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Unlock This CourseSeizing power was one thing. Keeping it was harder. The Bolsheviks controlled Petrograd but not the whole of Russia, and most people were waiting to see what they would do. On 26 October 1917 (Russian calendar) the Second Congress of Soviets began to answer that question. It approved a new government, the Council of People's Commissars, with Lenin as chairman. It also passed the first Bolshevik decrees.
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It called on all the countries fighting the war to begin talks for a 'just and democratic peace', with no land taken by force and no payments from the losers. The Allies ignored it. For tired soldiers and their families it was exactly what they wanted to hear.
It ended private ownership of the big estates, with no payment to the owners. Local committees were to share the land out among the peasants. Many peasants had already seized land, so the decree approved what was happening and won their support.
Other early decrees gave workers a say in running factories and shut down newspapers that opposed the new government. The decrees were significant because they delivered the slogans Peace and Land, won support from soldiers and peasants, and showed that the Bolsheviks would use their power to make big changes straight away.
There was a problem. Elections for a Constituent Assembly had been promised before the takeover, and they went ahead in November 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries won about 40 per cent of the votes. The Bolsheviks won about a quarter. The Assembly met in Petrograd on 5 January 1918 and refused to accept the Bolshevik decrees. The Bolsheviks walked out. The next morning armed guards stopped the delegates from entering, and the government announced that the Assembly was closed. Soldiers had also fired on people marching in support of it.
The Bolsheviks said that the soviets spoke for workers and peasants better than an Assembly elected from old party lists. Their opponents said the Bolsheviks had ended Russia's first free elections because they lost them. The closure was significant because it showed the Bolsheviks would not share power. After it, opposition parties had little legal way to challenge them, and many opponents turned to armed resistance.
The Bolsheviks had promised peace, but Germany wanted very harsh terms. An armistice (an agreement to stop fighting) began in December 1917, and talks took place at Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky, who led the Russian side, hoped to drag them out until revolution spread to Germany. In February 1918 he declared 'no war, no peace': Russia would stop fighting but would not sign. Germany then advanced again, taking large areas with almost no resistance.
Lenin saw that Russia's army had fallen apart. Some Bolsheviks wanted a 'revolutionary war' against Germany. Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks must sign at any price to save their revolution, and he persuaded his party to agree. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918.
The effects were serious. Many Russians were furious at the loss of so much territory, and some Bolsheviks thought the treaty was a betrayal. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had been working with the Bolsheviks, left the government in protest. Britain and France, Russia's former allies, were angry that Russia had left the war. The treaty was cancelled in November 1918, after Germany's defeat in the First World War. But it gave the Bolsheviks the breathing space they needed to survive. A civil war was about to begin, as you can read in Reds Against Whites: The Russian Civil War.
The Bolsheviks also set up the Cheka in December 1917, under Felix Dzerzhinsky. Its full name was the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. It hunted down anyone thought to oppose the government, including officers, former officials, rival socialists and people accused of hoarding food. It could arrest and imprison people and carry out executions without a proper trial. The Cheka made people afraid to speak out, which helped the Bolsheviks keep control, and it became far more violent during the Civil War.
This is a Paper 2 Section A (a) question. You choose one of the two topics and describe two features of it. One feature on its own can score no more than 3 marks, so give two, each with some supporting detail.
Describe TWO features of EITHER the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk OR the Cheka. [6 marks]
One feature of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed in March 1918, was that Russia lost huge amounts of land and resources to Germany. Russia gave up Poland, the Baltic lands, Finland and Ukraine, which meant about a third of its population and farmland and most of its coal mines.
A second feature is that it took Russia out of the First World War. Lenin had argued that the Bolsheviks must sign even on harsh terms, because the army had fallen apart. This gave the Bolsheviks time to deal with their enemies at home.
What lifts this to the top level: two clearly different features, each backed by precise facts such as dates, places and the reason for the feature.
Start each paragraph with the feature in one clear sentence, then add two supporting facts. Nothing else is needed, because a 'Describe TWO features' question does not ask for a judgement.