Before it established the exclusive and repressive military regime that would dominate Burmese politics for decades, Burma's eight-person Revolutionary Council (RC) embarked on a path briefly notable for its show of consulting potential supporters (even mobilized, activist organizations) and soft-pedaling radical changes in the Burmese economy. Where it would soon arrest and murder demonstration participants, it initially attempted to recruit activist support to the new regime, and this seems strange in hindsight. Yet authorities' early policies also presaged the drive for political control that most characterizes the socialist period. The RC set aside the 1947 constitution, established state control over universities and the printing industry, and banned such innocuous practices as beauty contests and song and dance competitions. Soon, moreover, what might at first have been new avenues for representation (under military supervision) began more obviously to operate as mechanisms to extend and consolidate military control.

At the outset, government efforts to organize support, coupled with its attacks on BCP sympathizers, appeared to discriminate between those allied with the RC, and those who opposed military rule. Student associations established by the new regime's Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), as well as National United Front (NUF) groups and newly constructed Village Organizing Councils (VOC), expressed initial enthusiasm for the RC. For many experienced, leftist activists, the opportunity to build mass associations and participate in Burma's socialist transition was utterly exciting, and early BSPP initiatives, like land to the tiller and rent reduction programs, as well as concepts outlined in the Burmese Way to Socialism, stoked that excitement.