How did the Bolsheviks gain power and consolidate their rule?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Depth Study C: Russia, 1905 to 1941 · Key Question 2 Syllabus: 2027 and 2028

This is the second of the four Key Questions in Depth Study C, and it is the only one with two halves joined by a comma. Cambridge asks how the Bolsheviks got power and how they kept it, and the papers set both halves about equally often. This file covers the period from the fall of the Tsar in March 1917 to the New Economic Policy and the end of Lenin's rule. It starts with the Provisional Government, and it stops before the fight over who replaced Lenin.

Two neighbouring files carry what this one leaves out. Key Question 1, "Why did the Tsarist regime collapse in 1917?", ends at the abdication, so everything about Nicholas II, 1905, Stolypin, Rasputin and the war before March 1917 belongs there. Key Question 3, "How did Stalin gain and hold on to power?", owns Lenin's death and everything after it. The boundary with Key Question 3 is the least obvious one in this Depth Study, and there is a section below that fixes it using Cambridge's own wording.

One more page you should read before this one. The mark scheme rules, the level ladders, the two changes Cambridge made in 2024 and the faults that appear on every question of the paper are all set out in How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. None of it is repeated here. This file only carries what is specific to the Bolsheviks.

What Cambridge actually asks

The focus points, word for word

The syllabus prints four focus points under this Key Question, and each one is already shaped like a 10-mark title:

How effectively did the Provisional Government rule Russia in 1917?

Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in November 1917?

Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War?

How far was the New Economic Policy a success?

Nothing else is listed under the Key Question. There are no sub-bullets, no named individuals and no dates beyond 1917.

The specified content, which is not divided up

This is the part students get wrong when they revise from the syllabus. Cambridge prints the specified content once for the whole of Depth Study C, not under each Key Question. All four Key Questions share this single list, and the syllabus gives you no marking to say which bullet belongs to which:

The main features of Tsarist rule and Russian society before the First World War: the 1905 Revolution and its aftermath; attempts at reform
The First World War and its impact on the Russian people
The March Revolution of 1917
The Provisional Government and the Soviets, the growing power of revolutionary groups
Reasons for the failure of the Provisional Government
The Bolshevik seizure of power, the role of Lenin
The main features of Bolshevik rule, the Civil War and War Communism, and reasons for the Bolshevik victory
The Kronstadt Rising and the establishment of the New Economic Policy
Lenin's death and the struggle for power
Reasons for Stalin's emergence as leader by 1928
Stalin's dictatorship: use of terror; the Purges; propaganda and official culture
Stalin's economic policies and their impact: the modernisation of Soviet industry; the Five-Year Plans; collectivisation in agriculture
Life in the Soviet Union: the differing experiences of social groups; ethnic minorities and women

Five of those thirteen bullets are yours, and they run consecutively:

• The Provisional Government and the Soviets, the growing power of revolutionary groups
• Reasons for the failure of the Provisional Government
• The Bolshevik seizure of power, the role of Lenin
• The main features of Bolshevik rule, the Civil War and War Communism, and reasons for the Bolshevik victory
• The Kronstadt Rising and the establishment of the New Economic Policy

The three bullets above them belong to Key Question 1. Everything from "Lenin's death and the struggle for power" downwards belongs to Key Questions 3 and 4. The split above is a reading of the chronology, not something Cambridge states, and the undivided list is the reason a student who revises "the syllabus content" for this Key Question ends up revising the whole Depth Study.

Where the boundaries fall

Where Key Question 1 stops and this file starts

Key Question 1's last focus point is "Why was the revolution of March 1917 successful?" That question ends with the abdication. Your material starts the moment there is a Provisional Government to judge.

The overlap is real and the papers exploit it. June 2023 set "Why was the revolution of March 1917 successful?" as a 6-mark question, which is a Key Question 1 title lifted straight from the syllabus. If you have revised only this file, that question is not yours. If a question names the Tsar, Rasputin, Stolypin, the Dumas or 1905, it is Key Question 1 territory even when it appears at Question 13.

Where consolidation stops and Key Question 3 starts

This is the boundary students cross without noticing, because "consolidating their rule" and "Stalin holding on to power" sound like the same idea. Cambridge fixes the line itself, in the wording of its Paper 4 questions:

• "How significant was War Communism in the consolidation of Bolshevik rule to 1924?"
• "How important was Lenin in the consolidation of Bolshevik rule, 1917 to 1924?"
• "How significant was the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) to the survival of the Bolshevik dictatorship, 1917 to 1924?"
• "Write an account of the Bolshevik consolidation of power by 1924."

Consolidation ends in 1924, with Lenin's death. Everything before that is about whether Bolshevik rule survives at all. Everything after it is about which Bolshevik leads, which is Key Question 3.

Two warnings on that line.

Cambridge sometimes closes consolidation earlier, at 1921. The same Paper 4 series also asks about "the consolidation of Bolshevik rule between 1917 and 1921", "establishing Bolshevik rule between 1917 and 1921" and "the Cheka in the Bolsheviks' consolidation of power to 1921". Both end dates are Cambridge's. Do not try to reconcile them. Answer the dates in the question in front of you, because part of the marking is whether you stayed inside them.

The NEP straddles the line and Cambridge knows it. One Paper 4 question asks "How significant was the New Economic Policy (NEP) in allowing Stalin to gain control of the USSR by 1928?", which is your content used for a Key Question 3 purpose. One Paper 1 question asks candidates to "Describe what replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the late 1920s", where the correct answer is collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans, which are Key Question 4. Know what the NEP was and why Lenin introduced it. What killed it belongs to your neighbours.

Where this Key Question is set, and how often

Everything in this section comes from reading the printed question stems in all 48 Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024 and in every Paper 4 question paper on file. Cambridge publishes none of it.

Question 13 and Question 14, confirmed

Section B begins at Question 9, and Depth Study C takes Question 13 and Question 14 in all 48 Paper 1 papers read. There is no exception, in either the seven-Depth-Study papers up to 2023 or the five-Depth-Study papers from 2024.

This Key Question is set on more than half of all papers

Key Question 2 was set on 27 of the 48 papers. On 26 of those it took a whole question, all three parts. On one, June 2018 paper 2, it supplied only the 4-mark opening of a question that then moved on to Stalin. That is 79 individually marked parts on this Key Question in seven years, which makes it the best-supplied Key Question in the Depth Study for past-paper practice.

The slot rule that Cambridge does not print, and that is worth knowing

When this Key Question is set as a whole question, it took Question 13 on 23 papers and Question 14 on 3. That is not a coincidence, and it comes from a rule that holds in all 48 papers read: within Depth Study C, the two questions run in chronological order. The earlier period is always at Question 13 and the later period always at Question 14. There is no paper where Stalin sits at Question 13 and 1917 sits at Question 14.

So your Key Question is at Question 13 whenever the other question is about Stalin, and at Question 14 on the minority of papers where Question 13 covers the Tsar. Check both before choosing. Do not treat this as a promise: it is a pattern in the papers, not a published rule, and a Depth Study's internal ordering is exactly the kind of thing Cambridge changes without announcement.

Parts within one question are not ordered. November 2022 paper 1 opened Question 13 with the NEP and the Kronstadt Rising, both 1921, and then asked its 10-mark part about why the Provisional Government lost power in 1917. Do not assume part (a) is the earliest.

Gaining or consolidating: the papers do not favour either

Of the 79 marked parts, 39 were on gaining power and 40 on consolidating it. That is as even as it could be, and it means you cannot drop half of this Key Question.

The 10-mark parts do lean, and they lean the other way from what most students expect. Of the 26 papers where this Key Question took a whole question, the 10-mark part was on consolidation 17 times and on gaining power 9 times. Broken down further:

All three seizure-of-power 10-markers were the same argument in different words: Trotsky against Lenin, or Trotsky against everything else. If you prepare one balanced comparison of those two men, you have prepared for every version of it Cambridge has set.

Paper 4 sets this Key Question harder than Paper 1 does

Depth Study C is Question 5 and Question 6 on Paper 4, before and after the 2024 format change alike. Of the 41 pre-2024 Paper 4 papers read, 25 set this Key Question, and Paper 4 asks it in the language of importance and consolidation rather than description. One question was set twice, word for word, two years apart: "How important was the Petrograd Soviet in weakening the Provisional Government between March and November 1917?"

From 2024, Paper 4 is (a) 15 marks, "Write an account of", and (b) 25 marks, "Discuss the importance of" or "Discuss the impact of". The 2024 Paper 4 questions on this Key Question included "Write an account of the Russian Civil War" with "Discuss the impact of Lenin's decrees", and "Write an account of the Bolshevik consolidation of power by 1924" with "Discuss the impact of the New Economic Policy (NEP)".

Paper 2 never examines a Depth Study, so none of this appears there.

The calendar, which Cambridge is not consistent about

Russia used the Julian calendar until 1918, thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar used everywhere else. The same events therefore have two sets of dates, and Cambridge uses both.

The syllabus uses the Gregorian dates. It prints "The March Revolution of 1917" and asks "Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in November 1917?"

The mark schemes use both, sometimes in the same answer. One 4-mark question on Kerensky lists among its creditable points that "He was a leader of the February Revolution of 1917" and that "In the October Revolution he tried to re-take Petrograd but failed". A 2024 mark scheme, discussing the Provisional Government, writes that "The problems which had caused the February Revolution were still there". Question stems have used "the November Revolution of 1917", "October 1917" and "the March Revolution of 1917" in different series.

The seizure itself is dated two different ways. One paper asked candidates to "Describe the actions of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during 7 to 8 November 1917". Another asked them to "Describe how the Bolsheviks took power on 6 to 8 November 1917". A third mark scheme says simply that "on 7 November they seized power".

Do not try to resolve this and do not correct Cambridge. Use whatever calendar the question uses, name the event the way the question names it, and if you want to be safe write "the November Revolution (October in the old Russian calendar)" once and then stop. No mark scheme read here rewards or penalises the choice.

Focus point 1: How effectively did the Provisional Government rule Russia in 1917?

This focus point supplied 6 of the 26 ten-mark parts, more than any other single argument in the gaining-power half. Cambridge has set it as a statement to agree with, as a straight "how far", and twice as a choice between two named things: "Which was the more serious problem facing the Provisional Government: the land issue or the war?" and "Who was more important in the failure of the Provisional Government: Kerensky or Lenin?"

What it did, which is the part (a) material

Mark schemes credit, among other things, that it was led by Kerensky, that it acted with great caution, that it disbanded the secret police, that it granted freedom of speech, that it abolished the death penalty, that it gave political prisoners an amnesty, that the press was no longer censored, that strikes were allowed, that unions were legalised, that all people were declared equal before the law, that Poland was made independent and that the regions of the Russian Empire were given more freedom.

That list matters because the reforms are real. An answer that says the Provisional Government did nothing is wrong on the evidence Cambridge itself prints. It did a great deal, and still fell.

Why it failed, in the order the mark schemes rank it

It continued the war. This is the reason that appears in every mark scheme on this focus point. Kerensky, as Minister of War, visited the front and decided to fight on, and launched the offensive that carries his name. A 2024 mark scheme states that when Russia's armies were ordered to take the offensive in Austria in June 1917, "the response was wholesale desertion and mutiny", and that almost 2 million soldiers deserted, some killing their officers.

It would not settle the land question. Cambridge's own exemplar is precise about why this was fatal: the Provisional Government "was not against the idea of land redistribution but wanted it to take place lawfully". Peasants and deserting soldiers seized land anyway. The government's inability to act "made them seem out of touch with the people".

It shared power with the Petrograd Soviet. Mark schemes call this "dual power". The Soviet had existed since 1905, acted like a city council, set up soldiers' committees throughout the armed forces, began to take control of food supplies into Petrograd, controlled the railways, power supplies and factories, and coordinated a national network of soviets modelled on itself. Above all it issued Order No 1, which, in the mark scheme's wording, "only allowed orders in the Army to be carried out if they did not conflict with the orders of the Soviet". A government whose army obeys somebody else is not governing.

It was temporary and everybody knew it. Cambridge's Level 5 exemplar turns this into the judgement: Kerensky "knew he was in a temporary position until elections could be held late in 1917", and Lenin "understood that the Bolsheviks must gain power before the elections took place".

1. the Provisional Government keeps Russia in the war
2. the June offensive collapses and soldiers desert in huge numbers
3. deserters go home and seize land the government has refused to redistribute
4. the government loses the army, the peasants and the cities at once
5. the Petrograd Soviet, which the soldiers do obey, becomes the real authority

Focus point 2: Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in November 1917?

Lenin's return, and the promise

Mark schemes credit that Lenin reached Petrograd in April 1917, that he arrived in a sealed train provided by Germany, that he issued his April Theses, that he criticised his own Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government, that he urged peasants to take land from the landlords and workers to take over the factories, and that he called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

The promise itself, "Bread, Peace and Land", has its own 6-mark question. Cambridge's exemplar explains why it worked by matching each word to a grievance the Provisional Government had left standing: peace against a war Russia was losing, bread against real food shortages, land against a redistribution that never came.

The July Days, which went badly

Cambridge sets this both as a description and as a reason. Creditable points include that four Kadet ministers resigned from the government on 15 July, that workers, soldiers and sailors then rioted for two days, that they wanted the Soviets to take power, that the riots lacked leadership, that the Provisional Government suggested Lenin was a German spy, that Lenin was declared a German agent on 18 July and fled to Finland, that Trotsky was arrested, that Kerensky reintroduced the death penalty, that many Bolsheviks were imprisoned, and that the whole episode showed the Bolsheviks were not ready to take power.

The July Days are the reason the seizure of power needs explaining at all. In July the Bolsheviks were a banned party with a leader in hiding. Four months later they were the government.

The Kornilov Affair, the single most-set episode in this Key Question

Cambridge has set Kornilov as a 4-mark description, as a 6-mark reason four separate times on Paper 1, and as a 40-mark Paper 4 question. Nothing else in this Key Question is examined that often.

The mark scheme narrative runs like this. Kerensky appointed Kornilov Supreme Commander of the armed forces and authorised him to impose order in Petrograd. Kornilov marched on the capital. Kerensky, uncertain of his own generals, was forced to ask his Bolshevik opponents for help. He released Bolsheviks from prison and distributed arms to the workers. Bolshevik activists persuaded Kornilov's troops to desert. The Bolsheviks organised an armed force, the Red Guard, and after Kornilov's defeat they kept their weapons and were credited with saving Petrograd.

1. Kerensky arms the Bolsheviks to stop Kornilov
2. Bolshevik agitators talk Kornilov's troops out of marching
3. the threat collapses without a battle
4. the Bolsheviks keep the guns and the credit
5. Kerensky has armed the party that overthrows him six weeks later

The seizure

Creditable description includes that the Bolsheviks took control of post offices, bridges and the State Bank, that Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace and arrested the ministers of the Provisional Government, that Kerensky fled Petrograd, that the abolition of private property and the redistribution of land were announced, that withdrawal from the war was announced, that censorship of newspapers was introduced, that the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was established and that Lenin became leader of the Bolshevik government.

Lenin or Trotsky, which is the argument Cambridge actually sets

All three 10-mark questions on the seizure of power turn on this comparison. Cambridge's exemplars give you both sides, and they are worth knowing in the shape Cambridge writes them.

For Trotsky. He was Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He set up the Military Revolutionary Committee to prepare an armed uprising. The planning and organising of the uprising were his responsibility. He was commander of the Bolshevik troops who fought off Kerensky's forces after the capture of the Winter Palace.

For Lenin. He realised immediately after the collapse of the Kornilov revolt that the time for action had come, and he "did not relax his pressure on the Party Central Committee until his proposals were accepted". An examiner report adds that Lenin also dealt with internal opposition to the timing of the revolution from within his own party.

For neither. One Cambridge exemplar argues that the most important factor was the workers and soldiers, who controlled the railways and stations so that the Provisional Government's supporters could not move, and occupied the telegraph stations so that Kerensky could not contact forces outside the city.

Focus point 3: Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War?

The Civil War is the single commonest 10-mark topic in this Key Question, set nine times out of twenty-six. Cambridge phrases it as a balance almost every time: the Whites lost it, or the Reds won it.

Who the Whites were, and why the answer is a list

Mark schemes credit that the Whites fought the Bolsheviks, that they were nationalistic and supported the monarchy, that the Cossacks joined them, that they were led by General Kornilov, that they included middle-class liberals, army officers and monarchists, that they were made up of many different groups and were not united, that they were extreme anti-Semites, and that they were supported by foreign countries worried about Russia becoming communist.

The list is the argument. A coalition of monarchists and liberals was never going to agree on what it was fighting for.

Why the war happened at all, which is a separate 6-mark question

Creditable reasons include the actions of the Allies, who feared that Russia's withdrawal would free German troops for the Western Front and who opposed Bolshevik ideas; landlords and others who had lost money in the revolution; liberals and social democrats opposed to Bolshevik ideas; supporters of the Tsar who wanted the Romanovs back; and opponents on the left of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Britain and France sent troops and supplies to fight alongside the Whites.

Reds' strengths

Trotsky and the Red Army. Cambridge's exemplar: in 1918 the army was on the verge of disintegration, and Trotsky transformed it into the Workers and Peasants Red Army, restored discipline, brought back thousands of Tsarist officers and gave it a single unified command structure. By 1920 the Red Army had five million men. An examiner report adds that he inspired troops by travelling to the fighting in a special train.

Geography and industry. The Reds held the railways and the large industrial centres, so they could move men and make weapons. The Whites could do neither reliably.

War Communism. Discussed below, and set as a cause of victory in its own right.

Coercion. One mark scheme credits that "The Cheka made sure local people did not give the Whites any help."

Whites' advantages, which is the other side of the balance

Do not write the Whites off, because the questions are often phrased as "Are you surprised that the Whites lost?" and a one-sided answer is capped. Cambridge's own exemplar for the surprised side: the Whites outnumbered the Bolsheviks, controlled huge areas of Russia, had the experience of men who had been officers in the Tsar's army, and were strengthened by Allied support. At first it looked as if they would win.

1. the Whites hold more territory and more experienced officers
2. but they are monarchists, liberals and Cossacks who agree only on hating the Bolsheviks
3. they cannot appoint one commander or agree what victory would look like
4. they attack separately and are beaten separately by an army with one commander and the railways to move it

The judgement an examiner report singles out as the strongest is not that the Whites were weak, but that "the failure of the Whites owed more to the advantages held by the Bolsheviks, rather than their own shortcomings". That is a Level 5 sentence: it answers the question asked and gives a reason for coming down that way.

War Communism

Creditable description includes that it was designed to help fight the Civil War, that Russian industry was nationalised, that rationing was introduced, that the economy was managed centrally, that strikes were forbidden and strict rules imposed on workers, that food was taken from farms and distributed across Russia, that private enterprise was banned and that the railways were put under government control. The Cheka enforced grain requisitioning.

It worked for its purpose and destroyed the country doing it. Mark schemes credit both halves: it kept the Red Army supplied, and it caused falling industrial production, the collapse of agriculture and a famine.

Focus point 4: How far was the New Economic Policy a success?

Cambridge examines the NEP more than any other single policy in this Key Question. It has been the 4-mark description, the 6-mark reason and the 10-mark argument, and it has been set against War Communism as a straight comparison twice. Note that Cambridge has also inverted its own focus point and asked "How far was the New Economic Policy a failure?", and separately "How far was the New Economic Policy (NEP) disliked by Russians?" and "Are you surprised Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP)?" The content is the same. The direction of the question is not, and answering the wrong direction is a named fault.

Kronstadt, which is why the NEP exists

The Kronstadt Rising is examined in its own right almost as often as the NEP. Creditable points: it was a mutiny by sailors, in 1921, at the Kronstadt naval base; sailors on the battleship Petropavlovsk mutinied; it was against the Bolsheviks; there was a shortage of food; the sailors thought the Bolsheviks had drifted from true communism and disliked party leaders receiving privileges; it happened because of War Communism; they demanded freedom of speech, equal rations and new elections; it was crushed by the Red Army; over 2000 mutineers were executed and many were sent to Siberia; and it led to a change of policy from War Communism to the NEP.

Cambridge's exemplar explains the importance in one move: these sailors "had played an important role in the Revolution and the Civil War", so their opposition was taken seriously in a way that a peasant revolt was not. A mark scheme also names the Workers' Opposition, which demanded higher wages and better conditions.

1. War Communism feeds the Red Army by taking grain by force
2. peasants stop producing what will only be seized
3. famine, falling industrial output and strikes
4. the Kronstadt sailors, the regime's own supporters, mutiny in 1921
5. Lenin abandons War Communism for the NEP within weeks

What the NEP was

Creditable description: it reintroduced aspects of capitalism; small factories returned to private ownership; peasants were allowed to sell their surplus grain for a profit; private trading of small goods was allowed; trade with other countries was allowed; food production increased.

Both sides, which is what the 10-mark part needs

A success. It ended the famine. Grain production went up, peasants produced more, factory production increased, trade with other countries increased, there was less discontent and fewer strikes, owners of small businesses prospered. Cambridge's Level 5 exemplar goes further than most students dare: the NEP "rescued Russia from awful starvation and famine and might even have rescued the Bolshevik Revolution", and set against that, "upsetting a few extreme Bolsheviks did not matter much".

A failure. Many Bolsheviks were horrified because it was a step backwards from true communism. It produced the Nepmen, who made large profits and were widely resented. It did not modernise farming. It did not improve the position of industrial workers, who resented the Nepmen. It created growing inequality between peasants, and deep divisions inside the party.

What the mark schemes reward, and what they never mention

This matters more here than on most topics, because textbook coverage of the Russian Civil War is far wider than Cambridge's.

Nowhere in the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes read do the following appear: Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich, the Red Terror, the Greens, the Tambov rising, the Czech Legion, or Ekaterinburg and the fate of the imperial family. Cambridge does not name White commanders. It names Kornilov, and it treats the Whites as a coalition rather than as generals.

Cambridge prints almost no numbers for this Key Question. The figures that do appear in the mark schemes and examiner reports read here are: over 2000 Kronstadt mutineers executed; five million men in the Red Army by 1920; almost 2 million deserters after the June 1917 offensive; 703 candidates elected to the Constituent Assembly; and, for Brest-Litovsk, 90 per cent of coalmines and around 25 per cent of industrial capacity in one mark scheme, and 34 per cent of the population and 300 million gold roubles in one examiner report.

There is no Cambridge figure for Civil War deaths, famine deaths or Bolshevik party membership anywhere in the corpus read. One mark scheme goes no further than "millions of people losing their lives". If you have a precise casualty total or a membership number in your notes, it did not come from Cambridge, and a wrong one is worse than none: the fifth mark on part (b) is for specific contextual knowledge that is correct, not merely specific.

The safe named details, all Cambridge's own, are: the battleship Petropavlovsk, Order No 1, the April Theses, the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Red Guard, the Cheka, the Kerensky Offensive, dual power, the Nepmen, the Workers' Opposition, and the Constituent Assembly, which met on 18 January 1918 and was closed down by the Bolsheviks on 19 January 1918.

The mistakes examiner reports name on this Key Question

Depth Study C draws real examiner comment less often than you would like. Of the 39 Paper 1 sections of examiner reports available here, 20 say only that there were too few responses for meaningful comments to be made, and 19 give substantive comment. Eight of those 19 cover this Key Question. Everything below comes from those eight.

Writing about the wrong month. The sharpest one. On a 10-mark question about the Bolshevik success in November 1917, the report records that "some candidates did not take into account the date in the question, November 1917, and wrote about the Civil War, which was not relevant". On a 6-mark question about why Lenin went into hiding in July 1917, "a number of candidates wrote about events from October 1917; these were not relevant to this question". This Key Question covers about four years of very dense chronology, and the questions cut it thinly. Read the date before you read the noun.

Describing Kornilov instead of explaining him. Reports repeatedly note that candidates could say Kornilov marched on Petrograd and that Kerensky asked the Bolsheviks for help, but stopped there. The mark is in why that mattered: it exposed the Provisional Government and armed and legitimised the Bolsheviks.

Being stronger on one side than the other. On the Civil War, on the failure of the Provisional Government and on the seizure of power alike, reports say the same thing: arguments in agreement with the statement were stronger than those against, or "less successful responses tended to lack balance". Since 2024, one explanation on each side is 7 out of 10 and a one-sided answer is capped at 6, however good.

Generalising on part (a). On the Provisional Government's reforms, "a number of responses were generalised, without any specific reference to the reforms". On Brest-Litovsk, answers "tended to make generalised points about the severity of the losses" where the specifics earned the marks.

Listing instead of explaining. Named on Trotsky's role in the Civil War, on the Petrograd Soviet, on the Kornilov Affair and on the NEP against War Communism, in almost identical words each time.

Where Cambridge's own documents disagree

Three conflicts, all of them real, none of them worth your time to resolve. Answer the paper in front of you.

Quick revision

• Depth Study C is Question 13 and Question 14 on Paper 1, and Question 5 and Question 6 on Paper 4. Paper 2 never touches it.
• Within Depth Study C the two Paper 1 questions run in chronological order, so this Key Question is usually at Question 13. Check both.
• It was set on 27 of 48 papers, more than half.
• 39 marked parts on gaining power, 40 on consolidating. Neither half is safe to drop.
• But the 10-mark part leans to consolidation, 17 to 9. The Civil War and the NEP are the two commonest 10-mark topics.
• Every 10-mark question on the seizure of power has been Lenin against Trotsky. Prepare that one comparison and you have prepared them all.
• Kornilov is the most-set single episode: four times as a 6-mark reason, plus descriptions and a Paper 4 essay.
• The Provisional Government failed on the war, the land and dual power, and Order No 1 is the detail that makes dual power concrete.
• Kronstadt causes the NEP. Sailors who had made the revolution turned on it, and Lenin changed policy.
• Cambridge names no White generals except Kornilov and prints no Civil War casualty figure. Do not invent one.
• Watch the date limit in the question. It is the fault examiners name most often on this Key Question.

Where these facts come from

Everything above is taken from Cambridge's own documents, and each claim can be checked against a named one.

The Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. The four focus points, quoted verbatim, and the specified content list, quoted in full. The syllabus prints the specified content once for the whole Depth Study. The division of that list between Key Questions in this file is a reading of the chronology and is not stated by Cambridge.

Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024, all 48 papers. Every question stem quoted or summarised, every creditable point, every exemplar answer, and all the counts: the 48 out of 48 for Questions 13 and 14, the 27 papers that set this Key Question, the 79 marked parts, the 39 to 40 split between gaining and consolidating, and the 10-mark breakdown of 9 Civil War, 8 NEP and War Communism, 6 Provisional Government and 3 seizure of power.

Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2024. The fault list, and the counts of 39 Paper 1 sections, 20 of them reporting too few responses and 19 giving substantive comment, of which 8 cover this Key Question. The Brest-Litovsk figures of 34 per cent of the population and 300 million gold roubles come from a 2023 report, and the 90 per cent of coalmines and 25 per cent of industrial capacity from a 2020 mark scheme. Cambridge does not reconcile them, and they measure different things.

Paper 4 question papers, 2018 to 2024. The Question 5 and Question 6 slot, the 25 of 41 pre-2024 papers that set this Key Question, the repeated Petrograd Soviet question, the 2024 format change, and every quoted phrase about "consolidation of Bolshevik rule" and its end dates.

One spelling note. A 2018 examiner report names the two Bolsheviks who opposed the timing of the rising as "Kamanev and Zinoviev". Kamenev is the standard spelling and no mark scheme read here prints the name at all, so it is not a detail to rely on for the fifth mark.

The chronological ordering rule in the section on question slots is a pattern observed in all 48 papers, not a rule Cambridge publishes. It has held without exception in every paper read, and it should still be treated as a tendency.

What is not here. No casualty figure for the Civil War or the famine, no Bolshevik party membership number, no White commander other than Kornilov, and no date for the start or end of the Civil War beyond the single Level 1 example in one mark scheme that says it "lasted from 1918 until 1920". None of those appear in the Cambridge documents read, so none of them are asserted here.

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