Luck played a big part into how Stalin defeated the left side of the party. Because of Trotsky’s illness he often missed political conventions meaning the he couldn’t get his view across to the general public. This meant that Stalin was a lot more popular than Trotsky. Also the fact that Lenin’s testament wasn’t published played a part in Stalin’s success. In his testament he heavily criticized Stalin; if it was published then it would have damaged Stalin’s popularity.
He was also tricked by Stalin into not attending Lenin’s funeral. Despite him being very close to Lenin in life, these events convinced his opponents that Trotsky did not actually revere the man, as the rest of them did. and also verged close to trying to factionalise the
The lack of unity especially in the high command of the white army was the reason why many of the generals such as Denikin and Yudenich refused to combine their forces for an all-out assault, and this then resulted in the total defeat of the white forces. Although the lack of unity in the whites was an important aspect for the Bolsheviks victory, we cannot forget about several other factors which were also important to the success of the reds. The most significant advantage that the Bolsheviks had during the civil war was Trotsky’s role as war commissar, without a doubt if it wasn't for Trotsky the reds might have lost the civil war. Trotsky had good management and organisation skills which he put to good use trying to turn the red army from a gang of inexperienced men into an effective fighting machine. The main he done this was using 50,000 ex tsarist officers to train and lead the red army, this proved unpopular with many Bolsheviks party members however.
In the testament, Lenin flawed all of the main power contenders at the time of his death. The testament stated that Stalin had to be removed from his powerful positions, Trotsky was too self-assured and Zinoviev and Kamenev didn’t support the October incident and therefore had questionable loyalty. By criticising all the main contenders to be named successor meant that it seemed Lenin didn’t want anyone to take charge of the USSR! This links with his ego affecting why there was no obvious successor because his testament shows how he didn’t trust anyone to be able to carry on his theory in the USSR. The
Why did the 1905 revolution fail? The 1905 revolution failed for a variety of reasons many of which are to do with the revolutionaries themselves such as a lack of leadership and that they were divided in their aims. One of the reasons that the 1905 revolution failed is that the revolutionaries had no leadership; this meant that they were unorganized and therefore attacks and industrial action were randomly taking place according to other strikes. Therefore the threat from each individual strike was much less of a threat to the Tsarist regime than they would have been had the industrial action been coordinated so that they happened at the same time; this allowed the Tsar and the army to be able to eliminate the individual threats much easier than had there been widespread attacks. Therefore the Russian revolution of 1905 failed because the revolutionaries were to easy to defend against as their attack were not in synchronization meaning the army only had to stop one group at a time meaning the revolutionaries suffered heavier casualties than they would have done.
Communist ideology aimed to establish justice for all, however, the lethal purges and gulags of the Stalinist era led to a general loss of confidence in the system and thus a low level of motivation in the work force. With lack of faith in the system the Soviet economy slumped. To add to this, the Soviet system was particularly inept at handling information. The deep secrecy of its political system meant that the flow of information was slow and cumbersome. An over-centralised government led to bureaucracy and corruption.
Was the Tsar’s personal inadequacy that led to the revolution of Feb/March 1917? Essentially, Tsar Nicholas II was a lacking ruler, he was unwilling to get rid of autocracy which then resulted to no reforms in government which was often corrupt mainly due to the fact that it was an autocracy. This led to the demands of the people being ignored causing there to be universal discontent all over the land of Russia, logically Nicholas’s inadequacy as a Tsar would be a reasonable consideration for what led to the 1917 revolution, however there were other reason not just Nicholas lacking strength in leadership which resulted to the revolution. For example, there had been lingering discontent growing especially with the industrial workers and peasants beforehand concerning their conditions of work. This led to an increase in strikes.
Nicholas II was faced with various issues during his reign from 1894-1917. His ineffectual personality was partly to blame for his ineffectual ruling. He was not able to listen to the needs of his public, and so violent uprisings such as Bloody Sunday occurred. His response was to initiate the October Manifest and the instigation of the Russian Duma, but neither of these pleased the public and so the February revolution of 1917 occurred, which ultimately created the fall of Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas II attempted to rule Russia as an autocrat as he believed that autocracy was the only was to save Russia from anarchy.
After a range of drastic changes came the downfall of Gorbachev as well as perestroika. This was due to Gorbachev's uncertainty due to resistance from hard-liners and encouragement from extremists which increased his uncertainty therefore leading to him not really following any consistent policies. He had very little political support as highlighted when there was an attempt to remove him from power. Gorbachev was almost powerless as Boris Yeltsin became president, we can therefore see that perestroika was indeed a failure. This shows that Gorbachev's policies were a significant cause of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe as due to perestroika and glasnost Russia became more independent of the communist party and their iron grip on the government and the people.
His reform included different aspect; such as political, social and economic. 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 however resentment of his wife and her involvement with the mystical Rasputin was widespread and did little to regain the peoples trust. Also the state of the country during World War One left a lot to be desired and created a lot of dissatisfaction amongst the Russian people. The personality of Nicholas II contributed to his downfall in 1917.