Government of Vladimir Lenin

Lenin Government
12th Cabinet of Russia (as Russian SFSR)
Lenin in 1920
Date formed	8 November 1917
Date dissolved	21 January 1924
People and organisations
Head of government	Vladimir Lenin
Member parties	Bolsheviks Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (1917–1918)
Status in legislature	Majority (1917-1921) Sole legal party (from 1921)
Opposition cabinet	Komuch (1918) Ufa Directory (1918) Omsk Government (1918–1920) Priamurye Government (1920-1923)
Opposition parties	Socialist-Revolutionaries (1917–1921) Mensheviks (1917–1921) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (1918–1921)
History
Incoming formation	Alexander Kerensky's Second Cabinet
Outgoing formation	Alexei Rykov's Cabinet
Predecessor	Alexander Kerensky
Successor	Alexei Rykov

Under the leadership of Russian communist Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik Party seized power in the Russian Republic during a coup known as the October Revolution. Overthrowing the pre-existing Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks established a new administration, the first Council of People's Commissars (see article "Lenin's First and Second Government"), with Lenin appointed as its governing chairman. Ruling by decree, Lenin’s Sovnarkom introduced widespread reforms confiscating land for redistribution among the permitting non-Russian nations to declare themselves independent, improving labour rights, and increasing access to education.

The Lenin party continued with the previously scheduled November 1917 election, but when it produced a Constituent Assembly dominated by the rival Socialist Revolutionary Party the Bolsheviks lambasted it as counter-revolutionary and shut it down. The Bolshevik government banned a number of centrist and right-wing parties, and restricted the activities of rival socialist groups, but entered into a governmental coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin had inherited a country in the midst of the First World War, with war-weary Russian troops battling the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front. Deeming the ongoing conflict a threat to his own government, Lenin sought to withdraw Russia from the war, using his Decree on Peace to establish an armistice, after which negotiations took place resulting in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This punitive treaty – highly unpopular within Russia – established a cessation of hostilities but granted considerable territorial concessions to Germany, who took control of large areas of the former Empire.