Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (U.S.S.R.) also called Soviet Union Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, or Sovetsky Soyuz, former northern Eurasian empire (1917/221991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.s)Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The capital was Moscow, then and now the capital of Russia.
During the period of its existence, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was by area the worlds largest country. It was also one of the most diverse, with more than 100 distinct nationalities living within its borders. The majority of the population, however, was made up of East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians); these groups together made up more than two-thirds of the total population in the late 1980s.
At its greatest extent, between 1946 and 1991 (the figures and descriptions given below refer to this period), the U.S.S.R. covered some 8,650,000 square miles (22,400,000 square kilometres), seven times the area of India and two and one-half times that of the United States. The country occupied nearly one-sixth of the Earths land surface, including the eastern half of Europe and roughly the northern third of Asia.
The U.S.S.R. extended more than 6,800 miles (10,900 kilometres) from east to west, covering 11 of the worlds 24 time zones. The most westerly point was on the Baltic Sea, near Kaliningrad; the easternmost was Cape Dezhnev on the Bering Strait, nearly halfway around the world. From north to south the U.S.S.R. extended some 2,800 miles from Cape Chelyuskin to Kuskha on the Afghan border. Nearly half the territory of the U.S.S.R. was north of 60° N, at the same latitude as Alaska, Baffin Island, and Greenland.
In addition to having the worlds longest coastline, the U.S.S.R. had the longest frontiers. To the north the country was bounded by the seas of the Arctic Ocean, and to the east were the seas of the Pacific. On the south the U.S.S.R. was bordered by North Korea, Mongolia, China, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. On the southern frontier there were three seas: the Caspian Sea, the worlds largest inland sea, as well as the almost completely landlocked Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, and Norway lay to the west.
The U.S.S.R. was the successor to the Russian Empire of the tsars. Following the 1917 Revolution, four socialist republics were established on the territory of the former empire: the Russian and Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republics and the Ukrainian and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republics. On Dec. 30, 1922, these constituent republics established the U.S.S.R. Additional union republics (Soviet Socialist Republics) were set up in subsequent years: the Turkmen and Uzbek S.S.R.s in 1924, the Tadzhik S.S.R. in 1929, and the Kazakh and Kirgiz S.S.R.s in 1936. In that year the Transcaucasian Republic was abolished and its territory was divided between three new republics: the Armenian, Azerbaijan, and Georgian S.S.R.s. In 1940 the Karelo-Finnish, Moldavian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian S.S.R.s were established. The Karelo-Finnish S.S.R. became an autonomous republic in 1956, leaving a total of 15 union republics (soyuznye respubliki). In addition to these, the U.S.S.R. as of 1990 was made up of 20 autonomous republics (avtonomnye respubliki), 8 autonomous provinces (avtonomnye oblasti), 10 autonomous districts (avtonomnye okruga), 6 regions (kraya), and 114 provinces (oblasti).
Under the constitution adopted in the 1930s and modified down to October 1977, the political foundation of the U.S.S.R. was formed by the Soviets (Councils) of Peoples Deputies. These existed at all levels of the administrative hierarchy, with the Soviet Union as a whole under the nominal control of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., located in Moscow. This body had two chambersthe Soviet of the Union, with 750 members elected on a single-member constituency basis; and the Soviet of Nationalities, with 750 members representing the various political divisions: 32 from each union republic, 11 from each autonomous republic, 5 from each autonomous region, and 1 from each autonomous district. In elections to these bodies, the voters were rarely given any choice of candidate other than those presented by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which, until the amendment of Article 6 of the constitution in March 1990, was the leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system. In theory, all legislation required the approval of both chambers of the Supreme Soviet; in practice, all decisions were made by the small group known as the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, itself strongly influenced by the Politburo of the CPSU, and were unanimously approved by the deputies. The role of the soviets in the individual republics and other territories was primarily to put into effect the decisions made by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
The political system was thus authoritarian and highly centralized, and this also applied to the economic system. The economic foundation of the U.S.S.R. was Socialist ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the economy of the entire country was controlled by a series of five-year plans that set targets for all forms of production.
Dramatic changes, both political and economic, occurred during the late 1980s and early 90s, ushered in by the adoption of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). On the economic side the planned, highly centralized command economy was to be replaced by the progressive introduction of elements of a market economy, a change that proved difficult to achieve and was accompanied by declining production in many sectors and increasing distribution problems. In the political sphere, amendments to the constitution in 1988 replaced the old Supreme Soviet with the Congress of Peoples Deputies of the U.S.S.R. The new congress had 2,250 members; one-third of these were elected on a constituency basis, one-third represented the political territories (as in the old Supreme Soviet), and the remaining third came from all-union social organizations such as the trade unions, the CPSU, and the Academy of Sciences. Voters were presented with a choice of candidates, and many non-Communists were elected. The Congress of Peoples Deputies elected a new Supreme Soviet of 542 members and also chose the chairman of that body, who was to be the executive president of the U.S.S.R. Congresses of Peoples Deputies were also established in each republic.
These congresses could be legitimately described as parliaments, and they engaged in vigorous debate over the economic and political future of the country. From 1989, conflicts developed between the parliament of the U.S.S.R. and those of the individual republics, mainly over the respective powers of the centre (the U.S.S.R. government) and the republics. These conflicts were exacerbated by the resurgence of ethnic nationalism and increasing demands for autonomy and even for full independence. Following the abortive coup of August 1991, in which the CPSU was heavily implicated, the party itself was abolished.
By December 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had virtually ceased to exist, and the future of its territories and peoples was uncertain. Three republicsEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuaniahad achieved complete independence and were internationally recognized as sovereign states, and several others were demanding independence. Attempts were made, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, to establish a new Union of Sovereign States with some degree of integration in foreign policy, defense, and economic affairs, but agreement among the remaining 12 republics was not achieved. Whatever the legal position, the union republics had begun to act as if they were sovereign states and were negotiating with each other, bypassing the vestigial central government. This process culminated on Dec. 8, 1991, in the signing of an agreement between the three Slav republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus for the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with an agreed common policy for foreign affairs and defense. The CIS later came to include all the remaining republics except Georgia, but great difficulty was experienced in arriving at agreed policies. The future thus remained uncertain, but there could be no disagreement with the statement by the leaders of the Commonwealth that the U.S.S.R. has ceased to exist as a geopolitical reality.
This article contains a history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1917 to 1991. For the geography and history of the former Soviet Socialist republics, see the articles Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine.
Late tsarist Russia
Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, Russia entered a phase of internal crisis that in 1917 would culminate in revolution. Its causes were not so much economic or social as political and cultural. For the sake of stability, tsarism insisted on rigid autocracy that effectively shut out the population from participation in government. At the same time, to maintain its status as a great power, it promoted industrial development and higher education, which were inherently dynamic. The result was perpetual tension between government and society, especially its educated element, known as the intelligentsia. Of the socioeconomic causes of tsarisms ultimate collapse, the most important was rural overpopulation: tsarist Russia had the highest rate of demographic growth in Europe; in the second half of the 19th century the rural population increased by more than 50 percent. Potentially destabilizing also was the refusal of the mass of Russian peasantry, living in communes, to acknowledge the principle of private property in land.
In the late 19th century the political conflict pitted three protagonists: tsarism, the peasantry (with the working class, its subdivision), and the intelligentsia.
The tsar was absolute and unlimited in his authority, which was subject to neither constitutional restraints nor parliamentary institutions. He ruled with the help of a bureaucratic caste, subject to no external controls and above the law, and the army, one of whose main tasks was maintaining internal order. Imperial Russia developed to a greater extent than any contemporary country a powerful and ubiquitous security police. It was a crime to question the existing system or to organize for any purpose whatsoever without government permission. The system, which contained seeds of future totalitarianism, was nevertheless not rigidly enforced and was limited by the institution of private property.
Some eighty percent of the empires population consisted of peasants. The vast majority of Russian peasants lived in communes (obshchiny), which held land in common and periodically redistributed it to member households to allow for changes in family size. The communal organization, composed of heads of households, exercised great control over members. Communal peasants did not own their land but merely cultivated it for a period of time determined by local custom. Under these conditions they had little opportunity to develop respect for private property or any of the other qualities necessary for citizenship. Politically they tended toward primitive anarchism. To some extent this also held true for industrial workers, some two million strong at the turn of the century, most of whom came from the village.
The intelligentsia was partly liberal, partly radical, but in either case unalterably opposed to the status quo. Radical intellectuals tried in the 1860s and 70s to stir the peasants and workers to rebellion. Having met with no response, they adopted methods of terror, which culminated in 1881 in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II. The government reacted with repressive measures that kept the revolutionaries at bay for the next two decades. In the meantime the field was left to liberal intellectuals, who in January 1904 formed the Union of Liberation, a semilegal political body committed to the struggle for democracy.
The oppositional groups received their chance in 190405 when Russia became involved in a war with Japan. Caused by Russias designs on Manchuria, the war went badly from the start, lowering the regimes prestige in the eyes of the people. The Union of Liberation, moving into the open, presented a program of fundamental political reforms. In January 1905, following the massacre of a worker demonstration bearing a petition drafted by the Union of Liberation (Bloody Sunday), the country exploded in rebellion, which, ebbing and flowing in response to news from the front, reached a climax in October 1905. On October 17 (October 30, New Style), faced with a general strike, Emperor Nicholas II issued a manifesto that promised the country a legislative parliament. The October Manifesto in effect ended the autocratic system. The following year Russia was given a constitution. Elections took place to a representative body, the State Duma, which was empowered to initiate and veto legislative proposals. The population received guarantees of fundamental civil liberties. Censorship was abolished.
Between 1906 and 1911 Russia was administered by the greatest statesman of the late imperial era, Pyotr Stolypin. Stolypin both ruthlessly suppressed disorders and carried out extensive reforms. The most important of these were laws allowing peasants to withdraw from the commune and establish independent farmsteads. Stolypin hoped to create a self-reliant yeomanry to act as a stabilizing force in the countryside. He also had other social and political reforms in mind. These were frustrated by the hostility of the court as well as of the opposition parties. He was murdered by a revolutionary in 1911.
The constitution of 1906 was frequently violated by both the government and the opposition. The former misused its emergency clauses to adjourn the Duma and rule by decree. The latter, especially the radical parties, sabotaged the legislative process. Even so, in its last decade Russia enjoyed greater freedom than ever before. It also enjoyed relative prosperity: on the eve of World War I it was the worlds leading producer of petroleum and exporter of grain. Conditions in the countryside gradually improved, and in 1916 peasants owned or rented 90 percent of the arable land.
The February Revolution
World War I weakened tsarism. The humiliating defeats that the Russian army suffered at the hands of the Germans, who expelled it from Poland, lowered the prestige of the monarchy further. There were also unsubstantiated rumours that Empress Alexandra, a German by origin, betrayed military secrets to the enemy. The opposition, instead of rallying behind the crown, exploited its difficulties to wrest further powers so as to be in a position to take charge once the war was over. The government, for its part, clung jealously to all its prerogatives, from fear that involving public figures in the war effort would make it impossible to reassert strong tsarist authority once peace was reestablished. In no other belligerent country were political conflicts waged as intensely during the war as in Russia, preventing the effective mobilization of the rear. One result of this was disorganization of food supplies. Although Russia produced more than enough to feed itself, economic mismanagement combined with the breakdown of transportation led in the third year of the war to a sharp rise in prices and to food shortages in the cities.
The final assault on the monarchy began in November 1916, when the head of the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, Pavel Milyukov, during a session of the Duma, implied the government was guilty of treason. During the exceptionally severe winter of 191617, food and fuel deliveries to the major cities, especially the capital, Petrograd (the name given to St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924), continued to decline. Dissatisfaction with the governments conduct of the war, coupled with economic hardships, led in late February 1917 (early March, New Style) to an outburst of popular fury. The revolt began with a mutiny of the Petrograd garrison, staffed by superannuated reservists; from them it spread to the industrial quarters. Nicholas II, persuaded by his generals that he and his wife were the main obstacle to victory, agreed to abdicate (March 2 [March 15, New Style]).
Instead of improving Russias war effort, the abdication of the man who, however unqualified to rule, symbolized for the mass of the population the idea of statehood led to the rapid disintegration of the country.
Authority was nominally assumed by a provisional government, issued from the Duma and headed by Prince Georgy Lvov. In fact, it was from the outset exercised by the Petrograd Soviet (Council), a body that claimed to represent the nations workers and soldiers but actually was convened and run by an executive committee of radical intellectuals nominated by the socialist parties. Similar soviets sprang up in other cities. In the summer of 1917, their socialist leaders united to form in Petrograd the All-Russian Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. The All-Russian Soviet assumed responsibility for ensuring that the provisional government, which it labeled bourgeois, did not stray from the path of progress. It legislated on its own without bearing responsibility for the consequences. On March 1 (March 14, New Style), fearing a counterrevolution, the Soviet issued Order No. 1, which instructed the troops to disarm their officers. Its effect was to cause a breakdown of discipline in the armed forces.
The regime of dual power quickly brought disarray to the country. In May representatives of the Petrograd Soviet entered the government, but this action did not stop the slide to anarchy as peasants seized land, soldiers deserted, and ethnic minorities clamored for self-rule. An offensive that the minister of war, Aleksandr Kerensky, launched on June 16 (June 29, New Style), 1917 in the hope of rallying patriotic spirits soon ran out of steam.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
From the beginning of the 20th century there were three principal revolutionary parties in Russia. The Socialist Revolutionary Party, whose main base of support was the peasantry, was heavily influenced by anarchism and resorted to political terror. In the first decade of the century, members of this party assassinated thousands of government officials, hoping in this way to bring down the government. The Social Democrats (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party) believed such terror to be futile; they followed the classic doctrines of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, according to which the development of capitalism inevitably created a radicalized proletariat that would in time stage a revolution and introduce socialism. The party split in 1903 into two factions, which soon developed into separate parties. The Mensheviks, loyal to traditional Social Democratic teachings, concentrated on developing ties with labour and rejected as premature political revolution in agrarian, largely precapitalist Russia. The Bolsheviks, who in some respects were closer to the Socialist Revolutionaries, believed that Russia was ready for socialism. Their leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, was a fanatical revolutionary, who managed to organize a relatively small but totally devoted and highly disciplined party bent on seizing power. Convinced that workers by themselves could not progress beyond peaceful trade- unionism, he wanted the party to direct the working class on the revolutionary path.
During World War I Lenin, living in neutral Switzerland, agitated for Russias defeat. This attracted the attention of the Germans, who came to realize that they could not win the war unless they somehow succeeded in forcing Russia to sign a separate peace. In April 1917 they arranged for Lenins transit through Germany to Sweden and thence to Russia, where they hoped the Bolsheviks would fan antiwar sentiment. To this end they generously supplied Lenin with the money necessary to organize his party and build up a press.
Sensing the weakness of the provisional government and the inherent instability of dual power, on arrival in Russia (April 3, 1917 [April 16, New Style]) Lenin wanted to launch a revolution immediately. He had to contend, however, with the majority of his followers who doubted it would succeed. The skeptics were vindicated in July 1917 when a putsch led by the Bolsheviks badly misfired. They were near success when the government released information on Lenins dealings with the Germans, which caused angry troops to disperse the rebels and end the uprising. Abandoning his followers, Lenin sought refuge in Finland.
After the abortive Bolshevik July rising the chairmanship of the provisional government passed to Kerensky. A Socialist Revolutionary lawyer and Duma deputy, Kerensky was the best-known radical in the country owing to his defense of political prisoners and fiery antigovernment rhetoric. A superb speaker, he lacked the political judgment to realize his political ambitions. Aware that such power as he had rested on the support of the All-Russian Soviet, Kerensky decided that the only threat Russian democracy faced came from the right. By this he meant conservative civilian and military elements, whose most visible symbol was General Lavr Kornilov, a patriotic officer whom he had appointed commander in chief but soon came to see as a rival. To win the support of the Soviet, still dominated by Socialists Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, Kerensky did not prosecute the Bolsheviks for the July putsch and allowed them to emerge unscathed from the debacle.
By general consent the decisive event in the history of the provisional government was Kerenskys conflict with Kornilov, which broke into the open in August (September, New Style). Although many aspects of the Kornilov affair remain obscure to this day, it appears that Kerensky deliberately provoked the confrontation in order to be rid of a suspected competitor and emerge as the saviour of the Revolution. The prime minister confidentially informed Kornilov that the Bolsheviks were planning another coup in Petrograd in early September (which was not, in fact, true) and requested him to send troops to suppress it. When Kornilov did as ordered, Kerensky charged him with wanting to topple the government. Accused of high treason, Kornilov mutinied. The mutiny was easily crushed.
It was a Pyrrhic victory for Kerensky. His action alienated the officer corps, whose support he needed in the looming conflict with the Bolsheviks. It also vindicated the Bolshevik claim that the provisional government was ineffective and that the soviets should assume full and undivided authority. In late September and October the Bolsheviks began to win majorities in the soviets: Leon Trotsky, a recent convert to Bolshevism, became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, the countrys most important, and immediately turned it into a vehicle for the seizure of power.
The Bolshevik coup
The events of February 1917 merit the name of Revolution because they were essentially spontaneous. October 1917 (November, New Style), by contrast, was a classic coup détat carried out by a small group of conspirators.
The Bolshevik Central Committee made the decision to seize power at a clandestine meeting held on the night of October 10 (October 23, New Style). There were considerable disagreements over the timing: Lenin wanted the coup to be carried out immediately; Trotsky and most of the others preferred to convene a national Congress of Soviets, packed with Bolsheviks, and have it proclaim the overthrow of the provisional government. A compromise was struck: the coup would take place as soon as practicable, and the Congress of Soviets would ratify it. This decided, Lenin returned to his hideaway, leaving the direction of the coup in the hands of Trotsky.
Disregarding the authority of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet, dominated as before by the Mensheviks and Socialists Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks invited those local soviets in which they enjoyed majorities to attend a national congress beginning on October 25 (November 7, New Style). In the meantime they built up an armed force to carry out a coup. The task was facilitated by the decision of the Soviet to form a Military Revolutionary Committee to organize Petrograds defense from an expected German attack. Since the Bolsheviks were the only organization with an independent armed force, they took over the Military Revolutionary Committee and used it to topple the government.
During the night of October 2425, Bolshevik Red Guards peacefully occupied strategic points in Petrograd. On the morning of October 25, Lenin, reemerging from his hideaway, issued a declaration in the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, which had no authority to do so, that the provisional government was overthrown and all power was assumed by the soviets. The declaration referred neither to the Bolsheviks nor to socialism, for which reason the inhabitants of the city had no inkling how profound a change had occurred. Kerensky tried to rally the armed forces to save his government but found no response among officers furious at his treatment of Kornilov. On October 26 the rump Congress of Soviets confirmed the transfer of power and passed several decrees submitted to it by Lenin, including one that socialized nonpeasant private land. It also formed a new provisional government, chaired by Lenin, that was to administer until the Constituent Assembly convened.
In Moscow the Bolshevik coup met with armed resistance from cadets and students, but they were eventually overcome. In the other cities of Russia soldiers, lured by Bolshevik slogans of immediate peace, crushed the opposition. The march to power was facilitated by the ambivalence of the Mensheviks and Socialists Revolutionaries who, though opposed to the October coup, feared a right-wing counterrevolution more than Bolshevism and discouraged physical resistance to it.
The Bolshevik dictatorship
Although Lenin and Trotsky had carried out the October coup in the name of soviets, they intended from the beginning to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling organs of the Bolshevik Party. The resulting novel arrangementthe prototype of all totalitarian regimesvested actual sovereignty in the hands of a private organization, called the Party, which, however, exercised it indirectly, through state institutions. Bolsheviks held leading posts in the state: no decisions could be taken and no laws passed without their consent. The legislative organs, centred in the soviets, merely rubber-stamped Bolshevik orders. The state apparatus was headed by a cabinet called the Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin, all of whose members were drawn from the elite of the Party.
The Bolsheviks were solemnly committed to convening and respecting the will of the Constituent Assembly, which was to be elected in November 1917 on a universal franchise. Realizing that they had no chance of winning a majority, they procrastinated under various pretexts but eventually allowed the elections to proceed. The results gave a majority (40.4 percent) of the 41.7 million votes cast to the Socialists Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks received 24 percent of the ballots. They allowed the assembly to meet for one day (Jan. 5 [Jan. 18, New Style], 1918) and then shut it down. The dispersal of the first democratically elected national legislature in Russian history marked the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship. In the months that followed, one party after another was outlawed, non-Bolshevik newspapers and journals closed, and all overt opposition suppressed by a new secret police, the Cheka, which was given unlimited authority to arrest and shoot at its discretion suspected counterrevolutionaries. The Peasant Union, representing four-fifths of the countrys population, which had opposed the October coup, was subverted from within and replaced by an organization created and run by Bolsheviks.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in order to distinguish it from Social Democratic parties in Russia and Europe and to separate the followers of Lenin from those affiliated with the nonrevolutionary Socialist International. The party was directed by a Central Committee. To streamline work, from March 1919 onward its management was entrusted to the Secretariat, the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo), and the Political Bureau (Politburo). The Secretariat and Orgburo dealt largely with personnel matters, while the Politburo combined legislative and executive powers.
One of Lenins highest priorities on coming to power was ending the war with the Central Powers. He feared that Russian soldiers, eager to return home to share in the distribution of looted land, would topple his regime if it continued the war. He also believed that an armistice on the Eastern Front would spark mutinies and strikes in the west, making it possible for the Bolsheviks to take power there.
Immediately on taking over, the Bolsheviks proposed to the belligerent countries an end to the fighting. The Germans and Austrians promptly agreed to the proposal. In negotiations held at Brest-Litovsk, an armistice was arranged (December 1917). This was to be followed by a peace treaty. The Germans, however, posed extremely harsh conditions, causing a split in the Bolshevik high command: Lenin favoured accepting whatever terms the Germans offered, but the majority of his associates, arguing that this would mean a betrayal of the German working class, refused to make formal peace with the imperial government. In the end Lenin prevailed by threatening to resign. The terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, signed on March 3, 1918, were very onerous: Russia lost territories inhabited by more than one-quarter of its citizens and providing more than one-third of its grain harvest. It also exempted citizens and corporations of the Central Powers from Soviet nationalization decrees. But the treaty saved the Bolshevik regime: for the next eight months it received critical diplomatic and financial support from Germany that enabled it to beat back political opponents.
Until the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk treaty the Allies made friendly overtures to the Bolsheviks, hoping with promises of military and economic assistance to prevent its ratification. A separate peace threatened them with military disaster because it freed the Germans to transfer hundreds of thousands of troops from the Eastern Front to the west, enabling them to achieve the breakthrough that had so far eluded them. Once Russia had dropped out of the war, the Allies tried desperately to reactivate the Eastern Front, using for this purpose the Czechoslovak Legion composed of ex-prisoners of war, Japanese troops, and small contingents of their own forces landed in the northern port cities of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Archangel). But these efforts proved unsuccessful, driving the beleaguered Bolsheviks ever closer into the arms of Germany. In a supplementary treaty signed on Aug. 27, 1918, Russia not only granted Germany additional economic right on its territory but obtained pledges that German troops would intervene to expel Allied forces from its territory and crush the so-called White armies formed in southern Russia. These arrangements came to nought because of the German surrender in November 1918. By the terms of the Treaty of Versailles Germany had to renounce what it had gained at Brest-Litovsk.
A few months after coming to power the new Russian regime initiated a series of unprecedented measures intended to destroy all vestiges of private property and inaugurate a centralized communist economy. These measures, which in 1921 received the name War Communism, had two primary objectives. One was political: as Marxists, the Bolsheviks believed that private ownership of the means of production provided the basis of political power. By nationalizing it, they undermined the opposition. They further acted in the conviction that a centralized and planned economy was inherently more efficient than a capitalist one and would in no time turn Soviet Russia into the most productive country in the world.
War Communism entailed four sets of measures: (1) the nationalization of all the means of production and transportation, (2) the abolition of money and its replacement by barter tokens as well as free goods and services, (3) the imposition on the national economy of a single plan, and (4) the introduction of compulsory labour.
In the first year of the new regime all but the smallest industrial enterprises were nationalized. Agricultural land, the main source of national wealth, was for the time being left at the disposal of peasant communes, with the understanding that sooner or later it would be collectivized. Private ownership of urban real estate was abolished, as was inheritance. The state (that is, in effect, the Bolshevik Party) became the sole owner of the countrys productive and income-yielding assets. Management of this wealth was entrusted to a gigantic bureaucratic organization, the Supreme Council of the National Economy, which was to allocate human and material resources in the most rational manner.
Money was effectively destroyed by the unrestrained printing of banknotes, which led, as intended, to an extraordinary inflation: by January 1923 prices in Soviet Russia, compared to 1913, had increased 100 million times. Ordinary citizens, along with the rich, lost their life savings. Barter and the issuance by government agencies of free goods replaced normal commercial operations. Private trade, whether wholesale or retail, was forbidden. All adult citizens were required to work wherever ordered. The independence of trade unions was abolished and the right to strike against the nationalized enterprises outlawed.
One of the most severe problems confronting the new regime was providing bread and other foodstuffs to the cities and the newly formed Red Army, because the peasants were unwilling to sell their produce for rapidly depreciating money (coloured paper) for which there was nothing to buy. Lenin resolved the problem by exceedingly brutal and ultimately counterproductive methods. He ordered peasants to surrender all surplus grain to state organs at prices that bore no relationship to its actual worth. To overcome peasant resistance, armed requisition detachments assisted by regular army units were sent to the villages to extract food. Peasants who resisted these expropriations were labeled kulaks (kulak is the Russian word for fist). In time the policy of forcible extractions led to a regular civil war that cost the lives of untold thousands on both sides. A secondary objective of this campaign was to establish political bases of the new regime in the countryside, which had remained almost entirely outside its control.
In the summer of 1918 the fortunes of the Bolsheviks were at their lowest ebb. They not only had to contend with rebellious peasants and hostile White armies supported by the Allies but they lost such support as they had once had among the workers: in elections to the soviets held in the spring of 1918 they were everywhere defeated by rival socialist parties. They dealt with the problem by expelling the Socialists Revolutionaries and Mensheviks from the soviets and forcing reelections until they obtained the desired majorities.
Their growing unpopularity moved them to resort to unbridled terror. The Cheka had carried out not a few summary executions in the first half of 1918. In July, on Lenins orders, the ex-tsar and his entire family were murdered in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg (called Sverdlovsk between 1924 and 1991) where they had been held prisoner. The formal Red Terror began in September 1918. The pretext was a nearly successful attempt on the life of Lenin by a Socialist Revolutionary, Fannie Kaplan. As soon as he recovered from what could have been fatal wounds, Lenin ordered the Cheka to carry out mass executions of suspected opponents. Thousands of political prisoners held without charges were shot. To prevent further attempts on his life and those of his associates, Lenin instituted the practice of taking hostages from among officials of the old regime and well-to-do citizenry: these were to be executed whenever the states interests required it. In the resulting carnage, an estimated 140,000 persons perished.
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The Civil War and the creation of the U.S.S.R.
In the context of the Russian Revolution, the term civil war had two distinct meanings. It described the repressive measures applied by the Bolsheviks against those who refused to recognize their power seizure and defied their decrees, such as peasants who refused to surrender grain. It also defined the military conflict between the Red Army and various White armies formed on the periphery of Soviet Russia for the purpose of overthrowing the communists. Both wars went on concurrently. The struggle against domestic opponents was to prove even more costly in human lives and more threatening to the new regime than the efforts of the Whites.
The Civil War in the military sense was fought on several fronts. The first White force, known as the Volunteer Army, formed in the winter of 191718 in the southern areas inhabited by the Cossacks. Organized by Generals Mikhail Alekseyev and Kornilov, after their death it was taken over by General Anton Denikin. Another army was created in western Siberia; in November 1918 Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak assumed command of this army and became the dictator of the territories where it was deployed. Several smaller White armies came into being in the northwest, the north, and the Far East. All were in varying measures supported by Great Britain with money and war matériel. The Allied intervention was initially inspired by the desire to reactivate the Eastern Front, but after the Armistice it lost its clear purpose, and it was continued on the insistence of Winston Churchill, who saw in Bolshevism a permanent threat to democracy and world peace. Neither the American nor the French contingents on Russian soil engaged in combat, and they were withdrawn after the Armistice. The British stayed on until the autumn of 1919, doing occasional fighting but mainly providing aid to the White armies.
The Bolsheviks were slow to form a professional army, in large measure because they feared that the officer corps that they would have to engage to command the largely peasant army could provide a breeding ground for the counterrevolution. They also did not relish the prospect of arming peasants, whom they viewed as class enemies. At first they relied mainly on partisans and Latvian volunteers. In the autumn of 1918, however, having suffered defeats at the hands of the pro-Allied, anti-German Czechs, they decided to proceed with the formation of a regular army manned by conscripts. Command over the troops and the formulation of strategic decisions was entrusted to professional officers of the ex-tsarist army, some 75,000 of whom were drafted. To prevent defections and sabotage, the orders of these officers were subject to approval of Bolshevik political commissars assigned to them. Officer families were treated as hostages. At the height of the Civil War the Red Army numbered almost five million men. Overall command of this force was entrusted to Trotsky as Commissar of War and Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council, but all operational decisions were made by professional officers, most of them one-time members of the Imperial General Staff.
The decisive battles of the Civil War took place in the summer and fall of 1919. Kolchak launched in the spring a drive on Moscow and approached the shores of the Volga when he was stopped by a numerically superior Red force and thrown back. His army disintegrated later in the year, and he himself was captured and shot without a trial, possibly on Lenins orders (February 1920).
Of all the White generals, Denikin came closest to victory. In October 1919 his Volunteer Army, augmented by conscripts, reached Oryol (Orel), 150 miles (250 kilometres) south of Moscow. In their advance, Cossacks in White service carried out frightful pogroms in Ukraine in which an estimated 100,000 Jews lost their lives. Denikins lines were stretched thin, and he lacked reserves. He advanced recklessly because he had been told by Britain that unless he took the new capital before the onset of winter he would receive no more assistance. In battles waged in October and November the Red Army decisively crushed the Whites and sent them fleeing pell-mell to the ports of the Black Sea. A remnant under the command of General Pyotr Wrangel held on for a while in the Crimean peninsula, from where it was dislodged in November 1920. The survivors were evacuated, joining the one and a half million Russians in emigration. Estimates of the casualties of the Civil War, most of them civilian victims of epidemics and hunger, range from a minimum of 10 million to a figure three times as high.
The communists victory cannot be attributed to the higher spirit of their troops. The rate of desertions in the Red Army was unusually high: Trotsky instituted a veritable reign of terror to prevent defections, including placing in the rear of the troops machine-gun detachments with instructions to shoot retreating units. Even so, desertions continued: at various times nearly one-half of the Red Armys effectives (1.9 million men) were absent from the ranks. In part the Bolshevik triumph can be attributed to superior organization and better understanding of the political dimensions of the Civil War. But in the ultimate analysis it was due mainly to the insurmountable advantages that they enjoyed. The Reds controlled the heartland of what had been the Russian Empire, inhabited by some 70 million Russians, while their opponents operated on the periphery, where the population was sparser and ethnically mixed. In nearly all engagements the Red Army enjoyed great preponderance in numbers. It also enjoyed superiority in military hardware: since most of Russias defense industries and arsenals were located in the centre of the country, they inherited vast stores of weapons and ammunition from the tsarist army. The Whites, by contrast, were almost wholly dependent on foreign aid.
One of the by-products of the Revolution was the separation of the borderland areas inhabited by non-Russians. When out of power the Bolsheviks had encouraged the process, advancing the slogan of national self-determination. Once in power, however, they moved decisively to reconquer these territories and reintegrate them into Russia. Except for those regions that enjoyed strong British or French backingFinland, the Baltic area, and Polandby 1921 the Red Army had occupied all the independent republics of the defunct Russian Empire. In 1922 Moscow proclaimed the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, composed of Russia, Belorussia (now Belarus), Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation. (The first U.S.S.R. constitution was formally adopted in January 1924. In 1925 the All-Union Communist Party, later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU], was formed.) Nominally a league of equals, the U.S.S.R. was from the beginning dominated by Russians. The federated state structure was a facade to conceal the dictatorship of the Russian Communist Party, the true locus of power.
Lenin and his associates viewed Russia as no more than a springboard from which to launch a global civil war. They feared that if the revolution remained confined to backward, agrarian Russia it would perish under the combined onslaught of the foreign bourgeoisie and the domestic peasantry. In their view it was essential to carry the revolution abroad to the industrial countries of the West, whose workers, they believed, were anxious to stop fighting one another and topple their exploiters. To organize and finance this effort, they formed in March 1919 the Third International, or Comintern. This organization was a branch of the Russian Communist Party and operated under the aegis of that partys Central Committee. By virtue of rules laid down in 1920 at the Cominterns Second Congress, Communist parties abroad were to be created either afresh or else by splitting Social Democratic parties; in either case, they were to be accountable to Moscow and not to their domestic constituencies.
Hoping to exploit the political and economic turmoil afflicting central Europe after the Allied victory, Moscow sent agents with ample supplies of money to stir up unrest. In Germany three revolutionary efforts undertaken with the help of local communists and sympathizersin early 1919, in 1921, and again in 1923failed, partly from the passivity of the workers, partly from effective countermeasures of the Weimar government. In Hungary a Bolshevik government under Béla Kun came to power in March 1919, but it lasted only four months before being overthrown. Efforts to incite social unrest elsewhere had no success either and eventually were given up in favour of infiltrating existing institutions by both legal and clandestine communist organizations.
By the early 1920s the Comintern succeeded in forming in most European countries, especially France and Italy, Communist Party affiliates that it used as pressure groups. The idea of world revolution, however, had to be postponed indefinitely, which compelled the Bolshevik leadership to concentrate on building in Russia an isolated communist state. The methods of government that they devised, centred on the one-party monopoly and known since the early 1920s as totalitarian, were emulated not by elements sympathetic to communism but by nationalistic radicals hostile to it, such as Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Culture and religion under communism
Determined not only to change drastically the political and economic order but also to create a new type of human being, the Bolsheviks attached great importance to every aspect of culture, especially education and religion.
They suppressed political dissidence by shutting down hostile newspapers and subjecting all publications to preventive censorship. In 1922 they set up a central censorship office, known for short as Glavlit, with final authority over printed materials as well as the performing arts. In literary and artistic matters, however, as long as Lenin was alive, the regime showed a degree of tolerance absent from other spheres of Soviet life. Aware that the overwhelming majority of intellectuals rejected them, and yet wishing to win them over, the Bolsheviks permitted writers and artists creative freedom as long as they did not engage in overt political dissent. Trotsky popularized the term fellow travelers for writers who, without joining the communists, were willing to cooperate with them and follow their rules. As a result, the early 1920s saw a degree of innovation in literature and the arts that contrasted vividly with the regimes political rigidity. Among the few writers and artists who joined the Bolsheviks were the Futurists, led by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who closely followed the models set by their Italian counterparts, and the Constructivists, Russian analogues of the German Bauhaus group. In the theatre and cinema, experiments in staging and montage, greatly influenced by Max Reinhardt and D.W. Griffith, were in vogue. Even so, many of Russias best writers and artists, finding conditions at home insufferable, chose to emigrate. The others withdrew into their private world and gradually ceased to publish or exhibit.
To destroy what they considered the elitist character of Russias educational system, the communists carried out revolutionary changes in its structure and curriculum. All schools, from the lowest to the highest, were nationalized and placed in charge of the Commissariat of Enlightenment. Teachers lost the authority to enforce discipline in the classroom. Open admission to institutions of higher learning was introduced to assure that anyone who desired, regardless of qualifications, could enroll. Tenure for university professors was abolished, and the universities lost their traditional right of self-government. Fields of study deemed potentially subversive were dropped in favour of courses offering ideological indoctrination. These reforms thoroughly disorganized the educational system, and in the early 1920s many of them were quietly dropped. Party controls, however, remained in place and in the following decade were used by Stalin to impose complete conformity.
The Bolsheviks, in common with other socialists, regarded religious belief as gross superstition, and they were determined to eliminate it by a combination of repression, ridicule, and scientific enlightenment. A decree issued on Jan. 20, 1918 (Feb. 2, New Style), formally separated church from state, but it went far beyond its declared purpose by prohibiting religious bodies from engaging in instruction and from collecting dues from their members. Since the state nationalized all church property, the clergy were left destitute. In 1919 major campaigns were undertaken to discredit church observances by staging mock Christmas holidays and exposing the remains of saints. Schools and youth organizations were ordered to engage in atheist propaganda.
These measures do not seem to have had the desired effect; on the contrary, the hardships and bloodshed accompanying the Revolution intensified religious feeling and led to increased church attendance. In March 1922 Lenin decided to launch a direct assault on the Orthodox church, the only organized body in Soviet Russia (apart from the minuscule Academy of Sciences) still outside Communist Party control. Using as a pretext the catastrophic famine of the previous year (see below), he ordered the church to surrender its consecrated vessels, essential for services, to be sold for famine relief. In fact, knowing that the church could not comply, he sought a pretext for charging it with refusal to obey laws and, at the same time, discrediting it in the eyes of the people for alleged callousness to human suffering. In the spring and summer of 1922 numerous incidents of resistance occurred, in consequence of which priests were arrested and numerous faithful killed. On Lenins orders mock trials were staged in Moscow, Petrograd, and other cities, in which some priests were sentenced to death and prison terms. A splinter Living Church, composed of renegade priests and operating under instructions from the Cheka, was created to serve the interests of the state.
Lenin concentrated on the Orthodox establishment because of its traditional links with the monarchy and its hold on the Russian population. But he did not spare the other faiths. A trial of Catholic priests resulted in death sentences and the closure of churches. Synagogues were also desecrated and Jewish holidays subjected to public derision. Muslim religious institutions suffered the least because of Lenins fear of alienating the colonial peoples of the Middle East, on whose support he counted against the Western imperial powers.
Foreign policy
With the failure of attempts to incite revolution abroad, the communist high command adopted in 192021 a two-track foreign policy. On the one level it engaged in regular diplomatic relations with any capitalist country prepared to deal with Soviet Russia. Following the signing of a British-Soviet trade agreement in 1921, other powers entered into commercial relations with Soviet Russia as well. Diplomatic recognition followed. The United States was the main holdout, refusing recognition on the grounds that the communist regime routinely violated accepted norms of international behaviour. Absence of diplomatic relations, however, did not prevent Americans from carrying on business with Soviet Russia. On a different level, Moscow strove to subvert the countries with which it maintained relations, using for this purpose branches of the Comintern, which it represented as a private organization.
The Soviet government paid particular attention to relations with Germany, which it saw as the key to a European revolution. Aware of Germanys bitterness over the Treaty of Versailles, Moscow, both directly and through the German Communist Party, identified itself with nationalist forces and incited hostility against France and Britain. A by-product of this policy was secret collaboration with the German military. Forbidden by the terms of Versailles to maintain a modern army and air force, and yet anxious to prepare for the day when it would avenge Germanys humiliation, the German military entered into agreements with the Soviet government. To circumvent the provisions of Versailles, they undertook to construct on Soviet territory industries for the manufacture of tanks, poison gas, and military aviation. In return they agreed to train Russians in the use of these weapons. This collaboration, which permitted the German army to develop and test the techniques of blitzkrieg, later used in World War II, continued until late 1933.
The Russians and the Germans also collaborated against Poland, which they viewed as a bastion of French influence in eastern Europe directed at them both. During the Russian Civil War Józef Pisudski, the Polish head of state, withheld military support from Denikin because of the White generals refusal to acknowledge unequivocally Polands independence. As soon as Denikin was crushed Pisudski ordered the army to invade Soviet Ukraine with the view of making it into a buffer state that would protect Poland from Russia. The invasion, launched in April 1920, was successful at first but soon turned into a rout. In August 1920 the Red Army approached Warsaw and seemed poised to take it. The Germans forbade the French to ship military supplies across their territory to Poland. Gross military mistakes by the Red Army permitted the Poles to lift the siege of their capital and launch a counteroffensive. Severely mauled, the Red Army retreated in disarray. In the Treaty of Riga (March 1921), Soviet Russia had to give up sizable territories to which it had laid claim.
The communist regime in crisis: 192021
The policies of War Communism brought about an unprecedented economic crisis. In 1920, when the Civil War was for all practical purposes over, industrial production was about one-quarter of what it had been in 1913, and the number of employed workers had fallen by roughly one-half. Productivity per worker was one-quarter of the 1913 level. Most painful was the decline in the production of grain. Compelled to surrender all the grain that government officials decided they did not require for personal consumption, fodder, or seed, and forbidden to sell on the open market, the peasants kept reducing their sown acreage. Such reductions, combined with declining yields caused by shortages of fertilizer and draft animals, led to a steady drop in grain production: in 1920 the cereal harvest in central Russia yielded only two-thirds of the 1913 crop. In the cities bread rations were reduced to one or two ounces a day.
It required only one of the periodic droughts that customarily afflict Russia to bring about a massive famine. This happened in early 1921. There was a catastrophic plunge in foodstuff production in the areas that traditionally supplied the bulk of grains. Affected were 30 provinces: at the height of the famine some 35 million people suffered from severe malnutrition. The hungry resorted to eating grass and, occasionally, to cannibalism. The losses would have been still more disastrous were it not for assistance provided by the American Relief Administration, headed by the future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, which, with moneys from the U.S. Congress and voluntary contributions, fed most of the starving. Even so, the human casualties of the 1921 famine are estimated at 5.1 million.
By this time the entire countryside of the Soviet state was in rebellion: hundreds of thousands of peasants fought the Red Army and Cheka detachments. In the most rebellious provinces, such as Tambov, the authorities employed indiscriminate terror against the rural population in order to isolate the partisans, resorting to executions of hostages and mass deportations.
Such widespread rural unrest forced Moscow to consider abandoning the policies of forced food requisitions. This it was very loath to do for fear of opening the floodgates to a capitalist restoration. Moscows hand was forced by a mutiny of the Kronshtadt naval base, near Petrograd. Since 1917 a Bolshevik stronghold, in February 1921 Kronshtadt raised the banner of revolt against the communist dictatorship, demanding the restoration of liberties and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. The mutiny was suppressed by military force, and most of the surviving sailors were either executed or sent to concentration camps. But even as it was being crushed, the revolt demonstrated that major changes in economic management had become unavoidable.
While the Kronshtadt mutiny was still in progress, Moscow announced the abolition of the universally hated policy of grain requisitions, replacing it with a tax in kind. Whatever grains and other produce the peasants had left over after meeting their tax obligations, they were free to dispose of. Initially the authorities expected them to barter surplus food for manufactured goods, but, since such goods were not available, they had to sanction free trade. Step by step, other sectors of the economy were liberalized, with private enterprise allowed in the consumer sector of industry. The commanding heights of the economy, embracing heavy industry, transportation, and foreign trade, remained firmly in government hands. A new currency, called chervonets, based on gold, replaced the worthless ruble. Thus was inaugurated the New Economic Policy (NEP), which Lenin expected to last for an indeterminate period; during this time the country would recover from the calamities of War Communism and the population would acquire a higher economic culture. The results were soon visible: by 1928, when Stalin abruptly terminated the NEP, agricultural productivity in Russia had attained prerevolutionary levels.
Afraid that economic liberalization would encourage dissent, Lenin accompanied it with intensified political repression. In 1922 the Cheka was abolished and replaced by the GPU (State Political Administration; after 1923, OGPU, or Unified State Political Administration). Formally, the new security police was to act less arbitrarily. In reality, its powers were even greater than those of the Cheka, since, in addition to wide discretionary authority to deal with political opponents and run a network of concentration camps (the Gulag), it was charged with penetrating all economic institutions to forestall sabotage by so-called Nepmen.
In 1922 the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were subjected to a sham trial, which ended in their being condemned to death on spurious charges of counterrevolution; only international protests and fear of retaliation from Socialist Revolutionary terrorists caused the execution of the sentences to be deferred. Lenin also responded vigorously to dissent in the labour movement, the so-called Workers Opposition, led by Bolshevik veterans who objected to the bureaucratization of the state and the elimination of workers from decision making. A secret clause in the party regulations forbade the formation of factions, by which was meant any organized resistance within Communist Party ranks to the directing party organs. Under this provision the leaders of the Workers Opposition were purged and all subsequent signs of independence in worker circles repressed. This regulation is widely credited by historians with having paved Stalins rise to power, since it enabled him, after he was appointed general secretary, to depict all opposition to him and his policies as illegal factionalism.
Lenins disillusionment
Lenins health began to fail in 1921; it deteriorated further during the following year, when he suffered several strokes. Forced gradually to withdraw from day-to-day activity, he had the opportunity to survey his achievement. It did not please him. There is considerable evidence that if his health had allowed it he would have carried out major reforms in the political and economic structure of the Soviet state.
One cause for concern was the growing bureaucratization of both party and state. Under the terms of the strict discipline that Lenin imposed, the ruling party became increasingly centralized, with its directorateheaded by the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committeemaking decisions on its own authority without consulting the party cadres. Dissent from lower organs was ignored and punished if pressed. The local branches of the party lost the right to elect their officers; these were routinely appointed by the Secretariat. The result was ossification of the Communist Party and undue concentration of power in the hands of the Moscow apparatus. The latter was increasingly dominated by Joseph Stalin, on whom Lenin relied as an efficient administrator and whom he had agreed to promote in April 1922 to serve as the partys general secretary. Stalin used his authority to appoint officials personally loyal to him and hostile to his archrival, Leon Trotsky.
The state apparatus grew by leaps and bounds, in part because the government assumed many responsibilities previously exercised by private interests, including the entire national economy, and in part because holding a government post gave access to scarce commodities. Short of communist personnel, Lenin was required to employ in managerial and technical positions many of the same experts who before the Revolution had served the tsarist regime and private enterprises. In some commissariats 80 percent or more of the officials were carryovers from the tsarist civil service. Lenin believed that they injected old bureaucratic habits into the Soviet government but he had no one with whom to replace them.
There were problems with the national minorities. Lenin insisted on the reconquered republics being deprived of all freedom, except of a purely formalistic kind. But he wanted the ethnic minorities treated with tact and deference in order to overcome their suspicion of Russians. He was dismayed to note the emergence in Communist Party ranks of Great Russian chauvinism. In the last months of his active life, the winter of 192223, he spent a great deal of time on this matter. He strenuously objected to the methods used by Stalin to crush the objections of his fellow Georgians to Georgias entry into the new Soviet Union as a member of the Transcaucasian Federation, rather than directly, as a sovereign Soviet republic. The dispute nearly caused Lenin to break personal relations with his protégé.
A sense of failure haunted him: except for holding onto power, he had succeeded in none of his plans.
The struggle for succession
Lenins growing incapacitation led in 1922 to a power struggle within the party: it would culminate five years later in Trotskys banishment and Stalins unchallenged dictatorship.
On the face of it, Trotsky was the natural heir to Lenin, since it was Trotsky who had organized the October coup and managed the Red Army in the Civil War. A superb orator and lively writer, he had an international reputation. His chances of succeeding Lenin, however, were more apparent than real. Trotsky had joined the Bolshevik party late (August 1917), having for many years subjected it to savage criticism; he thus never belonged to its Old Guard. He was personally unpopular for his arrogance and unwillingness to work as member of a team. His Jewishness was no asset in a country in which Jews were widely blamed for the devastations wrought by communism. Last but not least, bored by the routine of paperwork, he was a poor administrator.
Although far less known, Stalin was much better positioned to succeed Lenin. Intellectually unprepossessing, a dull speaker and lacklustre writer, he operated behind the scenes. Realizing early that the centralized system of government that Lenin had created vested extraordinary power in the party machine, he avoided the spotlight and instead concentrated on building up cadres loyal to himself. By 1922 he was in a unique position to manipulate policies to his own ends by virtue of the fact that he alone belonged to both the Politburo, which set policy, and the Secretariat, which managed personnel. To thwart Trotsky he entered into an alliance with Grigory Zinovyev and Lev Kamenev, forming with them a triumvirate that dominated the Politburo and isolated their common rival.
Aware that his followers were squabbling and deathly afraid that the party he had built on the principle of disciplined unity would fall apart after his death, Lenin tried to interfere, but he was unsuccessful. The triumvirate, ostensibly from concern over his health, ordered him to abstain from involvement in government affairs. From December 1922 onward Lenin lived under virtual house arrest.
On his death in January 1924 Lenin was embalmed and put on permanent display in a mausoleum in Red Square to provide superstitious peasants with a visible symbol of sainthood. By then power was in the hands of the triumvirate, which Stalin before long broke up to assume undisputed personal leadership. The party cadres, aware of the regimes unpopularity, supported him, for he promised to provide continued strong leadership, repel all democratic challenges, and maintain the privileges they had gained since November 1917.
MLA style: "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016.
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