TowhatextentdidtheBolsheviksdeviatefromtheiroriginalpolicytowardsestablishing asocialiststate.Howfarwasthisjustifiablebythecivilwar?

The Bolshevik consolidation of power undoubtedly compromised the Party's ideology, in both economic and political terms. However, it could also be argued that much of what the Party did in the decade after it came to power was consistent with the principles espoused by Marx and Lenin. When they came to power, Russia was still in a pre-industrial state and the Bolsheviks had no idea how to achieve socialism. Hence, they were forced to make decisions which compromised their ideology. Marx asserted that all societies passed through historical stages. One of these was capitalism. Its role was to industrialise society and create wealth. Socialism was historically inevitable, due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism as it could not distribute the wealth it created. Eventually, the working class would overthrow the capitalists and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat a system in which only the workers would have power. Wealth could then distributed more evenly in society. Lenin made a number of significant changes to Marxs theories. He asserted that nations in the early stages of capitalism were also ripe for socialist revolution; the industrialisation process could be completed once socialism had been achieved. He also argued that revolutions could be staged not by the working class, but by a professional band of revolutionaries. Their commitment would make up for the lack of a large working class in Russia. Clearly, these alterations to Marx's policies were Lenin's ill-judgement because it meant that the Communist Party would have to rule Russia dictatorially until a large working class support base could be created. Just as after his return in April, Lenin overcame the Provisional Government by exploiting and introducing reforms that the Provisional Government had failed to deliver. He introduced these in his April Theses with the slogan of Peace, Bread and Land. From here on till attaining power, the Bolsheviks effectively delivered justice to this slogan, very much with the support of the Russian public. They had already been working on gaining support of the proletariat since the February Revolution and after stepping up to the peasants land problem the Bolsheviks had improved their relations with the much important proletariat. They effectively handled food shortages by establishing a well-rounded control of the railways and transport with the working class carrying out Bolshevik orders. Backing Russia out of the losing struggle against Germany was perhaps the most important factor which led to Bolsheviks gaining immense support. Lenin was a very skilled pragmatic politician; he would change his mind, then portray his new idea as the most Marxist position; and this is exactly what happened after October. Every action he took was an example of his pragmatism, mostly trying to tackle the problem at hand.The Bolsheviks crushing of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 and their subsequent outlawing of all other parties showed that they were not prepared to share power. This absolutist claim made civil war unavoidable. A number of rebel armies were formed and seeing this opportunity, all anti-Bolshevik forces decided to settle their scores. Lenin's claims and achievements from the April Theses had

started to disintegrate and over time these problems expanded and intensified to become highly contradictory to Bolshevik aims before the revolution. On occasion, the fighting was simply a desperate struggle for food, which is why alot of grain had to be requisitioned. The dislocation of supplies that had occurred during the war against Germany was seen once again. The party that once had large amounts of support from the proletariat now had to suppress them by taking harsh measures. A Bolshevik Red Army was formed to keep in check any forms of opposition. To consolidate their power base they arrested opposition leaders and closed their printing presses. A secret police force (the Cheka) was established and a system of Revolutionary Tribunals set up, to deal with opponents of the regime. By 1924, the Cheka had eliminated a quarter of a million people. The governments enemies were completely eliminated, the most prominent example being the Kronstadt Rising of 1921. All these activities contradicted the principles the Bolsheviks had espoused when they came to power in 1917. Following the Civil War, Lenin ended War Communism. He now introduced the NEP, a system combining elements of socialism and capitalism. The contrast between the promises and the end result of Bolshevism has often led its critics to claim that the Bolsheviks seized power by deception. By and large, these observers fall into two schools of thought. One views the Bolsheviks as conscious deceivers, as power-hungry intellectual zealots posing as the friends of the oppressed, taking advantage of social problems and the discontent of the masses, in order to seize power and impose their authoritarian rule, irrespective of their lack of support amongst the population as a whole. The other school of thought sees the basis of Bolshevik practice in a combination of a problematic political theory and a highly over-optimistic estimation of the national and international situation. Judging by the above said it is plausible that a civil war was justifiable, but only to a certain extent. Even if the appalling conditions of the civil war justified their policies then, they cannot excuse the repression both before and after the war. It can also cannot be used to excuse the Bolshevik leaders' lack of regret about their use of repression. For instance, although Lenin described the NEP as a 'defeat', at no stage did he describe the suppression of soviet democracy and workers' control in such language. Indeed the Bolsheviks even called their civil war policies "communist" although they were obviously the antithesis of genuine communism. Hence, it can be seen that while the establishment of a one party state and the introduction of NEP did indeed contradict the principles the Bolsheviks had originally espoused, they were not necessarily incompatible with Marxist-Leninist ideology. However his transformation of Russia from a dictatorship of the proletariat, as Marx had envisioned to a dictatorship over the proletariat a totalitarian state, was perhaps a step too far.