempt on Lenin.

Heavily outnumbered, with some 300,000 Bolsheviks facing 700,000 enemy, and controlling only a quarter of the country, it seemed as if Lenin had virtually lost the civil war and had no chance of retaining power. However, thanks largely to Trotsky, the Red Army was rapidly built up within three months to 600,000 and by 1919 to over 1,000,000, and the tide of battle began to turn. For example, by September 1918 the Czechs were driven out of Kazan, Simbirsk and the Urals regions, back to Siberia, where they co-operated with the Siberian White government.

v. The Czech rising led in May 1918 to the establishment of a White government in Western Siberia, based on Omsk. However, in November 1918, Admiral Kolchak seized power, removing socialists from the government and declaring himself "supreme ruler of Russia". In March 1919, Kolchak made a bid for total victory. He had the advantage as his forces, between 130,000 and 145,000 strong, outnumbered the 100,000 or so Bolsheviks and were well armed, having received rifles, machine guns, artillery pieces and ammunition from the Americans and British, although the Bolsheviks were also well-armed, with, for example, 1882 machine guns and 374 field guns to Kolchak's 1300 machine guns and 211 field guns. However, Kolchak failed in his attempt to join up with the Whites in the Baltic and, in the South, where he outnumbered the Bolsheviks 4:1 his advance in the Volga region, which began swiftly, was held by Mikhail Frunze and pushed back to Orenberg, Ekaterinburg, Omsk and finally Irkutsk. Caught in Irkutsk, Kolchak was handed over by the Czechs and shot in February 1920.

vi. The Red Army's pre-occupation with Kolchak gave others their chance and October 1919 was especially serious for the Bolsheviks. In particular, Denikin, following German evacuation, organized a southern White army of 150,000 in the Caucasus and held Bolshevik attempts to reconquer the area in January 1919, although, in April 1919, he was driven back to the Black Sea. None the less, he remained strong enough to launch an offensive in July 1919 with Moscow as the main goal. In August the Don, Donetz, Kiev and East Ukraine and Volga regions were taken and by October 1919 he was at Orel 250 miles south west of Moscow. However, he was then pushed back, losing the battle of Voronezh and by March 1920 he held only a small area in the Crimea. His troops, now led by Wrangel, who had seized power, held out until November 1920 when Frunze took Kerch, causing 2,000,000 Whites to evacuate. Denikin failed very much as he neglected politics, in particular neglecting to establish civilian administrations in areas "liberated" or to attempt to explain policies to the people. To the "liberated", these Whites were worse than the Reds, for example, butchering 100,000 Jews (which alienated the British and others).

vii. On 11 Oct 1919, General Nicolai Yudenich, with a motley force, reached the outskirts of Petrograd, which Lenin prepared to abandon. However, on 22nd October, the Whites were forced back into Estonia.

viii. In May 1920, a Polish force under Marshal Josef Pilsudski, having seized independence in 1917, took the opportunity to occupy Kiev and part of the Ukraine but there was little Ukrainian support and by August 1920, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and his Soviet forces were in the suburbs of Warsaw and Lwow, and the Poles were only saved by the support of a French force under Marshal Weygand, as a result of which the Treaty of Riga (capital of Latvia) was signed in March 1921.

ix. Thus, by March 1921, the Bolsheviks were fairly firmly in control, although there was still some fighting, there was the problem of the independence of the Baltic States, Finland, Poland and Transcaucasia, and the Japanese controlled the Far East. The Civil War was apparently more or less over but the situation could have become serious again. For example, between 17th February and 21st March 1921, there occurred the Kronstadt naval mutiny, which, even though it was crushed, might have sparked off a fresh bout of fighting.

Eastern Republic, capital Chita, to cope with the Japanese in the Vladivostok area but in October 1922 the Japanese evacuated their forces, thereby bringing the Civil War to a definitive end. As for the nationalists, the independence of the Baltic States, Finland and Poland was recognized 1920-21 and in 1921 Transcaucasia was reconquered.

5. Reasons for Bolshevik success.

i. The political leadership of Lenin and the military leadership of Trotsky, aided by Mikhail Frunze. They were helped by the ruthless elimination of opposition organized by the Bolshevik secret police, the CHEKA, under Felix Dzerzhinsky. The Bolsheviks were generally enthusiastic and ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause. They were generally more popular among ordinary people as they adopted popular policies. Trotsky and Lenin were ready to use former Tsarist officers and were lucky to have had the Latvian Rifle Regiments join them when the Germans took over Latvia as these formed the nucleus of the Red Army.

ii. In contrast, the Whites lacked good leadership and overall unity, being very divided, for example, over whether Russia should remain one country and what form the government should take. Their forces were also separated by the Reds, who had the advantage of interior lines of communication. The Whites failed to try to win over the "liberated" areas. The Whites were also too associated with foreigners and foreign rule.

iii. The Whites received only limited foreign help. Lloyd George was aware that the British people wanted demobilization and, as the refusal by London dockers to load ships with supplies for the Murmansk expedition proved, would not accept a crusade against Bolshevism. He also assumed that limited aid (for example, in 1919 to the value of œ150,000,000) would suffice if the Whites played their cards right. (Admittedly, had Churchill had his way, aid would have been much greater.) As for the French, in April 1918, their fleet in Odessa mutinied and French sailors in the Crimean insisted on returning to France, all of which fuelled fears of revolution in France. As important, US President Wilson blocked French proposals for an international intervention force to destroy Bolshevism.

6. Results.

There was great destruction in lives and material, with at least 800,000 dying (including the Romanovs) according to official figures, and between 7,000,000 and 25,000,000 according to unofficial figures. (R. Luckett in "The White Generals", 1987, estimated that some 25,000,000 died including those from hunger and disease.) Possibly there were 2,000,000 refugees.

The fighting also encouraged the establishment of a repressive regime in Russia, War Communism, and the death of the Romanovs, who had hitherto survived.

The Bolsheviks had to recognize the independence of parts of the empire, for example, Finland in October 1920, Estonia in February 1920, Lithuania in July 1920, and Latvia in 1921. Already, in 1919, Lenin had accepted the independence of Bessarabia and its union with Romania. In 1919, Polish independence had been recognized, but the Russo-Polish War of April to October 1920 occurred as the Poles claimed parts of the Ukraine. Led by Marshal Josef Pilsudski, who was supported by French troops under General Maxime Weygand, the Poles forced the Russians to agree in March 1921 to the Treaty of Riga (the capital of Latvia); by this, the frontier was pushed back more than 100 miles east of the Curzon Line (which had been drawn up by the British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon and agreed on by the great powers in December 1919), although the Poles did not gain the frontiers of 1793, which they had also claimed. (On the other hand, the Bolsheviks between 1920 and 1921 had restored to Russian control Armenia, Azerbajan, and Georgia, which had declared independence and united to form the Transcaucasian Federal Republic. Lenin opposed the independence of the former Russian Empire not because he was a Russian imperialist. Indeed, he had consistently favoured independence for the national groups within the Empire and did so in 1917, but on condition that they had communist regimes. In theory, the reconquered areas of the former Empire were independent, but in practice they had Bolshevik regimes which allied themselves to, and co-operated with, Lenin's Russian Socialist Federal Republic.)

III. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS.

1. Factors.

i. Lenin took the view that Russia had "either to perish or to catch up with the advanced countries and overtake their economies". However, this was to be achieved gradually and he had hoped to work with the capitalists initially because of their experience and expertness, although, as conditions permitted, they would inexorably be shorn of their privileges. His goal of the state withering away was for the distant future, to be preceded not by worker control of farms and factories but state control, with state farms and factories, and the Marxist "planned economy" as the means to rapid development and the just distribution of profits. He also planned social development, with, for example, state-run schools, hospitals and homes for old people.

ii. Lenin's views were opposed by many. At one extreme, idealists favoured worker control, while moderates, notably Bukharin, accepted the long-term continuation of small-scale private enterprises. That a great debate did not occur was the result of events and necessity. For example, on 7th November 1917, the Land Decree ordered the partition of large estates among the peasants. This was not what Lenin wanted (he wanted state farms) but was in part an attempt to win popularity and in part recognition of what was happening and could not be stopped. Above all, however, there was the introduction of War Communism as a response to the Civil War.

. 2. War Communism, lasting officially from June 1918 to mid-1921.

i. During the Civil War, Lenin introduced what came to be known as War Communism, that is the state control of the means of production, exchange, and distribution. Control over the economy was exercised by the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKH or Versenkah), set up in December 1917.

For example, in December 1917,private banks and the State Bank were nationalised (that is, taken over by the state) and all Church property was taken over. This was followed in February 1918 by a law declaring that all land was the property of the state, although peasants could continue to work the land. Railways in March 1918, and other forms of transportation later, were nationalized. In June 1918, large industrial enterprises were taken over by the government and between April 1919 and November 1920, all plants with machinery and 5 workers and all enterprises with no machinery and 10 or more workers were nationalised, smaller enterprises escaping because of the administrative difficulty of organizing their takeover. Such state control Lenin wanted but not at once.

ii. War Communism was the result of practical necessity, not of ideology, although Marx had envisaged state control and the planned economy to permit the best use of resources and the sharing of profits among the population as a whole instead of profits going to owners who were already rich. In fact, Lenin (but not all Bolsheviks) had hoped to win over the middle classes in order to avoid disruption and only introduced War Communism because of practical necessity.

One indication of the disastrous economic situation was that by June 1918 the workforce in Petrograd, the main industrial centre, had shrunk to 60% of the 1917 level and the population had declined from 3,000,000 to 2,000,000 as food shortages and hunger drove factory workers to the countryside. However, the main pressing problem was the creation of a strong economic base to sustain the life and death struggle of the Civil War. Whatever about peace-time, economic chaos could not be permitted in war-time (as government control in capitalist America and Britain in both World Wars illustrates). Government control of the economy was seen as vital to win the Civil War; as the economy had to be co-ordinated and the workers had to be prevented from seizing control of the factories since they were deemed incapable of running them effectively.

The Land Decree of 7th November 1917, partitioning the large estates among the peasants (although some land was retained for state farms), was not actually the result of a policy decision (although Lenin favoured distribution of the land to the peasants, at least for a few years) but merely sanctioned what was happening, for the peasants were seizing land, and would win much needed popular support.

In factories, a decree of 27th November 1917, established joint worker-owner control of factories, largely to prevent workers from taking over completely and causing chaos, if only because of inexperience. However, joint control did not work and factories and communications, especially railways, had to be nationalized to prevent the workers from taking over and causing economic disruption.

A decree of January 1920 authorised forced labour in factories and farms to ensure production for the civil-war effort. The Bolsheviks also sent out raiding parties to requisition grain from the peasants and urban workers often took the law into their own hands. Grain production had fallen dramatically, partly as a result of the civil war but also because peasants ceased to produce more grain than they needed for their own use as money paid was worthless and anyway there was nothing to buy with the money. The grain seizures meant that many peasants starved to death and there was no seed for next year's planting, so that the problem worsened. Had it not been for US humanitarian aid, many more Russians would have died from starvation than actually did.

The State Bank was nationalised on 7th/20th November 1917(and subsequently replaced in 1918 by the People's Bank), when it refused to issue money to those it considered rebels. (The takeover of all private banks on 27th December 1917, with the seizure of private accounts, was both ideological and practical, the latter in as far as the government needed the money.) Money gave way to barter not because of ideology but because inflation meant that money lost all value! In March 1917, there were 11,750,000 paper roubles in circulation; in November 1917, there were 23,500,000; and in January 1921, 1,168,000,000. The introduction between 1921 and 1924 of a new rouble and the end of the Civil War ended inflation.

iii. War Communism's controls were an important reason why the Reds won the Civil War.

iv. nb. At the 1920 Party Congress in Moscow, the old Bolshevik engineer, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, outlined a plan for the electrification of the country and a state body, with the acronym of GOELRO was established for this purpose. GOELRO, which started work in 1920, was very successful and was a forerunner of the Five Year Plans begun in 1927. (See the notes on Stalin.)

3. The New Economic Policy, (NEP). (According to opponents of the NEP, it stood for New Exploitation of the Proletariat!)

In 1921, the Civil War was as good as won but the economy was in tatters, Lenin's grand hopes for the development of the economy naturally having come to nothing. Because of the Great War and then the Civil War, industrial output in 1920 was 13% that of 1913 and food production was about 20% of the 1913 level, mainly because peasants failed to plant crops as money was worthless and no goods to speak of were available in exchange. Not surprisingly, hungry townspeople and soldiers attacked and ransacked peasant homes, seeking food that had been hidden away. The situation was made even worse by drought and during 1921 and 1922, perhaps 5,000,000 died from famine. Indeed, without US aid, the results would have been even more disastrous. In view of this, Lenin, ignoring those who wanted to retain War Communism as a step to real Communism, in 1921, in an attempt to revive the economy, lent his weight to the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which authorised small-scale private enterprises, especially in commerce and transportation, the hiring of labour, and private ownership of flats. The spark for the NEP was the Rising of the Kronstadt sailors in February and March 1921, which was in part the result of economic dissatisfaction. The NEP was intended as a temporary step but no indication of the duration of "temporary" was ever given, although Lenin said that a life of 25 years for the NEP was "pessimistic". Then, from 1921, new bank notes were issued by the People's Bank, a stratagem, which, with the conclusion of the Civil War, ended inflation.

The NEP, which was controlled by the State Planning Agency (GOSPLAN), and the end of the Civil War, meant that overall by 1927 the economy had returned to 1913 levels. Of course, there were problems; for example, in December 1923, Trotsky complained of the "scissors effect" by which he meant the widening gap between the blades which represented the widening gap between industrial and agricultural prices, to the advantage of the former.

4. Lenin hoped for economic relations with capitalist countries, admittedly allegedly saying that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them! As a result, in March 1921, a trade agreement was concluded with Britain and representatives were sent to the 1922 Genoa Economic Conference. However, talks there broke down because of the February 1918 decree which unilaterally annulled all of Russia's foreign debts. Germany alone, by means of the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, agreed to drop claims for debt repayment in return for Russia dropping demands for reparations for war damage.

1. The constitution for the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic, 1918.

Following the Bolshevik coup of November 1917, Lenin, in April 1918, established a constitution for what was called the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic, RSFSR. An All-Russian Congress of Soviets (parliament) was chosen by indirect election; that is, villagers and townspeople elected representatives, who elected provincial representatives, who, in turn, elected the All-Russian Congress. There was one representative for 25,000 urban dwellers and one for every 125,000 rural inhabitants.

2. The establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR.

i. Before 1917, Lenin had supported autonomy for the non-Russians of the Russian Empire, who made up 57% of the population, and during the Russian Civil War, 1917-22, as areas such as the Ukraine and Transcaucasia (Armenia, Azerbajan and Georgia) were brought under their control, the victorious Bolsheviks established systems similar to that in Russia, creating autonomous republics, which were allied to the RSFSR. Lenin's concept of autonomy was that there would be Bolshevik governments which would think the same way as Moscow did and anyone who disagreed with Moscow was not a real Bolshevik! Admittedly, Lenin bowed to nationalist, bourgeois, non-Bolshevik sentiment in certain areas; for example, 1917-20, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia seized their independence, and, following a vote in April 1918, Bessarabians joined Romania.

ii. Lenin and the other leaders of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves from 1918, had always envisaged a wide federation of Soviet Republics (for Lenin the socialist was an internationalist and his goal had always been a union of the different socialist republics), including in particular German Soviets (and perhaps eventually all Europe), which it had been hoped would give the lead to the predominantly agrarian Russians. Thus the alliances (see i. above) were considered inadequate and only temporary, especially as they would likely be an insufficient safeguard against the bourgeois nationalists seizing independence and overthrowing the revolution. Consequently, once the Civil War was over, communist representatives from Russia, Belorussia, Transcaucasia, and the Ukraine met and agreed in December 1922 to establish a union, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), of the 54 nations of the old Russian Empire. The constitution was written in 1923 and ratified on 31 January 1924. (Lenin had died 21st January 1924.)

3. Main features of the 1924 constitution (which was based on the US model).

i. Each republic elected representatives (by indirect election as under the 1918 RSFSR constitution) to a state soviet but in addition the soviet of each Republic elected representatives to an All-Union Congress over 2,000 in number. The unequal representation for rural and urban workers was retained, that is, one representative for 25,000 urban and one for 125,000 rural voters; the village and town soviets were elected, as before in Russia, openly by a show of hands; all over 18 years voted, except for Romanovs, former officials, clergy and bourgeois. Initially, there were four Republics: Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia, Transcaucasia (= Georgia, Armenia and Azerbajan). The number increased to sixteen with:-

a. the separation from Russia of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 1924, Tajikistan in 1929, and Kazakhstan and Kirghizia in 1936.

b. the division in 1936 of Transcaucasia into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbajan.

c. the reacquisition in 1940 by conquest of Bessarabia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the conquest from Finland of the Karelo-Finnish Republic (which in 1956 was brought into the RSFSR, so that there were 15 republics).

ii. The All-Union Congress met briefly every two years in the Bolshoi Theatre. It selected, from its members, a Central Executive Committee to do its work between sessions. The Central Executive Committee was in two sections, usually meeting separately:-

a. the Council or Soviet of the Union (at first 414 members and later 371) representing the people of the republics according to the size of the population.

b. the Council or Soviet of the Nationalities, with five representatives from each of the Republics (and one from autonomous regions, which had been set up within the Republics). Each soviet elected a Praesidium of seven (later nine) to serve as an executive; in theory, the Praesidiums controlled the government.

iii. The Central Executive Committee appointed the Council of People's Commissars or Ministers (Sovnarkom). It was this Council, which, with the Party officials, actually ran the USSR. (After Lenin's death, and thanks to Stalin, the Commissars came increasingly under the thumb of the party secretariate and in particular, its General Secretary, Stalin.)

iv. Responsibilities were divided between Republic and Union governments, but the central federal powers were so wide that there was little freedom for the Republics (for example, the Union controlled transport, principles of economic and political life, posts and telegraph, finance, defence and foreign policy; the Republics dealt with education, justice, social security, public health).

v. The Union was dominated by Russia. Not only did Russia have over half the population but it was also divided into sufficient autonomous regions to give it a majority in the Soviet of the Nationalities.

vi. The Party. (In 1918 the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Communist Party.)

a. The Communist Party, with about 80,000 members in 1917, was the only party allowed. To become a member, one had to be recommended to the local cell by three party members, of not less that five years' standing, who had known the candidate at work for at least a year. The city or district party organization had then to accept the candidate. Members had to be over 23.

b. Every four years (and later every five), the Party elected the All-Union Congress of about 2,000, all candidates being proposed by the Politburo! An extraordinary All-Union Congress could also be summoned in an emergency, hence the 13^th Congress in 1924, the 14^th in 1925, and the 15th in 1927.

The Congress then elected a Central Committee of about 200. This Committee in turn elected the Political Bureau, usually called the Politburo (1952-66 called the Party Praesidium) of 12 or so, plus 8 or so "candidate members", who had no vote. The head of the Politburo was the Party General Secretary (1953-66 called the First Secretary), an office which Stalin from 1922 turned into the most important in Russia, Lenin's office having been Chairman of the Council of Commissars.

c. The Party Secretary was officially the head of the Party Secretariat of permanent officials, headed by a dozen or so, many of whom also served on the Politburo. This secretariat prepared legislation for approval by the soviets and selected candidates for election.

4. The creation of a dictatorship.

i. "All who are dangerous to the cause of revolution must be eliminated." (Pravda 1918). Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not interested in freedom of thought but in acceptance of Marxist-Leninist doctrines. Deaths were "regrettable but necessary" (Lenin, in response to the protest by Stalin's second wife, Nadya, about the killing of a hostage.) Admittedly, Lenin was influenced by the August 1918 attempt to assassinate him, and by the Civil War, which were clear indications of the danger to the revolution.

ii. In December 1917, Lenin replaced the Tsar's secret police, the OKHRANA (from the Russian for "guarding"), with the CHEKA (an acronym for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution), headed by the efficient and pitiless Polish aristocrat, Felix Dzerzhinsky (who died in 1926, being succeeded by another Polish nobleman, Menzhinsky 1926-34. The CHEKA gained the power to execute without trial, and, between 1918 and 1922, an estimated 280,000 were killed. (cf. according to Soviet sources, between 1866 and 1900, 94 political prisoners were executed, despite 40 assassinations, including Tsar Alexander II in 1881.) With the end of the Civil War and the creation of the USSR, the CHEKA in 1924 became the OGPU (United State Political Directorate).

Was the Civil War responsible for turning Lenin's Russia into a terroristic dictatorship or would this have happened anyway?

iii. In 1918, the first concentration camps for those of "doubtful loyalty" were set up. The camps, usually called labour camps as the inmates had to work, came to be run by GULAG (the Main Administration of Corrective Labour Camps), set up in 1930.

iv. At first, there had been some degree of political independence for Bolsheviks and fellow travellers, but this was ended and, in March 1921, the 10th Party Congress banned "fractionalism" within the Party (that is, disagreement with the accepted party position) and Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), who until then had been accepted, were repressed. There followed the first mass purge of the Party, with the removal especially of those who opposed Lenin's New Economic Policy. Ten prominent Mensheviks were allowed into exile, but the SR leaders were given the first show trials and executed in 1922 "pour encourager les autres".

Lenin had been badly shaken by the growing opposition to his regime, which saw strikes in St. Petersburg in February of workers and sailors. These demanded, among other things, new elections by secret ballot for the soviet, freedom of speech, press and assembly, rights for trades unions, and the end of the one party system. This was followed, between 21st February and 17th March 1921, of the Kronstadt Mutiny of sailors, formerly staunch supporters, who demanded real democracy. Trotsky sent a force of 60,000 commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky and these stormed the naval base which was captured after stiff resistance.

v. Bolshevik trade unions (TUs) were the only ones allowed. "Their (= unions') activity is directed towards fulfilling the purpose and tasks determined by the Party. The TUs act as supports and conveyors of the Party's policies towards the masses .." (definition of a union by TRUD, the union magazine).

vi. Propaganda:- (less use was made of propaganda than in Italy under Mussolini after 1922 and Hitler in Germany after 1933 as Russian society was less advanced, for example with low literacy rates and few cinemas.)

There was strict censorship, especially of the cinema and press, and even parts of Marx's writings were censored. The two main papers were Pravda (=Truth), a daily, representing the Party and set up 1912; and Izvestiya (=New), begun by the government after the seizure of power (in 1960, it became an evening paper). Tass (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) was set up as the official news agency in July 1924.

In 1921 Lenin ordered that culture should reflect "Socialist Realism" and influence people in a positive way, to glorify the Party, sing the praises of the working class, attack Party enemies, show the power and strength of the state, and be immediately understandable to all. This was the first time a government had an official cultural policy. Brilliant writers disappeared if they would not toe the line and did not escape. Thus in August 1921, the poet Nikolai Gumilev was shot as a counter-revolutionary, unlike the artists Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky and Antoine Pevsner, the musician Igor Stravinsky and the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who all managed to escape abroad.

Youth movements were organized in 1918, the Little Octobrists for those age 7-9, the Pioneers for those age 10-15, and the Komsomol (acronym for the All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth) for those between 15 and 28.

Education was controlled and developed.

vii. Control of religion. (nb. Not all Russians were Orthodox and the USSR was the 5th largest Moslem country in the world.) Lenin regarded religion as "the opium of the people" (Karl Marx) and disliked its influence, especially as it was considered reactionary. There was no official persecution and the 1918 constitution permitted religious and anti-religious propaganda. However, Communists had to renounce religion. In December 1917, all Church property was seized (although it could be used by the congregation if not needed for other purposes), and several hundred bishops and clergymen were shot or died in prison as counter-revolutionaries; the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Nikon, was periodically imprisoned.

viii. Control of the armed forces. The loyal Trotsky, the first Commissar for War, had introduced the idea of "political commissars" who "assisted" the military commanders, making sure that they were politically sound and had no plans to try to seize power.

ix. Thus, by the time of his death, Lenin had created not the utopia he had promised, but a cruel dictatorship, dominated by the Communist Party (the name for the Bolshevik Party from 1918) and ruled from Moscow, which in 1918 had replaced Petrograd as the capital.

1. Factors.

i. The commissars were Trotsky in 1917 and 1918 and then Georghi Chicherin from 1918 to 1930.

ii. Initially, Lenin hoped for workers' revolutions in other countries, especially Germany, whose workers would then take the lead being more advanced, for, as he said in March 1918, "without the revolution in Germany, we shall perish". Later, in 1921, he told Comintern (see below, 5.ii) that "We thought either immediately or at worst very soon, revolution will come in other more developed countries or if this is not so, we must perish." However, revolutions in other countries failed, despite the support of the Third Communist International, called Comintern, which Lenin organized in Moscow in March 1919 to promote revolution. His hopes of a union of soviets stretching across Europe were quickly dashed, especially by the failure of German communists to seize power between 1919 and 1923. Consequently, he adapted to power politics, turning to a policy of defending Bolshevism in Russia as a launchpad for its future spread, a policy that came to be known as "Socialism in One Country. "

2. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, they at once set about ending the war against Germany. At the same time, Lenin issued to all belligerents his appeal, known as the Decree of Peace, to start peace talks. Then, on 22 November Trotsky proposed peace talks on the basis of no annexations and no indemnities and the Russian Commander-in-Chief, General Dukhonin, was dismissed for opposing armistice talks, being replaced by the Bolshevik Krylenko. Russo-German peace-talks began on 3 December 1917 at Brest-Litovsk, between Ioffe and the German general, Max Hoffmann but Russian procrastination in the hope that a German revolution would make a treaty unnecessary caused the Germans to resume their advance into Russia in February, reaching within 100 miles of St. Petersburg by March. As a result, talks recommenced, this time with Trotsky leading the Russian delegation and, in March 1918, the Germans secured the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia agreed to cede 34% of its population, 54% of its industry and 89% of its coal. While Germany itself gained directly, others also were to gain, for example, the Turks were to receive Ardahan, Batum and Kars. Acceptance of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk split the Bolshevik Party but its signature probably saved the Bolshevik Revolution. Fortunately for Russia, the treaty in the event became a dead letter with German defeat, although the victorious Allies used the Russian treaty with the Germans to evade the clauses of the 1915 treaty promising Russia control of the Straits at Constantinople at the end of the war.

3. Lenin also had to recognize the independence of much of the former Russian Empire, generally those parts of the empire where independence movements received foreign help. For example, in Finland, reds and whites fought a civil war between January and April 1918, victory going to the whites thanks very much to German aid. In contrast, Ukraine and Transcaucasia were brought back under control. (See above, the Civil War.)

Finnish independence, seized in December 1917, was recognized by the Treaty of Dorpat in October 1920 (but thanks to President Stahlberg, there was no attempt to create Greater Finland).

In the Baltic States, Estonian independence, declared November 1917, was recognized in February 1920, Lithuanian independence, declared in March 1918 , was recognized in July 1920 and Latvian independence, declared in January 1918 , was recognized in 1921.

The fighting over Polish independence was especially serious situation as the Poles did not only proclaim independence (3 November 1918) but waged war between April and October 1920 to gain the frontiers of 1772. Fighting began when the Poles under Marshal Pilsudski, ignoring the international decision in December 1919 establishing the Curzon Line as the Russo-Polish frontier, invaded the Ukraine. Russian forces under Marshal Tukhachevsky quickly advanced almost to Warsaw by August, but the Poles were saved by the assistance of a French force under General Weygand and, by the Treaty of Riga (capital of Latvia) signed in March 1921, gained land over 100 miles beyond the Curzon Line in the Ukraine and Belorussia.

The war was an important reason for Lenin changing his views on nationalist independence for he had assumed that independent states such as Poland would have co-operated with the Bolshevik regime and joined the Soviet Union.

4. The Russians were ostracised by the capitalist countries of Europe, which both sent troops to help overthrow the Whites in the Russian Civil War (see above) - although US aid saved many victims of the Russian Civil War - and refused to invite them to the Paris peace talks in 1919. In April 1918, a French force was expelled from the Ukraine but on 23 June 1918, a British force landed and took Murmansk and on 2 August 1918, an Anglo-French force took Archangel, with the Reds only regaining Archangel on 30 September 1919 and Murmansk on 12 October 1919. Japanese troops, supported for a time by American forces, occupied the Vladivostok area until 1922.

5. For his part, Lenin mounted a revolutionary offensive against capitalism.

i. He idealistically believed that Bolshevik style revolutions would benefit the masses and that the Bolshevik seizure of power would spark of revolution in Germany and elsewhere. However, there was also the practical element for, as he told Comintern in 1921 "We thought, either immediately or at worst very soon, revolution will come in other more developed countries or if this is not so, we must perish." Revolution in Germany he considered essential as the German workers were more advanced and their leadership was needed.

ii. To spearhead the revolutionary movement, Lenin, on 4th March 1919, established Comintern (the Communist International) in Moscow to promote world revolution.

iii. The failure of communist risings elsewhere, especially in Germany between 1919 and 1921 (in 1919 in Berlin and Munich, in the Ruhr in 1920, in Saxony in 1921 and in Thuringia and Saxony in October 1923), caused Lenin to be pessimistic about world revolution and to adopt a policy of power politics, although it was only after the failure of the communist risings in Germany in 1923 that he admitted that the general revolution was not likely (and some communists held out hopes until after the failure of the British general strike of 1926).

6. In view of the above, Lenin, with security in mind, tried to establish tolerable relations with capitalist countries, until they could be overthrown. He allegedly said that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them! As for his neighbours, most were ready for a deal, to safeguard their own security or to re-establish profitable trading ties, which had been interrupted by the Great War.

Thus in 1921 and 1922, the Bolsheviks signed treaties of peace and friendship with their neighbours, for example, in 1921 with the Afghans, Persians and Turks (with the cement of the alliances being fear of British influence). Also, in March 1921, both Britain and Germany signed trade deals and then, in 1922, Lenin sent representatives to the economic conferences held in Cannes in January 1922, in Genoa in April and May 1922 and in the Hague in June and July 1922, where, admittedly, nothing was achieved, largely because the Bolsheviks refused to agree to repay loans made before 1917. However, diplomatic ties were opened with Germany by the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo (in northern Italy, near Genoa). By this, the Russians dropped their claims for compensation for war-damage and the Germans dropped their demands for repayment of pre-war loans.

Even before Rapallo, from April 1921 or possibly even in 1920 (when is not clear), Germany and Russia had come together. The Russians allowed the Germans (represented by their military chief, General Hans von Seeckt) to evade the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles by letting them build tank and plane factories in Russia in return for German military advisers and training.

In 1923, the Kremlin promised Germany aid if Germany were attacked by the Poles (or even if Germany attacked the Poles) and supported Germany diplomatically when the Belgians and French invaded the Ruhr because of German non-payment of reparations.

Soon after Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, the British government (2 February), anxious to rebuild trade, and then the Italian government (8 February), and then other countries, completed the re-establishment of diplomatic ties but relations were far from good. (The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, wanted to restore trading ties but he was also anxious to discourage Russo-German co-operation in overthrowing the 1919 peace settlement.)

7. Relations with China could not be ignored. Not only did the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok pass through Chinese territory, where it was called the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), but there was also the strategic danger of capitalist domination (by the Japanese or Americans and British) of China which shared a 5,000 mile border with Russia.

In 1919, the Red Army chased the Whites into Outer Mongolia (a Russo-Chinese protectorate since 1915), going on to establish a communist regime there dominated by Russians.

In 1921, Mikhail Borodin was sent to Guangzhou (Canton) as adviser to the Chinese Nationalists, led by Sun Yixian (who had overthrown the Manchu Emperors in 1911 but had failed to gain control of the country which had fallen into the hand of warlords), to help in their fight against the warlords (such as Wu Peifu (see below) who controlled much of the country. In 1923, Borodin brokered an alliance, known as the First United Front, between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists, an alliance which might have resulted in the Chinese Communists dominating the Nationalist Party.

Also in 1923, Sun's second-in-command and successor, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) went to Russia to study the methods of the Red Army and on his return established the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy, which greatly strengthened Nationalist forces.

Despite the co-operation with Sun, talks were held 1922-1924 with the warlord ruler of Peking, Wu Peifu, about the CER, over which Russia had lost control in 1919. These resulted in the Peking Agreement of May 1924 which established joint-control of the railway in exchange for Russian recognition (which actually changed nothing) of Outer Mongolia as part of China as well as the surrender of Russian concessions, notably Port Arthur (Lushun) on the Liaodong (Liao-tung) Peninsula, and of extra-territoriality.Such concessions would not only bring control once again over the vital rail link to Vladivostok but might also divert the Chinese from the capitalist West which jealously guarded its concessions (and approved the transfer of German concessions to the Japanese).