Russia and Revolution

tsarist russia

World War 1

February Revolution-1917

October Revolution

Civil War 1917-22

romanovs

marx

planning

war communism

bolsheviks

who is russia in 1920?

bolsheviks win

NEWER FLAG: 1955-1991

Untitled Slide

SECRET POLICE, EXILE IN SIBERIA?

BRAIN DRAIN

PRIVATE PROPERTY

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

1924 LENIN DIES

CONFLICT WITHIN PARTY

• Bolsheviks united under the flag of patriotism- external threats during the Civil War
• Sailors become the enemy within. Theyuse Marx’s directive that ‘you have nothing to lose but your chains!’ as an inspiration to fight against the communists

why a NEW ECONOMIC POLICY?

• Lenin had to accept international aid to ease the famine - 7 million deaths.
• 118 uprisings in the countryside in February 1918
• War Communism made farmers andthe workers in towns and cities unhappy: longer hours, less food
• if you were caught at a black market, you were shot
• In March 1921 sailors at the Kronstadt naval base mutinied- 20,000 deads

NEP: "Bridled capitalism"

the NEP

• The requisition of grain was ended. Replaced by ‘a tax of kind’, which amounted to a certain % of a farmers harvest. Peasants who grew surplus food could sell the surplus for a profit and pay 10% tax (by 1924 cash rather than grain) to the government on any profit made

MARKETS!

• Markets and private trading were legalized. Factories with fewer than 20 workers were returned to private ownership to be run for profit.

what was the NEP?

• trade agreements resumed
• rationing phased out
• cash wages introduced
• new currency
• state retained control over "Commanding Heights" of industry (coal, iron, steel, rail, shipping, finance

justification

• Lenin: privately admits it's a final and desperate attempt to respond to economic crisis
• Bolsheviks were forced into war communism due to WWI... shouldn't be afraid to learn from Bourgeosie specialists

sassy Lenin to party delegates

• 'the real meaning of the New Economic Policy is that we have met a great defeat in our plans and that we are now making a strategic retreat’.
• 'Please don’t try teaching me what to include and what to leave out of Marxism: eggs don’t teach their hens how to lay!’

great industrialization debate

• would USSR shuffle into industrialization on the back of a donkey?
• Bukharin, had economic training, wanted a long NEP transition

Trotsky

NEP men eww

scissors crisis

scissors crisis

• price of farm products was rising
• price of industrial products was falling
• concern: kulaks (independent and strong-willed farmers) got rich
• But: this ignored market force

How to solve the "crisis"?

• left: tax the kulaks, channel $ to industry. State seizes control of farm
• city boy Bolsheviks assume farms can be organized like factorie
• fear:need to industrialize fast to overcome foreign counter-revolution

enter Josef Stalin

STALIN PLAYS THE GAME

• Stalin is not a philosopher
• aligne with the right against Trotsky, drove him to Mexico and had him assassinated

stalin isn't done

• now he turns on the Right
• executed Bukharin and others after show trials
• by mid-1930's, all foes are dead.