Soviet Russia Part 2 Lenin WHO WAS LENIN

Soviet Russia: Part 2 Lenin

WHO WAS LENIN? • Youth and early career • Dad was provincial director • Older brother was involved in plot to kill Alexander III • Lenin studied law • Fascinated with Marxism • Published Marxist newspaper “Iskra” (or the Spark)

WHO WAS LENIN? • Leader of Bolsheviks • Social Democratic Party • Lenin and followers called themselves Bolsheviks (radical) and different from moderate Russian Marxist, the Mensheviks. • Believed in elite leaders • Impatient revolutionary (agitator) rather than more patient moderates. • Exiled from 1905 -1917 • Germans smuggled him back into Russia to start uprising

Early Measures of the Bolshevik Regime: Reform Laws • Russian Orthodox was long seen as a reactionary/ conservative tool • Bolsheviks sought to destroy • Church & State separated • Church property seized • Religious instruction prohibited • Only civil marriage allowed • Changed to Gregorian Calendar

Early Measures of the Bolshevik Regime: The Constituent Assembly November Election • Bolsheviks lost to more moderate Socialist Revolutionary Party • 420 -225 Bolsheviks dissolved assembly after 1 session Cheka Organized and Bolshevik dictatorship created

Early Measures of the Bolshevik Regime: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The Civil War • November Revolution caught the moderates off guard • By Spring of 1918, their efforts to topple Lenin began

The Civil War • Reds vs. Whites • Leon Trotsky- Red Army • Whites- Anti-Communists • Divided between liberalism and socialism • Many feared White victory would bring back old order

The Civil War • Allied Intervention • French, British and American troops were sent to prevent Germans from gaining raw materials (Archangel Expedition) • Japanese helped in the east • Allies didn’t really fully commit to white forces to overthrow Lenin • Soviets still never forgot these western invasions and interference

The Civil War • Soviet Territorial Losses • In the West, Finland the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained independence, while Rumania seized the province of Bessarabia • Independence movements failed, however, in the Ukraine and in Georgia and Armenia in the Caucasus. In 1920, Poland invaded Russia.

The Civil War • Soviet Territorial Losses • Poland Marshal Jozef Pilsudski desired to retake land lost to Russia during Polish Partitions • Polish invaded Ukraine and took Kiev • Soviet counteroffensive reached Warsaw, but was stopped • Both sides concluded an armistice by October that place Poland’s border east of the Curzon Line

The Civil War • War Communism • program that centered on forced grain seizures and class war between the “Kulaks” (ill-defined middle class peasants) and others. • Nationalization of companies and industries • Private trade prohibited • Requisitioned food from peasants to feed the cities

The Civil War • The Kronstadt Rebellion • March 1, 1021, rebellion broke out at naval base near Petrograd • Trotsky and Red Army put down rebellion

The New Economic Policy • NEP- Partial restoration of capitalism • State retained ownership of large industries, transportation and trade • Small industry were turned back over to private operators.