BOLSHEVIKS TOOK CONTROL OF RUSSIA

Dissatisfaction with the policies of Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government led more and more Russians to look to the Petrograd Soviet for leadership. As .the Provisional Government became weaker and the Petro grad Soviet grew stronger, any party that gained control of the Soviet had the potential to topple the Provisional Government and seize control of the country.

LENIN LED THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. The person who understood the ripe

political opportunity in Russia better than anyone else was V.1. Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, the most radical of the socialists parties. Lenin, whose real family name was Ulyanov, was born in 1870 into a well-educated Russian family. His father was a respected school official, and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. Lenin was a bright and studious child who received high grades in school. Few would have predicted that he would later become one of the most influential revolutionaries of the 1900s.

As a young man, Lenin had planned to be a lawyer, but shortly after he entered the university, the tsarist authorities expelled him. In the eyes of the authorities, young Vladimir Uyich Ulyanov was a dangerous person because his older brother, Alexander, had been executed for plotting to kill the tsar. Lenin then studied on his own, and, while earning a law degree, began reading the works of Karl Marx-a 19th

Century socialist philosopher. In his book The Communist Manifesto,

Marx wrote that capitalism would inevitably be overthrown by violent workers' revolutions. Lenin developed a firm belief in Marxism, and became convinced that force was necessary to abolish capitalism and establish a classless society. By the time Lenin was in his twenties, he was a detennined revolutionary socialist. Because of his politics, he was forced to spend many years aboard as an exile.

After Lenin's return to Russia in April, 1917, he put all this energies into gaining power for the small Bolshevik party. Beginning in

July, 1917, the Bolsheviks won broad support by promising peace to soldiers, land to peasants, and bread to workers. As the Bolsheviks won elections for representatives to the soviets, party strength increased. By the fall of 1917, the Bolsheviks had won control of the important Petrograd and Moscow soviets.

As part of their revolutionary activities, these soviets formed a workers' militia called the Red Guard. The Bolshevik Revolution took place in OctoberlNovember of 1917. At this time, the Red Guard, joined by pro­Bolshevik soldiers and sailors, seized the central government by force. The revolutionaries captured government buildings in the capital and stormed the Winter Palace, site of the Kerensky Provisional Government. All government ministers were arrested except Kerensky, who escaped and tried to fight against Lenin. With most of the Provisional Government leaders in prison, Kerensky failed to overcome the revolutionaries and soon fled the country.

After Lenin's successful and daring coup d'etat, the Bolsheviks moved quickly to set up a party dictatorship. They also changed the name of the party to communist party.

THE COMM1JNISTS FACED MANY ENEMIES. As the undisputed leader of the

communist party, Lenin became chief of state with unlimited power. He devoted his life to making Russia communistic by applying Marxist principles to Russian society.

In the early phase of this process, known as '<War communism," all private property was taken over by the state. Industries, banks, railroads, and shipping were all placed under government ownership. Landholdings of the Orthodox Church were taken by the state, and atheism, which is disbelief in the existence of God, was encouraged.

To increase the food supply, peasants were allowed to farm the land they had seized for themselves. However, when peasants tried to prevent food from being sent to the cities because people there could not pay for it, the Bolsheviks sent soldiers into farm villages to

take the grain by force. This action again made the peasants become angry and bitter toward their government.

In 1918 a furious Civil War broke out between the Bolsheviks, called the "Reds," and groups opposed to the revolution, called the "Whites." The war began in January, 1918, after Lenin used armed sailors to shut down the first freely elected Constituent Assembly in Russian history. Lenin took this action because the Bolsheviks did not have a majority in the assembly, and he was afraid oflosing power.

Lenin wanted to establish a communist dictatorship, but many Russians, from socialists to monarchists, opposed and fought against the dictatorship. These counterrevolutionaries were joined by other nationalities, such as Ukrainians, Poles, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, who saw a chance to break away from Russian role.

The civil war, which soon spread to almost every part of Russia, continued until 1920. Conditions created by this war were worse for Russia than those of\Vorld War 1. Famine and disease killed thousands, and total casualties were in the millions. Both sides committed terrible atrocities. Among the casualties were the former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and their five children. The entire family was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918 at Ekaterinburg, a town along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Meanwhile, Lenin led Russia out of World War I by signing a separate peace treaty with Germany - the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ­in March of 1918. Britain and France, still desperately fighting to defeat Germany, wanted to bring Russia back into the war. Thus, the Allies sent troops and supplies to Russia to help the opposition overthrow Lenin. The United States also sent troops to Russia but took no active part in the fighting. Japan, seeking to dominate eastern Siberia, occupied Vladivostok and other Pacific ports.

The Allies continued to take part in the Russian civil war even after an armistice with Germany ended World War I in November, 1918. Fearing that communism would spread to the rest of Europe, the Allies tried to destroy Lenin's regime. Faced with civil war and Allied

intervention, the communist government seemed likely to fall.

Yet the communists [mally defeated all their enemies. The opposition armies, widely scattered and uncoordinated, were unable to organize an effective military strategy. They were also unable to win over many Russian peasants because of the pro-landlord policy of the opposition generals. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, had built up a superior army under Leon Trotsky, the Commissar for War. In addition, Allied intervention aroused Russian nationalism and drew the people into a more united front against the counterrevolutionaries.

All of these factors helped bring victory to the Bolsheviks, and by late 1920 communist rule in Russia was secure against its enemies. Still, the communist regime enjoyed no real popularity.

MARxIST PRINCIPLES WERE MODIFIED.

To ease the strain of long years of war, the government in 1921 retreated from its policy of war communism and introduced instead the New Economic Policy (NEP). Under this program, the state still owned basic industries, but private enterprise in retail trade and small business was allowed. "Nepmen" (as small business people were caned) did well under the new policy. The peasants were also more satisfied, because, except for a tax on surplus grain, they were free to grow and sell their produce as they wished.

Under Lenin the communists laid the base for a powerful dictatorship by building a strong, well-organized party. Communist leaders ensured that the communist party controlled the government and the economy and used force and terror to put down aU enemies. The communists taught the ideas ofMarx and Lenin to the people, and many Russians became workers for the state.

In 1922 the communist party created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (commonly called the U.S.S.R. or Soviet Union) to take the place of the old Russian Empire. The Soviet Union then consisted of four republics, but after World War II it grew to include 15 republics

STALIN DEFEATS TROTSKY The death of Lenin in 1924 brought on

a bitter fight for power between two strong communist leaders, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Trotsky was a brilliant writer and speaker and the organizer of the Red Army. He was as well known as Lenin and was expected to become the new party leader. Joseph Stalin, whose real name was Joseph Djugashvili, was originally from Georgia, a region in the Caucasus Mountains. Stalin was not as well known as Trotsky, but he was a shrewd politician who used his post as party secretary to place supporters in key jobs.

The feelings of the times were on Stalin's side. The socialist world revolution that Trotsky supported was not occurring, and the idea had lost favor with Soviet leaders. Stalin, on the other hand, believed that the Soviet Union should develop itself as a 'workers paradise.' Only after that goal was achieved, Stalin believed could the world revolution spread to other countries.

In 1925 Stalin's policy was accepted at the 14th Party Congress, and by 1926 he was in control. Trotsky was dismissed from the communist party and exiled. In 1940 he was assassinated in Mexico by an agent of Stalin.