Socialism in Europe and the Russia

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1. In the winter of 1917, conditions in the capital, Petrograd, were grim.
2. The workers’ quarters and factories were located on the right bank of the River Neva.
3. On the left bank were the fashionable areas, the Winter Palace, and official buildings, including the palace where the Duma met.
4. In February 1917, food shortages were deeply felt in the workers’ quarters.
5. Parliamentarians wishing to preserve elected government were opposed to the Tsar’s desire to dissolve the Duma.
6. On 22 February, a lockout took place at a factory on the right bank.
7. The next day, workers in fifty factories called a strike in sympathy.
8. This came to be called the International Women’s Day.
9. Demonstrating workers crossed from the factory quarters to the centre of the capital – the Nevskii Prospekt.
10. At this stage, no political party was actively organizing the movement.
11. Petrograd had led the February Revolution that brought down the monarchy in February 1917.

1. Army officials, landowners and industrialists were influential in the Provisional Government.
2. The liberals, as well as socialists among them, worked towards an elected government.
3. Restrictions on public meetings and associations were removed.
4. ‘Soviets’, like the Petrograd Soviet, were set up everywhere, though no common system of election was followed.
5. In April 1917, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile.
6. He and the Bolsheviks had opposed the war since 1914.
7. Now he felt it was time for Soviets to take over power.
8. April Theses contained three demands:
   a.) He declared that the war be brought to a close.
   b.) land be transferred to the peasants.
   c.) banks be nationalized.
9. He also argued that the Bolshevik Party rename itself the Communist Party to indicate its new radical aims.
10. Most others in the Bolshevik Party were initially surprised by the April Theses. They thought that the time was not yet ripe for a socialist revolution and the Provisional Government needed to be supported.
11. But the developments of the subsequent months changed their attitude.
12. Through the summer the workers’ movement spread.

1. The Bolsheviks were opposed to private property.
2. Most industry and banks were nationalised in November 1917.
3. This meant that the government took over ownership and management.
4. The land was declared social property and peasants were allowed to seize the land of the nobility.
5. In cities, Bolsheviks enforced the partition of large houses according to family requirements.
6. They banned the use of the old titles of the aristocracy.
7. To assert the change, new uniforms were designed for the army and officials, following a clothing competition organised in 1918 – when the Soviet hat(budeonovka) was chosen.
8. The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).
9. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks conducted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but they failed to gain majority support.
10. In January 1918, the Assembly rejected Bolshevik measures and Lenin dismissed the Assembly.
11. He thought the All Russian Congress of Soviets was more democratic than an assembly elected in uncertain conditions.