POLITICS 1917-1924
Had to deal with internal and external opposition. Party was becoming a mass movement, how would they turn the party into a government.
Tsarist elements still remained, most obviously the bureaucracy, if the Bolsheviks sack all of them, who will they replace them with. Council of People’s Commissars, 10 members, the most powerful body, power was concentrated on just a few people. Bolsheviks begin to bring their own people into the bureaucracy, this leads to Stalin’s appointment as Gen Sec in 1922 which would prove to be a very important position, in 1918 it was a shit job. By 1921 the bureaucracy is 10X larger than the Tsarist one, consuming 90% of all the paper in Russia… As the size of the party grew, it became more corrupt.
In the 1921 conference, Lenin introduced a ban on factions i.e. no internal opposition, for some reason, this was actually very effective.
To deal with external opposition they won the civil war. Also arrested a vast number of SRs and Mensheviks. Cheka played a very important role in the Red Terror which ran from 1921 to 1923. Terror was used as part of an official government policy, it was a tool of control. Innocent people got caught up in what was a bit like a dry run for the purges. Feelix Dhzerzhinsky led it, bit of a sadist. Tsar and his family are killed in Ekaterinburg in 1918. The terror was responsible for around 2 million deaths.
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