The Cheka

Feliks
Dzerzhinskii

Russian Civil War
• Whites vs Reds
Communist Propaganda poster by Viktor Deni reading ‘Either we kill capital or we die under the heel of capital’, 1919.

• Bolsheviks
Reds

Whites
• Tsarist Army Officers
• Cossacks (elite troops of Tsar’s army)
• Bourgeoisie
• Outlawed political groups

Uncle Sam unleashes his White Army dogs

Only the Red Army gives us bread

Salute to foreign comrades!

Peace and Liberty in the Land of the Council of Deputies

Trotsky as St. George

Summer 1918
• Trotsky organized the Red Army and movement of supplies

Whites - Allied Intervention
• In all, 14 countries would send troops into the
USSR
Who is Against the Soviets? White Army Man, Capitalist, Priest. Russia, c. 1917-1921.

War Communism
• Bolsheviks allowed the peasants to seize the land
• Factories came under the control of worker’s committees
• Nationalized banks
• Private accounts confiscated
• Foreign trade became a state monopoly
• All opposition groups made illegal (including
Mensheviks)

Trotsky vs Stalin
War Commissar Commissar of Nationalities

War Communism
• Nationalization of industry
“The Soviets and electrification make up the base of the new world.”

War Communism
• Compulsory labour was introduced
• Private trade suppressed

The Nature of War Communism
• Authorities finally decreed a food levy, demanding peasants turn in their entire produce

Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP)
“Socialist Russia will come from the
New Economic Policy”

New Economic Policy
• Some private trade permitted
• Peasants were allowed to sell surplus
• Workers in small factories, under 25 employees, were permitted to “purchase” their factory under a co-op agreement.

Lenin’s Final Years
“Lenin reading the Soviet newspaper “Pravda” = “Truth”

The Treaty of Rapallo
• USSR and Germany
• USSR would manufacture illegal war material for Germany forbidden by the T o V
• USSR would receive steel manufacturing technology from Germany

1922
• Bolshevik Party now called the “Communist
Party”
• Russia became known as the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics