The great October socialist revolution awakened and raised the broad masses of the working people to active political life. The party of the working class, which for the first time in history became the ruling party, faced the difficult task of creating a new society, the main purpose of which would be to protect the vital interests of the working masses. Only the masses themselves could solve these problems.
Here is Lenin's manuscript address "to the population" (November 5, 1917.): "Comrades workers! Remember that you are now running the state. No one will help you if you do not unite and do not take all the Affairs of the state into their own hands. Your Councils are henceforth the organs of state power, the competent and decisive organs." The first priority was the creation of a new, Soviet state apparatus - a complicated matter, as Lenin liked to say. The workers and peasants had no trained personnel and, naturally, did not have the necessary experience of governing the state. The difficulties were aggravated by the fact that part of the bourgeois intelligentsia, senior officials sabotaged the activities of the new government in every possible way. In addition, the economy of the country, already quite backward, was undermined by the war.
But Lenin had unlimited faith in the creative powers of the working masses, who, freed from the yoke of exploitation and social injustice, would be able to exert all their strength, enthusiasm and initiative to build a new society. History has confirmed that Lenin was right. The workers and peasants were actively involved in the struggle for the abolition of capitalism, for the victory of socialism. The art of control they learned in the process of creation of the Soviet Socialist state.
Decrees were approved on the abolition of estates and civil ranks, on the court, on the separation of Church from state and school from Church, and others, which marked the beginning of the demolition of the old bourgeois-landlord political state apparatus and the creation of new bodies of state administration. In the "Declaration of rights of working and exploited people", Lenin defined the main tasks of the Soviet government: to abolish all exploitation of man by man, the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, socialist organization of society, complete elimination of division of society into classes. This historical document was then included as an introductory section in the text of the first Constitution of the RSFSR, developed with the active participation of Lenin.
"Any revolution is only worth something if it knows how to defend itself..."Started the organization of defense of the Soviet Republic and the struggle of the party for the country's withdrawal from the imperialist war, the conclusion of a universal democratic peace.
January 28, 1918 issued a decree on the organization of the Workers 'and Peasants' red Army. At first, the army was based on the voluntary principle of recruitment, and only from representatives of the working classes. The photo record volunteers in the Red Army. The first detachments were sent to the most dangerous place - near Pskov, revel (now Tallinn) and Narva, where stubborn battles with parts of the German army unfolded.
A fierce and uncompromising struggle for a way out of the war had to be waged with the Trotskyists and "left Communists", who claimed that the signing of the peace would disrupt the revolutionary movement in the West and lead to the restoration of bourgeois power in Russia. Speaking against the conclusion of peace, Lenin stressed, they threaten the existence of the Republic of Soviets.
The articles "on the revolutionary phrase" and "the Strange and the monstrous" were written in February 1918, during the dramatic days of the most acute struggle within the party over the question of signing the peace, which Germany agreed to sign under very difficult conditions for the Soviet Republic. Nevertheless, Lenin saw that if peace was not signed, the death sentence of the Soviet government would be signed. I saw and with courage and integrity inherent in it defended the line on signing of the world on the offered conditions. The peace Treaty with Germany was signed in Brest-Litovsk (now Brest-Litovsk in Belarus) on March 3, 1918 and went down in history as the Brest peace.
The conclusion of peace with Germany gave the young workers 'and peasants' Republic a much-needed peaceful respite. The Soviet people had the opportunity to concentrate their material and spiritual forces on the restoration of the national economy destroyed by the war, on solving the creative tasks of the socialist revolution.
In his work "the Next tasks of Soviet power", which was written in April 1918, Lenin outlined a plan of socialist construction, developed the main directions of economic policy of the Soviet state, revealed the most important problems of the transition period from capitalism to socialism.
"We, the Bolshevik party, have convinced Russia. We have won Russia back - from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the working people. We must now rule Russia." So figuratively Lenin defined the main task of the party after the victory of the revolution of 1917.
Socialist construction began in difficult conditions. By the summer of 1918, the country was in a very difficult food situation. The workers of Moscow, Petrograd, and other industrial cities did not receive food rations for weeks on end. The working peasantry of a number of areas starved. The famine was caused primarily by the fact that as a result of the intervention of the imperialist powers and counter - revolutionary rebellions, Central Russia was cut off from the main "grain" areas-Ukraine, the Volga region, Siberia. The kulaks (the rural bourgeoisie) hid bread and refused to sell it to the state at fixed prices.
Lenin wrote in those days that the main thing now was the struggle for bread, for the struggle for bread was the struggle for socialism. The party and the government have taken a number of measures to eliminate hunger and provide food to the population. Thus, food detachments of workers, endowed with the necessary powers to purchase bread, went to the villages, the struggle against grain speculators began, all grain reserves were strictly accounted for.
The first steps of the Soviet power in the field of cultural construction began. At the third all - Russian Congress of Soviets in January 1918, two months after the victory of the revolution, Lenin said: "Previously, the whole human mind, all his genius worked only to give one all the benefits of technology and culture, and others to deprive the most necessary-education and development. Now all the marvels of technology, all the conquests of culture will become the common property of the people, and henceforth the human mind and genius will never be turned into means of violence, into means of exploitation."
In his speech at the 1st all-Russian Congress on education (August 1918) Lenin set the task of educating the younger generation conscious and active builders of socialism. Decrees were issued on the elimination of adult illiteracy and on working faculties. The country Councils have embarked on the formation of intellectuals of a socialist society.
The Constitution of the RSFSR was developed with the active participation of Lenin. The text of the Constitution - the Basic law of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic-was approved by the V all-Russian Congress of Soviets in July 1918. In it the conquests of the great October socialist revolution were legislated: the establishment of the political power of the workers and peasants, the transfer into the hands of the people of the basic means of production, the establishment of genuine democracy - democracy for the broadest masses of the people. The Constitution granted all workers equal rights in the economic and political life of society. The Soviet government, supported by the broad masses of workers, confidently strengthened its position.