To What Extent Had the Bolsheviks Achieved Their Aims by 1928

To what extent had the Bolsheviks achieved their aims by 1928?

When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in 1917, they had three ambitions: to consolidate their power, to industrialise the nation, and to establish the world’s first socialist system. By 1928, they had only achieved the first of these aims.

Following the November Revolution, the Bolsheviks expected to consolidate their power by implementing the promises they had made: redistributing land to the peasants, improving wages and conditions for industrial workers, and making peace with Germany. However, opposition soon emerged, particularly after Lenin closed the Constituent Assembly. By the middle of 1918, the Bolsheviks found themselves surrounded and outnumbered by their enemies, and only managed to win the Civil War by a combination of good luck, good management and ruthless determination. By the beginning of 1921, all organized opposition had been crushed. Even so, dissent was still widespread, as evidenced by the Kronstadt Rebellion, when sailors from the garrison near St. Petersburg mutinied, demanding democratic reforms. The sailors had been supporters of the revolution, and their defection convinced Lenin that change was needed if support for the Party was to be restored. The change the Bolsheviks introduced was the New Economic Policy. This involved a mixture of rural capitalism with some socialism in the cities. The main thrust of the policy was to raise agricultural production, by giving peasants incentives to produce. Hence, they were required to hand over only 10 percent of their output to the government; the rest could be sold on the market and the profits retained. The policy worked, and agricultural production soon returned to pre-war levels, bringing with it a rise in support for the Bolsheviks, particularly among the peasants and industrial workers. Hence, by 1928, the Bolsheviks could legitimately claim to have consolidated their political power. As far as their other goals were concerned, however, their achievements were far less impressive. Although industrial output had been restored to its pre-war level, there were few signs Russia was on the road to industrialisation. Nevertheless, there had been considerable debate in the 1920s as to how to proceed on this front. Nikolai Bukharin favoured a continuation of NEP, in order to facilitate balanced and sustainable development. Under his plan, market mechanisms would drive the economy, with demand for industrial goods coming largely from a prosperous peasant class. This plan was opposed by Evgeny Preobrazhensky, who argued that industrialisation should be driven by the state. To generate the surplus necessary for investment, the peasants and workers would have to ruthlessly exploited. The debate between the two economists was only resolved with the triumph of Joseph Stalin at the end of the decade. He decided to implement a radical version of Preobrazhensky’s plan, and that did ultimately succeed in industrialising the nation. The Bolsheviks were also only partially successful in their efforts to establish socialism in Russia by 1928. NEP was essentially a hybrid system, with manufacturing under government control, and the rest of the economy in private hands. Even so, at the end of his life, Lenin had come to see NEP as a valid path to socialism. It was just going to take longer than the Bolsheviks had expected.

Hence, it can be seen that the Bolsheviks had really only achieved one of their aims by 1928: the consolidation of power. It would take another decade before socialism and industrialisation had been achieved, but the human cost was almost unimaginable.