Revolution

The coup d'état financed by the German General Staff, which took place on 7th November (25th October according to the then valid Julian calendar in Russia) 1917, paved the way for the practical implementation of the utopian assumptions of the ideology created by German philosophers. The Bolsheviks, despite declaring a progressive and reforming program, did not leave any illusions as to what means they planned to bring about a communist system in the country. When it turned out that in the elections to the Legislative Assembly, transformed by the revolution, Russia won only 25% of the vote, the Assembly was dispersed by the soldiers of the Red Guard appointed by them, and the demonstrations in defence of it were bloodily suppressed. In practice, the power gained by the coup d'état was exercised by the so-called Council of People's Commissioners, which acted as the Interim Government of Workers and Peasants. Other authorities, such as the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (as a surrogate for the parliament), performed rather facade functions without any real influence on the shape of the system being introduced. The Council of Commissioners set this by decree, one of the first of which was the reintroduction of censorship in the country.

The practical implementation of the revolutionary reforms was to be supervised by a specially established commission, i.e. the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission at the Council of People's Commissioners for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (later the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Abuse of Power - the famous Czech Republic's Cheque). Its main task was to bring about a revolutionary terror in the country, which would make it impossible to overthrow the new popular power and consolidate it properly. The victims of Cheque were first of all the dangerous “counter-revolutionary elements”, which could have questioned the new order - officials of the old regime, officers of the former tsarist army, landowners, clergy, industrialists, aristocracy. In a word, all the owners of the means of production and the exploiters of the fruits of the work of the proletariat according to Marx's definition. New economic orders were also introduced by the means of terror including the so-called war communism, which was particularly lamentable in its effects. It was an attempt to implement the theoretical economic assumptions contained in the thoughts of Marks and Engels - monopolization of the means of production through the actual liquidation of the private sector in the economy, a universal obligation to work, destruction of the value of money through artificial hyperinflation, an attempt to introduce a central system of distribution and regulation and the creation of centralised planning of almost all economic activity. The bitter fruit of these utopian theories was the rapid collapse of the country's economy and its anarchism.