Politics of The Soviet Union - Background

Background

The Bolsheviks who took power during the October Revolution, the final phase of the Russian Revolution, were the first Communist Party to take power and attempt to apply Marxism (to be more specific, the Leninist variant of Marxism) in a practical way. Although they grew very quickly during the Revolution, from 24,000 to 100,000 members, and some support, 25% of the votes for the Constituent Assembly in November, 1917, the Bolsheviks were a minority party when they took power by force in Petrograd and Moscow. Their advantages were discipline and a platform supporting the movement of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors who had seized factories, organized soviets, appropriated the lands of the aristocracy and other large landholders, deserted from the army and mutinied against the navy during the Revolution.

Karl Marx made no detailed proposals for the structure of a socialist or communist government and society other than the replacement of capitalism with socialism, and eventually communism, by the victorious working class. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, had developed the theory that a Communist Party should serve as the vanguard of the proletariat, ruling in their name and interest, but, like Marx, had not developed a detailed economic or political program. The new Communist government of the Soviet Union faced alarming problems: extending practical control beyond the major cities, combatting counter-revolution and opposing political parties, coping with the continuing war, and setting up a new economic and political system.

Despite their relative discipline, the Bolsheviks were not of one mind, the Party being a coalition of committed revolutionaries, but with somewhat differing views as to what was practical and proper. These diverging tendencies resulted in debates within the Party over the next decade, followed by a period of consolidation of the Party as definite programs were adopted.