Lack of an alternative
5 important questions on Lack of an alternative
What was the impact of the small middle-class in Russia on the support of more moderate political parties in Russia?
- Kadets, who represented Russia's small business and professional classes, polled only 5% nationally in the January Constituency Assembly elections
- Kadets were branded 'former people' and faced ridicule from the masses and lost their homes
Why did socialist parties fail to form strong opposition to the Bolsheviks?
- Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were damaged by their association with the Provisional Government
- Moreover, even though the SRs polled 40% of the popular vote in January 1918 their core support was in the rural provinces
- Moderate SRs abandoned the mainstream politics to form a Komuch government in Samara; this proved to be politically weak; and unable to recruit peasants to fight (partly because Volga peasants had little problem with Bolshevik land policy) their 30,000 troops were destroyed by Red Army forces, 3 times the size by October 1918
How did Socialist parties actually help to legitimise the Bolsheviks' rule?
- gave legitimacy to the early decrees of the Sovnarkom and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet
- Also helped to win peasant support of the view that hadn't been won over by Bolshevik land reform
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What happened to the radical left SRs eventually?
How did the Mensheviks fail to act as any strong opposition to the Bolsheviks?
- Despite official protests, did little to oppose the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, as they hadn't done well in it (only polling 3%)
- Their belief that Russia's lack of industrialisation and huge peasant population meant that she wasn't ready for revolution led them to follow a terrible 'wait and see policy' where they expected the Bolshevik regime to collapse of its own accord
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