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AQA A/A* essay - early Tsarist Russia
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With reference to these sources and your understanding of the historicalcontext, assess the value of these three sources to an historian studying the
Bolshevik Revolution between 1917 and 1921.
[30 marks]
Source 1:
Adapted from Lenin’s ‘Theses for Peace’, published in the official Communist newspaper ‘Pravda’ in
February 1918. 1. The condition of the Russian Revolution at the present moment is such that
practically all the workers and a large majority of the peasants are on the side of the Soviet
Government and the social revolution. In that respect the success of the Socialist Revolution in
Russia seems assured. 2. At the same time the civil war which was caused by the furious resistance of
the propertied classes has not reached its highest point. In the end the Soviet Government will win
the fight, but it will take much time and a good deal of energy, and a certain period of disorganisation
and chaos incidental to every war and especially civil war is inevitable before the bourgeoisie is
finally crushed. 3. Furthermore, the resistance of the bourgeoisie in its less active and non-military
forms such as sabotage, bribing tramps and other hirelings of the bourgeoisie to join the Socialist
ranks with the purpose of undermining their cause, has proved to be so obstinate and capable of
assuming such varying forms that it will take time, several months perhaps, to put it down.
Source 2:
Adapted from Bessie Beatty’s book, The Red Heart of Russia, written in 1918. Beatty was an
American journalist who lived in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. She later defended
the Bolsheviks in front of a US Senate Committee in 1921. …Yakov Peters [One of the founders of the
Cheka] told me that one day he was riding on a street car, when the man sitting beside him engaged
him in conversation. He offered to sell him twelve hundred bags of flour at two hundred and fifty
roubles each, six thousand pounds of sugar, and some butter. Peters got him to write down his name
and address and within the hour, he had been arrested and his supplies had been seized. Despite all
efforts to unearth the offenders, a few men waxed hideously rich upon the hunger of the many. All
provocation notwithstanding, the guillotine remained simply a name. Wherever the death penalty
was inflicted, it was done by mobs having no official sanction, by mobs aroused to an uncontrolled
fury, and momentarily conscious of no other passion than that of reprisal. Considering the unsettled
condition of government, such instances of violence were not so frequent as to change the character
of the Revolution into that of a Reign of Terror.
Source 3
Adapted from Kronstadt Izvestia, the main publication of the Kronstadt rebels, March 1921. Our
country is enduring a difficult moment. Hunger, cold and economic ruin have held us in an iron vice
these three years already. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become separated
from the masses and shown itself unable to lead her from her state of general ruin. It has not faced
the reality of the disturbances which in recent times have occurred in Petrograd and Moscow. This
unrest shows clearly enough that the party has lost the faith of the working masses. Neither has it
recognised the demands presented by the workers. It considers them plots of the counterrevolution.
It is deeply mistaken. This unrest, these demands, are the voice of the people in its entirety, of all
labourers. All workers, sailors and soldiers see clearly at the present moment that only through
common effort, by the common will of the labourers, is it possible to give the country bread, wood
and coal, to dress the barefoot and naked, and to lead the Republic out of this dead end.
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