- Revolutionary committee
Revolutionary committees or revkoms ( _ru. Революционный комитет, ревком) were
Bolshevik -led organizations in Soviet Russia and in areas of its activities established to serve asprovisional government s and temporary Soviet administrations in territories under the control of theRed Army in 1918-1920, during theRussian Civil War and foreign military intervention. The forms of their work were inherited fromMilitary Revolutionary Committee s of theRussian Revolution of 1917 . The name was borrowed from the history of theFrench Revolution , where "comités révolutionnaires" were created, the superior ones beingCommittee of Public Safety andCommittee of General Security .Revolutionary committees were often created in an anticipation of the advances of the Red Army. In some cases they were created in places remote from the intended place of action as it was in the case, e.g.,
Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee . In other cases they were created in underground from local population under the guidance ofBolsheviks , which subsequently organized an insurgence and then invited the Red Army for help, as it was, e.g., in the case of theAzerbaijani Revkom , which seized power inBaku when English troops were evacuated and then askedMoscow for help.Some of revkoms were successful, while others were not.
There were different levels of "revkoms", according to the administrative divisions: republican, inherited from
Russian Empire ("guberniya ", "uyezd ", "volost "), and of grassroots level: rural revkoms.According to the decree of
VTsIK (central Sovietlegislative body ), "On Revolutionary Committees" (October 24 , 1919), there were three major types of revkoms:
*in areas taken over by the Red Army
*in front areas
*in rear areasIn most territories all lower level revkoms were abiolished by January 1920, with some exceptions:
*in 1920: in Arkhangelsk guberniya (February-April), inVolga German s area (February), inCentral Asia ,Ukraine ,Kuban ,Belarus ,Dagestan ,Azerbaijan .
*in 1921:Armenia , Georgia
*inSiberia ,Siberian Revkom (Sibrevkom ) existed until 1925.ee also
*
Poor Peasants Committee References
*"
Great Soviet Encyclopedia "
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