AQA 7042 · 2N · R05 - The consolidation of the Communist dictatorship: the establishment of one-party control
After the Bolsheviks seized power in October/November 1917, their authority was neither uncontested nor yet entirely one-party. This lesson traces how they removed the elected Constituent Assembly, ended Russia's involvement in the First World War and then lost their Left Socialist-Revolutionary coalition partners. You will judge whether Communist dictatorship was created in one decisive moment or consolidated through connected steps during 1918.
Rival claims to rule Russia
The October Revolution had given the Bolsheviks control of the central government, but it had not settled who had the right to rule Russia. Two rival answers existed.
- The soviet claim said that power belonged to councils of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets had created Sovnarkom, the Council of People's Commissars, as the new executive government.
- The parliamentary claim said that a nationally elected Constituent Assembly should decide Russia's political system and write a constitution. The Provisional Government had arranged its election, and the Bolsheviks allowed voting to continue after taking power.
The distinction matters because Bolshevik control of Sovnarkom was not yet the same thing as complete one-party control. The first Sovnarkom was all-Bolshevik, but Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Left SRs) entered a coalition with it in December 1917. They shared the Bolsheviks' support for soviet power and immediate land redistribution, while representing a political tradition with much stronger roots among peasants.
The government was already narrowing lawful opposition. On 11 December 1917 (New Style), it outlawed the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, or Kadets, as leaders of armed counter-revolution. Yet socialist rivals still operated in soviets, and the expected Constituent Assembly offered an alternative national source of authority.
One-party control
One party monopolises effective state decision-making and prevents rival parties from replacing or constraining it. Holding the most government posts alone does not establish that monopoly.
The Constituent Assembly is elected and removed
The November 1917 election exposed the weakness of the Bolsheviks' national electoral claim. In one scholarly tabulation, Socialist-Revolutionary lists received 39.5% of votes and the Bolsheviks 22.5%. The Bolsheviks were much stronger among workers and soldiers in major urban centres, but Russia was overwhelmingly rural, and SR promises on land appealed widely to peasants.
Those figures need one qualification, but not dismissal. The SR movement had divided into Right and Left wings while candidate lists were being finalised, so an SR vote did not always reveal which wing a voter preferred. Bolsheviks argued that the result was already politically outdated and that the more responsive soviets represented workers and peasants better than a parliamentary body. Nevertheless, they did not organise a new national election that separated the SR wings. The Assembly therefore remained a genuine elected rival to Soviet authority.
The Assembly met at the Tauride Palace in Petrograd on 5 January Old Style / 18 January New Style 1918. It elected the SR leader Viktor Chernov as chair. Yakov Sverdlov, speaking for the Soviet Central Executive Committee, asked it to accept the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which placed sovereign power in the soviets and endorsed the October government's programme. The Assembly refused to subordinate itself in this way.
The Bolshevik and then Left SR delegates withdrew. In the early morning of 19 January New Style, armed guards ended the sitting; when deputies tried to return, the palace was locked. The Soviet Central Executive Committee dissolved the Assembly, and the Third Congress of Soviets endorsed Soviet power instead. The key consequence was constitutional: a body elected by national suffrage could no longer challenge the government. Force, rather than a further electoral contest, settled the conflict between parliamentary and soviet sovereignty.
From armistice to Brest-Litovsk
Ending the war was both a Bolshevik promise and a problem of survival. The old Russian army was disintegrating, with mass desertion and very limited capacity to resist Germany. The new government could call for a general democratic peace, but it could not make the other belligerents accept one.
The sequence shows why the final treaty was not the peace the Bolsheviks had originally advertised:
| Date, New Style | Development | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 1917 | The Second Congress of Soviets adopted the Decree on Peace. | It called for a general peace without annexations or indemnities, but the Entente powers did not join negotiations. |
| 15 December 1917 | Russia and the Central Powers agreed an armistice. | Fighting paused on the Eastern Front while formal negotiations continued. |
| 22 December 1917 | Peace talks opened at Brest-Litovsk. | Germany negotiated from military strength and demanded control or separation of extensive western territories. |
| 10 February 1918 | Trotsky declared “neither war nor peace”: Russia would stop fighting and demobilise but not sign the proposed treaty. | This attempted to avoid both continued war and a humiliating signed peace. It depended on Germany accepting the declaration. |
| 18 February 1918 | Germany renewed its advance. | Russian forces could not stop it, exposing Trotsky's policy as unenforceable and increasing the price of delay. |
| 3 March 1918 | Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. | Russia formally left the war on terms dictated by the Central Powers. |
Authentic source — Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Articles I and III, 3 March 1918 (abridged):
“the state of war between them has ceased” … territories west of the agreed line “will no longer be subject to Russian sovereignty”
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