The Civil War and the Revolutionary Period, 1917–22

Abstract

In the early years of glasnost, there was no explicit questioning of official interpretations of the February and October revolutions of 1917, or of Bolshevik theory and practice in the early years of Soviet power. Gorbachev and his supporters viewed the revolutionary period, from the turn of the century to the 1920s, as all of a piece. The vital role of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party continued to be emphasized; it was repeatedly claimed that Bolshevism had brought down the Russian monarchy, turned the workers and peasants against the Provisional Government, and formulated admirable decrees after the Revolution. The period 1917–22 continued to be seen as a period of heroic revolutionary struggle, when, despite bitter resistance by the old ruling classes and the whole capitalist world, the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious and started to construct a humane socialist society. Gorbachev’s speech in 1987 on the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution made no reference to the negative side of Bolshevism: the creation of the Cheka, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in 1918, the Red Terror, the curbing of the power of the soviets and trade unions, the banning of factions within the party or the suppression of the Kronstadt Revolt in 1921. Gorbachev passed cursorily over the period of the Civil War and said nothing about the ruthlessness of the Bolsheviks either before or after the Revolution.1 KeywordsBitter ResistanceLiberal Democratic PartyClass StruggleWhite GeneralOctober RevolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.