The acts of violence must be understood as politics by other means, primarily as the result of a lack of control. Felix Dzerzinsky s secret police, the Cheka, was established in late autumn when opposition to Lenin s extremism increased. The Polish born fanatic and Cheka commander often had no regard for his local henchmen. These local Red Guards, who after a short time numbered were not infrequently the driving force behind the worst acts of violence. Just as often, the explanation for the violence lies in numerical inferiority.
When a minority wants to subjugate a larger area as was often the case from to in Russia and in Spain years later excesses of violence will become a compensation for territorial control. Lenin was crystal clear on this tactic. Terror was the sharpest form of class struggle, he said. Violence was whatsapp mobile number list supposed to frighten and trigger submission far beyond what the number of soldiers could manage. In Beevor s book, Lenin appears to us as one of the most ruthless and violently fanatical rulers of the entire century, on a par with Hitler. The former died too soon to have the GULag camps made.
But seeing differences in humanity between him and Stalin fades away as pure pettiness. So why did neither Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, head of the provisional government after the fall of the Tsar in February nor the White generals succeed in crushing the numerically inferior Bolsheviks Lenin s party received only a quarter of the votes in the Constituent Assembly in November The explanation lies largely in the political power vacuum that arose after the February Revolution in when Czar Nikolai II fell. Such pockets of power represent a parallel to the final phase of the Weimar Republic from.