However in reality this was not the case, as because Lenin believed he was speeding up the dialectical phase of Marxism he adopted the ideology of ‘dictatorship’ rather than ‘communism’ due to his belief that he was the only one capable of leading the country to communism. The adjustment of ideology meant that there was little difference between his ideology and the ideology of ‘autocracy’ on which the preceding Tsars had based their rule. This meant that both the Tsars and the Communists believed in absolute rule, (good evaluation in this para)which in turn affected the nature of the government in many ways. Firstly, it affected the structure, resulting in both Tsarist and communist government sharing a ‘top down’ structure, in which the leader at the time had absolute control, as shown by Alexander III use of Land captains to increase state control, Nicholas II overruling the decisions of the
Russia was still an autocratic state (the Tsar held completed political power). The reformist groups wanted to amend this so the Tsar had less power. The reformist groups also known as the radical parties all had various different ideas as to how they were going to go about reforming the country. They grew in numbers from 1881 and gained a lot of support from various different social groups. The Socialist Revolutionary Party wanted to completely abolish the Tsar’s power and give the peasants power to advance Russia.
Lenin like the Tsars had absolute power in Russia to the extent that he could ignore advice from his party and single handily dictate changes. The tsars also had an almost identical amount of power with examples being Nicholas 2nd ignoring everyone’s advice and going to the front in 1916, Lenin ignored his party in signing the treaty of Brest – Litovsk and introducing the N.E.P. This evidence shows that like the Tsars Lenin did have absolute power within his government. The only real contrast between the Tsars and Lenin is that the Tsars had some, very weak local Government, with the Zemstva. In
How far do you agree that Lenin's leadership was the main reason why the Bolsheviks were able to seize power in October 1917? Lenin’s leadership was the main reason why the Bolsheviks were able to seize power in October 1917. Despite other contextual factors like the war and land contributing to the weakness of the Provisional Government, Lenin was still the main reason they were able to seize power, because without Lenin the Bolshevik party didn’t have any armed revolution on their agenda, they had even considered joining the Provisional Government like the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionists. Lenin was an extremely important individual in the seizure of the October Revolution. The leadership of the Bolshevik party, after Lenin had been forced into exile in Switzerland, didn’t press for an armed uprising.
To regain the support from people, he needed to carry out the reforms in the October Manifesto. His improvements included different aspects, such as political, social and economic approaches. However these were expedients rather than real reforms. He also appointed Peter Stolypin as the prime minister to stabilize the country. Nicholas II had tried his best to regain people’s support and stop the revolution tide through the reforms after the 1905 Revolution.
How far do you agree that communists and Tsars ruled Russia in the same way? The February Revolution of 1917 that brought down the Tsarist regime and led to the ascension of the Provisional Government, had much potential to bring about significant change from the autocratic regime of the Tsars. However, the totalitarian government of the communists seized power in the October Revolution and continued to maintain many aspects of Tsarist rule including the top-down approach to rule, their ideology in policy making and their repressive methods. Although the communists and Tsars appeared to rule differently in their theory, in practice their methods were to a very large extent the same. The top-down approach the rulers of Russia had in the period 1855-1964 were superficially different as the communists claimed to represent the people by giving power to the proletariat where as the Tsars were heavily elitist in their ideology.
After the 1905 revolution Russia was in need of reforms both economically and politically to allow it to maintain its role of a great power and to prevent another revolution occurring. The answer to this was the October Manifesto. However, due to the stubbornness of the Tsar, who was determined not to relinquish his autocratic powers, what may have appeared as reforms were largely superficial, making little change in particular to the Russian political system. Any law that the Lower House (the elected body) wanted to pass had to be agreed by the Upper House and then the Tsar, this meant that although it is giving the illusion that the people are picking their way of life and the rules in which they abide by, the Tsar still has complete control over them and therefore the extent to which they had undergone reforms was less than what it seemed to the naked eye. While the peasants began to see higher wages in the cities seeming positive it meant that many people moved causing an over-crowding in cities and 4/5 people were still peasants despite the wage increase.
For Lenin, the party was to be a group prepared to seize power as soon as possible yet on the other hand, for Martov, the main purpose of the party was to spread propaganda and raise the level of consciousness of the proletariat. This was because he did not believe that Russia was ready for a Marxist revolution for many years. Lenin believed that is the Mensheviks had their way, it would take years to start the revolution; they would just waste time on useless discussion and argument. Martov, replied that the revolution would fail if it did not have the support of the whole working class. The social democratic party remained spilt on the issue.
The personalities influenced the cold war, despite not being as significant as the other factors. Stalin being manipulative and ruthless instantly suggesting that relations with other countries, so different from his and he was very cautious of this. Source 8 suggests his personality, ‘threw Stalin back into neurotic solitude’ after the A bomb of 1945. Also after the death of Roosevelt which was Stalins ‘dream partner’ there was no need ‘to forge a strong relationship’ between the new politicians. When it
of 1918, 17). The Bolsheviks wrote this to the people to con them to come back on the Bolsheviks side, though the Bolsheviks were not actually going to follow through with it like we seen with the tsar an the October Manifesto. In the 1920s the Bolsheviks were emerging victorious from the Civil War. Though they had recognized the independence of former tsarist territories, they wanted to retain the East Slavic lands, and later reconquer the states of South Caucasus and Central Asia. The question of nationalism then came up due to the fact that most of the people in these states were non-Russian, in which the Constitution took a form of a treaty, ostensibly among a set of independent socialist republics (including the RSFSR), which established a federation or union (Const.