The organization and activity of the Committee of Revolutionary De-fense of Petrograd as an example of the functioning of early Soviet state agencies
Keywords:
Committee of Revolutionary Defense of Petrograd, German offensive of 1918, Soviet government agencies, left Social Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, PetrogradAbstract
Based on mostly previously unpublished documents of the Central State Administration of St. Petersburg, the article examines the activities of the Committee of the Revolutionary Defense of Petrograd in February-March 1918. The process of creating the committee is reconstructed, and its activities are characterized. It is shown that the committee was not an exclusively military agencies, its activities affected almost all aspects of the life of revolutionary Petrograd. For the first time, the article coverage the activities of the left Social Revolutionaries in maintaining order in the city. The authors conclude that structurally the CRO cannot be called an effective government agencies, but in the circumstances in which it existed, the methods of “hand control” that were characteristic of the CRO corresponded to the time and their results can be considered successful.
