Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , better known as the Lenin ( ; 22 April 1870 - January 21, 1924), was a revolutionary, politician and communist Russian expert political theory. He served as head of the Soviet government of Russia from 1917 to 1924 and the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his rule, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism.
Born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following the execution of his brother in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Tsarist government, he devoted subsequent years to a law degree. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for incitement and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, in which he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent theorist in the Russian Marxist Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). In 1903, he took a key role in the ideological divide of the RSDLP, leading the Bolshevik faction against Menshevik Julius Martov. Encouraging a revolt during the failed Russian Revolution in 1905, he then campaigned for the First World War to be transformed into a European-wide proletarian revolution, which as a Marxist he believed would lead to the overthrow of capitalism and his successor to socialism. After the February 1917 Revolution ousted the Tsar and formed the Provisional Government, he returned to Russia to play a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the new regime.
The Leninist Bolshevik government initially shared power with the Left Revolutionary Socialists, elected soviets, and multi-party Constituent Assembly, although in 1918 it had concentrated power in the new Communist Party. The Lenin government redistributed land among the peasants and the large national and industrial banks. He withdrew from the First World War by signing an agreement with the Central Bloc and promoting the world revolution through the Communist International. Opponents are oppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign run by the state security service; Tens of thousands of people were killed or exiled in concentration camps. His government defeated the anti-Bolshevik right wing in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922 and oversaw the Soviet-Soviet War of 1919-1921. In response to wartime demise, famine, and popular uprisings, Lenin in 1921 encouraged economic growth through a market-oriented New Economic Policy. Some non-Russian states gained independence after 1917, but the three reunited with Russia through the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922. In worsening health, Lenin expressed opposition to the ever-growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying in his home. dacha di Gorki.
Widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a cult of personality that permeated the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. He became the ideological figure behind Marxism-Leninism and thus the influence that prominent over the international communist movement. Somebody controversial and deeply divisive, Lenin was seen by his supporters as a supporter of socialism and the working class, while the left and right critics emphasized his role as the founder and leader of the authoritarian regime responsible for political repression and mass murder.
Video Vladimir Lenin
Initial life
Smaller age: 1870-1887
Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, came from a slave family; his ethnic origins remain unclear, with suggestions made that he is Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin, or Kalmyk. Despite this underclass background he has climbed into middle class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility. Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a relatively well-off background, she was the daughter of a German-Swedish woman and a Russian Jewish physician who had converted to Christianity. It is likely that Lenin was unaware of his mother's Jewish ancestor, found only by his sister Anna after his death. Immediately after their marriage, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, rose to Director of Elementary School in Simbirsk district six years later. Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public School for the province, overseeing the foundations of more than 450 schools as part of the government's plan for modernization. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, who gave him the status of a descendant of nobility.
Lenin was born in Simbirsk on 22 April 1870 and was baptized several days later; as a child, he earned the nickname "Volodya," a dimunitive of Vladimir. He is one of eight children, has two older siblings, Anna (born 1864) and Alexander (born 1868). They were followed by three more children, Olga (born 1871), Dmitry (born 1874), and Mary (born 1878). Two siblings later died in infancy. Ilya is a member of the religiously Russian Orthodox Church and baptizes her children into it, though Mary - a Lutheran with her care - is largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that affects her children.
Both parents are monarchist and liberal conservative, committed to emancipation reform 1861 introduced by reformist Tsar Alexander II; they avoid political radicals and there is no evidence that the police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thinking. Every summer they take a vacation in a rural manor in Kokushkino. Among his brothers, Lenin was closest to his sister Olga, whom he often employed; he has a very competitive and destructive nature, but usually admits his mistake. A keen athlete, he spends much of his free time outside or playing chess, and excels at school, the disciplined and conservative Gimnazia Classic Simbirsk.
In January 1886, when Lenin was 16, his father died of cerebral hemorrhage. Furthermore, his behavior becomes erratic and confrontational and he abandons his belief in God. At that time, Lenin's eldest brother, Alexander - whom he knew as Sasha - studied at Saint Petersburg University. Engaging in political agitation against the absolute monarchy of the reactionary Tsarist Alexander III, Alexander studied the writings of the forbidden left and organized anti-government protests. He joined the revolutionary cell bending when killing the Tsar and was selected to make a bomb. Before the attack could happen, the conspirators were arrested and tried, and in May, Alexander was executed by hanging. Despite the emotional trauma of his father and brother's death, Lenin continued to study, graduating with a gold medal for outstanding performance, and decided to study law at the University of Kazan.
University and political radicalization: 1887-1893
Upon entering the University of Kazan in August 1887, Lenin moved to a nearby flat. There, he joined the zemlyachestvo , a form of university society representing people from a particular region. The group elected him as his representative for the university board of zemlyachestvo, and in December, he took part in a demonstration against government restrictions prohibiting student associations. The police arrested Lenin and accused him of being the culprit in the demonstration; he was expelled from the university, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs alienated him to his family Kokushkino plantation. There, he read voraciously, becoming captivated by Pro-revolutionary novel Nikolay Chernyshevsky in 1863 What to Do? .
Lenin's mother was concerned about her son's radicalization, and was instrumental in convincing the Interior Ministry to allow her to return to the city of Kazan but not the university. Upon his return, he joined the revolutionary circle of Nikolai Fedoseev, where he found the 1867 book Karl Marx Capital . This sparked his interest in Marxism, a socio-political theory which argued that society gradually developed, that this development resulted from the class struggle, and that capitalist society would eventually give way to the socialist society and then the communist society. Afraid of his political views, Lenin's mother bought a rural land in Alakaevka village, Samara Oblast, in the hope that her son would turn her attention to the farm. He had little interest in farm management, and his mother immediately sold the land, keeping the house as a summer home.
In September 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to the city of Samara, where Lenin joined the circle of socialist discussion Alexei Sklyarenko. There, Lenin fully embraced Marxism and produced a Russian translation of the political pamphlets of Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, The Communist Manifesto . He began reading the works of Russian Marxists, Georgi Plekhanov, approving Plekhanov's argument that Russia moves from feudalism to capitalism and thus socialism would be carried out by the proletariat, or the urban working class, rather than the peasantry. This Marxist perspective contradicts the Agrarian-socialist narodnik movement, which argues that the peasantry can build socialism in Russia by forming peasant communes, thus passing capitalism. This Narodnik view developed in the 1860s with the People's Freedom Party and was later dominant in the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin rejected the premise of agrarian-socialist argument, but was influenced by agrarian socialists such as Pyotr Tkachev and Sergei Nechaev, and friends with some Narodniks.
In May 1890, Maria - who retained the influence of society as a noble widow - persuaded the authorities to allow Lenin to take his exams externally at the University of St. Petersburg, where he earned a first-class honors degree with honors.. The graduation ceremony was marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid. Lenin remained in Samara for several years, working first as a legal assistant for the district court and then for a local lawyer. He devotes much time to radical politics, remains active in the Sklyarenko group and formulates ideas about how Marxism is applied to Russia. Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Lenin collected data on Russian society, using it to support Marxist interpretations of community development and against the claims of the Narodniks. He wrote a paper on peasant economy; it was rejected by the liberal journal Russian Thought .
Maps Vladimir Lenin
Revolutionary activity
Early activism and prison: 1893-1900
In late 1893, Lenin moved to Saint Petersburg. There, he worked as a lawyer's assistant and advanced to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself a "Social-Democrat" after the German Marxist Social Democratic Party. Publicly championing Marxism in the socialist movement, he encouraged the establishment of revolutionary cells in the industrial centers of Russia. At the end of 1894, he led a Marxist working circle, closely closing his footsteps, knowing that the police spies were trying to infiltrate the movement. She started a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya, a Marxist school teacher. He also wrote a political tract that criticized the Narodnik socialist-socialists, What the "Friends of the People" Do and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, largely based on his experience in Samara; about 200 copies were printed illegally in 1894.
Lenin hopes to establish a relationship between Social-Democrat and Labor Emancipation, a group of Russian Marxists ÃÆ'  © migrà ©  s Swiss-based; he visited the country to meet members of the group Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod. He went on to Paris to meet Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue and to study the Paris Commune of 1871, which he regarded as the earliest prototype for the proletarian government. Financed by his mother, he stayed at a Swiss health spa before traveling to Berlin, where he studied for six weeks at Staatsbibliothek and met with Marxist activist Wilhelm Liebknecht. Returning to Russia with a stack of illegal revolutionary publications, he traveled to various cities distributing letters to striking workers. When involved in the production of news sheets, Rabochee delo (" Workers Cause "), he was among 40 activists arrested at St. Petersburg and was accused of sedition.
Rejecting legal representation or guarantees, Lenin denied all allegations against him but remained imprisoned for a year before the sentence. He spent time writing and writing. In this work he notes that the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia has led to a large number of peasants moving into cities, where they formed the proletariat. From his Marxist point of view, Lenin argued that this Russian proletariat would develop class consciousness, which in turn would lead them to violently overthrow of Tsarism, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie and to form a proletarian state that would move towards socialism.
In February 1897, he was sentenced without trial until three years of exile in eastern Siberia. He was given a few days in Saint Petersburg to organize his affairs in order and use this time to meet the Social-Democrats, who have renamed themselves the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, mostly accompanied by his mother and sister. Considered as a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to a farmer's shack in Shushenskoye, Minusinsky District, where he was guarded under police surveillance; he can still correspond with other revolutionaries, many visit him, and be allowed to go on a trip to swim in the Yenisei River and hunt ducks and shoot.
In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organizing a strike. He was originally sent to Ufa, but persuaded the authorities to transfer him to Shushenskoye, claiming that he and Lenin were involved; they married in a church on July 10, 1898. Settled in family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye, the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian. Interested in following developments in German Marxism - where there is ideological divide, with revisionists like Eduard Bernstein advocating a peaceful way, election to socialism - Lenin remains faithful to the violent revolution, attacking revisionist arguments in Protest by the Social-Democratic Russia . He also completed Capitalism in Russia (1899), his longest book to date, criticizing the agrarian-agrarian and promoting Marxist analysis of Russia's economic development. Published under the pseudonym "Vladimir Ilin", after publication, most of his reviews were received poorly. Munich, London and Geneva: 1900- 1905
After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began collecting funds for newspapers, Iskra (" Spark "), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calls itself the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia to Western Europe; in Switzerland he met with other Russian Marxists, and at the Corsier conference they agreed to launch a newspaper from Munich, where Lenin was moved in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, Iskra is smuggled into Russia, becoming the country's most successful underground publication for 50 years. He first adopted the pseudonym "Lenin" in December 1901, possibly based on the Lena River; he often uses a more complete pseudonym of "N. Lenin", and while N does not stand for anything, a popular misconception then emerges that it represents "Nikolai". Under this pseudonym, he published a political pamphlet What to Do? in 1902; his most influential influence to date, relates to Lenin's idea of ​​the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat to the revolution.
Nadya joins Lenin in Munich, becomes his personal secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for Iskra and drafted the RSDLP program, attacking the ideological and external critics of dissent, especially the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a Narodnik socialist-socialist group founded on 1901. While still a Marxist, he accepts the Narodnik's view of the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, according to the 1903 pamphlet writing Into The Poor Village. To avoid the Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with Iskra in April 1902, there became a friend with fellow Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky. In London, Lenin fell ill with erysipelas and could not take a leading role in the editorial board of Iskra ; in his absence, the council moved its operating base to Geneva.
The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a split emerged between Lenin's supporters and supporters of Julius Martov. Martov argues that party members should be able to express themselves independently of party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasizing the need for strong leadership with full control over the party. Lenin's supporters were the majority, and Lenin referred to them as "majority people" (bol'sheviki in Russian, thus Bolshevik); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minor minority" ( menheviki in Russian, thus the Menshevik). The arguments between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks continued after the conference; The Bolsheviks accused their opponent rivals and less-disciplined reformers, while the Mensheviks accused Lenin of being unjust and autocratic. Angry at the Mensheviks, Lenin withdrew from the editorial board of Iskra and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik Treaty One Step Forward, Two Steps Back . Stress made Lenin sick, and to recover, he went on a hiking holiday in the Swiss countryside. The Bolshevik faction is getting stronger; in the spring, the entire RSDLP Central Committee was the Bolshevik, and in December they established the Verted ( Forward ).
Revolution 1905 and thereafter: 1905-1914
In January 1905, the massacre of protesters on Sunday at St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest known as the 1905 Revolution. Lenin urged the Bolsheviks to take a greater role in those events, encouraging rebellion by violence. Thus, he adopted SR slogans of "armed uprising", "mass terror", and "takeover of noble land", which resulted in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism. In turn, he insisted that the Bolsheviks were completely divided with the Mensheviks; many Bolsheviks refused, and both groups attended the Third RSDLP Congress, held in London in April 1905. Lenin presented many of his ideas in the pamphlet of the Two Social Democratic Tactics of the Democratic Revolution, published in August 1905 here, he predicted that the Russian liberal bourgeoisie would be satisfied by the transition to a constitutional monarchy and thereby betray the revolution; he instead argued that the proletariat should build an alliance with the peasants to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish a "temporary democratic revolutionary proletariat of the proletariat and peasants".
In response to the 1905 revolution, Tsar Nicholas II received a series of liberal reforms in the October Manifesto, after which Lenin felt safe to return to St. Petersburg. Petersburg. Joining the editorial board of Novaya Zhizn ("New Life "), a radical legal newspaper run by Maria Andreyeva, she uses it to discuss problems facing RSDLP. He encouraged the party to seek broader membership, and advocated the escalation of perpetual violent confrontation, believing both were necessary for a successful revolution. Acknowledging that membership fees and donations from some wealthy sympathizers are insufficient to finance Bolshevik activities, Lenin supports the idea of ​​robbing post offices, railway stations, trains, and banks. Under the leadership of Leonid Krasin, a group of Bolsheviks began committing such crimes, most notably in June 1907, when a group of Bolsheviks acting under the leadership of Joseph Stalin committed an armed robbery from the State Bank in Tiflis, Georgia.
Although he briefly endorsed the idea of ​​reconciliation between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, Lenin's advocacy of violence and robbery was condemned by the Mensheviks at the Fourth Party Congress, held in Stockholm in April 1906. Lenin was involved in setting up the Bolshevik Center in Kuokkala, the Grand Duchy of Finland, was a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Empire, before the Bolsheviks regained the dominance of the RSDLP at the Fifth Congress, held in London in May 1907. When the Tsarist crushed the opposition - both by dissolving the Russian legislature, the Second Duma, and by ordering his secret police Okhrana , to capture the revolutionary - Lenin fled from Finland to Switzerland. There he tried to exchange the stolen banknotes in Tiflis which had an identifiable serial number.
Alexander Bogdanov and other leading Bolsheviks decided to relocate the Bolshevik Center to Paris; Although Lenin disagreed, he moved to the city in December 1908. Lenin disliked Paris, denouncing it as a "rotten hole", and while there he sued a biker who knocked him off his bike. Lenin became very critical of Bogdanov's view that the Russian proletariat should develop a socialist culture to be a successful revolutionary vehicle. On the contrary, Lenin preferred a pioneer of socialist intellectuals who would lead the working class in the revolution. Furthermore, Bogdanov - influenced by Ernest Mach - believes that all the concepts of the world are relative, while Lenin attaches itself to an orthodox Marxist view that there is an objective reality independent of human observation. Bogdanov and Lenin vacationed together at the Maxim Gorky villa in Capri in April 1908; on his return to Paris, Lenin encouraged division within the Bolshevik faction between his followers and Bogdanov, accusing the latter of deviating from Marxism.
In May 1908, Lenin stayed briefly in London, where he used the British Museum Reading Room to write Materialism and Empirio-criticism, an attack on what he described as "bourgeois reactionary hatred" of Bogdanov's relativism. Lenin's factionalism began alienating the increasing number of Bolsheviks, including former close supporters Alexei Rykov and Lev Kamenev. Okhrana exploited his factional stance by sending spies, Roman Malinovsky, to acting as a supporter of Lenin's vocals within the party. The Bolsheviks expressed their suspicions about Malinovsky to Lenin, though it is unclear whether the latter was aware of a duplicate of spies; it is possible that he used Malinovsky to give false information to Okhrana.
In August 1910, Lenin attended the Second International Congress of Second - an international socialist meeting - in Copenhagen as the representative of the RSDLP, after this with a holiday in Stockholm with his mother. Together with his wife and sister, he then moved to France, settling first in Bombon and then Paris. Here, he became a close friend of Bolsevik Inessa Armand of France; some biographers claimed that they had extramarital affairs from 1910 to 1912. Meanwhile, at the Paris meeting in June 1911, the Central Committee of the RSDLP decided to move the focus of their operations back to Russia, ordering the closure of the Bolshevik Center and the newspaper, Proletari . Seeking to rebuild his influence within the party, Lenin organized a party conference to be held in Prague in January 1912, and although 16 of his 18 escorts were Bolsheviks, he was strongly criticized for his factional tendencies and failed to improve his status at the party.
Moved to KrakÃÆ'³w in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the Polish part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, he used the Jagellonian University library to conduct research. He remained in close contact with the RSDLP, which operated in the Russian Empire, convincing members of the Bolshevik Duma to secede from their parliamentary alliance with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin - whom Lenin called the "extraordinary Georgia" - visited him, and they discussed the future of non-Russian ethnic groups in the Empire. Due to poor health both from Lenin and his wife, they moved to the rural town of Bia? Y Dunajec, before heading to Bern for Nadya to undergo surgery on his goiter.
First World War: 1914-1917
Lenin was in Galicia when the First World War broke out. The war pitted the Russian Empire against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and because of its Russian citizenship, Lenin was arrested and jailed for a while until his anti-tribal credibility was explained. Lenin and his wife returned to Bern before moving to ZÃÆ'¼rich in February 1916. Lenin was upset that the German Social-Democratic Party supported the German war effort - a direct contradiction to the Second Stuttgart International's resolution that socialist parties would oppose the conflict - and thus see Second International as dead. He attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists throughout the continent to transform the "imperialist war" into a continent-wide "civil war" with a proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. In July 1916, Lenin's mother died, but he was unable to attend his funeral. His death deeply affected him, and he became depressed, fearing that he too would die before seeing the proletarian revolution.
In September 1917, Lenin published Imperialism, the Supreme Stage of Capitalism, which argued that imperialism is the product of monopoly capitalism, when capitalists seek to increase their profits by extending into new territories where wages are lower and raw. cheaper material. He believes that competition and conflict will increase and that the war between imperialist powers will continue until they are overthrown by the proletarian revolution and established socialism. He spent a great deal of time reading the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Aristotle, all of which were a major influence on Marx. This changed Lenin's interpretation of Marxism; whereas he once believed that policies could be developed based on established scientific principles, he concluded that the only test of whether the policy was true was his practice. He still considers himself an orthodox Marxist, but he begins to deviate from some of Marx's predictions about community development; whereas Marx believed that the middle-class "bourgeois-democratic revolution" must take place before the "socialist revolution" of the proletariat, Lenin believed that in Russia, the proletariat could overthrow the Tsarist regime without a medieval revolution.
February and July Revolutions: 1917
In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out at St. Petersburg - renamed Petrograd at the start of the First World War - when industrial workers broke down due to food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions. Riots spread to other parts of Russia, and feared that he would be violently overthrown, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The State of Duma took control of the state, established the Provisional Government and transformed the Empire into a new Russian Republic. When Lenin learned this from his headquarters in Switzerland, he celebrated with other dissidents. He decided to return to Russia to take over the Bolsheviks, but found that most of the way to the country was blocked because of ongoing conflict. He organized a plan with other dissidents to negotiate a passage for them through Germany, with whom Russia was at war. Acknowledging that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to allow 32 Russian citizens to travel by wagon train "sealed" through their territory, among them Lenin and his wife. The group traveled by train from ZÃÆ'¼rich to Sassnitz, continuing by ferry to Trelleborg, Sweden, and from there to the Haparanda-Tornio border and then to Helsinki before taking the last train to Petrograd.
Arriving at Petrograd Finland Station, Lenin gave a speech to Bolshevik supporters who condemned the Provisional Government and once again called for European proletarian revolution across the continent. Over the next few days he spoke at Bolshevik meetings, denouncing those who wanted reconciliation with the Mensheviks and revealed his book April Apes, outlining his plans for the Bolsheviks, which he had written on the journey from Switzerland. He openly condemned the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries - who dominated influential Petrograd Soviets - to support the Provisional Government, denouncing them as traitors to socialism. Considering the government to be just as imperialist as the Tsarist regime, it advocates an immediate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, government by soviets, industrialized nationalizations and banks, and state takeover of land, all with the aim of building the government proletariat and pushing toward socialist society. Instead, the Mensheviks believed that Russia did not develop enough to transition to socialism and accused Lenin of trying to bring the new Republic into civil war. Over the next few months, he campaigned for his policies, attended the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, wrote productively for the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, and gave a public speech in Petrograd aimed at transforming workers, soldiers, sailors and peasants to its destination.
Feeling increasingly frustrated among the Bolshevik supporters, Lenin suggested armed political demonstrations in Petrograd to test the government's response. In the midst of deteriorating health, he left town to recuperate in the Finnish village of Neivola. The Bolshevik armed demonstration, July Day, occurred when Lenin left, but after learning that the demonstrators had clashed with government troops, he returned to Petrograd and called for calm. Responding to the violence, the government ordered the capture of other prominent Lenin and Bolsheviks, robbed their offices, and publicly declared that he was a German agent provocateur . Avoiding the arrest, Lenin was hiding in a number of safe Petrograd homes. Fearing that he would be killed, Lenin and his senior Bolshevik colleague Grigory Zinoviev escaped from undercover Petrograd, moving to Razliv. There, Lenin began working on a book that became the Country and Revolution, an exposition of how he believed the socialist state would develop after the proletarian revolution, and how from then on the state would gradually wither away, leaving behind a pure communist society. He began arguing for the Bolshevik-led armed uprising to overthrow the government, but at a secret meeting of the party's central committee, the idea was rejected. Lenin was then led by train and on foot to Finland, arriving in Helsinki on August 10, where he was hiding in the safe houses of Bolshevik sympathizers.
October Revolution: 1917
In August 1917, when Lenin was in Finland, General Lavr Kornilov, Commander of the Russian Army, dispatched troops to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky turned to Soviet Petrograd - including members of the Bolsheviks - to help, allowing the revolutionaries to organize the workers as Red Guards to defend the city. The coup had subsided before reaching Petrograd, but it had enabled the Bolsheviks to return to the open political arena. Fearing of the counter-revolution of right-wing forces hostile to socialism, the Mensheviks and Revolutionary Socialists who dominated the Petrograd Soviets have been instrumental in pressuring the government to normalize relations with the Bolsheviks. Both the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries have lost much popular support because of their affiliation with the Provisional Government and the unpopular continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks capitalized on this, and soon the pro-Bolshevik Marxist Trotsky was elected the Soviet leader of Petrograd. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the worker sections in both Moscow and the Soviet Petrograd.
Realizing that the situation was safer for him, Lenin returned to Petrograd. There he attended the meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on October 10, where he again argued that the party should lead an armed insurrection to overthrow the Provisional Government. This time his argument won by ten votes against two. Critics of the plan, Zinoviev and Kamenev, argue that Russian workers will not support a violent coup against the regime and that there is no clear evidence for Lenin's assertion that all of Europe is on the brink of the proletarian revolution. The party began planning to organize the attacks, holding its final meeting at the Smolny Institute on October 24. This is the base of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), an armed militia loyal to the Bolshevik that was founded by Soviet Petrograd during the alleged coup Kornilov.
In October, the MRC was ordered to take over Petrograd's major transportation, communications, printing and utilities center, and did so without bloodshed. The Bolsheviks besieged the government at the Winter Palace, and overcame it and captured its ministers after the Aurora explorers, controlled by Bolshevik sailors, fired on buildings. During the rebellion, Lenin gave a speech to the Soviet Petrograd announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. The Bolsheviks announced the formation of a new government, the People's Commissar Council or "Sovnarkom". Lenin initially rejected the position of the main leader, suggested Trotsky to the work, but the other Bolsheviks insisted and eventually Lenin relented. Lenin and other Bolsheviks then attended the Second Soviet Congress on 26 and 27 October, and announced the formation of a new government. The Menshevik participants condemned the illegal power struggle and the risk of civil war. In the early days of this new regime, Lenin avoided speaking in Marxist and socialist terms in order not to alienate the Russian population, and instead speak of having a state controlled by workers. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks expected the proletarian revolution to sweep across Europe in a few days or months.
Lenin Government
Organizing the Soviet government: 1917-1918
The Provisional Government had planned a Constituent Assembly to be elected in November 1917; against Lenin's objections, Sovnarkom agreed to vote on schedule. In constitutional elections, the Bolsheviks earned roughly a quarter of the vote, defeated by the Socialist Socialist-focused Socialist Party. Lenin argued that the election was not a fair reflection of the will of the people, that voters did not have time to study the Bolshevik political program, and that the list of candidacies had been drawn up before the leftist Socialist Revolution broke away from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the newly elected Constituent Assembly of Russia convened in Petrograd in January 1918. Sovnarkom argued that it was counter-revolutionary for attempting to remove power from the soviets, but the Revolutionary and Menshevik Socialists denied this. The Bolsheviks present the Assembly with a motion that will remove most of its legal force; when the Assembly rejected the motion, Sovnarkom proclaimed this as evidence of its counter-revolutionary nature and forcibly dispersed it.
Lenin rejected repeated calls - including from some Bolsheviks - to form a coalition government with other socialist parties. Sovnarkom partially succumbed; despite rejecting the coalition with the Mensheviks or the Revolutionary Socialists, in December 1917 they allowed the leftist Socialist Revolutionaries five posts in the cabinet. This coalition lasted only four months, until March 1918, when Left Socialist Socialists withdrew from the government because of disagreements about the Bolshevik approach to ending the First World War. At their 7th Congress in March 1918, the Bolsheviks changed their official name from the "Social Democratic Workers' Party" to the "Russian Communist Party", because Lenin wanted them to distance their group from the increasingly reformist German Social Democrats and to emphasize its main purpose: communist society.
Although the supreme power is officially rested with the state government in the form of Sovnarkom and the Executive Committee (VTSIK) elected by the All-Russian Soviet Congress (ARCS), the Communist Party is de facto in control in Russia, as recognized by its members at that time. In 1918, Sovnarkom began to act unilaterally, claiming the need for wisdom, with ARCS and VTSIK becoming increasingly marginalized, so the soviets no longer had a role in governing Russia. During 1918 and 1919, the government drove the Mensheviks and the Revolutionary Socialists of the soviets. Russia has become a one-party state.
Within the party was established the Political Bureau ("Politburo") and the Organization Bureau ("Orgburo") to accompany the existing Central Committee; decisions of these party bodies should be adopted by Sovnarkom and the Council of Labor and Defense. Lenin was the most important figure in the structure of this government; as well as chairman of the Sovnarkom and sitting on the Council of Labor and Defense, he was on the Communist Party's Central Committee and Politburo. The only individual near this influence was Lenin's right-hand man, Yakov Sverdlov, who died in March 1919 during a flu pandemic. In November 1917, Lenin and his wife occupied a two-room flat within the Smolny Institute; the following month they went for a short vacation in Halia, Finland. In January 1918, he survived an assassination attempt at Petrograd; Fritz Platten, who was with Lenin at the time, protected him and was wounded by bullets.
Concerned that the German Army posed a threat to Petrograd, in March 1918 Sovnarkom moved to Moscow, initially as a temporary measure. There, Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders moved to the Kremlin, where Lenin lived with his wife and sister Mary in an apartment on the first floor adjacent to the space where the Sovnarkom meeting was held. Lenin did not like Moscow, but rarely left the city center for the rest of his life. It was in town in August 1918 that he survived a second assassination attempt; he was shot following a public speech and was seriously injured. A Revolutionary Socialist, Fanny Kaplan, was arrested and executed. The attack was widely covered in the Russian press, generating much sympathy for him and boosting his popularity. As a relief, in September 1918, Lenin was driven to the land of Gorki, just outside Moscow, which he recently acquired by the government. Social, legal and economic reform: 1917 -1918
After taking power, the Lenin regime issued a series of decisions. The first is the Decree on Land, which states that land belonging to the aristocracy and the Orthodox Church should be nationalized and redistributed to farmers by local government. This is in contrast to Lenin's desire for collectivizing agriculture but giving government recognition of the widespread seizure of peasant land that has already occurred. In November 1917, the government issued a Decree on the Press that closed many of the opposition media considered counter-revolutionary. They claim that the action is temporary; The decree was widely condemned, including by many Bolsheviks, for sacrificing freedom of the press.
In November 1917, Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Russian People, stating that non-Russian ethnic groups living within the Republic have the right to surrender from the Russian authorities and establish their own independent nation-state. Many countries declared independence: Finland and Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaasia in April 1918, and Poland in November 1918. Soon, the Bolsheviks actively promoted the communist parties in these countries. and in July 1918, at the 5th Soviet Congress in the Soviets, a constitution was adopted which reformed the Russian Republic into the Socialist Republican Soviet Russian Federation. Seeking to modernize the country, the government formally changed Russia from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar used in Europe.
In November 1917, Sovnarkom issued a decree abolishing the Russian legal system, calling for the use of a "revolutionary conscience" to replace the abolished law. The court was replaced by a two-tier system: the Revolutionary Court to deal with counter-revolutionary crimes, and the People's Court to deal with crime and other criminal offenses. They were ordered to disregard pre-existing laws, and based their decisions on the decisions of Sovnarkom and the "sense of socialist justice". November also sees a reshuffle of armed forces; Sovnarkom implemented egalitarian measures, abolished previous ranks, positions, and medals, and called on soldiers to form committees to elect their commanders.
In October 1917, Lenin issued a decree limiting work to all people in Russia for up to eight hours per day. He also issued a Popular Education Decree stipulating that the government would guarantee free secular education for all children in Russia, and a decree establishing a state orphanage system. To combat mass illiteracy, literacy campaigns begin; about 5 million people enrolled in a literacy literacy course from 1920 to 1926. By embracing gender equality, legislation was introduced which helped liberate women, by granting them economic autonomy from their husbands and removing divorce restrictions. The Bolshevik women's organization, Zhenotdel, was established to advance this goal. In militant atheists, Lenin and the Communist Party wanted to destroy organized religion, and in January 1918 the government decided the separation of church and state and forbade the teaching of religion in schools.
In November 1917, Lenin issued a Decree on Labor Control, which asked workers of each company to form an elected committee to monitor the management of their company. That month they also issued orders that required gold in the country, and nationalized the banks, which Lenin saw as a major step toward socialism. In December, Sovnarkom established the Supreme National Economic Council (VSNKh), which has authority over industry, banking, agriculture, and commerce. The factory committees are under a trade union, which is subordinate to VSNKh; thus, the centralized state economic plan is prioritized over the interests of the local economy of the workers. In early 1918, Sovnarkom canceled all foreign debts and refused to pay any interest payable to them. In April 1918, he nationalized foreign trade, establishing a state monopoly on imports and exports. In June 1918, he declared the nationalization of public utilities, railways, engineering, textiles, metallurgy, and mining, although often this only belonged to the state in name only. Full-scale nationalization did not last until November 1920, when small-scale industrial enterprises were brought under state control.
A Bolshevik faction known as the "Left Communist" criticized Sovnarkom's economic policy as too moderate; they want the nationalization of all industries, agriculture, commerce, finance, transportation, and communications. Lenin believed that this was not practical at that stage, and that the government should only nationalize large Russian capitalist enterprises, such as banks, trains, larger estates, and larger factories and mines, small businesses to operate privately until they grow large enough to be successfully nationalized. Lenin also disagreed with Communist Left about economic organization; In June 1918, he argued that the control of a centralized industrial economy was necessary, while the Communist Left wanted every factory controlled by its workers, a syndicalist approach Lenin considered to be detrimental to the cause of socialism.
Adopting the left libertarian perspective, both Communist Left and other factions in the Communist Party criticized the decline of democratic institutions in Russia. Internationally, many socialists condemned Lenin's regime and denied that he was building socialism; in particular, they highlight the lack of widespread political participation, popular consultation, and industrial democracy. At the end of 1918, Czech-Austrian Marxist Karl Kautsky wrote an anti-Leninist pamphlet condemning the Soviet anti-democratic nature of Russia, which Lenin published an aggressive answer. The German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg repeats Kautsky's view, while Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin describes the struggle for power by the Bolsheviks as "the burial of the Russian Revolution". Agreement
from Brest-Litovsk: 1917-1918
After taking power, Lenin believed that the main policy of his administration should be withdrawn from the First World War by forming a ceasefire with the German and Austrian-Hungarian Central Blocks. He believes that an ongoing war will create hatred among the war-weary Russian army - to whom he has promised peace - and that this army and the advanced German Army threaten both his own government and the cause of international socialism. In contrast, other Bolsheviks - particularly Nikolai Bukharin and the Left Communist - believe that peace with the Central Bloc will be a betrayal of international socialism and that Russia should instead inflict a "revolutionary defense war" that will provoke a proletarian German revolt against their own government.
Lenin proposed a three-month truce in the Decree on Peace in November 1917, approved by the Second Soviet Congress and presented to the governments of Germany and Austro-Hungary. Germany responded positively, seeing this as an opportunity to focus on the Western Front and prevent a looming defeat. In November, the truce talks began in Brest-Litovsk, the headquarters of Germany's high command on the Eastern Front, with a Russian delegation headed by Trotsky and Adolph Joffe. Meanwhile, the truce until January is approved. During the negotiations, Germany insisted on maintaining the conquest of war - including Poland, Lithuania, and Courland - while Russia denied that this was a violation of the rights of nations to self-determination. Some Bolsheviks have expressed hope of dragging negotiations until the proletarian revolution broke out across Europe. On January 7, 1918, Trotsky returned from Brest-Litovsk to St. Petersburg. Petersburg with an ultimatum from the Central Bloc: Russia accepts German territorial demands or war will proceed.
In January and again in February, Lenin urged the Bolsheviks to accept the German proposal. He argues that territorial losses are acceptable if it ensures the survival of the Bolshevik-led government. The majority of Bolsheviks rejected his post, hoping to extend the ceasefire and call the German bluff. On February 18, the German Army launched Operation Faustschlag, advanced further into the territory controlled by Russia and conquered Dvinsk in one day. At this point, Lenin finally convinced a small part of the Bolshevik Central Committee to accept the demands of the Central Block. On February 23, the Central Block issued a new ultimatum: Russia must recognize German control not only from Poland and the Baltic states but also from Ukraine, or face a full-scale invasion.
On March 3, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was signed. This resulted in massive territorial losses for Russia, with 26% of the previous Empire population, 37% of its agricultural harvest area, 28% of its industry, 26% of railway lines, and three-quarters of its coal deposit and iron. transferred to German controls. Thus, the Treaty was highly unpopular throughout the political spectrum of Russia, and some Bolsheviks and the Left of the Socialist Revolutionaries withdrew from the Sovnarkom in protest. After the Treaty, Sovnarkom focused on trying to mobilize the proletarian revolution in Germany, issuing a series of anti-war and anti-government publications in the country; the German government retaliated by expelling Russian diplomats. The treaty failed to stop the defeat of the Central Bloc; in November 1918, German Emperor Wilhelm II resigned and the new government of the country signed a ceasefire with the Allies. As a result, Sovnarkom proclaims the Brest-Litovsk Treaty void.
Anti-Kulak, Cheka, and Red Terror: 1918-1922
In early 1918, many cities in western Russia faced famine as a result of chronic food shortages. Lenin blamed this on the kulaks, or the rich peasants, who allegedly stockpiled the grain they produced to increase its financial value. In May 1918, he issued a request order forming an armed detachment to confiscate grain from the kulaks for distribution in the cities, and in June called for the establishment of the Poor Farmers Committee to assist the demand. This policy resulted in enormous social and violent clashes, as armed detachments often clashed with farmer groups, helping to set the stage for civil war. One prominent example of Lenin's view was his telegram in August 1918 to the Bolsheviks of Penza, calling on them to suppress peasant uprisings by openly hanging at least 100 "famous kulak, rich man, [and] bloodsucking."
Asks uninspired farmers to produce more seeds than they can personally consume, and thus production degenerates. A booming black market complements the official state-approved economy, and Lenin asks speculators, illegal traders and looters to be shot. Both the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Left of the Socialist Revolutionaries condemned the allocation of nuclear weapons to the Soviet-5th Soviet Congress in July 1918. Recognizing that the Poor Farmers Committee also persecuted peasants who were not kulak and thus contributed to anti-government. feeling among the peasants, in December 1918 Lenin erased them.
Lenin repeatedly stressed the need for terror and violence in overthrowing the old order and ensuring the success of the revolution. Speaking to the Soviet Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in November 1917, he declared that "the state is an institution built for the sake of violence, before this violence was committed by a handful of pockets of money to all the people: now we want to... organize violence for the benefit of the people. He strongly opposes suggestions to remove the death penalty. Fearing anti-Bolshevik forces would overthrow his government, in December 1917 Lenin ordered the creation of an Emergency Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, a political police force headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky.
In September 1918, the Sovnarkom issued a decree that inaugurated the Red Terror, a system of repression set by Cheka. Though sometimes described as an attempt to remove an entire bourgeoisie, Lenin did not want to destroy all members of this class, only those who sought to restore their power. The majority of victims of Terror are either good citizens or former members of the Tsarist government; the other is a non-bourgeois anti-Bolsheviks and is considered to be a social undesirable person like a prostitute. Cheka claims the rights to both sentences and executes anyone who is considered an enemy of government, without assistance to the Revolutionary Court. Thus, throughout the Russian Soviet Cheka committed murder, often in large numbers. For example, Petrograd Cheka executes 512 people in a few days. There are no surviving records to provide accurate figures on how many are killed in the Red Terror; estimates then historians ranged between 10,000 and 15,000, and 50,000 to 140,000.
Lenin never witnessed this violence or participated in it directly, and publicly distanced himself from it. His published articles and speeches rarely call for execution, but he regularly does so in coded telegrams and confidential records. Many Bolsheviks expressed disapproval of Cheka's mass execution and feared the organization's inadequacy. The Party tried to restrain its activities in February 1919, disarming its powers in court and execution in areas not under military law, but Cheka continued as before in a number of countries. By 1920, Cheka had become the most powerful institution in Soviet Russia, exerting influence over all other state apparatus.
The decision in April 1919 resulted in the establishment of a concentration camp, entrusted to Cheka, which was later managed by a new government agency, Gulag. By the end of 1920, 84 camps had been established throughout the Soviet Russia, detaining some 50,000 prisoners; in October 1923, it has grown to 315 camps and about 70,000 inmates. Those who were interned in the camps were used as slave laborers. From July 1922, intellectuals deemed to be opposed to the Bolshevik government were exiled to areas not hostile or deported from Russia at all; Lenin personally examined the lists to be dealt with in this way. In May 1922, Lenin issued a decree calling for the execution of anti-Bolshevik priests, causing between 14,000 and 20,000 deaths. The Russian Orthodox Church was worst affected; the government's anti-religious policies also impacted Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, and Islamic mosques.
Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War: 1918 - 1920
Lenin expects the Russian aristocracy and bourgeoisie to oppose his government, but he believes that numerical superiority of the lower classes, coupled with the Bolshevik ability to effectively govern it, guarantees a swift victory in any conflict. In this case, he failed to anticipate the brutal intensity of the opposition against the Bolshevik government in Russia. The subsequent Russian Civil War pitted the pro-Bolshevik Reds against the white anti-Bolsheviks, but also included ethnic conflicts on Russian borders and conflicts between the Red and White soldiers and local farmer groups, the Green troops, throughout the former Empire. Thus, historians have seen civil war as representing two different conflicts: one between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries, and the other among the different revolutionary factions.
The White Army was founded by a former Tsar military officer, and included the Volunteer Army of Anton Denikin in Southern Russia, Alexander Kolchak's troops in Siberia, and Nikolai Yudenich troops in newly independent Baltic states. The whites were supported when 35,000 members of the Czech Legion - prisoners of war from the conflict with the Central Bloc - turned against Sovnarkom and allied with the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), an anti-Bolshevik government established in Samara. The whites were also supported by Western governments who regarded the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as a betrayal of the Allied war effort and feared the Bolshevik appeal for the world revolution. In 1918, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Canada, Italy and Serbia landed 10,000 troops in Murmansk, capturing Kandalaksha, while at the end of the year British, American and Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok. Western troops soon withdrew from civil war, in contrast only supporting white people with officers, technicians and weapons, but Japan remained because they saw the conflict as an opportunity for territorial expansion.
Lenin commissioned Trotsky by establishing the Red Army of Workers and Farmers, and with his support Trotsky organized the Military Revolutionary Council in September 1918, remained chairman until 1925. Recognizing their precious military experience, Lenin agreed that officers of the old Tsar army could serve in the Army Red, though Trotsky set up a military council to monitor their activities. The Reds are in control of two of Russia's largest cities, Moscow and Petrograd, as well as most of Russia, whilst the whites are predominantly in the former Empire border region. Therefore, the latter is hampered by fragmented and dispersed geographically, and because of their ethnic Russian supremacy alienate the national minorities in the region. Anti-Bolshevik troops engaged in White Terror, a campaign of violence against Bolshevik supporters who were perceived to be more spontaneous than the state-approved Red Terror. Both the White and Red Army are responsible for attacks on the Jewish community, prompting Lenin to issue the curse of anti-Semitism, blaming the prejudices against the Jews on capitalist propaganda.
In July 1918, Sverdlov informed the Sovnarkom that the Soviet Regional Ural had overseen the execution of the former Tsar and his immediate family in Yekaterinburg to prevent them from being saved by advancing the White army. Despite the lack of evidence, biographers and historians such as Richard Pipes and Dmitri Volkogonov have expressed the view that the murder might have been approved by Lenin; on the contrary, historian James Ryan warns that there is "no reason" to believe this. Whether approved by Lenin or not, he still considers it necessary, highlighting the precedent set by the execution of Louis XVI in the French Revolution.
After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Leftist Revolutionaries left the coalition and increasingly saw the Bolsheviks as traitors of the revolution. In July 1918, Revolutionary Socialist Left Yakov Grigorevich Blumkin assassinated German ambassador to Russia, Wilhelm von Mirbach, hoping that a diplomatic incident that would take place would lead to a revolutionary war being re-launched against Germany. The Left Revolutionary Socialists then launched a coup in Moscow, fired at the Kremlin and seized the post office downtown before being stopped by Trotsky's troops. Party leaders and many members were arrested and imprisoned, but treated more leniently than other Bolshevik opponents.
In 1919, White's forces retreated and in the early 1920s were defeated on all three fronts. Although the Sovnarkom won, the territory of the Russian state has diminished, as many non-Russian ethnic groups have used chaos to encourage national independence. In some cases - such as the northeastern states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland - the Soviets acknowledged their independence and ended the peace agreement. In other cases, the Red Army suppressed the separatist movement; in 1921 they had defeated the Ukrainian national movement and occupied the Caucasus, although the fighting in Central Asia lasted until the late 1920s.
After the German Ober Ost garrison was withdrawn from the Eastern Front after the Armistice, both Russian Soviet soldiers and Polish troops moved to fill the void. The newly independent Polish state and the Soviet government each sought an expansion of territory in the region. Pasu
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments