ABSTRACT
The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd on 6–7 November 1917 was the signal for action elsewhere. The government commissar for Estonia, Jaan Poska, was obliged to surrender his powers to the Bolshevik Viktor Kingisepp, acting in the name of the Estonian military revolutionary committee, and all other representatives of the provisional government were ordered to hand over their powers and functions to the executive committees of the local Soviets. The Latvian Bolsheviks had been closely involved in the preparations for the uprising, which gave them a further opportunity to consolidate the authority which they had managed to establish in the region during the summer. The exercise of power was by no means easy. The Soviets encountered a good deal of resistance from the civil service, especially in Estonia, and had to cope with a disintegrating economy. The confiscated estates were often badly run down, and the decision to manage rather than partition them, though later criticised by Soviet historians, was probably rather academic at a time of general crisis, and had hardly begun to take shape before the rapid advance of the Germans in February 1918 brought to an end the first brief period of Soviet rule in the Baltic. 1
