How did the Bolsheviks gain power, and how did they consolidate their rule?

Candidates confuse the Petrograd Soviet with the Bolshevik Party. The Soviet was a broad elected council of workers' and soldiers' deputies including Mensheviks and SRs; the Bolsheviks were a minority until September 1917. It weakened the government as a rival authority -- "Order Number 1" (March 1917) told soldiers to obey the Soviet -- with or without Bolshevik control.

When a question is scoped (e.g. "abdication to November 1917"), weaker candidates stray into the earlier Tsarist period -- Bloody Sunday, the 1905 Revolution, Rasputin -- which earns no credit. The reverse also loses marks: a question on the October seizure should not narrate the Civil War, War Communism or NEP. Fix the stage the question sets and stay inside its dates.

Candidates blur the seizure of power with consolidation of rule. The seizure is the single event of 24-25 October 1917 -- the Winter Palace coup. Consolidation is everything after: Brest-Litovsk, the Cheka, the Civil War, War Communism, Kronstadt and the NEP. A "how did they seize power" question wants the coup, not years of later policy.

These were opposite policies, easily muddled. War Communism (1918-21) meant state control of industry and forced grain requisitioning to win the Civil War, causing hardship and the 1921 famine. The NEP (from 1921) reversed this: a tax in kind replaced requisitioning and limited private trade was allowed. Reversing the two makes the Kronstadt-to-NEP chain incoherent.

On "Explain why" questions, candidates describe what happened instead of why it mattered -- narrating the Kornilov Affair without linking it to the Bolsheviks gaining arms and credibility. Narrative "scene-setting" earns no credit. Every point should answer the "why", connecting the event to the outcome the question names.

In "How far do you agree" answers, weaker candidates argue one side then assert a verdict. A judgement must weigh evidence, not restate it. Develop BOTH sides -- for the NEP, its real economic recovery against its ideological retreat -- then explain which is stronger. A conclusion that repeats earlier points without weighing them stays in the lower bands.

Students often think the October 1917 seizure was a mass popular uprising, like the February/March revolution that toppled the Tsar. In fact it was a small, organised coup: armed Red Guards under Trotsky's Military Revolutionary Committee took key buildings and the Winter Palace in one night, because the government had lost support and had almost no loyal troops left.