II. Find the English equivalents in the text and use them in the sentences of your own:

Отколовшаяся группа; столкновение, стычка; небольшой бой, схватка; братоубийственный; смещать, удалять; родина; предвестник конца, гибели (чего-л.); объединиться; набор; отличающийся; периферия; отвращать, отдалять; вмешиваться; восстановить, ввести вновь; нехватка, дефицит; непригодность; беда, неудача, несчастье; бесспорный; воплощение; взять верх над кем-л.; человек, улаживающий проблемы; мало значить; необъявленный; принимаемый без возражений, необсуждаемый; вести классовую войну; полагать, считать; применение; избыток, излишек, остаток; экстренные меры; суматоха, беспорядок; залп (орудийный, бомбовый), предлог

III. Discuss the following questions:

1. What was basic cause of the civil war? Was there any specific date or single event that officially marked the beginning of the civil war?

2. Why was the war announcement the death knell for the former czar and his family?

3. How can you characterize the whites as a movement? What disadvantages did they suffer from? Did they get any help from other countries?

4. What problems did the Bolsheviks have? How did they solve them? Who were the most powerful people in the party?

5. What were the functions of the Cheka?

6. What policies were given the name War Communism?

IV. Summarize the information presented in the text. Text 4 The New Economic Policy and the Ban on “Factions”

I. Study the text, change the words or phrases in bold to their synonyms listed below:

Death toll; significant; uprisings; invaders; reluctance; ruled; accomplished; associates; scattered; crucial; sorrow; in vain; betraying; survive; seizures; tightening; hardship; pivotal; restore; confines; split; rebellion; permitted; convince; unease; incentive; enterprise.

The last major battles of the civil war were fought in 1920. By the end of the year the last important White force, with French help, was evacuated from the country via the Black Sea. The Bolsheviks then tried to export their revolution to Europe by sending the Red Army into Poland, the purpose being first to ignite a socialist revolution there and then spread the revolution to Germany. But the Poles had other ideas. They rallied against the aggressors from the east and drove the Red Army out of their country.

The end of the civil war thus left the Bolsheviks with half a cup. They had triumphed in Russia. Some non-Russian western parts of the old czarist empire had broken away and established their independence – Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – but most of the former czarist patrimony was in Bolshevik hands. At the same time the country they controlled was in ruins. Industrial production had plummeted and, worse, so had food production, which by 1921 was less than half of what it had been in 1913, the last full year before World War I. In some areas farmers planted 70 percent less than before the fighting began.

When food did not reach the cities, desperate urbanites disbanded to the countryside to find sustenance. Moscow lost half its population, Petrograd more than two-thirds. Wherever they were, people struggled desperately to stay alive. Far too often their efforts were fruitless: between early 1918 and the beginning of 1921, an estimated 5 million people in Russia died from hunger and disease. Nor did the end of the fighting renew food production quickly enough; as a result during 1921 and 1922 Russia suffered one of the worst famines in its history, with another 5 million people starving to death. Only a massive international relief effort led by the American Relief Administration directed by future president Herbert Hoover prevented the human casualties from going even higher.

It was against this background of victory combined with difficulties and distress that in March 1921 the party (officially called the Communist Party since 1918) gathered to decide policy at its 10th Party Congress. As the meeting was about to begin, it was interrupted by news of a revolt against Bolshevik rule by sailors at the Kronstadt naval base, on an island not far from Petrograd in the Gulf of Finland. It was one of numerous rebellions, mostly by peasants, that the Bolsheviks faced after defeating the Whites. What made the revolt so disturbing was that the Kronstadt sailors had a long history as militant revolutionaries. Many had previously been strong supporters of the Bolsheviks; now they accused the party of setting up a dictatorship and letting down its socialist ideals. The Bolsheviks put the rebellion down after a fierce, bloody 10- day battle, but even in victory many of them were deeply shaken. After all, if the Kronstadt sailors had turned against them, what did that say about their policies? As Lenin himself put it, despite their victory over the Whites, the Bolsheviks had “failed to persuade the broad masses.”

The shock of Kronstadt and the wider crisis it represented led to a dramatic change in policy. Despite great unwillingness on the part of many party members who enthusiastically supported War Communism as a major step toward socialism, Lenin concluded it had to go. Demonstrating a flexibility many of his colleagues lacked, he argued that for the Bolsheviks to remain in power the country had to recover economically, and economic recovery could not be realized at the point of a gun. In its place Lenin proposed what he called the New Economic Policy (NEP), a program he admitted was a “strategic retreat.”

The NEP consisted of several components. First, food usurpations from the peasantry were ended and replaced by a progressive tax. This meant that for the first time since 1918 peasants had a motive to produce as much food as possible since they could sell and profit from any food they did not consume themselves. The NEP also undid much of the nationalization of industry. Russia’s major industries and businesses – the largest factories (which employed 80 percent of the country’s factory workers), railroads, and banks – remained in government hands. The Bolsheviks called these enterprises “the commanding heights” of the economy and considered them urgent to building a socialist economy in the near future. The remaining thousands of small factories and workshops, retail outlets, and other businesses were returned to their former owners, if they were still alive, or leased to other entrepreneurs, and new businesses were authorized as well. Private trade was legalized as the only way to move agricultural products and other goods and services from private producers to consumers. The result was what is known as a mixed economy, one that combined elements of socialist state control and private business.

Lenin was ever the flexible politician, with his eyes firmly fixed on maintaining the Bolshevik dictatorship. Therefore, while loosening the economic reins, he tightened the political ones. In 1921, with all opposition outside the party destroyed, this meant enhancing control inside the party, a policy implemented at the cardinal 10th Party Congress. Lenin faced disagreement from some leaders about restrictions on party members during the civil war – it is worth noting that they had no problem with repressive measures against non-Bolsheviks – and the increased concentration of power in the hands of Lenin and his closest colleagues.

By 1921 these dissenters were openly expressing their views. Lenin feared that expressions of dissent, even within the party, could get out of hand, cause a party division, and threaten the exclusive Bolshevik grip on power. He therefore urged that any organized “factions” within the party be banned. In effect, having banned all political discussion outside the party’s limits, Lenin now found it necessary to ban it inside the party as well. The resolution banning factions caused considerable debate at the congress before finally being adopted. In the future those guilty of violating “party unity,” a concept whose definition obviously lay with the top Bolshevik leaders, could be expelled. There was considerable confusion, even among party leaders, with the resolution. One leader, in supporting it, did so despite his concern that some day it might “well be turned against us.” He was right. Lenin would not live to see that day, but many of his colleagues did, to their great grief.