Editing Marxism–Leninism (section)

=== October Revolution and Russian Civil War (1917–1922) ===
{{Main|October Revolution|Russian Civil War}}
[[File:Alfred Grohs zur Revolution 1918 1919 in Berlin Große Frankfurter Straße Ecke Lebuser Straße Barrikade Kampf während der Novemberrevolution in Berlin 02 Bildseite Schaulustige.jpg|thumb|left|From 5 to 12 January 1919, the [[Spartacist uprising]] in the [[Weimar Republic]] featured [[urban warfare]] between the [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) and anti-communist Freikorps units called in by the German government led by the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]] (SPD).]]
In March 1917, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II led to the [[Russian Provisional Government]] (March–July 1917), who then proclaimed the [[Russian Republic]] (September–November 1917). Later in the [[October Revolution]], the Bolshevik's seizure of power against the Provisional Government resulted in their establishment of the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] (1917–1991), yet parts of Russia remained occupied by the counter-revolutionary [[White Movement]] of anti-communists who had united to form the [[White Army]] to fight the [[Russian Civil War]] (1917–1922) against the Bolshevik government. Moreover, despite the White–Red civil war, Russia remained a combatant in the Great War that the Bolsheviks had quit with the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]] which then provoked the [[Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War|Allied Intervention to the Russian Civil War]] by the armies of seventeen countries, featuring Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Imperial Japan.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=31}}

[[File:Bela.Kun.Revolution.1919.jpg|thumb|[[Béla Kun]], leader of the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]], speaks to supporters during the [[1919 Hungarian Revolution]].]]
Elsewhere, the successful October Revolution in Russia had facilitated the [[German Revolution of 1918–1919]] and [[revolutions and interventions in Hungary (1918–1920)]] which produced the [[First Hungarian Republic]] and the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]]. In Berlin, the German government aided by [[Freikorps]] units fought and defeated the [[Spartacist uprising]] which began as a [[general strike]]. In Munich, the local Freikorps fought and defeated the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]]. In Hungary, the disorganised workers who had proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic were fought and defeated by the royal armies of the [[Kingdom of Romania]] and the [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]] as well as the army of the [[First Republic of Czechoslovakia]]. These communist forces were soon crushed by anti-communist forces and attempts to create an international communist revolution failed. However, a successful revolution occurred in Asia, when the [[Mongolian Revolution of 1921]] established the [[Mongolian People's Republic]] (1924–1992). The percentage of Bolshevik delegates in the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets]] increased from 13%, at the [[First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies|first congress]] in July 1917,<ref>{{cite book |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCS17.html |chapter=First All Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies |orig-date=3–24 June (6 June – 7 July), 1917 |title=V. I. Lenin, Collected Works |edition=4th English |publisher=Progress Publishers |location=Moscow |date=1974 |volume=25 |pages=15–42 |editor1-first=Stephan |editor1-last=Apresyan |editor2-first=Jim |editor2-last=Riordan |editor2-link=James Riordan (writer-sportsman) |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=22 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200722052832/http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCS17.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804022766?lc=en |title=First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies |encyclopedia=Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia |editor-first=A. M. |editor-last=Kulegin |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206053134/http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804022766?lc=en |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/formation-of-the-soviets-texts/first-all-russian-congress-of-soviets/ |chapter=First All-Russian Congress of Soviets: Composition of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets |orig-date=26 June 1917 |editor-first=Frank |editor-last=Golder |editor-link=Frank A. Golder |title=Documents of Russian History, 1914–1917 |location=New York |publisher=The Century Co. |date=1927 |pages=360–361 |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=17 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517004653/http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/formation-of-the-soviets-texts/first-all-russian-congress-of-soviets/ |url-status=live}}</ref> to 66%, at the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets#Fifth Congress|fifth congress]] in 1918.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jonathan D. |last=Smele |title=Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926 |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |date=2015 |pages=xxx, 39, 315, 670–671, 751}}</ref>

As promised to the Russian peoples in October 1917, the Bolsheviks quit Russia's participation in the Great War on 3 March 1918. That same year, the Bolsheviks consolidated government power by expelling the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries]] from the [[Soviet (council)|soviets]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=37}} The Bolshevik government then established the [[Cheka]] (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) secret police to eliminate anti–Bolshevik opposition in the country. Initially, there was strong opposition to the Bolshevik régime because they had not resolved the food shortages and material poverty of the Russian peoples as promised in October 1917. From that social discontent, the Cheka reported 118 uprisings, including the [[Kronstadt rebellion]] (7–17 March 1921) against the economic austerity of the War Communism imposed by the Bolsheviks.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=37}} The principal obstacles to Russian economic development and modernisation were great [[Poverty|material poverty]] and the lack of modern technology which were conditions that orthodox Marxism considered unfavourable to communist revolution. Agricultural Russia was sufficiently developed for establishing capitalism, but it was insufficiently developed for establishing socialism.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}}{{sfn|Ulam|1998|pp=249}} For Bolshevik Russia, the 1921–1924 period featured the simultaneous occurrence of economic recovery, famine (1921–1922) and a financial crisis (1924). By 1924, considerable economic progress had been achieved and by 1926 the Bolshevik government had achieved economic production levels equal to Russia's production levels in 1913.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=39}}

Initial Bolshevik economic policies from 1917 to 1918 were cautious, with limited [[nationalisation]]s of the [[means of production]] which had been private property of the Russian aristocracy during the Tsarist monarchy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} Lenin was immediately committed to avoid antagonising the [[peasant]]ry by making efforts to coax them away from the Socialist Revolutionaries, allowing a peasant takeover of [[Nobility|nobles]]' estates while no immediate nationalisations were enacted on peasants' property.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} The [[Decree on Land]] (8 November 1917) fulfilled Lenin's promised redistribution of Russia's arable land to the peasants, who reclaimed their farmlands from the aristocrats, ensuring the peasants' loyalty to the Bolshevik party. To overcome the civil war's economic interruptions, the policy of [[War Communism]] (1918–1921), a [[regulated market]], state-controlled means of distribution and nationalisation of large-scale farms, was adopted to requisite and distribute grain in order to feed industrial workers in the cities whilst the Red Army was fighting the White Army's attempted restoration of the [[Romanov]] dynasty as [[Absolute monarchy|absolute monarchs]] of Russia.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} Moreover, the politically unpopular forced grain-requisitions discouraged peasants from farming resulted in reduced harvests and food shortages that provoked labour strikes and food riots. In the event, the Russian peoples created an economy of [[barter]] and [[black market]] to counter the Bolshevik government's voiding of the [[monetary economy]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}}

In 1921, the [[New Economic Policy]] restored some private enterprise to animate the Russian economy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} As part of Lenin's pragmatic compromise with external financial interests in 1918, Bolshevik [[state capitalism]] temporarily returned 91% of industry to private ownership or trusts{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} until the Soviet Russians learned the [[technology]] and the techniques required to operate and administrate industries.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |page=306 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> Importantly, Lenin declared that the development of socialism would not be able to be pursued in the manner originally thought by Marxists.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} A key aspect that affected the Bolshevik regime was the backward economic conditions in Russia that were considered unfavourable to orthodox Marxist theory of communist revolution.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}} At the time, orthodox Marxists claimed that Russia was ripe for the development of capitalism, not yet for socialism.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|pp=249}} Lenin advocated the need of the development of a large corps of technical intelligentsia to assist the industrial development of Russia and advance the Marxist economic stages of development as it had too few technical experts at the time. In that vein, Lenin explained it as follows: "Our poverty is so great that we cannot, at one stroke, restore full-scale factory, state, socialist production."{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}} He added that the development of socialism would proceed according to the actual material and socio-economic conditions in Russia and not as abstractly described by Marx for industrialised Europe in the 19th century. To overcome the lack of educated Russians who could operate and administrate industry, Lenin advocated the development of a [[Intelligentsia|technical intelligentsia]] who would propel the industrial development of Russia to self-sufficiency.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}}