Here is version 3.0 of Petrograd, The Red Flame Of Russia. It will eventually be finished and will be updated occasionally until complete.
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Petrograd, The Red Flame Of Russia: An Alternate History
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Part One
Section One
In 1918, the nascent Soviet government which was formed following the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets faced a dire situation; the spring and early summer of that year had brought with it the prospect of total annihilation by the counterrevolution, as the civil war raged across the former Russian Empire without ceasing. To make matters worse, a cholera outbreak in a Petrograd beset by supply problems, internal reaction both foreign and domestic, and rebellion only served to hasten the crisis as the city was evacuated and the capital moved to Nizhnii Novgorod. [1]
The Sovnarkom having departed hastily from Petrograd to the new capital, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet formed in it's absence the Council of Commissars of the Petrograd Labor Commune (SK PTK). Furthermore, the Executive Committee would also form a local Cheka in Petrograd (PCheka) on March 9th, to be headed by the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky.
The government of the SK PTK was initially composed as follows, with the Bolshevik Zinoviev as chairperson: Lunacharskii (enlightenment); Viacheslav Menzhinskii (finance); Mikhail Lashevich (food supply); Petr Stuchka (justice); Viacheslav Molotov (economy); Adolf Ioffe (social welfare); Miron Vladimirov (transportation); and Ivar Smilga (Petrograd Military District). All were Bolsheviks. [2]
The newly created SK PTK government soon found itself struggling to maintain order in Petrograd wherein dissent was strong amongst the workers, whom along with moderate socialists would found the Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants (EAD). The EAD found widespread support in industrial areas due to the advent of food supply shortages in the city which were brought on by the loss of the Ukraine to the Germans after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which cut grain reserves in half by almost 350 million puds. [3] The EAD was further strengthened as a result of mass unemployment and inflation which inversely affected grain production in the countryside, causing only more unrest in the city.
The counterrevolution in Petrograd during the spring and summer of 1918 thrived under such tenuous conditions and, supported by the Entente powers, would take advantage of general disenchantment with the Soviet government as the crisis deepened. The PCheka, a clandestine organization created with the intent of safeguarding the emerging revolutionary order in Petrograd, operated independently of the national VCheka which had set itself up in the new capital at Nizhnii Novgorod. The two organizations, separate but similar in function, soon diverged in methods when it came to fighting counterrevolution.
The VCheka, formed on December 7th in place of the MRC and led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, sanctioned the shooting of alleged reactionaries-'counterrevolutionaries, speculators, thugs, hooligans, saboteurs, and other parasites'-on the spot on February 22nd during a meeting of the Sovnarkom between the Bolsheviks and Left SR's; at the meeting, the Left SR's voted against a document entitled The Socialist Fatherland Is In Danger but were defeated in their attempts to curb the steadily increasing powers of the VCheka. What irked the Left SR's was the inclusion of a provision in the document which allowed for the execution of counterrevolutionaries and common criminals. Fears of a German attack deeper into Russia shook the ruling Bolshevik-Left SR coalition, prompting an excessive increase in the VCheka's powers virtually overnight.
The PCheka on the other hand was more moderate under the leadership of Uritsky, whom was against arbitrary executions and tried to prevent shootings of prisoners wherever possible. This did not stop Uritsky from being derisively named the 'Robespierre of Petrograd' despite his aversion towards the harsher tactics being utilized by the VCheka.
Regardless, Uritsky's attempts to lessen the impact of the PCheka's preemptive actions towards perceived counterrevolutionaries would soon be challenged following the assassination of Volodarskii. A commissar for the press, agitation, and propaganda in the SK PTK government, Volodarskii's sudden death ushered in a surge of popular violence from below in Petrograd. Zinoviev was against immediate repression despite urgings by workers and Krasnaia gazeta colleagues of Volodarskii to seek revenge. Lenin would recommend mass terror and was furious that so far leading Bolsheviks operating in Petrograd had refused to respond to the vengeful mood of workers.
Unbeknownst to the Bolsheviks, the Left SR Party had approved as a contingency option the assassination of leading German officials following the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets at their own Third All-Russian Left SR Party Congress. The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, largely expected to having been vote rigged by the Bolsheviks, produced a Bolshevik majority of 678 delegates to the Left SR's 269 delegates. Unable to challenge the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk through electoral means, the Left SR's central committee considered the proposal for assassinations.
Grigorii Smolianskii, as secretary of the CEC and as a member of the Left SR's Battle Organization, would go in secret to Berlin in an attempt to entangle German Social-Democrats into a conspiratorial plan to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm II. Other key figures designated for assassination were General Eikhord, the commander of German occupation forces in the Ukraine and Count Mirbach, the German ambassador to Soviet Russia.
When the Social-Democrats refused to join the Left SR plot to murder the Kaiser, the Left SR's central committee made a final decision: General Eikhord was to be assassinated, whose death was meant to provoke Germany into resuming hostilities against Soviet Russia's budding revolutionary forces. [4] General Eikhord would be killed by Left SR Chekists in July, after several days of preparation occurring after the opening session of the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets held in Nizhnii Novgorod.
Unfortunately for the Left SR Party, no German retaliation took place. Unofficial telephone and telegraph communications were cut from within Nizhnii Novgorod, while motor traffic to and from the city was tightly regulated. While the VCheka headquarters was combed for the Left SR's leadership (the VCheka headquarters having become the command center for the Left SR Party), the Left SR Fifth Congress fraction was simultaneously found and arrested by the Soviet authorities.
Immediately branded as 'scoundrels' and 'new servants of the white guards' by the authorities, hundreds of Left SR cadre were soon arrested while many were summarily executed as well. Gradually, surely, all traces of the Left SR Party would be cast out from the soviets by extraordinary military-revolutionary troikas.
An immediate consequence of the Left SR's sudden ouster from the soviets and other governmental bodies countrywide would be the heightening of Red Terror. Despite Uritsky's best attempts to thwart the advent of Red Terror, his actions only served to delay its outbreak. The Red Terror, when combined with the removal of all other socialist, left-wing parties from participation in the Soviet government, would bring about the creation of the single-party state model in Soviet Russia.
With the Bolsheviks' rear effectively secured against further domestic opposition, the fight against the Whites in the Russian Civil War took top priority throughout the remainder of the year.
---
Section One Footnotes
[1]: In OTL the capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow, a decision which was protested by the Bolshevik Zinoviev on the grounds that the new capital should be placed instead in a less crucial city as this would increase the likelihood of the capital moving back to Petrograd.
[2]: Later, during elections to the Sovkom of the Northern Oblast in May, four Left SR Party members would be given posts in the SK PTK government: Proshian, whom replaced the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky as head of the Committee for Internal Affairs and of the Committee for the Revolutionary Security of Petrograd; M. D. Samokhvalov (oblast control); Nikolai Kornilov (agriculture); and Leonid Bekleshov (post and telegraph).
[3]: A total of 650 million puds of grain had been reserved. An additional 110 million puds came from the North Caucasus, 143 million puds from the steppe borderlands and Western Siberia, with all the rest coming from the Central black earth region. With the loss of the Ukraine, coupled with the severing of grain reserves from the North Caucasus through the German occupation of Kursk and Voronezh, only about 150 million puds of grain could be relied upon.
[4]: In OTL Count Mirbach was assassinated by the Left SR Chekists Iakov Blumkin and Nikolai Andreev in Moscow.
Read, enjoy, and comment!
Petrograd, The Red Flame Of Russia: An Alternate History
---
Part One
Section One
In 1918, the nascent Soviet government which was formed following the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets faced a dire situation; the spring and early summer of that year had brought with it the prospect of total annihilation by the counterrevolution, as the civil war raged across the former Russian Empire without ceasing. To make matters worse, a cholera outbreak in a Petrograd beset by supply problems, internal reaction both foreign and domestic, and rebellion only served to hasten the crisis as the city was evacuated and the capital moved to Nizhnii Novgorod. [1]
The Sovnarkom having departed hastily from Petrograd to the new capital, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet formed in it's absence the Council of Commissars of the Petrograd Labor Commune (SK PTK). Furthermore, the Executive Committee would also form a local Cheka in Petrograd (PCheka) on March 9th, to be headed by the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky.
The government of the SK PTK was initially composed as follows, with the Bolshevik Zinoviev as chairperson: Lunacharskii (enlightenment); Viacheslav Menzhinskii (finance); Mikhail Lashevich (food supply); Petr Stuchka (justice); Viacheslav Molotov (economy); Adolf Ioffe (social welfare); Miron Vladimirov (transportation); and Ivar Smilga (Petrograd Military District). All were Bolsheviks. [2]
The newly created SK PTK government soon found itself struggling to maintain order in Petrograd wherein dissent was strong amongst the workers, whom along with moderate socialists would found the Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants (EAD). The EAD found widespread support in industrial areas due to the advent of food supply shortages in the city which were brought on by the loss of the Ukraine to the Germans after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which cut grain reserves in half by almost 350 million puds. [3] The EAD was further strengthened as a result of mass unemployment and inflation which inversely affected grain production in the countryside, causing only more unrest in the city.
The counterrevolution in Petrograd during the spring and summer of 1918 thrived under such tenuous conditions and, supported by the Entente powers, would take advantage of general disenchantment with the Soviet government as the crisis deepened. The PCheka, a clandestine organization created with the intent of safeguarding the emerging revolutionary order in Petrograd, operated independently of the national VCheka which had set itself up in the new capital at Nizhnii Novgorod. The two organizations, separate but similar in function, soon diverged in methods when it came to fighting counterrevolution.
The VCheka, formed on December 7th in place of the MRC and led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, sanctioned the shooting of alleged reactionaries-'counterrevolutionaries, speculators, thugs, hooligans, saboteurs, and other parasites'-on the spot on February 22nd during a meeting of the Sovnarkom between the Bolsheviks and Left SR's; at the meeting, the Left SR's voted against a document entitled The Socialist Fatherland Is In Danger but were defeated in their attempts to curb the steadily increasing powers of the VCheka. What irked the Left SR's was the inclusion of a provision in the document which allowed for the execution of counterrevolutionaries and common criminals. Fears of a German attack deeper into Russia shook the ruling Bolshevik-Left SR coalition, prompting an excessive increase in the VCheka's powers virtually overnight.
The PCheka on the other hand was more moderate under the leadership of Uritsky, whom was against arbitrary executions and tried to prevent shootings of prisoners wherever possible. This did not stop Uritsky from being derisively named the 'Robespierre of Petrograd' despite his aversion towards the harsher tactics being utilized by the VCheka.
Regardless, Uritsky's attempts to lessen the impact of the PCheka's preemptive actions towards perceived counterrevolutionaries would soon be challenged following the assassination of Volodarskii. A commissar for the press, agitation, and propaganda in the SK PTK government, Volodarskii's sudden death ushered in a surge of popular violence from below in Petrograd. Zinoviev was against immediate repression despite urgings by workers and Krasnaia gazeta colleagues of Volodarskii to seek revenge. Lenin would recommend mass terror and was furious that so far leading Bolsheviks operating in Petrograd had refused to respond to the vengeful mood of workers.
Unbeknownst to the Bolsheviks, the Left SR Party had approved as a contingency option the assassination of leading German officials following the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets at their own Third All-Russian Left SR Party Congress. The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, largely expected to having been vote rigged by the Bolsheviks, produced a Bolshevik majority of 678 delegates to the Left SR's 269 delegates. Unable to challenge the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk through electoral means, the Left SR's central committee considered the proposal for assassinations.
Grigorii Smolianskii, as secretary of the CEC and as a member of the Left SR's Battle Organization, would go in secret to Berlin in an attempt to entangle German Social-Democrats into a conspiratorial plan to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm II. Other key figures designated for assassination were General Eikhord, the commander of German occupation forces in the Ukraine and Count Mirbach, the German ambassador to Soviet Russia.
When the Social-Democrats refused to join the Left SR plot to murder the Kaiser, the Left SR's central committee made a final decision: General Eikhord was to be assassinated, whose death was meant to provoke Germany into resuming hostilities against Soviet Russia's budding revolutionary forces. [4] General Eikhord would be killed by Left SR Chekists in July, after several days of preparation occurring after the opening session of the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets held in Nizhnii Novgorod.
Unfortunately for the Left SR Party, no German retaliation took place. Unofficial telephone and telegraph communications were cut from within Nizhnii Novgorod, while motor traffic to and from the city was tightly regulated. While the VCheka headquarters was combed for the Left SR's leadership (the VCheka headquarters having become the command center for the Left SR Party), the Left SR Fifth Congress fraction was simultaneously found and arrested by the Soviet authorities.
Immediately branded as 'scoundrels' and 'new servants of the white guards' by the authorities, hundreds of Left SR cadre were soon arrested while many were summarily executed as well. Gradually, surely, all traces of the Left SR Party would be cast out from the soviets by extraordinary military-revolutionary troikas.
An immediate consequence of the Left SR's sudden ouster from the soviets and other governmental bodies countrywide would be the heightening of Red Terror. Despite Uritsky's best attempts to thwart the advent of Red Terror, his actions only served to delay its outbreak. The Red Terror, when combined with the removal of all other socialist, left-wing parties from participation in the Soviet government, would bring about the creation of the single-party state model in Soviet Russia.
With the Bolsheviks' rear effectively secured against further domestic opposition, the fight against the Whites in the Russian Civil War took top priority throughout the remainder of the year.
---
Section One Footnotes
[1]: In OTL the capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow, a decision which was protested by the Bolshevik Zinoviev on the grounds that the new capital should be placed instead in a less crucial city as this would increase the likelihood of the capital moving back to Petrograd.
[2]: Later, during elections to the Sovkom of the Northern Oblast in May, four Left SR Party members would be given posts in the SK PTK government: Proshian, whom replaced the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky as head of the Committee for Internal Affairs and of the Committee for the Revolutionary Security of Petrograd; M. D. Samokhvalov (oblast control); Nikolai Kornilov (agriculture); and Leonid Bekleshov (post and telegraph).
[3]: A total of 650 million puds of grain had been reserved. An additional 110 million puds came from the North Caucasus, 143 million puds from the steppe borderlands and Western Siberia, with all the rest coming from the Central black earth region. With the loss of the Ukraine, coupled with the severing of grain reserves from the North Caucasus through the German occupation of Kursk and Voronezh, only about 150 million puds of grain could be relied upon.
[4]: In OTL Count Mirbach was assassinated by the Left SR Chekists Iakov Blumkin and Nikolai Andreev in Moscow.
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