Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding
head of government
The head of government is the highest or the second-highest official in the executive branch of a sovereign state, a federated state, or a self-governing colony, autonomous region, or other government who often presides over a cabinet, ...
of
Soviet Russia
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
from 1917 to 1924 and of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a
one-party
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government ...
socialist state
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term '' communist state'' is of ...
governed by the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.
Born to an
upper-middle-class
In sociology, the upper middle class is the social group constituted by higher status members of the middle class. This is in contrast to the term ''lower middle class'', which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle-class strat ...
family in
Simbirsk
Ulyanovsk, known until 1924 as Simbirsk, is a city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River east of Moscow. Population:
The city, founded as Simbirsk (), was the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin (born ...
, Lenin embraced
revolutionary socialist
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revoluti ...
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
's Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He moved to
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to
Shushenskoye
Shushenskoye ( rus, Шу́шенское, p=ˈʂuʂɨnskəjɛ) is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) and the administrative center of Shushensky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Yenisei and Big S ...
Mensheviks
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions em ...
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
to be transformed into a Europe-wide
proletarian revolution
A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, ...
, which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the overthrow of
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...
and its replacement with
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
and established a
Provisional Government
A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or ...
, he returned to Russia to play a leading role in the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...
Left Socialist Revolutionaries
The Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (russian: Партия левых социалистов-революционеров-интернационалистов) was a revolutionary socialist political party formed during the Russian Rev ...
, elected
soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
, and a multi-party
Constituent Assembly
A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...
, although by 1918 it had centralised power in the new Communist Party. Lenin's administration redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry. It withdrew from the First World War by signing a
treaty
A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal pe ...
conceding territory to the
Central Powers
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
, and promoted
world revolution
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class. For theorists, these revolutions will not necessarily occur simultaneously, but whe ...
through the
Communist International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
. Opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign administered by the state security services; tens of thousands were killed or interned in concentration camps. His administration defeated
right
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical ...
and
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
anti-Bolshevik armies in the
Russian Civil War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Russian Civil War
, partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I
, image =
, caption = Clockwise from top left:
{{flatlist,
*Soldiers ...
from 1917 to 1922 and oversaw the
Polish–Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet War (Polish–Bolshevik War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Russian War 1919–1921)
* russian: Советско-польская война (''Sovetsko-polskaya voyna'', Soviet-Polish War), Польский фронт (' ...
of 1919–1921. Responding to wartime devastation,
famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin encouraged economic growth through the
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
. Several non-Russian nations had secured independence from the Russian Empire after 1917, but three were re-united into the new
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
in 1922. His health failing, Lenin died in
Gorki Gorki may refer to:
* Gorki Águila (b. 1968), Cuban rock musician
*Gorki (band), a Belgian band of Luc De Vos
* Gorki (Kazan Metro), a station of the Kazan Metro, Kazan, Russia
* Gorki Ridge, a ridge in Antarctica
* Gorki, Russia, several inha ...
, with
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government.
Widely considered one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive
personality cult
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create an id ...
within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. He became an ideological figurehead behind
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various c ...
and a prominent influence over the international
communist movement
The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core theoretical values of common ownership of wealth, economic enterprise, and property. Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least ...
. A controversial and highly divisive historical figure, Lenin is viewed by his supporters as a champion of
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...
and the working class. Meanwhile, Lenin's critics accuse him of establishing a
totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
dictatorship
A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship a ...
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
,
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, and possibly Kalmyk influences can be discovered. His father Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was from a family of former serfs; Ilya's father's ethnicity remains unclear, while Ilya's mother, Anna Alexeyevna Smirnova, was half-Kalmyk and half-Russian. Despite a lower-class background, Ilya had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at
Kazan University
Kazan (Volga region) Federal University (russian: Казанский (Приволжский) федеральный университет, tt-Cyrl, Казан (Идел буе) федераль университеты) is a public research uni ...
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
–
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
mother, and a Russian Jewish father who had converted to Christianity and worked as a physician. According to historian Petrovsky-Shtern, it is likely that Lenin was unaware of his mother's half-Jewish ancestry, which was only discovered by his sister Anna after his death. According to another version, Maria's father came from a family of German colonists invited to Russia by Catherine the Great.
Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in
Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət ), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, from the 13th to the 17th century Novgorod of the Lower Land, formerly known as Gork ...
, rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the
Simbirsk
Ulyanovsk, known until 1924 as Simbirsk, is a city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River east of Moscow. Population:
The city, founded as Simbirsk (), was the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin (born ...
district six years later. Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government's plans for modernisation. In January 1882, his dedication to education earned him the
Order of Saint Vladimir
The Imperial Order of Saint Prince Vladimir (russian: орден Святого Владимира) was an Imperial Russian order established on by Empress Catherine II in memory of the deeds of Saint Vladimir, the Grand Prince and the Baptize ...
, which bestowed on him the status of hereditary nobleman.
Lenin was born in Streletskaya Ulitsa, Simbirsk, now
Ulyanovsk
Ulyanovsk, known until 1924 as Simbirsk, is a city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River east of Moscow. Population:
The city, founded as Simbirsk (), was the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin (born ...
, on 22 April 1870, and
baptised
Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...
six days later; as a child, he was known as ''Volodya'', a diminutive of Vladimir. He was the third of eight children, having two older siblings,
Anna
Anna may refer to:
People Surname and given name
* Anna (name)
Mononym
* Anna the Prophetess, in the Gospel of Luke
* Anna (wife of Artabasdos) (fl. 715–773)
* Anna (daughter of Boris I) (9th–10th century)
* Anna (Anisia) (fl. 1218 to 12 ...
(born 1864) and
Alexander
Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history.
Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...
(born 1866). They were followed by three more children, Olga (born 1871),
Dmitry
Dmitri (russian: Дми́трий); Church Slavic form: Dimitry or Dimitri (); ancient Russian forms: D'mitriy or Dmitr ( or ) is a male given name common in Orthodox Christian culture, the Russian version of Greek Demetrios (Δημήτρι ...
(born 1874), and
Maria
Maria may refer to:
People
* Mary, mother of Jesus
* Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages
Place names Extraterrestrial
* 170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877
* Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, ...
(born 1878). Two later siblings died in infancy. Ilya was a devout member of the
Russian Orthodox Church
, native_name_lang = ru
, image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg
, imagewidth =
, alt =
, caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia
, abbreviation = ROC
, type ...
and baptised his children into it, although Maria, a Lutheran by upbringing, was largely indifferent to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, a view that influenced her children.
Both of his parents were
monarchists
Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. ...
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
Alexander II; they avoided political radicals and there is no evidence that the police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thought. Every summer they holidayed at a rural manor in Kokushkino. Among his siblings, Lenin was closest to his sister Olga, whom he often bossed around; he had an extremely competitive nature and could be destructive, but usually admitted his misbehaviour. A keen sportsman, he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess, and excelled at school, the disciplinarian and conservative Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium.
In January 1886, when Lenin was 15, his father died of a
brain haemorrhage
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...
. Subsequently, his behaviour became erratic and confrontational and he renounced his belief in God. At the time, Lenin's elder brother Alexander, whom he affectionately knew as Sasha, was studying at
Saint Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...
. Involved in political agitation against the
absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy (or Absolutism (European history), Absolutism as a doctrine) is a form of monarchy in which the monarch rules in their own right or power. In an absolute monarchy, the king or queen is by no means limited and has absolute pow ...
of the reactionary Tsar Alexander III, Alexander studied the writings of banned leftists and organised anti-government protests. He joined a revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and was selected to construct a bomb. Before the attack could take place, the conspirators were arrested and tried, and Alexander was executed by hanging in May. Despite the emotional trauma of his father's and brother's deaths, Lenin continued studying, graduated from school at the top of his class with a gold medal for exceptional performance, and decided to study law at Kazan University.
University and political radicalisation: 1887–1893
Upon entering
Kazan University
Kazan (Volga region) Federal University (russian: Казанский (Приволжский) федеральный университет, tt-Cyrl, Казан (Идел буе) федераль университеты) is a public research uni ...
in August 1887, Lenin moved into a nearby flat. There, he joined a '' zemlyachestvo'', a form of university society that represented the men of a particular region. This group elected him as its representative to the university's ''zemlyachestvo'' council, and he took part in a December demonstration against government restrictions that banned student societies. The police arrested Lenin and accused him of being a ringleader in the demonstration; he was expelled from the university, and the
Ministry of Internal Affairs
An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs.
Lists of current ministries of internal affairs
Named "ministry"
* Ministry ...
exiled him to his family's Kokushkino estate. There, he read voraciously, becoming enamoured with
Nikolay Chernyshevsky
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky ( – ) was a Russian literary and social critic, journalist, novelist, democrat, and socialist philosopher, often identified as a utopian socialist and leading theoretician of Russian nihilism. He was ...
's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel '' What Is to Be Done?''
Lenin's mother was concerned by her son's radicalisation, and was instrumental in convincing the Interior Ministry to allow him to return to the city of
Kazan
Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: ɑzan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers, covering an ...
, but not the university. On his return, he joined Nikolai Fedoseev's revolutionary circle, through which he discovered
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
's 1867 book '' Capital''. This sparked his interest in
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
, a socio-political theory that argued that society developed in stages, that this development resulted from class struggle, and that
capitalist society
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...
communist society
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of co ...
. Wary of his political views, Lenin's mother bought a country estate in Alakaevka village,
Samara Oblast
Samara Oblast ( rus, Сама́рская о́бласть, r=Samarskaya oblast, p=sɐˈmarskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Samara. From 1935 to 1991, it was known as Kuyb ...
, in the hope that her son would turn his attention to agriculture. He had little interest in farm management, and his mother soon 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 Alexei Sklyarenko's socialist discussion circle. There, Lenin fully embraced Marxism and produced a Russian language translation of Marx and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels" '' The Communist Manifesto
''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Commu ...
''. He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, agreeing with Plekhanov's argument that Russia was moving from
feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
to capitalism and so socialism would be implemented by the proletariat, or urban working class, rather than the
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasant ...
ry. This Marxist perspective contrasted with the view of the agrarian-socialistNarodnik movement, which held that the peasantry could establish socialism in Russia by forming peasant communes, thereby bypassing capitalism. This Narodnik view developed in the 1860s with the
People's Freedom Party People's Freedom Party may mean one of the following:
* People's Freedom Party (Russia)
The People's Freedom Party (russian: Партия народной свободы, Partiya narodnoy svobody) or shortly PARNAS (russian: ПАРНАС), formerl ...
and was then dominant within the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin rejected the premise of the agrarian-socialist argument, but was influenced by agrarian-socialists like
Pyotr Tkachev
Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev (Russian: Пётр Ники́тич Ткачёв) (29 June 1844 – 4 January 1886) was a Russian writer, critic and revolutionary theorist who formulated many of the revolutionary principles that were later developed and pu ...
and
Sergei Nechaev
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev (russian: Серге́й Генна́диевич Неча́ев) ( – ) was a Russian communist revolutionary and prominent figure of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution ...
, and befriended several Narodniks.
In May 1890, Maria, who retained societal influence as the widow of a nobleman, persuaded the authorities to allow Lenin to take his exams externally at the University of St Petersburg, where he obtained the equivalent of a first-class degree with honours. The graduation celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of
typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several d ...
. Lenin remained in Samara for several years, working first as a legal assistant for a regional court and then for a local lawyer. He devoted much time to radical politics, remaining active in Sklyarenko's group and formulating ideas about how Marxism applied to Russia. Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Lenin collected data on Russian society, using it to support a Marxist interpretation of societal development and counter the claims of the Narodniks. He wrote a paper on peasant economics; it was rejected by the liberal journal '' Russian Thought''.
Revolutionary activity
Early activism and imprisonment: 1893–1900
In late 1893, Lenin moved to
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. There, he worked as a barrister's assistant and rose to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself the Social-Democrats after the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany. Publicly championing Marxism within the socialist movement, he encouraged the founding of revolutionary cells in Russia's industrial centres. By late 1894, he was leading a Marxist workers' circle, and meticulously covered his tracks, knowing that police spies tried to infiltrate the movement. He began a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya, a Marxist schoolteacher. He also authored the political tract ''What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats'' criticising the Narodnik agrarian-socialists, based largely on his experiences in Samara; around 200 copies were illegally printed in 1894.
Lenin hoped to cement connections between his Social-Democrats and
Emancipation of Labour
Emancipation of Labour (russian: Освобождение труда) was the first Russian Marxist group. It was founded in exile by Georgi Plekhanov, Vasily Ignatov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and Pavel Axelrod, at Geneva (Switzerland) in 1883. ...
, a group of Russian Marxist émigrés based in Switzerland; he visited the country to meet group members Plekhanov and
Pavel Axelrod
Pavel Borisovich Axelrod (russian: Па́вел Бори́сович Аксельро́д; 25 August 1850 – 16 April 1928) was an early Russian Marxist revolutionary. Along with Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Leo Deutsch, he was one ...
. He proceeded to Paris to meet Marx's son-in-law
Paul Lafargue
Paul Lafargue (; 15 January 1842 – 25 November 1911) was a Cuban- Haitian revolutionary Marxist socialist, political writer, economist, journalist, literary critic, and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law having married his second dau ...
and to research the
Paris Commune of 1871
The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended ...
, which he considered an early prototype for a proletarian government. Financed by his mother, he stayed in a Swiss health spa before travelling to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met the Marxist activist
industrial capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
in Russia had caused large numbers of peasants to move to the cities, where they formed a proletariat. From his Marxist perspective, Lenin argued that this Russian proletariat would develop
class consciousness
In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to ...
, which would in turn lead them to violently overthrow
tsarism
Tsarist autocracy (russian: царское самодержавие, transcr. ''tsarskoye samoderzhaviye''), also called Tsarism, was a form of autocracy (later absolute monarchy) specific to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states th ...
, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and to establish a proletariat state that would move toward socialism.
In February 1897, Lenin was sentenced without trial to three years' exile in eastern Siberia. He was granted a few days in Saint Petersburg to put his affairs in order and used this time to meet with the Social-Democrats, who had renamed themselves the
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
The St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (russian: Союз борьбы за освобождение рабочего класса, ''Sojuz borʹby za osvobozhdenie rabochego klassa,'' known sometimes in En ...
. His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Deemed only a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to a peasant's hut in
Shushenskoye
Shushenskoye ( rus, Шу́шенское, p=ˈʂuʂɨnskəjɛ) is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) and the administrative center of Shushensky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Yenisei and Big S ...
,
Minusinsky District
Minusinsky District (russian: Минуси́нский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #10-4765 and municipalLaw #13-3022 district (raion), one of the forty-three in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is located in the southwest of the krai and b ...
, where he was kept under police surveillance; he was nevertheless able to correspond with other revolutionaries, many of whom visited him, and permitted to go on trips to swim in the
Yenisei River
The Yenisey (russian: Енисе́й, ''Yeniséy''; mn, Горлог мөрөн, ''Gorlog mörön''; Buryat: Горлог мүрэн, ''Gorlog müren''; Tuvan: Улуг-Хем, ''Uluğ-Hem''; Khakas: Ким суғ, ''Kim suğ''; Ket: Ӄук, ...
and to hunt
duck
Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form ...
and
snipe
A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/ camouflaging plumage. The ''Gallinago'' snipes have a ...
.
In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organising a strike. She was initially posted to
Ufa
Ufa ( ba, Өфө , Öfö; russian: Уфа́, r=Ufá, p=ʊˈfa) is the largest city and capital city, capital of Bashkortostan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Belaya River (Kama), Belaya and Ufa River, Ufa rivers, in the centre-n ...
, but persuaded the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, claiming that she and Lenin were engaged; they married in a church on 10 July 1898. Settling into a family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian. Keen to keep up with developments in German Marxism, where there had been an ideological split, with revisionists like Eduard Bernstein advocating a peaceful, electoral path to socialism, Lenin remained devoted to violent revolution, attacking revisionist arguments in ''A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats''. He also finished ''
The Development of Capitalism in Russia
''The Development of Capitalism in Russia'' () was an early economic work by Lenin written whilst he was in exile in Siberia. It was published in 1899 under the pseudonym of "Vladimir Ilyin".Paul Le Blanc (2008) ''Revolution, Democracy, Socialism ...
'' (1899), his longest book to date, which criticised the agrarian-socialists and promoted a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development. Published under the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilin, upon publication it received predominantly poor reviews.
Munich, London, and Geneva: 1900–1905
After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began raising funds for a newspaper, ''
Iskra
''Iskra'' ( rus, Искра, , ''the Spark'') was a political newspaper of Russian socialist emigrants established as the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).
History
Due to political repression under Tsar Nicho ...
'' (''Spark''), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia for Western Europe; in Switzerland he met other Russian Marxists, and at a
Corsier
Corsier (, locally ) is a municipality of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
History
Corsier is first mentioned in 1297 as ''Corsiacum''. Between 1816-58 Corsier and Anières formed a single municipality.
Geography
Corsier has an area, , of ...
conference they agreed to launch the paper from
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, where Lenin relocated in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, ''Iskra'' was 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 Siberian River Lena; he often used the fuller pseudonym of N. Lenin, and while the ''N'' did not stand for anything, a popular misconception later arose that it represented ''Nikolai''. Under this pseudonym, he published the political pamphlet '' What Is to Be Done?'' in 1902; his most influential publication to date, it dealt with Lenin's thoughts on the need for a
vanguard party
Vanguardism in the context of Leninist revolutionary struggle, relates to a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically "advanced" sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organ ...
to lead the proletariat to revolution.
His wife Nadya joined Lenin in Munich and became his personal secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for ''Iskra'' and drafted the RSDLP programme, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics, particularly the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a Narodnik agrarian-socialist group founded in 1901. Despite remaining a Marxist, he accepted the Narodnik view on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, accordingly penning the 1903 pamphlet ''To the Village Poor''. To evade Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with ''Iskra'' in April 1902. He became friends with fellow Russian-Ukrainian Marxist
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
. Lenin fell ill with
erysipelas
Erysipelas () is a relatively common bacterial infection of the superficial layer of the skin ( upper dermis), extending to the superficial lymphatic vessels within the skin, characterized by a raised, well-defined, tender, bright red rash, t ...
and was unable to take such a leading role on the ''Iskra'' editorial board; in his absence, the board moved its base of operations to
.
The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a schism emerged between Lenin's supporters and those of Julius Martov. Martov argued that party members should be able to express themselves independently of the party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasising the need for a strong leadership with complete control over the party. Lenin's supporters were in the majority, and he termed them the "majoritarians" (''bol'sheviki'' in Russian;
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minoritarians" (''men'sheviki'' in Russian;
Mensheviks
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions em ...
). Arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks continued after the conference; the Bolsheviks accused their rivals of being opportunists and reformists who lacked discipline, while the Mensheviks accused Lenin of being a despot and autocrat. Enraged at the Mensheviks, Lenin resigned from the ''Iskra'' editorial board and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik tract ''
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
''One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our Party'' () is a work written by Vladimir Lenin and published on May 6/19, 1904. In it Lenin defends his role in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussel ...
''. The stress made Lenin ill, and to recuperate he went on a hiking holiday in rural Switzerland. The Bolshevik faction grew in strength; by spring 1905, the whole RSDLP Central Committee was Bolshevik, and in December they founded the newspaper ''Vpered'' (''Forward'').
Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath: 1905–1914
In January 1905, the
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday may refer to:
Historical events Canada
* Bloody Sunday (1923), a day of police violence during a steelworkers' strike for union recognition in Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
* Bloody Sunday (1938), police violence aga ...
massacre of protesters in St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest in the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
known as the Revolution of 1905. Lenin urged Bolsheviks to take a greater role in the events, encouraging violent insurrection. In doing so, he adopted SR slogans regarding "armed insurrection", "mass terror", and "the expropriation of gentry land", resulting in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism. In turn, he insisted that the Bolsheviks split completely with the Mensheviks; many Bolsheviks refused, and both groups attended the
Third RSDLP Congress
The 3rd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held during 25 April - 10 May Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html"_;"title="12–27_April_Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S.)1905_in_ O.S.)">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html"_;" ...
, held in London in April 1905 at the
Brotherhood Church
The Brotherhood Church is a Christian anarchist and pacifist community. An intentional community with Quaker origins has been located at Stapleton, near Pontefract, Yorkshire, since 1921.
History
The church can be traced back to 1887 when a ...
. Lenin presented many of his ideas in the pamphlet ''
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
''Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'' is one of the most important of Lenin's early writings.
Background
It was written in June and July 1905, while the Russian Revolution of 1905 was taking place.
Content
Lenin's ...
'', published in August 1905. Here, he predicted that Russia's liberal bourgeoisie would be sated by a transition to
constitutional monarchy
A constitutional monarchy, parliamentary monarchy, or democratic monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in decision making. Constitutional monarchies dif ...
and thus betray the revolution; instead he argued that the proletariat would have to build an alliance with the peasantry to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish the "provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry."
In response to the revolution of 1905, which had failed to overthrow the government, Tsar Nicholas II accepted a series of liberal reforms in his October Manifesto. In this climate, Lenin felt it safe to return to St. Petersburg. Joining the editorial board of ''Novaya Zhizn'' (''New Life''), a radical legal newspaper run by Maria Andreyeva, he used it to discuss issues facing the RSDLP. He encouraged the party to seek out a much wider membership, and advocated the continual escalation of violent confrontation, believing both to be necessary for a successful revolution. Recognising that membership fees and donations from a few wealthy sympathisers were insufficient to finance the Bolsheviks' activities, Lenin endorsed the idea of robbing post offices, railway stations, trains, and banks. Under the lead of
Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin (russian: Леони́д Бори́сович Кра́син; 15 July 1870 – 24 November 1926) was a Russian Soviet politician, engineer, social entrepreneur, Bolshevik revolutionary politician and a Soviet diplomat. In ...
, a group of Bolsheviks began carrying out such criminal actions, the best known taking place in June 1907, when a group of Bolsheviks acting under the leadership of
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
Tiflis
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...
, Georgia.
Although he briefly supported the idea of reconciliation between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin's advocacy of violence and robbery was condemned by the Mensheviks at the Fourth RSDLP Congress, held in Stockholm in April 1906. Lenin was involved in setting up a Bolshevik Centre in Kuokkala,
Grand Duchy of Finland
The Grand Duchy of Finland ( fi, Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta; sv, Storfurstendömet Finland; russian: Великое княжество Финляндское, , all of which literally translate as Grand Principality of Finland) was the predecess ...
, which was at the time a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Empire, before the Bolsheviks regained dominance of the RSDLP at its Fifth Congress, held in London in May 1907. As the Tsarist government cracked down on opposition, both by disbanding Russia's legislative assembly, the
Second Duma
The State Duma, also known as the Imperial Duma, was the lower house of the Governing Senate in the Russian Empire, while the upper house was the State Council. It held its meetings in the Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg. It convened four ti ...
, and by ordering its
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of ...
, the Okhrana, to arrest revolutionaries, Lenin fled Finland for Switzerland. There, he tried to exchange those banknotes stolen in Tiflis that had identifiable serial numbers on them.
Alexander Bogdanov and other prominent Bolsheviks decided to relocate the Bolshevik Centre to Paris; although Lenin disagreed, he moved to the city in December 1908. Lenin disliked Paris, lambasting it as "a foul hole", and while there he sued a motorist who knocked him off his bike. Lenin became very critical of Bogdanov's view that Russia's proletariat had to develop a socialist culture in order to become a successful revolutionary vehicle. Instead, Lenin favoured a vanguard of socialist intelligentsia who would lead the working-classes in revolution. Furthermore, Bogdanov, influenced by Ernest Mach, believed that all concepts of the world were relative, whereas Lenin stuck to the orthodox Marxist view that there was an objective reality independent of human observation. Bogdanov and Lenin holidayed together at
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
's villa in Capri in April 1908; on returning to Paris, Lenin encouraged a split within the Bolshevik faction between his and Bogdanov's followers, accusing the latter of deviating from Marxism.
In May 1908, Lenin lived briefly in London, where he used the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
Reading Room
Reading room may refer to:
* Reference library
* British Museum Reading Room
* Christian Science Reading Room
image:5054_christian-science-reading-room-e.jpg, 400px, A typical storefront Christian Science Reading Room on the main street of a subu ...
to write ''
Materialism and Empirio-criticism
''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'' ( Russian: ''Материализм и эмпириокритицизм, Materializm i empiriokrititsizm'') is a philosophical work by Vladimir Lenin, published in 1909. It was an obligatory subject of study ...
'', an attack on what he described as the "bourgeois-reactionary falsehood" of Bogdanov's relativism. Lenin's factionalism began to alienate increasing numbers of Bolsheviks, including his former close supporters Alexei Rykov and Lev Kamenev. The Okhrana exploited his factionalist attitude by sending a spy,
Roman Malinovsky
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
, to act as a vocal Lenin supporter within the party. Various Bolsheviks expressed their suspicions about Malinovsky to Lenin, although it is unclear if the latter was aware of the spy's duplicity; it is possible that he used Malinovsky to feed false information to the Okhrana.
In August 1910, Lenin attended the Eighth Congress of the
Second International
The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued th ...
, an international meeting of socialists, in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
as the RSDLP's representative, following this with a holiday in Stockholm with his mother. With his wife and sisters he then moved to France, settling first in Bombon and then Paris. Here, he became a close friend to the French Bolshevik
Inessa Armand
Inessa Fyodorovna Armand (born Elisabeth-Inès Stéphane d'Herbenville; 8 May 1874 – 24 September 1920) was a French-Russian communist politician, member of the Bolsheviks and a feminist who spent most of her life in Russia. Armand, being ...
; some biographers suggest that they had an extra-marital affair from 1910 to 1912. Meanwhile, at a Paris meeting in June 1911, the RSDLP Central Committee decided to move their focus of operations back to Russia, ordering the closure of the Bolshevik Centre and its newspaper, ''Proletari''. Seeking to rebuild his influence in the party, Lenin arranged for a party conference to be held in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
in January 1912, and although 16 of the 18 attendants were Bolsheviks, he was heavily criticised for his factionalist tendencies and failed to boost his status within the party.
Moving to
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
in the
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria,, ; pl, Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii, ; uk, Королівство Галичини та Володимирії, Korolivstvo Halychyny ta Volodymyrii; la, Rēgnum Galiciae et Lodomeriae also known as ...
, a culturally Polish part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he used Jagiellonian University's library to conduct research. He stayed in close contact with the RSDLP, which was operating in the Russian Empire, convincing the Duma's Bolshevik members to split from their parliamentary alliance with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin, whom Lenin referred to as the "wonderful Georgian", visited him, and they discussed the future of non-Russian ethnic groups in the Empire. Due to the ailing health of both Lenin and his wife, they moved to the rural town of
Biały Dunajec
Biały Dunajec , ( sk, Biely Dunajec) is a village in southern Poland situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999; it was previously in Nowy Sącz Voivodeship from 1975–1998. It lies approximately north-east of Zakopane and south of t ...
, before heading to Bern for Nadya to have surgery on her
goitre
A goitre, or goiter, is a swelling in the neck resulting from an enlarged thyroid gland. A goitre can be associated with a thyroid that is not functioning properly.
Worldwide, over 90% of goitre cases are caused by iodine deficiency. The term is ...
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
broke out. The war pitted the Russian Empire against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and due to his Russian citizenship, Lenin was arrested and briefly imprisoned until his anti-Tsarist credentials were explained. Lenin and his wife returned to Bern, before relocating to
in February 1916. Lenin was angry that the German Social-Democratic Party was supporting the German war effort, which was a direct contravention of the Second International's Stuttgart resolution that socialist parties would oppose the conflict, and saw the Second International as defunct. He attended the
Zimmerwald Conference
The Zimmerwald Conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, from September 5 to 8, 1915. It was the first of three international socialist conferences convened by anti-militarist socialist parties from countries that were originally neutral ...
in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists across the continent to convert the "imperialist war" into a continent-wide "civil war" with the proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In July 1916, Lenin's mother died, but he was unable to attend her funeral. Her 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 Highest Stage of Capitalism
''Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism'' (russian: Империализм как высшая стадия капитализма, Imperializm kak vysshaja stadija kapitalizma, link=no), originally published as ''Imperialism, the Newest S ...
'', which argued that imperialism was a product of monopoly capitalism, as capitalists sought to increase their profits by extending into new territories where wages were lower and raw materials cheaper. He believed that competition and conflict would increase and that war between the imperialist powers would continue until they were overthrown by proletariat revolution and socialism established. He spent much of this time reading the works of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
,
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gene ...
, and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...
, all of whom had been key influences on Marx. This changed Lenin's interpretation of Marxism; whereas he once believed that policies could be developed based on predetermined scientific principles, he concluded that the only test of whether a policy was correct was its practice. He still perceived himself as an orthodox Marxist, but he began to diverge from some of Marx's predictions about societal development; whereas Marx had believed that a "bourgeoisie-democratic revolution" of the middle-classes had to take place before a "socialist revolution" of the proletariat, Lenin believed that in Russia the proletariat could overthrow the Tsarist regime without an intermediate revolution.
February Revolution and the July Days: 1917
In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out in St. Petersburg, renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War, as industrial workers went on strike over food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions. The unrest spread to other parts of Russia, and fearing that he would be violently overthrown, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The State Duma took over control of the country, establishing the
Russian Provisional Government
The Russian Provisional Government ( rus, Временное правительство России, Vremennoye pravitel'stvo Rossii) was a provisional government of the Russian Republic, announced two days before and established immediately ...
and converting the Empire into a new
Russian Republic
The Russian Republic,. referred to as the Russian Democratic Federal Republic. in the 1918 Constitution, was a short-lived state which controlled, ''de jure'', the territory of the former Russian Empire after its proclamation by the Rus ...
. When Lenin learned of this from his base in Switzerland, he celebrated with other dissidents. He decided to return to Russia to take charge of the Bolsheviks but found that most passages into the country were blocked due to the ongoing conflict. He organised a plan with other dissidents to negotiate a passage for them through Germany, with whom Russia was then at war. Recognising that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to permit 32 Russian citizens to travel by train through their territory, among them Lenin and his wife. For political reasons, Lenin and the Germans agreed to adhere to a
cover story
Cover story or Cover Story may refer to:
* A magazine or newspaper article whose subject appears on that issue's front cover, and may be profiled in depth.
* A fictitious explanation intended to hide one's real motive; see disinformation, cover-u ...
that Lenin had travelled by
sealed train
A sealed train is one that travels internationally under customs and/or immigration seal, without its contents legally recognized as entering or leaving the nations traversed between the beginning and end of the journey or subject to any otherwis ...
carriage through German territory, but in fact the journey was not truly by sealed train because the passengers were allowed to disembark to, for example, spend the night in Frankfurt The group travelled by train from Zürich to
Sassnitz
Sassnitz (, before 1993 in german: Saßnitz) is a town on the Jasmund peninsula, Rügen Island, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The population as of 2012 was 9,498.
Sassnitz is a well-known seaside resort and port town, a ...
, proceeding by ferry to
Trelleborg
Trelleborg () is a town in Skåne County, Sweden, with 43,359 inhabitants as of December 31, 2015. It is the southernmost town in Sweden located some west from the southernmost point of Sweden and the Scandinavian peninsula. It is one of the ...
Tornio
Tornio (; sv, Torneå; sme, Duortnus ; smn, Tuárnus) is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of , of which is ...
border crossing and then to
Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...
before taking the final train to Petrograd in disguise.
Arriving at Petrograd's
Finland Station
St Petersburg–Finlyandsky (russian: Станция Санкт-Петербург-Финля́ндский ''Stantsiya Sankt-Peterburg-Finlyandskiy'', in spoken language usually just russian: Финля́ндский вокзал ''Finlyandskiy ...
in April, Lenin gave a speech to Bolshevik supporters condemning the Provisional Government and again calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution. Over the following days, he spoke at Bolshevik meetings, lambasting those who wanted reconciliation with the Mensheviks and revealing his "
April Theses
The April Theses (russian: апрельские тезисы, transliteration: ') were a series of ten directives issued by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin upon his April 1917 return to Petrograd from his exile in Switzerland via Germany ...
", an outline of his plans for the Bolsheviks, which he had written on the journey from Switzerland. He publicly condemned both the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who dominated the influential
Petrograd Soviet
The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (russian: Петроградский совет рабочих и солдатских депутатов, ''Petrogradskiy soviet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov'') was a city council of P ...
, for supporting the Provisional Government, denouncing them as traitors to socialism. Considering the government to be just as imperialist as the Tsarist regime, he advocated immediate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, rule by
soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
, the nationalisation of industry and banks, and the state expropriation of land, all with the intention of establishing a proletariat government and pushing toward a socialist society. By contrast, the Mensheviks believed that Russia was insufficiently developed to transition to socialism and accused Lenin of trying to plunge the new Republic into civil war. Over the coming months, he campaigned for his policies, attending the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, prolifically writing for the Bolshevik newspaper ''
Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...
'', and giving public speeches in Petrograd aimed at converting workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants to his cause.
Sensing growing frustration among Bolshevik supporters, Lenin suggested an armed political demonstration in Petrograd to test the government's response. Amid deteriorating health, he left the city to recuperate in the Finnish village of Neivola. The Bolsheviks' armed demonstration, the
July Days
The July Days (russian: Июльские дни) were a period of unrest in Petrograd, Russia, between . It was characterised by spontaneous armed demonstrations by soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers engaged against the Russian Provisi ...
, took place while Lenin was away, but upon learning that demonstrators had violently clashed with government forces, he returned to Petrograd and called for calm. Responding to the violence, the government ordered the arrest of Lenin and other prominent Bolsheviks, raiding their offices, and publicly alleging that he was a German ''
agent provocateur
An agent provocateur () is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, th ...
''. Evading arrest, Lenin hid in a series of Petrograd
safe house
A safe house (also spelled safehouse) is, in a generic sense, a secret place for sanctuary or suitable to hide people from the law, hostile actors or actions, or from retribution, threats or perceived danger. It may also be a metaphor.
Histori ...
s. Fearing that he would be killed, Lenin and fellow senior Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev escaped Petrograd in disguise, relocating to
Razliv
Razliv railway station ''(russian: Ста́нция Разли́в)'' is a railway station located near to Lake Razliv which is in the territory of Saint Petersburg, Russia.
It was built by the Joint-stock company of the Primorskaya St.-Peterbur ...
. There, Lenin began work on the book that became ''
The State and Revolution
''The State and Revolution'' (1917) is a book by Vladimir Lenin describing the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dicta ...
'', an exposition on how he believed the socialist state would develop after the proletariat revolution, and how from then on the state would gradually wither away, leaving a pure communist society. He began arguing for a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection to topple the government, but at a clandestine meeting of the party's central committee this idea was rejected. Lenin then headed by train and by foot to Finland, arriving at Helsinki on 10 August, where he hid away in safe houses belonging to Bolshevik sympathisers.
October Revolution: 1917
In August 1917, while Lenin was in Finland, General Lavr Kornilov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, sent troops to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Premier
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, ; original spelling: ( – 11 June 1970) was a Russian lawyer and revolutionary who led the Russian Provisional Government and the short-lived Russian Republic for three months from late July to early Nove ...
turned to the Petrograd Soviet, including its Bolshevik members, for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as
Red Guards
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...
to defend the city. The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd, but the events had allowed the Bolsheviks to return to the open political arena. Fearing a counter-revolution from right-wing forces hostile to socialism, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who dominated the Petrograd Soviet had been instrumental in pressurising the government to normalise relations with the Bolsheviks. Both the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had lost much popular support because of their affiliation with the Provisional Government and its unpopular continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks capitalised on this, and soon the pro-Bolshevik Marxist Trotsky was elected leader of the Petrograd Soviet. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the workers' sections of both the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets.
Recognising that the situation was safer for him, Lenin returned to Petrograd. There he attended a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10 October, where he again argued that the party should lead an armed insurrection to topple the Provisional Government. This time the argument won with ten votes against two. Critics of the plan, Zinoviev and Kamenev, argued that Russian workers would not support a violent coup against the regime and that there was no clear evidence for Lenin's assertion that all of Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. The party began plans to organise the offensive, holding a final meeting at the
Smolny Institute
The Smolny Institute (russian: Смольный институт, ''Smol'niy institut'') is a Palladian edifice in Saint Petersburg that has played a major part in the history of Russia.
History
The building was commissioned from Giacomo Qua ...
on 24 October. This was the base of the
Military Revolutionary Committee
The Military Revolutionary Committee (russian: Военно-революционный комитет, ) was the name for military organs created by the Bolsheviks under the soviets in preparation for the October Revolution (October 1917 – Marc ...
(MRC), an armed militia largely loyal to the Bolsheviks that had been established by the Petrograd Soviet during Kornilov's alleged coup.
In October, the MRC was ordered to take control of Petrograd's key transport, communication, printing and utilities hubs, and did so without bloodshed. Bolsheviks besieged the government in the
Winter Palace
The Winter Palace ( rus, Зимний дворец, Zimnij dvorets, p=ˈzʲimnʲɪj dvɐˈrʲɛts) is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now ...
, and overcame it and arrested its ministers after the cruiser ''
Aurora
An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
'', controlled by Bolshevik seamen, fired a blank shot to signal the start of the revolution. During the insurrection, Lenin gave a speech to the Petrograd Soviet announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. The Bolsheviks declared the formation of a new government, the
Council of People's Commissars
The Councils of People's Commissars (SNK; russian: Совет народных комиссаров (СНК), ''Sovet narodnykh kommissarov''), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (Совнарком), were the highest executive authorities of ...
, or Sovnarkom. Lenin initially turned down the leading position of Chairman, suggesting Trotsky for the job, but other Bolsheviks insisted and ultimately Lenin relented. Lenin and other Bolsheviks then attended the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 and 27 October, and announced the creation of the new government. Menshevik attendees condemned the illegitimate seizure of power and the risk of civil war. In these early days of the new regime, Lenin avoided talking in Marxist and socialist terms so as not to alienate Russia's population, and instead spoke about having a country controlled by the workers. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks expected proletariat revolution to sweep across Europe in days or months.
Lenin's government
Organising the Soviet government: 1917–1918
The Provisional Government had planned for a Constituent Assembly to be elected in November 1917; against Lenin's objections, Sovnarkom agreed for the vote to take place as scheduled. In the constitutional election, the Bolsheviks gained approximately a quarter of the vote, being defeated by the agrarian-focused Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin argued that the election was not a fair reflection of the people's will, that the electorate had not had time to learn the Bolsheviks' political programme, and that the candidacy lists had been drawn up before the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries split from the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the newly elected
Russian Constituent Assembly
The All Russian Constituent Assembly (Всероссийское Учредительное собрание, Vserossiyskoye Uchreditelnoye sobraniye) was a constituent assembly convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It met fo ...
convened in Petrograd in January 1918. Sovnarkom argued that it was counter-revolutionary because it sought to remove power from the soviets, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks denied this. The Bolsheviks presented the Assembly with a motion that would strip it of most of its legal powers; when the Assembly rejected the motion, Sovnarkom declared this as evidence of its counter-revolutionary nature and forcibly disbanded it.
Lenin rejected repeated calls, including from some Bolsheviks, to establish a coalition government with other socialist parties. Although refusing a coalition with the Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, Sovnarkom partially relented; they allowed the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries five posts in the cabinet in December 1917. This coalition only lasted four months until March 1918, when the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries pulled out of the government over a disagreement about the Bolsheviks' approach to ending the First World War. At their 7th Congress in March 1918, the Bolsheviks changed their official name from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian Communist Party, as Lenin wanted to both distance his group from the increasingly reformist German Social Democratic Party and to emphasise its ultimate goal, that of a communist society.
Although ultimate power officially rested with the country's government in the form of Sovnarkom and the
Executive Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
(VTSIK) elected by the
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
The All-Russian Congress of Soviets evolved from 1917 to become the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 until 1936, effectively. The 1918 Constitution of the Russian SFSR mandated that Congress sha ...
(ARCS), the Communist Party was ''de facto'' in control in Russia, as acknowledged by its members at the time. By 1918, Sovnarkom began acting unilaterally, claiming a need for expediency, with the ARCS and VTSIK becoming increasingly marginalised, so the soviets no longer had a role in governing Russia. During 1918 and 1919, the government expelled Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries from the soviets. Russia had become a
one-party state
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of sovereign state in which only one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties ...
.
Within the party was established a
Political Bureau
A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist party, communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states.
Names
The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian language, Russian ''Pol ...
(Politburo) and Organisation Bureau (Orgburo) to accompany the existing Central Committee; the decisions of these party bodies had to be adopted by Sovnarkom and the
Council of Labour and Defence The Council of Labor and Defense (Russian: Совет труда и обороны (СТО) Sovet Truda i Oborony, Latin acronym: STO), first established as the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense in November 1918, was an agency responsible fo ...
. Lenin was the most significant figure in this governance structure as well as being the Chairman of Sovnarkom and sitting on the Council of Labour and Defence, and on the Central Committee and Politburo of the Communist Party. The only individual to have anywhere near this influence was Lenin's right-hand man,
Yakov Sverdlov
Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (russian: Яков Михайлович Свердлов; 3 June Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._22_May.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S ...
, who died in March 1919 during a
flu pandemic
An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads across a large region (either multiple continents or worldwide) and infects a large proportion of the population. There have been six major influenza epidemics in the las ...
. In November 1917, Lenin and his wife took a two-room flat within the Smolny Institute; the following month they left for a brief holiday in Halila, Finland. In January 1918, he survived an assassination attempt in Petrograd;
Fritz Platten
Fritz Platten (8 July 1883 – 22 April 1942) was a Swiss communist politician and one of the founders of the Communist International.
Early life
Platten was born in the village of Tablat, now part of St. Gallen, on 8 July 1883, to and Old Cathol ...
, who was with Lenin at the time, shielded him and was injured by a bullet.
Concerned that the German Army posed a threat to Petrograd, in March 1918 Sovnarkom relocated to Moscow, initially as a temporary measure. There, Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders moved into the Kremlin, where Lenin lived with his wife and sister Maria in a first floor apartment adjacent to the room in which the Sovnarkom meetings were held. Lenin disliked Moscow, but rarely left the city centre during the rest of his life. He survived a second assassination attempt, in Moscow in August 1918; he was shot following a public speech and injured badly. A Socialist-Revolutionary,
Fanny Kaplan
Fanny Efimovna Kaplan (russian: Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н, links=no; real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat, ; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a Ukrainian Jewish woman, Socialist-Revolutionary, and early Soviet dissi ...
, was arrested and executed. The attack was widely covered in the Russian press, generating much sympathy for Lenin and boosting his popularity. As a respite, he was driven in September 1918 to the Gorki estate, just outside Moscow, recently acquired for him by the government.
Social, legal, and economic reform: 1917–1918
Upon taking power, Lenin's regime issued a series of decrees. The first was a
Decree on Land
The Decree on Land (), written by Vladimir Lenin, was passed by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on , following the success of the October Revolution.
It decreed an abolition of private property, an ...
, which declared that the
landed estate
In real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a property that generates income for the owner (typically a member of the gentry) without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate.
In medieval Western Europe, there were two compet ...
s of the aristocracy and the Orthodox Church should be nationalised and redistributed to peasants by local governments. This contrasted with Lenin's desire for agricultural collectivisation but provided governmental recognition of the widespread peasant land seizures that had already occurred. In November 1917, the government issued the Decree on the Press that closed many opposition media outlets deemed counter-revolutionary. They claimed the measure would be temporary; the decree was widely criticised, including by many Bolsheviks, for compromising freedom of the press.
In November 1917, Lenin issued the
Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia
The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (russian: Деклара́ция прав наро́дов Росси́и) was a document promulgated by the Bolshevik government of Russia on November 15 (November 2 by Old Style), 1917 (sig ...
, which stated that non-Russian ethnic groups living inside the Republic had the right to secede from Russian authority and establish their own independent nation-states. Many nations declared independence (
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. Seeking to modernise the country, the government officially converted Russia from the
Julian calendar
The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandr ...
to the
Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years dif ...
used in Europe.
In November 1917, Sovnarkom issued a decree abolishing Russia's legal system, calling on the use of "revolutionary conscience" to replace the abolished laws. The courts were replaced by a two-tier system, namely the Revolutionary Tribunals to deal with counter-revolutionary crimes, and the People's Courts to deal with civil and other criminal offences. They were instructed to ignore pre-existing laws, and base their rulings on the Sovnarkom decrees and a "socialist sense of justice." November also saw an overhaul of the armed forces; Sovnarkom implemented
egalitarian
Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...
measures, abolished previous ranks, titles, and medals, and called on soldiers to establish committees to elect their commanders.
In October 1917, Lenin issued a decree limiting work for everyone in Russia to eight hours per day. He also issued the Decree on Popular Education that stipulated that the government would guarantee free, secular education for all children in Russia, and a decree establishing a system of state orphanages. To combat mass illiteracy, a literacy campaign was initiated; an estimated 5 million people enrolled in crash courses of basic literacy from 1920 to 1926. Embracing the equality of the sexes, laws were introduced that helped to emancipate women, by giving them economic autonomy from their husbands and removing restrictions on divorce.
Zhenotdel
The Zhenotdel (), the women's department of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), was the section of the Russian Communist party devoted to women's affairs in the 1920s. It gave women in the Russian Revolution ...
, a Bolshevik women's organisation, was established to further these aims. Under Lenin, Russia became the first country to legalize abortion on demand in the first trimester. Militantly atheist, Lenin and the Communist Party wanted to demolish organised religion. In January 1918, the government decreed the separation of church and state, and prohibited religious instruction in schools.
In November 1917, Lenin issued the Decree on Workers' Control, which called on the workers of each enterprise to establish an elected committee to monitor their enterprise's management. That month they also issued an order requisitioning the country's gold, and nationalised the banks, which Lenin saw as a major step toward socialism. In December, Sovnarkom established a Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), which had authority over industry, banking, agriculture, and trade. The factory committees were subordinate to the trade unions, which were subordinate to VSNKh; the state's centralised economic plan was prioritised over the workers' local economic interests. In early 1918, Sovnarkom cancelled all foreign debts and refused to pay interest owed on them. In April 1918, it nationalised foreign trade, establishing a state monopoly on imports and exports. In June 1918, it decreed nationalisation of public utilities, railways, engineering, textiles, metallurgy, and mining, although often these were state-owned in name only. Full-scale nationalisation did not take place until November 1920, when small-scale industrial enterprises were brought under state control.
A faction of the Bolsheviks known as the " Left Communists" criticised Sovnarkom's economic policy as too moderate; they wanted nationalisation of all industry, agriculture, trade, finance, transport, and communication. Lenin believed that this was impractical at that stage and that the government should only nationalise Russia's large-scale capitalist enterprises, such as the banks, railways, larger landed estates, and larger factories and mines, allowing smaller businesses to operate privately until they grew large enough to be successfully nationalised. Lenin also disagreed with the Left Communists about the economic organisation; in June 1918, he argued that centralised economic control of industry was needed, whereas Left Communists wanted each factory to be controlled by its workers, a syndicalist approach that Lenin considered detrimental to the cause of socialism.
Adopting a left-libertarian perspective, both the Left Communists and other factions in the Communist Party critiqued the decline of democratic institutions in Russia. Internationally, many socialists decried Lenin's regime and denied that he was establishing socialism; in particular, they highlighted the lack of widespread political participation, popular consultation, and industrial democracy. In late 1918, the Czech-Austrian Marxist
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky (; ; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theorist. Kautsky was one of the most authoritative promulgators of orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels i ...
authored an anti-Leninist pamphlet condemning the anti-democratic nature of Soviet Russia, to which Lenin published a vociferous reply. German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg echoed Kautsky's views, while Russian anarchistPeter Kropotkin described the Bolshevik seizure of power as "the burial of the Russian Revolution."
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: 1917–1918
Upon taking power, Lenin believed that a key policy of his government must be to withdraw from the First World War by establishing an armistice with the
Central Powers
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
of Germany and Austria-Hungary. He believed that ongoing war would create resentment among war-weary Russian troops, to whom he had promised peace, and that these troops and the advancing German Army threatened both his own government and the cause of international socialism. By contrast, other Bolsheviks, in particular Nikolai Bukharin and the Left Communists, believed that peace with the Central Powers would be a betrayal of international socialism and that Russia should instead wage "a war of revolutionary defence" that would provoke an uprising of the German proletariat against their own government.
Lenin proposed a three-month armistice in his
Decree on Peace
The Decree on Peace, written by Vladimir Lenin, was passed by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on the , following the success of the October Revolution. It was published in the ''Izvestiya'' newspaper, ...
of November 1917, which was approved by the Second Congress of Soviets and presented to the German and Austro-Hungarian governments. The Germans responded positively, viewing this as an opportunity to focus on the Western Front and stave off looming defeat. In November, armistice talks began at Brest-Litovsk, the headquarters of the German high command on the Eastern Front, with the Russian delegation being led by Trotsky and
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe (russian: Адо́льф Абра́мович Ио́ффе, alternative transliterations Adol'f Ioffe or, rarely, Yoffe) (10 October 1883 in Simferopol – 16 November 1927 in Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary, a Bo ...
. Meanwhile, a ceasefire until January was agreed. During negotiations, the Germans insisted on keeping their wartime conquests, which included Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, whereas the Russians countered that this was a violation of these nations' rights to self-determination. Some Bolsheviks had expressed hopes of dragging out negotiations until proletarian revolution broke out throughout Europe. On 7 January 1918, Trotsky returned from Brest-Litovsk to St. Petersburg with an ultimatum from the Central Powers: either Russia accept Germany's territorial demands or the war would resume.
In January and again in February, Lenin urged the Bolsheviks to accept Germany's proposals. He argued that the territorial losses were acceptable if it ensured the survival of the Bolshevik-led government. The majority of Bolsheviks rejected his position, hoping to prolong the armistice and call Germany's bluff. On 18 February, the German Army launched
Operation Faustschlag
The Operation Faustschlag ("Operation Fist Punch"), also known as the Eleven Days' War, Mawdsley (2007), p. 35 was a Central Powers offensive in World War I. It was the last major action on the Eastern Front.
Russian forces were unable to put ...
, advancing further into Russian-controlled territory and conquering
Dvinsk
Daugavpils (; russian: Двинск; ltg, Daugpiļs ; german: Dünaburg, ; pl, Dyneburg; see other names) is a state city in south-eastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. The parts of the ...
within a day. At this point, Lenin finally convinced a small majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee to accept the Central Powers' demands. On 23 February, the Central Powers issued a new ultimatum: Russia had to recognise German control not only of Poland and the Baltic states but also of Ukraine, or face a full-scale invasion.
On 3 March, the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (also known as the Treaty of Brest in Russia) was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's ...
was signed. It resulted in massive territorial losses for Russia, with 26% of the former Empire's population, 37% of its agricultural harvest area, 28% of its industry, 26% of its railway tracks, and three-quarters of its coal and iron deposits being transferred to German control. Accordingly, the Treaty was deeply unpopular across Russia's political spectrum, and several Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries resigned from Sovnarkom in protest. After the Treaty, Sovnarkom focused on trying to foment proletarian revolution in Germany, issuing an array of anti-war and anti-government publications in the country; the German government retaliated by expelling Russia's diplomats. The Treaty nevertheless failed to stop the Central Powers' defeat; in November 1918, the German Emperor
Wilhelm II
, house = Hohenzollern
, father = Frederick III, German Emperor
, mother = Victoria, Princess Royal
, religion = Lutheranism (Prussian United)
, signature = Wilhelm II, German Emperor Signature-.svg
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor ...
abdicated
Abdication is the act of formally relinquishing monarchical authority. Abdications have played various roles in the succession procedures of monarchies. While some cultures have viewed abdication as an extreme abandonment of duty, in other societ ...
and the country's new administration signed the
Armistice
An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...
with the Allies. As a result, Sovnarkom proclaimed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk void.
Anti-Kulak campaigns, Cheka, and Red Terror: 1918–1922
By early 1918, many cities in western Russia faced famine as a result of chronic food shortages. Lenin blamed this on the
kulaks
Kulak (; russian: кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈlak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned ov ...
, or wealthier peasants, who allegedly hoarded the grain that they had produced to increase its financial value. In May 1918, he issued a requisitioning order that established armed detachments to confiscate grain from kulaks for distribution in the cities, and in June called for the formation of
Committees of Poor Peasants
In Soviet-ruled Russia the Bolshevik authorities established Committees of Poor easants'' (russian: Комитеты Бедноты, ''komitety bednoty'' or russian: комбеды, ''kombedy'', commonly rendered in English as kombeds) during th ...
to aid in requisitioning. This policy resulted in vast social disorder and violence, as armed detachments often clashed with peasant groups, helping to set the stage for the civil war. A prominent example of Lenin's views was his August 1918 telegram to the Bolsheviks of Penza, which called upon them to suppress a peasant insurrection by publicly hanging at least 100 "known kulaks, rich men, ndbloodsuckers."
The requisitions disincentivised peasants from producing more grain than they could personally consume, and thus production slumped. A booming black market supplemented the official state-sanctioned economy, and Lenin called on
speculators
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many s ...
, black marketeers and looters to be shot. Both the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries condemned the armed appropriations of grain at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in July 1918. Realising that the Committees of the Poor Peasants were also persecuting peasants who were not kulaks and thus contributing to anti-government feeling among the peasantry, in December 1918 Lenin abolished them.
Lenin repeatedly emphasised the need for terror and violence in overthrowing the old order and ensuring the success of the revolution. Speaking to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in November 1917, he declared that "the state is an institution built up for the sake of exercising violence. Previously, this violence was exercised by a handful of moneybags over the entire people; now we want ..to organise violence in the interests of the people." He strongly opposed suggestions to abolish capital punishment. Fearing anti-Bolshevik forces would overthrow his administration, in December 1917 Lenin ordered the establishment of the Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, a political police force led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.
In September 1918, Sovnarkom passed a decree that inaugurated the Red Terror, a system of repression orchestrated by the Cheka. Although sometimes described as an attempt to eliminate the entire bourgeoisie, Lenin did not want to exterminate all members of this class, merely those who sought to reinstate their rule. The majority of the Terror's victims were well-to-do citizens or former members of the Tsarist administration; others were non-bourgeois anti-Bolsheviks and perceived social undesirables such as prostitutes. The Cheka claimed the right to both sentence and execute anyone whom it deemed to be an enemy of the government, without recourse to the Revolutionary Tribunals. Accordingly, throughout Soviet Russia the Cheka carried out killings, often in large numbers. For example, the Petrograd Cheka executed 512 people in a few days. There are no surviving records to provide an accurate figure of how many perished in the Red Terror; later estimates of historians have ranged between 10,000 and 15,000, and 50,000 to 140,000.
Lenin never witnessed this violence or participated in it first-hand, and publicly distanced himself from it. His published articles and speeches rarely called for executions, but he regularly did so in his coded telegrams and confidential notes. Many Bolsheviks expressed disapproval of the Cheka's mass executions and feared the organisation's apparent unaccountability. The Communist Party tried to restrain its activities in February 1919, stripping it of its powers of tribunal and execution in those areas not under official
martial law
Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory.
Use
Marti ...
, but the Cheka continued as before in swathes of the country. By 1920, the Cheka had become the most powerful institution in Soviet Russia, exerting influence over all other state apparatus.
A decree in April 1919 resulted in the establishment of
concentration camps
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
, which were entrusted to the Cheka, later administered by a new government agency,
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
. By the end of 1920, 84 camps had been established across Soviet Russia, holding about 50,000 prisoners; by October 1923, this had grown to 315 camps and about 70,000 inmates. Those interned in the camps were used as
slave labour
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. From July 1922, intellectuals deemed to be opposing the Bolshevik government were exiled to inhospitable regions or deported from Russia altogether; Lenin personally scrutinised the lists of those to be dealt with in this manner. 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 on
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
and
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
churches,
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
Lenin expected Russia's aristocracy and bourgeoisie to oppose his government, but he believed that the numerical superiority of the lower classes, coupled with the Bolsheviks' ability to effectively organise them, guaranteed a swift victory in any conflict. In this, he failed to anticipate the intensity of the violent opposition to Bolshevik rule in Russia. The ensuing
Russian Civil War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Russian Civil War
, partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I
, image =
, caption = Clockwise from top left:
{{flatlist,
*Soldiers ...
pitted the pro-Bolshevik Reds against the anti-Bolshevik
Whites
White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view.
Description of populations as ...
but also encompassed ethnic conflicts on Russia's borders and conflict between both Red and White armies and local peasant groups, the
Green armies
The Green armies (russian: Зеленоармейцы), also known as the Green Army (Зелёная Армия) or Greens (Зелёные), were armed peasant groups which fought against all governments in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922 ...
, throughout the former Empire. Accordingly, various historians have seen the civil war as representing two distinct conflicts: one between the revolutionaries and the counter-revolutionaries, and the other between different revolutionary factions.
The White armies were established by former Tsarist military officers, and included
Anton Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin (russian: Анто́н Ива́нович Дени́кин, link= ; 16 December Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_December.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New St ...
's
Volunteer Army
The Volunteer Army (russian: Добровольческая армия, translit=Dobrovolcheskaya armiya, abbreviated to russian: Добрармия, translit=Dobrarmiya) was a White Army active in South Russia during the Russian Civil War from ...
Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich ( – 5 October 1933) was a commander of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. He was a leader of the anti-communist White movement in Northwestern Russia during the Civil War.
Biography
Early life
Yuden ...
's troops in the newly independent Baltic states. The Whites were bolstered when 35,000 members of the
Czech Legion
, image = Coat of arms of the Czechoslovak Legion.svg
, image_size = 200px
, alt =
, caption = Czechoslovak Legion coat of arms
, start_date ...
, who were prisoners of war from the conflict with the Central Powers, turned against Sovnarkom and allied with the
Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly
The Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly was an anti-Bolshevik government that operated in Samara, Russia, during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. It formed on June 8, 1918, after the Czechoslovak Legion had occupied the city.
...
(Komuch), an anti-Bolshevik government established in Samara. The Whites were also backed by Western governments who perceived the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a betrayal of the Allied war effort and feared the Bolsheviks' calls for world revolution. In 1918, Great Britain, France, United States, Canada, Italy, and Serbia landed 10,000 troops in
Kandalaksha
Kandalaksha (russian: Кандала́кша; fi, Kantalahti, also ''Kandalax'' or ''Candalax'' in the old maps; krl, Kannanlakši; sms, Käddluhtt) is a town in Kandalakshsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located at the head of Kandala ...
, while later that year British, American, and Japanese forces landed in
Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, c ...
. Western troops soon pulled out of the civil war, instead only supporting the Whites with officers, technicians and armaments, but Japan remained because they saw the conflict as an opportunity for territorial expansion.
Lenin tasked Trotsky with establishing a Red Army, Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and with his support, Trotsky organised a Revolutionary Military Council in September 1918, remaining its chairman until 1925. Recognising their valuable military experience, Lenin agreed that officers from the old Tsarist army could serve in the Red Army, although Trotsky established military councils to monitor their activities. The Reds held control of Russia's two largest cities, Moscow and Petrograd, as well as most of Great Russia, while the Whites were located largely on the former Empire's peripheries. The latter were therefore hindered by being both fragmented and geographically scattered, and because their ethnic Russian supremacism alienated the region's national minorities. Anti-Bolshevik armies carried out the White Terror (Russia), White Terror, a campaign of violence against perceived Bolshevik supporters which was typically more spontaneous than the state-sanctioned Red Terror. Both White and Red Armies were responsible for attacks against Jewish communities, prompting Lenin to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism, blaming prejudice against Jews on capitalist propaganda.
In July 1918, Sverdlov informed Sovnarkom that the Ural Regional Soviet had overseen the Execution of the Romanov family, execution of the former Tsar and his immediate family in Yekaterinburg to prevent them from being rescued by advancing White troops. Although lacking proof, biographers and historians like Richard Pipes and Dmitri Volkogonov have expressed the view that the killing was probably sanctioned by Lenin; conversely, historian James Ryan cautioned that there was "no reason" to believe this. Whether Lenin sanctioned it or not, he still regarded it as necessary, highlighting the precedent set by the execution of Louis XVI in the French Revolution.
After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had abandoned the coalition and increasingly viewed the Bolsheviks as traitors to the revolution. In July 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Yakov Blumkin assassinated the German ambassador to Russia, Wilhelm von Mirbach, hoping that the ensuing diplomatic incident would lead to a relaunched revolutionary war against Germany. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries then Left SR uprising, launched a coup in Moscow, shelling the Kremlin and seizing the city's central post office before being stopped by Trotsky's forces. The party's leaders and many members were arrested and imprisoned, but were treated more leniently than other opponents of the Bolsheviks.
By 1919, the White armies were in retreat and by the start of 1920 were defeated on all three fronts. Although Sovnarkom were victorious, the territorial extent of the Russian state had been reduced, for many non-Russian ethnic groups had used the disarray to push for national independence. In some cases, such as the north-eastern European nations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland, the Soviets recognised their independence and concluded peace treaties. In other cases, the Red Army suppressed secessionist movements; by 1921 they had defeated the Ukrainian national movements and occupied the Caucasus, although Basmachi movement, fighting in Central Asia lasted until the late 1920s.
After the German Ober Ost garrisons were withdrawn from the Eastern Front following the Armistice, Soviet westward offensive of 1918–19, both Soviet Russian armies and Polish ones moved in to fill the vacuum. The newly independent Polish state and the Soviet government each sought territorial expansion in the region. Polish and Russian troops first clashed in February 1919, with the conflict developing into the
Polish–Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet War (Polish–Bolshevik War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Russian War 1919–1921)
* russian: Советско-польская война (''Sovetsko-polskaya voyna'', Soviet-Polish War), Польский фронт (' ...
. Unlike the Soviets' previous conflicts, this had greater implications for the export of revolution and the future of Europe. Polish forces pushed into Ukraine and by May 1920 Kiev Offensive (1920), had taken Kiev from the Soviets. After forcing the Polish Army back, Lenin urged the Red Army to invade Poland itself, believing that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support the Russian troops and thus spark European revolution. Trotsky and other Bolsheviks were sceptical, but agreed to the invasion. The Polish proletariat did not rise, and the Red Army was defeated at the Battle of Warsaw (1920), Battle of Warsaw. The Polish armies pushed the Red Army back into Russia, forcing Sovnarkom to sue for peace; the war culminated in the Peace of Riga, in which Russia ceded territory to Poland.
Comintern and world revolution: 1919–1920
After the Armistice on the Western Front, Lenin believed that the breakout of the European revolution was imminent. Seeking to promote this, Sovnarkom supported the establishment of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic, soviet government in Hungary in March 1919, followed by the Bavarian Council Republic, soviet government in Bavaria and Revolutions of 1917–23, various revolutionary socialist uprisings in other parts of Germany, including Spartacist uprising, that of the Spartacus League. During Russia's Civil War, the Red Army was sent into the newly independent national republics on Russia's borders to aid Marxists there in establishing soviet systems of government. In Europe, this resulted in the creation of new communist-led states in Commune of the Working People of Estonia, Estonia, Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic, Latvia, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1918–19), Lithuania, Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, Belarus, and Ukrainian Soviet Republic, Ukraine, all of which were officially independent of Russia, while further east it led to the creation of communist governments in Mongolian People's Republic, Outer Mongolia. Various senior Bolsheviks wanted these absorbed into the Russian state; Lenin insisted that national sensibilities should be respected, but reassured his comrades that these nations' new Communist Party administrations were under the ''de facto'' authority of Sovnarkom.
In late 1918, the Labour Party (UK), British Labour Party called for the establishment of an international conference of socialist parties, the Labour and Socialist International. Lenin saw this as a revival of the Second International, which he had despised, and formulated his own rival international socialist conference to offset its impact. Organised with the aid of Zinoviev, Nikolai Bukharin, Trotsky, Christian Rakovsky, and Angelica Balabanoff, the 1st Congress of the Comintern, First Congress of this
Communist International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
(Comintern) opened in Moscow in March 1919. It lacked global coverage; of the 34 assembled delegates, 30 resided within the countries of the former Russian Empire, and most of the international delegates were not recognised by any socialist parties in their own nations. Accordingly, the Bolsheviks dominated proceedings, with Lenin subsequently authoring a series of regulations that meant that only socialist parties endorsing the Bolsheviks' views were permitted to join Comintern. During the first conference, Lenin spoke to the delegates, lambasting the parliamentary path to socialism espoused by revisionist Marxists like Kautsky and repeating his calls for a violent overthrow of Europe's bourgeoisie governments. While Zinoviev became Comintern's president, Lenin retained significant influence over it.
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern, Second Congress of the Communist International opened in Petrograd's
Smolny Institute
The Smolny Institute (russian: Смольный институт, ''Smol'niy institut'') is a Palladian edifice in Saint Petersburg that has played a major part in the history of Russia.
History
The building was commissioned from Giacomo Qua ...
in July 1920, representing the last time that Lenin visited a city other than Moscow. There, he encouraged foreign delegates to emulate the Bolsheviks' seizure of power and abandoned his longstanding viewpoint that capitalism was a necessary stage in societal development, instead, encouraging those nations under colonial occupation to transform their pre-capitalist societies directly into socialist ones. For this conference, he authored ''"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder'', a short book articulating his criticism of elements within the British and German communist parties who refused to enter their nations' parliamentary systems and trade unions; instead he urged them to do so to advance the revolutionary cause. The conference had to be suspended for several days due to the ongoing war with Poland, and was relocated to Moscow, where it continued to hold sessions until August. Lenin's predicted world revolution did not materialise, as the Hungarian communist government was overthrown and the German Marxist uprisings suppressed.
Famine and the New Economic Policy: 1920–1922
Within the Communist Party, there was dissent from two factions, the Group of Democratic Centralism and the Workers' Opposition, both of which accused the Russian state of being too centralised and bureaucratic. The Workers' Opposition, which had connections to the official state trade unions, also expressed the concern that the government had lost the trust of the Russian working class. They were angered by Trotsky's suggestion that the trade unions be eliminated. He deemed the unions to be superfluous in a "workers' state", but Lenin disagreed, believing it best to retain them; most Bolsheviks embraced Lenin's view in the 'trade union discussion'. To deal with the dissent, at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Tenth Party Congress in February 1921, Lenin introduced a ban on factional activity within the party, under pain of expulsion.
Caused in part by a drought, the Russian famine of 1921–22 was the most severe that the country had experienced since Russian famine of 1891–92, that of 1891–92, resulting in around five million deaths. The famine was exacerbated by government requisitioning, as well as the export of large quantities of Russian grain. To aid the famine victims, the US government established an American Relief Administration to distribute food; Lenin was suspicious of this aid and had it closely monitored. During the famine, Patriarch Tikhon called on Orthodox churches to sell unnecessary items to help feed the starving, an action endorsed by the government. In February 1922 Sovnarkom went further by calling on all valuables belonging to religious institutions to be 1922 confiscation of Russian Orthodox Church property, forcibly appropriated and sold. Tikhon opposed the sale of items used within the Eucharist and many clergy resisted the appropriations, resulting in violence.
In 1920 and 1921, local opposition to requisitioning resulted in anti-Bolshevik peasant uprisings breaking out across Russia, which were suppressed. Among the most significant was the Tambov Rebellion, which was put down by the Red Army. In February 1921, workers went on strike in Petrograd, resulting in the government proclaiming martial law in the city and sending in the Red Army to quell demonstrations. In March, the Kronstadt rebellion began when sailors in Kronstadt revolted against the Bolshevik government, demanding that all socialists be allowed to publish freely, that independent trade unions be given freedom of assembly and that peasants be allowed free markets and not be subject to requisitioning. Lenin declared that the mutineers had been misled by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and foreign imperialists, calling for violent reprisals. Under Trotsky's leadership, the Red Army put down the rebellion on 17 March, resulting in thousands of deaths and the internment of survivors in labour camps.
In February 1921, Lenin introduced a
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
(NEP) to the Politburo; he convinced most senior Bolsheviks of its necessity and it passed into law in April. Lenin explained the policy in a booklet, ''On the Food Tax'', in which he stated that the NEP represented a return to the original Bolshevik economic plans; he claimed that these had been derailed by the civil war, in which Sovnarkom had been forced to resort to the economic policies of war communism. The NEP allowed some private enterprise within Russia, permitting the reintroduction of the wage system and allowing peasants to sell produce on the open market while being taxed on their earnings. The policy also allowed for a return to privately owned small industry; basic industry, transport and foreign trade remained under state control. Lenin termed this "state capitalism", and many Bolsheviks thought it to be a betrayal of socialist principles. Lenin biographers have often characterised the introduction of the NEP as one of his most significant achievements and some believe that had it not been implemented then Sovnarkom would have been quickly overthrown by popular uprisings.
In January 1920, the government brought in universal labour conscription, ensuring that all citizens aged between 16 and 50 had to work. Lenin also called for a mass electrification project, the GOELRO plan, which began in February 1920; Lenin's declaration that "communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country" was widely cited in later years. Seeking to advance the Russian economy through foreign trade, Sovnarkom sent delegates to the Genoa Conference (1922), Genoa Conference; Lenin had hoped to attend but was prevented by ill health. The conference resulted in a Treaty of Rapallo (1922), Russian agreement with Germany, which followed on from an earlier Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, trade agreement with the United Kingdom. Lenin hoped that by allowing foreign corporations to invest in Russia, Sovnarkom would exacerbate rivalries between the capitalist nations and hasten their downfall; he tried to rent the oil fields of Kamchatka to an American corporation to heighten tensions between the US and Japan, who desired Kamchatka for their empire.
Declining health and conflict with Stalin: 1920–1923
To Lenin's embarrassment and horror, in April 1920 the Bolsheviks held a party to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, which was also marked by widespread celebrations across Russia and the publication of poems and biographies dedicated to him. Between 1920 and 1926, twenty volumes of Lenin's ''Collected Works'' were published; some material was omitted. During 1920, several prominent Western figures visited Lenin in Russia; these included the author H. G. Wells and the philosopher Bertrand Russell, as well as the anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Lenin was also visited at the Kremlin by Inessa Armand, Armand, who was in increasingly poor health. He sent her to a sanatorium in Kislovodsk in the Northern Caucasus to recover, but she died there in September 1920 during a cholera epidemic. Her body was transported to Moscow, where a visibly grief-stricken Lenin oversaw her burial beneath the Kremlin Wall.
Lenin was seriously ill by the latter half of 1921, experiencing hyperacusis, insomnia, and regular headaches. At the Politburo's insistence, in July he left Moscow for a month's leave at his Gorki mansion, where he was cared for by his wife and sister. Lenin began to contemplate the possibility of suicide, asking both Krupskaya and Stalin to acquire potassium cyanide for him. Twenty-six physicians were hired to help Lenin during his final years; many of them were foreign and had been hired at great expense. Some suggested that his sickness could have been caused by metal oxidation from the bullets that were lodged in his body from the 1918 assassination attempt; in April 1922 he underwent a surgical operation to remove them. The symptoms continued after this, with Lenin's doctors unsure of the cause; some suggested that he had neurasthenia or cerebral arteriosclerosis. In May 1922, he had his first stroke, temporarily losing his ability to speak and being paralysed on his right side. He convalesced at Gorki, and had largely recovered by July. In October, he returned to Moscow; in December, he had a second stroke and returned to Gorki.
Despite his illness, Lenin remained keenly interested in political developments. When the Socialist Revolutionary Party's leadership was found guilty of conspiring against the government in a trial held between June and August 1922, Lenin called for their execution; they were instead imprisoned indefinitely, only being executed during the Great Purge of Stalin's leadership. With Lenin's support, the government also succeeded in virtually eradicating Menshevism in Russia by expelling all Mensheviks from state institutions and enterprises in March 1923 and then imprisoning the party's membership in concentration camps. Lenin was concerned by the survival of the Tsarist bureaucratic system in Soviet Russia, particularly during his final years. Condemning bureaucratic attitudes, he suggested a total overhaul to deal with such problems, in one letter complaining that "we are being sucked into a foul bureaucratic swamp".
During December 1922 and January 1923, Lenin dictated "Lenin's Testament", in which he discussed the personal qualities of his comrades, particularly Trotsky and Stalin. He recommended that Stalin be removed from the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, deeming him ill-suited for the position. Instead he recommended Trotsky for the job, describing him as "the most capable man in the present Central Committee"; he highlighted Trotsky's superior intellect but at the same time criticised his self-assurance and inclination toward excess administration. During this period he dictated a criticism of the bureaucratic nature of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, calling for the recruitment of new, working-class staff as an antidote to this problem, while in another article he called for the state to combat illiteracy, promote punctuality and conscientiousness within the populace, and encourage peasants to join co‑operatives.
In Lenin's absence, Stalin had begun consolidating his power both by appointing his supporters to prominent positions, and by cultivating an image of himself as Lenin's closest intimate and deserving successor. In December 1922, Stalin took responsibility for Lenin's regimen, being tasked by the Politburo with controlling who had access to him. Lenin was increasingly critical of Stalin; while Lenin was insisting that the state should retain its monopoly on international trade during mid-1922, Stalin was leading other Bolsheviks in unsuccessfully opposing this. There were personal arguments between the two as well; Stalin had upset Krupskaya by shouting at her during a phone conversation, which in turn greatly angered Lenin, who sent Stalin a letter expressing his annoyance.
The most significant political division between the two emerged during the Georgian Affair. Stalin had suggested that both Georgia and neighbouring countries like Azerbaijan and Armenia should be merged into the Russian state, despite the protestations of their national governments. Lenin saw this as an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Stalin and his supporters, instead calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he suggested be called the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. After some resistance to the proposal, Stalin eventually accepted it but, with Lenin's agreement, he changed the name of the newly proposed state to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Lenin sent Trotsky to speak on his behalf at a Central Committee plenum in December, where the plans for the USSR were sanctioned; these plans were then ratified on 30 December by the Congress of Soviets, resulting in the formation of the Soviet Union. Despite his poor health, Lenin was elected chairman of the new government of the Soviet Union.
Death and funeral: 1923–1924
In March 1923, Lenin had a third stroke and lost his ability to speak; that month, he experienced partial paralysis on his right side and began exhibiting sensory aphasia. By May, he appeared to be making a slow recovery, regaining some of his mobility, speech, and writing skills. In October, he made a final visit to the Kremlin. In his final weeks, Lenin was visited by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin; the latter visited him at his Gorki mansion on the day of his death. On 21 January 1924, Lenin fell into a coma and died later that day. His official cause of death was recorded as an incurable disease of the blood vessels.
The Soviet government publicly announced Lenin's death the following day. On 23 January, mourners from the Communist Party, trade unions, and Soviets visited his Gorki home to inspect the body, which was carried aloft in a red coffin by leading Bolsheviks. Transported by train to Moscow, the coffin was taken to the House of Trade Unions, where the body Lying in state, lay in state.
Over the next three days, around a million mourners came to see the body, many queuing for hours in the freezing conditions. On 26 January, the eleventh All-Union Congress of Soviets met to pay respects, with speeches by Kalinin, Zinoviev, and Stalin. Notably, Trotsky was absent; he had been convalescing in the Caucasus, and he later claimed that Stalin sent him a telegram with the incorrect date of the planned funeral, making it impossible for him to arrive in time. Lenin's funeral took place the following day, when his body was carried to Red Square, accompanied by martial music, where assembled crowds listened to a series of speeches before the corpse was placed into the vault of a specially erected mausoleum. Despite the freezing temperatures, tens of thousands attended.
Against Krupskaya's protestations, Lenin's body was embalmed to preserve it for long-term public display in the Red Square mausoleum. During this process, Lenin's brain was removed; in 1925 an institute was established to dissect it, revealing that Lenin had severe sclerosis (medicine), sclerosis. In July 1929, the Politburo agreed to replace the temporary mausoleum with a permanent one in granite, which was finished in 1933. His sarcophagus was replaced in 1940 and again in 1970. For safety amid the Second World War, from 1941 to 1945 the body was temporarily moved to Tyumen. As of 2022, his body remains on public display in Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.
Political ideology
Marxism and Leninism
Lenin was a devout Marxist, and believed that his interpretation of Marxism, first termed "Leninism" by Martov in 1904, was the sole authentic and orthodox one. According to his Marxist perspective, humanity would eventually reach pure communism, becoming a stateless, classless, egalitarian society of workers who were free from Exploitation of labour, exploitation and Marx's theory of alienation, alienation, controlled their own destiny, and abided by the rule "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." According to Volkogonov, Lenin "deeply and sincerely" believed that the path he was setting Russia on would ultimately lead to the establishment of this communist society.
Lenin's Marxist beliefs led him to the view that society could not transform directly from its present state to communism, but must first enter a period of socialism, and so his main concern was how to convert Russia into a socialist society. To do so, he believed that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" was necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and develop a socialist economy. He defined socialism as "an order of civilized co-operators in which the means of production are socially owned", and believed that this economic system had to be expanded until it could create a Post-scarcity economy, society of abundance. To achieve this, he saw bringing the Russian economy under state control to be his central concern, with "all citizens" becoming "hired employees of the state" in his words. Lenin's interpretation of socialism was centralised, planned, and statist, with both production and distribution strictly controlled. He believed that all workers throughout the country would voluntarily join to enable the state's economic and political centralisation. In this way, his calls for "workers' control" of the means of production referred not to the direct control of enterprises by their workers, but the operation of all enterprises under the control of a "workers' state." This resulted in what some perceive as two conflicting themes within Lenin's thought: popular workers' control, and a centralised, hierarchical, coercive state apparatus.
Before 1914, Lenin's views were largely in accordance with mainstream European Marxist orthodoxy. Although he derided Marxists who adopted ideas from contemporary non-Marxist philosophers and sociologists, his own ideas were influenced not only by Russian Marxist theory but also by wider ideas from the Russian revolutionary movement, including those of the Narodnik agrarian-socialists. He adapted his ideas according to changing circumstances, including the pragmatic realities of governing Russia amid war, famine, and economic collapse. As Leninism developed, Lenin revised the established Marxist orthodoxy and introduced innovations in Marxist thought.
In his theoretical writings, particularly ''Imperialism'', Lenin discussed what he regarded as developments in capitalism since Marx's death; in his view, it had reached the new stage of state monopoly capitalism. He believed that although Russia's economy was dominated by the peasantry, the presence of monopoly capitalism in Russia meant that the country was sufficiently materially developed to move to socialism. Leninism adopted a more absolutist and doctrinaire perspective than other variants of Marxism, and distinguished itself by the emotional intensity of its Emancipation, liberationist vision. It also stood out by emphasising the role of a vanguard who could lead the proletariat to revolution, and elevated the role of violence as a revolutionary instrument. Bertrand Russell, on his meeting with Lenin in 1920, said: "[He (Lenin) was possessed with] absolute orthodoxy. He thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx. And he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn't right."Bertrand Russell, , Excerpt from interview with Bertrand Russell in 1961 / Roman Styran, minutes 0:46–0:59.
Democracy and the national question
Lenin believed that the representative democracy of capitalist countries gave the illusion of democracy while maintaining the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"; describing the representative democratic system of the United States, he referred to the "spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties", both of whom were led by "astute multimillionaires" that exploited the American proletariat. He opposed liberalism, exhibiting a general antipathy toward liberty as a value, and believing that liberalism's freedoms were fraudulent because it did not free labourers from capitalist exploitation.
Lenin declared that "Soviet government is many millions of times more democratic than the most democratic-bourgeois republic", the latter of which was simply "a democracy for the rich." He regarded his "dictatorship of the proletariat" as democratic because, he claimed, it involved the election of representatives to the
soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
, workers electing their own officials, and the regular rotation and involvement of all workers in the administration of the state. Lenin's belief as to what a proletariat state should look like nevertheless deviated from that adopted by the Marxist mainstream; European Marxists like Kautsky envisioned a democratically elected parliamentary government in which the proletariat had a majority, whereas Lenin called for a strong, centralised state apparatus that excluded any input from the bourgeois.
Lenin was an internationalism (politics), internationalist and a keen supporter of
world revolution
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class. For theorists, these revolutions will not necessarily occur simultaneously, but whe ...
, deeming national borders to be an outdated concept and nationalism a distraction from class struggle. He believed that in a socialist society, the world's nations would inevitably merge and result in a single world government. He believed that this socialist state would need to be a centralised, unitary state, unitary one, and regarded federalism as a bourgeois concept. In his writings, Lenin espoused anti-imperialist ideas and stated that all nations deserved "the right of self-determination." He supported war of national liberation, wars of national liberation, accepting that such conflicts might be necessary for a minority group to break away from a
socialist state
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term '' communist state'' is of ...
, because socialist states are not "holy or insured against mistakes or weaknesses."
Prior to taking power in 1917, he was concerned that ethnic and national minorities would make the Soviet state ungovernable with their calls for independence; according to the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, Lenin thus encouraged Stalin to develop "a theory that offered the ideal of autonomy and the right of secession without necessarily having to grant either." On taking power, Lenin called for the dismantling of the bonds that had forced minority ethnic groups to remain in the Russian Empire and espoused their right to secede but also expected them to reunite immediately in the spirit of proletariat internationalism. He was willing to use military force to ensure this unity, resulting in armed incursions into the independent states that formed in Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states. Only when its conflicts with Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland proved unsuccessful did Lenin's government officially recognise their independence.
Personal life and characteristics
Lenin saw himself as a man of destiny and firmly believed in the righteousness of his cause and his own ability as a revolutionary leader. Biographer Louis Fischer described him as "a lover of radical change and maximum upheaval", a man for whom "there was never a middle-ground. He was an either-or, black-or-red exaggerator". Highlighting Lenin's "extraordinary capacity for disciplined work" and "devotion to the revolutionary cause", Pipes noted that he exhibited much charisma. Similarly, Volkogonov believed that "by the very force of his personality, [Lenin] had an influence over people". Conversely, Lenin's friend Gorky commented that in his physical appearance as a "baldheaded, stocky, sturdy person", the communist revolutionary was "too ordinary" and did not give "the impression of being a leader".
Historian and biographer Robert Service (historian), Robert Service asserted that Lenin had been an intensely emotional young man, who exhibited strong hatred for the Tsarist authorities. According to Service, Lenin developed an "emotional attachment" to his ideological heroes, such as Marx, Engels, and Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Chernyshevsky; he owned portraits of them, and privately described himself as being "in love" with Marx and Engels. According to Lenin biographer James D. White, Lenin treated their writings as "holy writ", a "religious dogma", which should "not be questioned but believed in". In Volkogonov's view, Lenin accepted Marxism as "absolute truth", and accordingly acted like "a religious fanatic". Similarly, Bertrand Russell felt that Lenin exhibited "unwavering faith—religious faith in the Marxian gospel". Biographer Christopher Read suggested that Lenin was "a secular equivalent of theocratic leaders who derive their legitimacy from the [perceived] truth of their doctrines, not popular mandates". Lenin was nevertheless an Atheism, atheist and a Criticism of religion, critic of religion, believing that socialism was inherently atheistic; he thus considered Christian socialism a contradiction in terms.
Service stated that Lenin could be "moody and volatile", and Pipes deemed him to be "a thoroughgoing misanthrope", a view rejected by Read, who highlighted many instances in which Lenin displayed kindness, particularly toward children. According to several biographers, Lenin was intolerant of opposition and often dismissed outright opinions that differed from his own. He could be "venomous in his critique of others", exhibiting a propensity for mockery, ridicule, and ''ad hominem'' attacks on those who disagreed with him. He ignored facts that did not suit his argument, abhorred compromise, and very rarely admitted his own errors. He refused to change his opinions, until he rejected them completely, after which he would treat the new view as if it was just as unchangeable. Lenin showed no sign of Sadistic personality disorder, sadism or of personally desiring to commit violent acts, but he endorsed the violent actions of others and exhibited no remorse for those killed for the revolutionary cause. Adopting a Utilitarianism, utilitarian stance, in Lenin's view the end always justified the means; according to Service, Lenin's "criterion of morality was simple: does a certain action advance or hinder the cause of the Revolution?"
Ethnically, Lenin identified as Russian. Service described Lenin as "a bit of a snob in national, social and cultural terms". The Bolshevik leader believed that other European countries, especially Germany, were culturally superior to Russia, describing the latter as "one of the most benighted, medieval and shamefully backward of Asian countries". He was annoyed at what he perceived as a lack of conscientiousness and discipline among the Russian people, and from his youth had wanted Russia to become more culturally European and Western.
Despite his revolutionary politics, Lenin disliked revolutionary experimentation in literature and the arts, expressing his dislike of expressionism, futurism, and cubism, and conversely favouring Realism (arts), realism and Russian Classic book, classic literature. Lenin also had a conservative attitude towards sex and marriage. Throughout his adult life, he was in a relationship with Krupskaya, a fellow Marxist whom he married. Lenin and Krupskaya both regretted that they never had children, and they enjoyed entertaining their friends' offspring. Read noted that Lenin had "very close, warm, lifelong relationships" with his close family members; he had no lifelong friends, and Armand has been cited as being his only close, intimate confidante.
Aside from Russian, Lenin spoke and read French, German, and English. Concerned with physical fitness, he exercised regularly, enjoyed cycling, swimming, and hunting, and also developed a passion for mountain walking in the Swiss peaks. He was also fond of pets, in particular cats. Tending to eschew luxury, he lived a spartan lifestyle, and Pipes noted that Lenin was "exceedingly modest in his personal wants", leading "an austere, almost ascetic, style of life." Lenin despised untidiness, always keeping his work desk tidy and his pencils sharpened, and insisted on total silence while he was working. According to Fischer, Lenin's "vanity was minimal", and for this reason he disliked the cult of personality that the Soviet administration began to build around him; he nevertheless accepted that it might have some benefits in unifying the communist movement.
Legacy
Volkogonov claimed, while renouncing Leninist ideology, that "there can scarcely have been another man in history who managed so profoundly to change so large a society on such a scale." Lenin's administration laid the framework for the system of government that ruled Russia for seven decades and provided the model for later Communist-led states that came to cover a third of the inhabited world in the mid-20th century. As a result, Lenin's influence was global. A controversial figure, Lenin remains both reviled and revered, a figure who has been both idolised and demonised. Even during his lifetime, Lenin "was loved and hated, admired and scorned" by the Russian people. This has extended into academic studies of Lenin and Leninism, which have often been polarised along political lines.
The historian Albert Resis suggested that if the October Revolution is considered the most significant event of the 20th century, then Lenin "must for good or ill be considered the century's most significant political leader." White described Lenin as "one of the undeniably outstanding figures of modern history", while Service noted that the Russian leader was widely understood to be one of the 20th century's "principal actors." Read considered him "one of the most widespread, universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century", while Ryan called him "one of the most significant and influential figures of modern history." ''Time'' magazine named Lenin one of the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century, 100 most important people of the 20th century, and one of their top 25 political icons of all time.
In the Western world, biographers began writing about Lenin soon after his death; some such as Christopher Hill (historian), Christopher Hill were sympathetic to him, and others such as Richard Pipes and Robert Gellately expressly hostile. Some later biographers such as Read and Lars Lih sought to avoid making either hostile or positive comments about him, thereby evading politicised stereotypes. Among sympathisers, he was portrayed as having made a genuine adjustment of Marxist theory that enabled it to suit Russia's particular socio-economic conditions. The Soviet view characterised him as a man who recognised the historically inevitable and accordingly helped to make the inevitable happen. Conversely, the majority of Western historians have perceived him as a person who manipulated events in order to attain and then retain political power, moreover considering his ideas as attempts to ideologically justify his pragmatic policies. More recently, Historical revisionism, revisionists in both Russia and the West have highlighted the impact that pre-existing ideas and popular pressures exerted on Lenin and his policies.
Various historians and biographers have characterised Lenin's administration as totalitarianism, totalitarian, and as a police state, and many have described it as a one-party dictatorship. Several such scholars have described Lenin as a dictator; Ryan stated that he was "not a dictator in the sense that all his recommendations were accepted and implemented", for many of his colleagues disagreed with him on various issues. Fischer noted that while "Lenin was a dictator, [he was] not the kind of dictator Stalin later became." Volkogonov believed that whereas Lenin established a "dictatorship of the Party", it would only be under Stalin that the Soviet Union became the "dictatorship of one man."
Conversely, various Marxist observers, including Western historians Hill and John Rees (activist), John Rees, argued against the view that Lenin's government was a dictatorship, viewing it instead as an imperfect way of preserving elements of democracy without some of the processes found in liberal democratic states. Ryan contends that the leftist historian Paul Le Blanc (historian), Paul Le Blanc "makes a quite valid point that the personal qualities that led Lenin to brutal policies were not necessarily any stronger than in some of the major Western leaders of the twentieth century." Ryan also posits that for Lenin revolutionary violence was merely a means to an end, namely the establishment of a socialist, ultimately communist world—a world without violence. Historian J. Arch Getty remarked, "Lenin deserves a lot of credit for the notion that the meek can inherit the earth, that there can be a political movement based on social justice and equality." Some left-wing intellectuals, among them Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, Lars T. Lih, and Fredric Jameson, advocate reviving Lenin's uncompromising revolutionary spirit to address contemporary global problems.
Within the Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, a cult of personality devoted to Lenin began to develop during his lifetime, but was only fully established after his death. According to historian Nina Tumarkin, it represented the world's "most elaborate cult of a revolutionary leader" since that of George Washington in the United States, and has been repeatedly described as "quasi-religious" in nature. Busts or statues of Lenin were erected in almost every village, and his face adorned postage stamps, crockery, posters, and the front pages of Soviet newspapers ''Pravda'' and ''Izvestia''. The places where he had lived or stayed were converted into museums devoted to him. Libraries, streets, farms, museums, towns, and whole regions were named after him, with the city of Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" in 1924, and his birthplace of Simbirsk becoming Ulyanovsk. The Order of Lenin was established as one of the country's highest decorations. All of this was contrary to Lenin's own desires, and was publicly criticised by his widow.
Various biographers have stated that Lenin's writings were treated in a manner akin to holy scripture within the Soviet Union, while Pipes added that "his every opinion was cited to justify one policy or another and treated as gospel." Stalin systematised Leninism through a series of lectures at the Sverdlov University, which were then published as ''Questions of Leninism''. Stalin also had much of the deceased leader's writings collated and stored in a secret archive in the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute. Material, such as Lenin's collection of books in Kraków, were also collected from abroad for storage in the institute, often at great expense. During the Soviet era, these writings were strictly controlled and very few had access. All of Lenin's writings that proved useful to Stalin were published, but the others remained hidden, and knowledge of both Lenin's non-Russian ancestry and his noble status was suppressed. In particular, his Jewish ancestry was suppressed until the 1980s, perhaps out of Soviet antisemitism, and so as not to undermine Stalin's Russification efforts, and perhaps so as not to provide fuel for anti-Soviet sentiment among international antisemites. After the discovery of Lenin's Jewish ancestry, this aspect was repeatedly emphasised by the Russian far-right, who claimed that his inherited Jewish genetics explained his desire to uproot traditional Russian society. Under Stalin's regime, Lenin was actively portrayed as a close friend of Stalin's who had supported Stalin's bid to be the next Soviet leader. During the Soviet era, five separate editions of Lenin's published works were published in Russian, the first beginning in 1920 and the last from 1958 to 1965; the fifth edition was described as "complete", but in reality had much omitted for political expediency.
After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev became leader of the Soviet Union and began a process of de-Stalinization, de-Stalinisation, citing Lenin's writings, including those on Stalin, to legitimise this process. When Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985 and introduced the policies of ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika'', he too cited these actions as a return to Lenin's principles. In late 1991, amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the Lenin archive be removed from Communist Party control and placed under the control of a state organ, the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, at which it was revealed that over 6,000 of Lenin's writings had gone unpublished. These were declassified and made available for scholarly study. Yeltsin did not dismantle the Lenin mausoleum, recognising that Lenin was too popular and well respected among the Russian populace for this to be viable.
In Russia in 2012, a proposal from a deputy belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, with the support of some members of the governing United Russia party, proposed the removal of all Lenin monuments. The proposal was strongly opposed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In Ukraine, during the 2013–14 Euromaidan protests, Lenin statues were Demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine, damaged or destroyed by protesters in various cities across the country, and in April 2015 the Ukrainian government ordered that all others be dismantled to comply with Decommunization in Ukraine, decommunisation laws.
In the international communist movement
According to Lenin biographer David Shub, writing in 1965, it was Lenin's ideas and example that "constitutes the basis of the Communist movement today." Socialist states following Lenin's ideas appeared in various parts of the world during the 20th century. Writing in 1972, the historian Marcel Liebman stated that "there is hardly any insurrectionary movement today, from Latin America to Angola, that does not lay claim to the heritage of Leninism."
After Lenin's death, Stalin's administration established an ideology known as
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various c ...
, a movement that came to be interpreted differently by various contending factions in the communist movement. After being forced into exile by Stalin's administration, Trotsky argued that Stalinism was a debasement of Leninism, which was dominated by bureaucratism and Stalin's own personal dictatorship. Marxism–Leninism was adapted to many of the 20th century's most prominent revolutionary movements, forming into variants such as Stalinism, Maoism, Juche, Ho Chi Minh Thought, and Politics of Fidel Castro, Castroism. Conversely, many later Western communists, such as Manuel Azcárate and Jean Ellenstein, who were involved in the Eurocommunist movement, expressed the view that Lenin and his ideas were irrelevant to their own objectives, thereby embracing a Marxist but not Marxist–Leninist perspective.
In 2012, the last statue of Lenin still standing in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, was removed, with city mayor Erdeniin Bat-Üül, Bat-Uul Erdene calling him a "murderer".
See also
* Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
* Lenin Peace Prize
* Lenin Prize
* Marxist–Leninist atheism
* National delimitation in the Soviet Union
* Tampere Lenin Museum
* Vladimir Lenin bibliography
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* Wade, Rex A. "The Revolution at One Hundred: Issues and Trends in the English Language Historiography of the Russian Revolution of 1917." ''Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography'' 9.1 (2016): 9–38.
External links
Marx2Mao.org enin Internet Library
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* Newsreels about Vladimir Lenin // Net-Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive *''iarchive:LeninBiography1983, Lenin: A Biography'', official Soviet account of his life and work.
* Lenin's speech with subtitles
Lenin Internet Archive Biography includes interviews with Lenin and essays on the leader
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xtensive compendium of writings, a biography, and many photographs
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