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By placing the party grassroots at the centre of its focus, Building Socialism presents an original account of the formative first two decades of the Soviet system. Assembled in a large network of primary party organisations (PPO), the Bolshevik rank-and-file was an army of activists made up of ordinary people. While far removed from the levers of power, they were nevertheless charged with promoting the Party's programme of revolutionary social transformation in their workplaces, neighbourhoods, and households. Their regular meetings, conferences and campaigns have generated a voluminous source base. This rich material provides a unique view of the practical manifestation of the Party's revolutionary mission and forms the basis of this insightful new narrative of how the Soviet republic functioned in the period from the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921 to its invasion by Nazi Germany in 1941.

This article examines the process of disintegration and reconstitution of political authority in civil war with reference to the Russian (1918–1921) and Greek (1946–1949) civil wars. These conflicts bracket the post-World War I period of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary conflicts that has been the core subject of historical scholarship on European civil strife. Both cases were highly polarised clashes between establishment and revolutionary forces, and much of the relevant historiography has been naturally coloured by this aspect of the conflicts. I argue that the interpretative focus on polarisation obscures a different dynamic that is equally important for our understanding of civil war as a type of military conflict and, crucially, its political aftermath. Civil war in Russia and Greece did not emerge as a result of functioning states splitting into two or more competing authorities. It was rather the product of a multifaceted fragmentation of political power as a result of war and revolution; a shattering of the state into an array of asymmetrical actors competing for control over both its territory and its administrative resources. Polarisation followed this fragmentation, as these disparate actors manoeuvred to form the camps of the civil wars. This form of coalition building was a dynamic process in which armed violence was not only the chief means of resolution of the competing claims to power but also an essential factor in the formation of the sides themselves. A corollary of this is that the process of political reconstruction that follows civil war is determined as much by the imperative to work out a functioning relationship between the various elements of the victors’ camp as by securing victory through the permanent exclusion or reintegration of the vanquished.

This article examines the activities of the Soviet military-political organs in the Baltic Fleet. It shows that the web of party institutions transformed the fleet into a space of political and social activism that had little to do with the strictly military aspects of government policy. Such activism was nevertheless unfailingly promoted, even as it became clear that it compromised core elements of military efficiency such as discipline and well-defined chains of command. This argument has implications for our broader understanding of the nature of the Soviet state. It indicates that once the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary ideology had become institutionalised in the state via the ubiquitous presence of party organs, pragmatic retreats for organisational efficiency became exceptionally difficult to implement.