Bolsheviks consolidation of power

How did the Bolsheviks deal with the socialists?
Lenin started talking to other parties about a power-sharing government because he was forced after the railwaymen`s union, the post and telegraph union threatened to cut off communications if the Bolsheviks didn't hold talks with the other different parties. What could have happened is that food supplies would be paralyzed to get to Petrograd and also to other cities.

Brest-litovsk treaty consequences
The main implications of the treaty were that Russia ceded Finland, the Baltic states and Poland – a million square kilometres of territory which contained 74% of the country´s coal and iron ore mines, 27% of their productive farmland as west Russia had the best agricultural resources, one fourth of the railway, and 30% (62 million people ) of the population. Finland had been ruled by the Tsars since 1809, the Germans helped the Finns to defeat a Bolshevik rising and Finland remained independent under the Brest-litovsk treaty. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent republics as well as some of the Russian-held area of Poland, Bessarabia was handed over to Romania. Germany set up semi-independent governments in Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia. Patriotic Russians started loathing the Bolsheviks and a civil war seemed inevitable. The Social revolutionaries left the Svornkom as they rather have a revolution that a Coup d´ état. The Cheka leader was captured during an uprising, however he was freed and the uprising closed down, the German ambassador was assassinated in order to provoke the Germans into restarting the war. The treaty cause more splits between the Bolsheviks, to them it seemed as a shameful peace that helped Germany survive as an imperial power, the left wing socialists who also wanted

How did Lenin deal with the constituent assembly?
The Provisional Government had promised elections for a constitutional assembly and it had too much support from the people for it to be abolished as the Bolsheviks were in no position to lose support for the revolution. As it had been predicted, on the fifth of January, the Socialist revolutionaries won with 410 seats while the Bolsheviks only got 168. At the end of January the assembly’s closure was approved by the third All-Russia Congress of soviets which the majority of its member’s were Bolsheviks. Lenin justified such act by stating that, “…The constituent assembly, elected on the old register, appeared as an expression of the old regime when the authority belonged to the bourgeoisie”.

Early policies of the Sovnarkom
There was the land decree, which gave peasants the right to take over the estates of the gentry, without compensation, and to decide for themselves the best way to divide it, up (as they were doing it anyways). Land could no longer be bought, sold or rented as it belonged to the “entire people”, the Bolsheviks didn’t want privately owned land as it was not part of their socialist vision. The worker´s control decree stated that factory committees were given the right to control production and supervise management. This decree didn’t give direct management to the workers, but some committees took it as if it were the case. This went far beyond what various Bolshevik leaders wanted, but they couldn’t fight against the worker´s pressure for a reform. With the Rights of the Russian people decree gave the right of self-determination to the national minorities in the former Russian empire. The Bolsheviks didn’t have control in these areas before the decree as they were very secluded and so when the decree was passed it was only a matter of making it official. Some of the other early decrees made by the Sovnarkom were;
• Maximum eight-hour day for workers
• Social insurances
• Opposition press was banned
• Peace decree
• Land decree
• Right of self determination to all parts of the former Russian empire
• Abolition of titles and class distribution (class warfare), abolition of justice system
• Workers to control factories
• Women were declared to equal to men and were able to own property
• Cheka was set up
• Banks were nationalised
• Democratisation of army
• Marriages and divorces were legal matters religion was not included,
• Church land nationalized
• Workers control of railways
• Creation of The red army
• Church and state were separated
• Nationalisation of industry
• Socialism of land