IB History Survival and Consolidation of Bolshevik Rule Key Definitions

The Bolshevik secret police, founded in December 1917 under Felix Dzerzhinsky to fight counter-revolution and sabotage. It operated outside the normal legal system, carrying out arrests, executions, and hostage-taking during the Red Terror and the Civil War.

A national body elected by universal suffrage in November 1917 to write Russia's constitution and settle who would govern. The Socialist Revolutionaries won the largest share of seats, but the Bolsheviks dissolved the Assembly by force after its first session in January 1918 rather than accept a result that denied them a majority.

A revolt by sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921, once among the most committed supporters of the Bolsheviks, demanding free soviet elections, free speech, and an end to grain requisitioning. The Red Army crushed it within days, but it convinced Lenin that War Communism could no longer continue.

The policy Lenin introduced in March 1921 that replaced grain requisitioning with a tax in kind, allowed peasants to sell surplus produce, and let small businesses operate for profit, while the state kept control of large industry, banking, and foreign trade. It was a tactical retreat from War Communism meant to revive the economy and ease peasant unrest.

The highest decision-making body in a communist party. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh served as chairman of the Politburo, which approved major military and political decisions.

The policy under War Communism that forced peasants to hand over grain surpluses to the state at fixed low prices, enforced by armed requisitioning squads. Peasants responded by hiding grain and planting less, which deepened the food shortages it was meant to solve.

A campaign of mass arrests and executions launched by the Bolsheviks in September 1918 after an assassination attempt on Lenin, carried out mainly by the Cheka against former nobles, priests, officers, and suspected opponents. It ran alongside the Civil War and killed tens of thousands of people.

The peace treaty Soviet Russia signed with Germany and its allies in March 1918, ending Russian participation in the First World War. Russia surrendered Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland, losing roughly a third of its population and much of its industry and farmland.

The emergency economic policy the Bolsheviks ran from 1918 to 1921 to supply the Red Army and cities during the Civil War. It nationalized industry, banned private trade, and seized grain from peasants by force, which kept the war effort funded but wrecked production and caused famine.

The loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War, including former tsarist officers, liberals, and moderate socialists, united mainly by opposition to Bolshevik rule rather than a shared political programme. Divided leadership and unclear goals on land and nationalities weakened their fight against the more unified Red Army.