The 10th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) was held in March 1921, attended by almost 1,100 delegates representing almost three-quarters of a million party members. This congress – the first since the end of the Civil War – proved to be another critical point in the development of the new society in Soviet Russia. The challenges of the Kronstadt uprising, growing peasant unrest and the development of factions within the party forced the Bolshevik hierarchy to respond. Lenin took the lead role at the congress, delivering economic policies to ease the pressure on the Russian people and political measures to stop his party from fracturing into anarchist and syndicalist factions.

Going on in the background of this congress was the rebellion, resistance and ensuing slaughter at the Kronstadt island fortress in Petrograd. In fact about 300 of the congress delegates left for Petrograd immediately after its conclusion, in order to join the fight. Publicly Lenin dismissed the men of Kronstadt as counter-revolutionaries, paid for or stirred up by White agents, privately he was worried by Kronstadt and recognised it as a clear sign that the nation was slipping into disorder and open rebellion. In rare moment of honesty he would later describe Kronstadt as “…the flash which lit up reality, better than anything else”. He recognised a need to alleviate the dire economic conditions in Russia and “to satisfy, as far as possible, the middle peasantry”. The response to this was the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Lenin’s other main goal was to address the lack of unity within the party and prevent the schism that was fast approaching. He had been infuriated by the emergence of the Workers’ Opposition and smaller factions dedicated to syndicalism – the idea that workers, through their unions or collectives, could own, operate and profit from their own factories without any need for state control. Lenin argued that factionalism and criticism from within was hurting the party, encouraging dissent and rebellion (as at Kronstadt) and providing ammunition for counter-revolutionaries and foreign enemies. He said that “…everyone who criticises in public must keep in mind the situation of the party in the midst of the enemies by which it is surrounded”. His response was a decree entitled “On Party Unity”, where all dissent and factionalism was strictly forbidden. Party members, even high-ranking communists, could be expelled and punished for breaching the conditions of this edict. As the Soviet Union had become a dictatorship under the party, the party itself now became a dictatorship under the Politburo.