Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War

Vladimir N. Brovkin

09/2013 · Hoover Press

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This presentation of previously unpublished documents from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives draws a dramatic picture of the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the Communist dictatorship as witnessed by members of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, or Mensheviks. When the opposing Bolsheviks consolidated their power to emerge as the ruling party of the 1917 revolution, the political influence of the Mensheviks was swept away, and most were driven to exile in Siberia. The historic power struggle that raged as the two parties vied for supremacy in postimperial Russia comes to light through these accounts—not official party statements but vivid reports, letters, and eyewitness testimonies by Mensheviks, ordinary citizens from diverse walks of life and different parts of the Soviet Union. Together, these materials create a mosaic of individual portraits and circumstances that illustrate the conflicts, struggles, and repression during the period of Soviet politics under Lenin. The primary source documents, skillfully edited and translated by Vladimir N. Brovkin, show the formation of a new mentality among Communist rulers and a new relationship to the workers, one that replaced multiparty competition with unquestioning obedience, military discipline, and intolerance.

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Vladimir N. Brovkin, born in the Soviet Union, was associate professor of history at Harvard University. His publications include The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship; Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922; and The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars.