Большевики» как «партия гражданской войны»: Радикальные социалисты в пропаганде их противников (март – апрель 1917 года)

Новейшая история России. 2025. Т. 15. № 1. С. 22–36.

Shumyakov R.

The main focus of the article is on the representation of the Bolsheviks as party and those who were called “Bolsheviks” as “civil war party” from the beginning of the February Revolution to the April Crisis. Author studies the contexts of statements and the political use of the concept of “civil war”, clarifies various actors’ understanding of the conditions for the outbreak of civil war, ways to justify political action and methods of discrediting opponents through association with civil war. Attention is also paid to the use of lexemes that are in the same semantic range with “civil war” (“turmoil”, “internal war” and others). For the first time, the Bolsheviks were associated with the civil war in March, which was tied with the propaganda of the left radicals’ slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil one and agitation in favor of the power of Soviets in the first days of the Revolution. The interpretation of the “Bolsheviks” as the “civil war party” has become a popular tool of their political opponents since the arrival of Vladimir Lenin to Petrograd in early April. Armed demonstrations during the days of the April Crisis led to the dissemination of the images of left radicals as supporters of the civil war, as well as the imposition of the label “Leninists” on the Petrograd workers - the main driving force of the anti-government demonstrations on April 21. This way workers were pushed to perceive the language of the class, to become more politically radicalized and to justify violence against the “bourgeoisie”. The study of the usage of the image of the civil war in propaganda confrontation between various political forces in 1917 became an important stage in the cultural preparation for the full-scale Civil War in Russia.

Keywords: Гражданская война, большевики, Российская революция 1917 г.