Left-Communist Opposition to Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (on Materials of the Urals)

Abstract

The materials of the Urals are used to analyze the little-studied regional aspects of the history of the left-Communist opposition to Lenin’s policy of “respite” and the “obscene” Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It is established that the foreign policy guidelines of the left Communists reflected the reaction of revolutionism against the actual course of the Russian revolution, against the tactics of continuous maneuvering and maneuvering in the international arena, which was imposed on the Bolsheviks by the inexorable realities of life. The author characterizes the scale of the spread of leftist Communist ideas in the regional organizations of the Bolshevik party and beyond - in the Soviets, trade unions, factory committees, among the social “lower classes,” and their dynamics. The calculations showed that the popularity of the views of the left Communists in these structures and segments of the population was due to both the doctrinal attitudes of Bolshevism and the sharp increase in the mass consciousness of the elements of the mythological worldview susceptible to “crazy” ideas of the left. The process of evolution of the left-Communist opposition in the conditions of Civil war is analyzed. It is concluded that the revolutionary principles of the “new” left Communists inevitably were in conflict with the tasks of consolidating the Bolshevik forces and strengthening the Soviet state machine. For the first time a wide range of archival sources and materials of periodicals of the studied period is introduced into scientific circulation.

Keywords

• treaty of brest-litovsk
• the bolsheviks
• left communists
• soviets, urals