Lenin's role
How did the Bolsheviks deal with the threat from people who opposed them?
- Lenin’s presence was, apparently, vital for the October Revolution to go ahead and be a success.
-Lenin managed to persuade the Russian representatives except Trotsky to sign and end the war. He knew that Russia’s army couldn’t hold up against the Germans for much longer. If Lenin hadn’t been there, the representatives may have followed Trotsky. The war would have gone on and the Russians could have lost a lot of land, turning the Bolshevik’s supporters against them.
-Lenin decided to make a radical turnaround, in the form of the New Economic Policy during the Civil War
One of the element of the Bolshevik's trategy to stay in power was to build its forces of terror and wipe out opposition.
1. Closing down the opposition press
2. Denouncing and outlawing of opposition political parties like The Kadets;
3. Lenin set up a Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter - Revolution and Sabotage); this step brought military and units of the Red Guard under its control;
4. Lenin actively encouraged class warfare;
5. The legal system was abolished and replaced by revolutionary justice;
6. Striking civil servants were arrested;
CONCLUSION
Lenin's use of class warfare played well in Russia. Workers, soldiers and peasants supported by the end of privilege and the moves to more egalitarian society. The abolition of titles and the use of "comrade" as the new form of address gave power and dignity to the once downtrodden. Workers and soldiers became more cocky and assertive, rude to their "social betters". The socialist press ecouraged the preception of burzhui as the "enemies of the people". The state licensed and encouraged the people to plunder the houses of the middle classes, to "loot the looters". There were elements in Russian society that did not need much encouragement to do this.
THE ROLE OF THE LEADERS
PERSUATION AND COERCION
Trotsky's role
Lenin always intended to rule on his own and asserted this in his own party and in government.
The Bolsheviks crushed opposition and developed forces of terror and coercion, especially Cheka.
Lenin made economic concesions in the form of NEP (was accompanied by repressive measures as the Communists asserted their control) to ensure the survival of the regime
How did Lenin deal with the threat posed to his government by other socialists?
He played a decisive role in the communist take-over of power. His first post in the new government was as foreign commissar, where he found himself negotiating peace terms with Germany. He was then made war commissar and in this capacity, built up the Red Army which prevailed against the White Russian forces in the civil war. Thus Trotsky played a crucial role in keeping the Bolshevik regime alive. He saw himself as Lenin's heir-apparent, but his intellectual arrogance made him few friends, and his Jewish heritage may also have worked against him.
Quite a few leading Bolsheviks, including Kamenev and Zinoviev, were in favour of a socialist coalition government. They believed an isolated Bolshevik Party would have to maintain itself by terror and would almost certainly be destroyed by the civil war that would inevitably follow. Although, Lenin had always intended Bolsheviks to rule alone and he engineered the collapse of the talks. He did, however, make an alliance with Left Socialist Revolutionaries and brought them as a junior partners into the Sovnarkom.
METHODS USED TO ESTABLISH AUTHORITARIAN STATES
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