Early Disenchantment with Bolshevik Rule

Abstract

Support for the political platform of the Bolsheviks among Petrograd factory workers facilitated the party’s seizure of power in October 1917, and helped it to overcome the threat posed by a hostile Constituent Assembly in January 1918. However, even at the time of the dispersion of the Constituent Assembly, several factors that were soon to erode the standing of the Bolsheviks among Petrograd workers had begun to emerge. These factors included the frustration of hopes of an immediate compromise peace, the shutdown of factories engaged in military production (resulting in massive unemployment),¹ chaotic evacuation policies, and most important, ever more dire food shortages. These developments, in turn, led in short order to worker protests, which then precipitated violent repressions against hostile workers. Such treatment further intensified the disenchantment of significant segments of Petrograd labour with Bolshevik-dominated Soviet rule. For the Soviet authorities in Petrograd, the rise of the Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants was an ominous portent of worker defection.