How Did Lenin and the Bolsheviks Use Discontent in Russia

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The Answer is Answer would ideally include the following. After taking power, the Provisional Government had to compete with several different groups for political support, including the soviets, which had the strength of the workers and soldiers behind them. The Provisional Government was not able to succeed in winning victories on the battlefield or in controlling the peasants, who were devastating the food supply by withholding produce to protest the lack of consumer goods in Russia, so the Bolsheviks were able to take advantage of a weakened government. Once Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders arrived in Russia in April 1917, they called for the soviets to overthrow the Provisional Government, drawing on popular discontent to gather support for their coup. In the first elections after the revolution, however, the Bolsheviks failed to gain a plurality of seats in the constituent assembly, and they turned to force to enact their policies. The Russian civil war pitted the Bolshevik forces (the "Reds") against an array of antirevolutionary groups (the "Whites"). The counterrevolutionary movement lacked a strong leader and unified goals, however, and was too diverse to be effective. These disparate groups joined together with non-Russian nationalities who had been forced to join the Russian Empire through force and Russification and who mainly fought the Bolsheviks because they saw it as a chance to gain independence. The Bolsheviks were able to draw on anti-aristocratic discontent within the Russian population to rally the Reds against the White forces.

How Did Lenin and the Bolsheviks Use Discontent in Russia

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