Word: tsarist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Falsely, perhaps, Soviet authorities had felt they could depend on the Kronstadt sailors to uphold the gains of the Bolshevik victory. Inveterate enemies of Tsarist autocracy, the sailors had risen decisively against both Nicholas and the mildly reformist Provisional Government. They had propelled the Communists to victory at the Winter Palace, and the valiant support which they rendered the fledgling regime during the stormy days after the October insurrection had prompted Minister of War Leon Trotsky to hail them as "the pride and glory of the revolution...
...devastating civil war was soon to erode the new government's political base and deprive it of popular support. Less than two months after the seizure of power, the remains of the Tsarist army, soon to be joined by 14 foreign powers, attacked the Bolshevik regime and plunged Russia into a state of physical and economic desolation. Those who had lived with hope and excitement through the days of Lenin's victory could not help feeling betrayal and disgust at the severe, quasi-dictatorial methods which the government now employed to deal with an increasingly desperate situation. The miniscule rations...
...difficulty confronting the government in late 1920 after its victory over the Tsarist forces was its confusion over how to make the transition from a war to a peacetime economy. The Russian nation had not had a breathing spell since its entrance into the World War in 1914, and the Bolsheviks had never known power under any but the most extremely dire conditions. Some party members argued for a complete relaxation of nationwide economic sanctions; others, such as Trotsky, advocated an even tighter regulation of farming and industry. Lenin, not wanting to move too precipitously, decided for the moment...
...Avrich points out, were scheming to turn the Kronstadt uprising to their own advantage. The rebels and the emigres had nothing in common, and Lenin and Trotsky know it; the sailors called for the realization of the "toilers republic," while the Whites stood for a bourgeois or even a Tsarist restoration, and all the dreaded forms of exploitation which that involved. The threat of the sailors was serious enough, but for the most part it was reformist in nature; the reactionaries would settle on nothing less than the final overthrow of Bolshevik rule...