Why did peasants support the bolsheviks

But in late , Bolshevik leader Lenin decided that the conditions in Russia were ripe for revolution. At once he took control and direction over the Bolsheviks. He prepared to seize power using a clear plan:. Lenin's energy and drive convinced the Bolsheviks to agree on this course of action. For the plan to work, it was necessary to increase Bolshevik support within the Soviets. Lenin developed Bolshevik policies with this aim in mind.

These policies were outlined in his April Theses. This showed that the Bolsheviks did not believe in the existence of the Provisional Government or an elected national assembly. However, the influence of the Bolsheviks was limited until Autumn Lenin was actively supported by Leon Trotsky. Many Americans are under the delusion that the Russian Revolution was merely a revolution of industrial workers against a small but powerful group of capitalists.

This misunderstanding is due to the fact that most people think it took place according to the predictions of the German socialist writer Karl Marx. In his most famous works— Capital and The Communist Manifesto— Marx had expressed the belief that the communist revolution would take place in a highly industrialized country like Germany, or possibly Britain.

At that time, as has already been pointed out, Russia was a backward agricultural country. Much of its industry, then still in its infancy, had been financed largely by foreign, not native capital. In the vast majority of the population were peasants, and the industrial workers, although growing in numbers, were still in a very small minority. Even though efforts were being made to introduce legislation regarding wages, hours, and conditions of work, factory workers at that time were living in wretched conditions.

These economic hardships caused them to play a far greater part in the November revolution than would have been expected from their numbers. The really large group of underprivileged people in Russia, however, were not the industrial workers, but the peasants.

When they were freed from serfdom in , the peasants got some land and the promise of more. In there were few really landless peasants.

Most peasant families owned land either individually or as part of a collective group called the mir or commune. But their holdings were so small that most of them had to work as tenants or farm hands on the estates of big landowners, or on the farms of richer peasants, known as kulaks tight fists , or on land owned by the state or the church. In Russia had not only factory workers who sought to overthrow an industrial capitalist class, but masses of peasants without enough land to make their living on.

They wanted more land and hoped to obtain it at the expense of such great landowners as the monarchy, the nobility, the church, and most important of all, the state. The actual coup that brought Lenin to power, however, was carried out by a group of professional revolutionaries, with the support of the mutinous Petrograd garrison.

It is important to note that this coup overthrew the Kerensky government, which was seeking to establish a democratic regime after having overthrown czarism in March Many of them—notably Lenin and Trotsky—had lived in exile abroad because their views had brought them into conflict with the czarist government. The guiding spirit of the revolution was Lenin, who came from the intelligentsia and had spent his life not in manual work but in writing and speaking.

Factory workers played an important role in destroying the old government and in defending the new Soviet regime as it proceeded to socialize production first of all in industry and trade, then in agriculture. But measured by the size of the forces engaged, the revolution of was chiefly an agrarian revolt.

Bread was desired by everyone, since the war had disrupted transportation and created shortages of food in the cities. Peace, too, was desired by many, especially by the soldiers at the front, who lacked munitions. In many peasants thought they were going to oust all the big landowners and become individual owners of land themselves. This did not happen, in the long run, because the Soviet government had no intention of transforming peasants into individual property owners.

Thus seeing an opportunity to gain support among the peasantry, Lenin composed the Decree on Land, which was passed by the Congress of Soviets on November 8 October 26 , The decree stipulated that all landed estates would become the property of local land committees pending the meeting of the Constituent Assembly.

Its adoption by the Bolsheviks was sure to win the support of Left SRs, paving the way for their entry into the Soviet government, and helping to legitimize the government in the eyes of peasants.