Lenin+-+survival,+civil+war+and+consolidation

= __Lenin - consolidating power, Civil War and dealing with opposition__ =

**__Past Questions:__**
 * Paper 3**
 * “Lenin abandoned ideology in order to gain and consolidate power.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? (Nov 2010)
 * Analyse the causes and immediate consequences (up to 1921) of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. (Nov 2009)


 * “The Bolshevik state under Lenin between 1918 and 1924 was a ruthless dictatorship, caring little for the Russian people.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? (Nov 2008)


 * Compare and contrast the roles of Lenin and Trotsky in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and in the foundation of the new Soviet State until 1924. (May 2007)


 * For what reasons, and in what ways, was a Marxist/Communist state set up in Russia between 1918 and 1928? (May 2006)


 * Compare and contrast the part played by Lenin and Trotsky in the development of the USSR between 1918 and 1924. (Nov 2005)


 * Lenin wrote, “One step forward two steps back; it happens in the lives of individuals, and in the history of nations.” To what extent can this quotation be applied to Lenin’s revolutionary career and his rule of the USSR 1918 to 1924? (May 2005)


 * Paper 2**
 * Discuss (a) the support for, and (b) the ideology of, //one// left-wing ruler of a single-party state. (May 2010)


 * Analyse the nature and extent of internal opposition //and// the methods used to deal with this opposition by //one// of the following single-party rulers: Lenin; Hitler; Mao. (Nov 2009)

MARKSCHEME for these questions.

__**Key dates:**__

**1917 ** November 6 and 7, the Bolsheviks seize power December 15, Temporary armistice with Germany December, White armies begin to form in the Ukraine, beginning of the civil war **1918 ** January 18, Constituent Assembly convenes, and is forcibly broken up by the Bolsheviks March 3, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with Germany, ending Russia’s involvement in the First World War March 13, Trotsky appointed People´s Commissar for War, takes charge of the Red Army **1920 ** April 26, Poland invades Russia June, Poles driven back to Warsaw by Red Army November, Evacuation of the last White forces across the Black Sea **1921 ** Famine in Russia, nearly 5,000 000 die March, Military uprising on Kronstadt Island March 8, Tenth Party Congress in Moscow, Lenin announces New Economic Policy __**What main problems were the Bolsheviks facing in October 1917?**__

<span style="display: block; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Opposition – the Whites <span style="display: block; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2. The problem of the land issue <span style="display: block; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3. The vastness of the territory to be governed <span style="display: block; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">4. The complexity of the economic issues

__**How did Lenin deal with these problems to keep control of the state?**__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Opened talks for an armistice with the German government. Lenin withdrew Russia from the War by signing the humiliating yet critical Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in order to consolidate power.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At first, Lenin expressed support for the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks won 168 out of 703 seats, yet Lenin had no interest of sharing power. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In January of 1918, Bolsheviks sent armed sailors to break it up. Democratic rule was thus displaced in favor of "Party rule," which became official in March 1918 when the Bolsheviks renamed themselves the Communist Party, a title under which they would govern Russia for seventy years.

In the dark years of civil war, Marxism's doctrine of "class warfare," heretofore purely theoretical, took on a terrible reality, as the revolutionary forces carried out atrocities exceeding even the worst of the Tsars' oppressions. <span style="background: white; display: block; line-height: 15.6pt; margin: 5.5pt 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Meanwhile, the economic policies pursued by Lenin, which sought to create a Communist economy immediately through massive seizures of food and supplies from the peasantry, exacerbated the suffering, and eventually led to the terrible famine of 1921, in which nearly five million people died. Only then did the government finally restore a limited market economy to the countryside, calling it the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.).

__**Which groups opposed Lenin in the civil war? What were the various aims of these 'Whites'?**__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">Opposition from non-Marxists <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Whites - <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Although they maintained various loyalties – some pledged devotion to Nicholas II (now a prisoner of the Communists), some to Kerensky's government, some to their own generals–the Whites were united in their opposition to the Bolsheviks White armies converged on Moscow and Petrograd, but the various White leaders failed to work together, and they were up against Leon Trotsky, whom Lenin appointed "People's Commissar for War" in March 1918, and who essentially created the Red Army out of the skeleton of the old imperial forces. Despite massive desertions, by 1919 Lenin had created a fighting force of 3 million men, a mass larger than anything his enemies could put on the field.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">Opposition from the Marxists <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">Menshevik opposition to Leninism and Bolshevism was essentially based on what they saw as his authoritarian nature and methods for achieving a Marxist state.

Additionally, t housands were massacred for opposing the Bolsheviks, thousands more for simply belonging to the wrong class–for being "kulaks," or wealthy peasants, a group that Lenin repeatedly compared to vermin and "bloodsuckers".


 * __What factors explain the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War? Focus especially on the role of Trotsky__**

<span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Factors for victory ** <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">One asset to Lenin and the Bolshevik victory was that the party had a secret police unit (called the Cheka, which was to change its title to the NKVD) which was ruthless in hunting out possible opponents to Lenin. In many areas of Russia, where the Bolsheviks had control, the NKVD was judge, jury and executioner. <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Yet a reason for their win was that the Whites were made up of many groups – groups that hated each other as much as they hated the Reds. With no cohesiveness to them, the Whites were on the whole a hopelessly uncoordinated group that fell out with each other. The fact that so many groups existed, meant that no one person could be appointed to act as their sole commander. With no unified leadership, the Whites were weakened. <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Finally, after success against forces in Russia, Trotsky faced a challenge from Poland. Granted her independence in 1918, Poland invaded the Ukraine in 1920. However, the Polish army was not able to defeat Trotsky’s Red Army and it broke through the Poles lines and advanced on Warsaw. Jozef Pilsudski, Poland’s commander-in-chief led a counter-attack against the Red Army, Lenin had decided to cut his losses and agreed to the Treaty of Riga on March 18th 1921. As a result of this treaty, about 10 million Ukrainians and White Russians were put under Polish rule. The Treaty of Riga brought to an end the Russian Civil War. Within Russia, the Communist government under Lenin was now secure. <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Trotsky ** <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Much credit must go to Trotsky who, despite the criticism aimed at him over the Czech Legion issue, was a brilliant War Commissar. Untrained in military matters, Trotsky seemed to be a natural leader of men. His beliefs were simple. If a Red commander was successful in combat, they were promoted. If a commander failed and survived, he paid the price. Trotsky was willing to use ex-tsarist officers as he knew that they had the military experience the Red Army lacked. In other words, Trotsky kept the spirit of the army up with his presence, that was a motivation to the soldiers. <span style="display: block; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Trotsky also knew that the first time the Red Army lost a major battle; it would spell the end of the revolution and all that the Bolsheviks had fought for. He visited the Red Army at the front in his legendary armored train to instill into them this very simple fact.

<span style="background: white; display: block; line-height: 15.6pt; margin: 5.5pt 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">The Communists continued to channel funds abroad to foment rebellions in the capitalist countries, sending vast sums to Western Europe even as their own people starved, but German authorities had put down Marxist uprisings there, and for now, at least, it seemed that Russia would have to build utopia on its own. To this end, Lenin and his circle of advisers–his political bureau, or Politburo–began to organize their territory into what came to be called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or U.S.S.R. In theory, this was to be a federation of independent nationalities, to be joined by other "soviet republics" as revolution spread around the world. In practice, however, it was a reconstruction of the old Russian Empire–now simply under the auspices of the Communist Party. <span style="background: white; display: block; line-height: 15.6pt; margin: 5.5pt 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">At the Eleventh Party Congress, held April 1922, Lenin expanded his Politburo to include seven members, most of whom would play key roles after Lenin's death. They included: Trotsky, the hero of the civil war, and Lenin's own favorite; Stalin, recently elected as General Secretary of the Party; two close friends of Lenin, Kamenev and Zinoviev; and three others, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. The rivalries among these men took on a sudden importance when, on May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered his first stroke. His health had been poor for some time, and throughout 1921 he had complained of tiredness, taking long holidays at his home near the town of Gorki, southwest of Moscow. With this stroke, however, he began a precipitous decline that would lead to his death within two years.
 * __What were the main effects of the Bolshevik victory? What position was Lenin in by 1921?__**

__**Resources:**__

__**https://sites.google.com/site/ibhistoryrussia/syllabus-overview---imperial-russia/o-consolidation-of-new-soviet-state**__

__**https://rudbeckib.managebac.com/classes/10016451/events/10123769**__

__**http://www.s114478754.websitehome.co.uk/hostoryasrevisionguiderevolutionaryrussia.htm**__