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Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years (1917–1924), as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a socialist economic system. As a politician, Vladimir Lenin was a persuasive orator, as a political scientist his extensive theoretic and philosophical developments of Marxism produced Marxism–Leninism, the pragmatic Russian application of Marxism.Триумф и Трагедия - И. В. Сталин: политический портрет. (Triumph and Tragedy - I. V. Stalin : A Political Portrait) Дмитрий Волкогонов (Dmitriy Volkogonov). Book 1, Part 1, PP. 95 - 114. Новости Publications. Moscow. 1989.

Early life and background

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov () on , to Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a schoolmistress, and Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, a physics instructor, at Simbirsk, a Volga River town in the Russian Empire of the nineteenth century; following family custom, he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.Read, Christopher, Lenin (2005) Abingdon: Routledge p. 4.Hill, Christopher, Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) Penguin Books:London p. 35. Later, the USSR renamed Simbirsk as Ulyanovsk. In 1869, Ilya Ulyanov became the Inspector of Public Schools, and later the Director of Elementary Schools, for the Simbirsk Gubernia Oblast (province), a successful career in the Imperial Russian public education system. Yet, Tsarist cultural mores defined the Ulyanov family stock as "ethnically mixed" — " Mordovian, Kalmyk, Jewish (cf. Blank family), Volgan German, and Swedish, and possibly others"; nonetheless, being of the intelligentsia, the Ulyanovs educated their children against the ills of their time (violations of human rights, servile psychology, etc.), and instilled readiness to struggle for higher ideals, a free society, and equal rights. Subsequently, excepting Olga (dead at age 19), every Ulyanov child became a revolutionary. In the event, the Provisional Government arrested the Bolsheviks and outlawed their Party, prompting Lenin to flee to Finland. In exile again, reflecting on the July Days and its aftermath, Lenin determined that, to prevent the triumph of counter-revolutionary forces, the Provisional Government must be overthrown by an armed uprising.Read, Christopher, Lenin (2005): 162-3 Meanwhile, he published State and Revolution (1917) proposing government by the soviets (worker-, soldier- and peasant-elected councils) rather than by a parliamentary body. In late August 1917, while Lenin was in hiding in Finland, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army General Lavr Kornilov sent troops from the front to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Kerensky panicked and turned to the Petrograd Soviet for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organize workers as Red Guards to defend Petrograd. The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd thanks to the industrial action of the Petrograd workers and the soldiers' increasing unwillingness to obey their officers.Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008), p. 60. However, faith in the Provisional Government had been severely shaken. Lenin's slogan since the April Theses - "All power to the soviets!" - became more plausible the more the Provisional Government was discredited in public eyes. The Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet on 31 August and in the Moscow Soviet on 5 September.Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008), pp. 60-1. In October Lenin returned from Finland. From the Smolny Institute for girls, Lenin directed the Provisional Government’s deposition (6–8 November 1917), and the storming (7–8 November) of the Winter Palace to realise the Kerensky capitulation that established Bolshevik government in Russia.

Forming a government

Lenin had argued in a newspaper article in September 1917:The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult ... but ... at a time when a union of the proletariat with the peasantry can give peace to people worn out by a most unjust and criminal war ... a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets. The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully, if the Soviets are made fully democraticV. I. Lenin, 'The Russian Revolution And Civil War: They Are Trying To Frighten Us With Civil War', Rabochy Put ('The Workers' Path') No. 12 (29th September 1917), Lenin Internet Archive.The October Revolution had been relatively peaceful. The Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee already had de facto military control of the capital thanks to the defection of the city garrison and few troops remained to defend the Winter Palace.Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London: Pimlico (1996), pp. 481, 491. Most citizens had simply continued about their daily business while the actual overthrow of the Provisional Government took place. However, of the Russian socialist parties, only the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs supported a full socialist revolution of the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers. The national congress of Soviet delegates - the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets - finally met, with a Bolshevik- Left SR majority, on the night of the October Revolution. When the left-wing Menshevik Martov proposed an all-party Soviet government, the Bolshevik Lunacharsky stated that his party did not oppose the idea, and the Bolshevik delegates voted unanimously in favour of the proposal.Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London: Pimlico (1996), pp. 489-90. However, just when an all-party socialist coalition seemed possible, the Right SRs and Mensheviks walked out of the Congress in protest at the overthrow of the Provisional Government, of which their parties had been members.Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London: Pimlico (1996), p. 490. The remaining Congress delegates thus elected the Bolsheviks into power as the Council of People's Commissars, which would be joined in coalition on 12 December O.S. by the Left SRs.Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London: Pimlico (1996), p. 512. Lenin was elected Chairman: the head of the new government. Lenin stood, appearing in public for the first time since the July Days, to deliver Decrees on Peace and Land:The Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies has opened. ... The Provisional Government has been overthrown. The majority of the members of the Provisional Government have already been arrested. The Soviet government will propose an immediate democratic peace to all the nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will secure the transfer of the land of the landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant committees wihout compensation; it will protect the rights of the soldiers by introducting complete democracy in the army; it will establish workers' control over production; it will ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the time appointed; it will see to it that bread is supplied to the cities and prime necessities to the villages; it will guarantee all the nations inhabiting Russia the genuine right to self-determination. The Congress decrees: all power in the localities shall pass to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, which must guarantee genuine revolutionary order.Vladimir Lenin, 'To Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!' (25 October O.S. 1917), Lenin Internet Archive Trotsky concluded the Second Congress of Soviets with the words: "We welcome into the Government all parties and groups which will adopt our programme."John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, London: Penguin (1977), p. 143. Lenin declared that "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country" in modernising Russia into a twentieth-century country:Lenin "Collected Works", vol. 31, p. 516. Yet the Bolshevik Government had to first withdraw Russia from the First World War (1914–18). Facing continuing Imperial German eastward advance, Lenin proposed immediate Russian withdrawal from the West European war; yet, other, doctrinaire Bolshevik leaders (e.g. Nikolai Bukharin) advocated continuing in the war to foment revolution in Germany. Lead peace treaty negotiator Leon Trotsky proposed No War, No Peace, an intermediate-stance Russo–German treaty conditional upon neither belligerent annexing conquered lands; the negotiations collapsed, and the Germans renewed their attack, conquering much of the (agricultural) territory of west Russia. Resultantly, Lenin's withdrawal proposal then gained majority support, and, on 3 March 1918, Russia withdrew from the First World War via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, losing much of its European territory. Because of the German threat Lenin moved the Soviet Government from Petrograd to Moscow on 10–11 March 1918.Christopher Read (2005) Lenin. London: Routledge: 212 LENINE’S MIGRATION A QUEER SCENE, The New York Times, 16 March 1918 On 19 January 1918, relying upon the soviets, the Bolsheviks, allied with anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries, dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly thereby consolidating the Bolshevik Government’s political power. Yet, that left-wing coalition collapsed consequent to the Social Revolutionaries opposing the territorially expensive Brest-Litovsk treaty the Bolsheviks had concorded with Imperial Germany. The anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries then joined other political parties in attempting to depose the Bolshevik Government, who defended themselves with persecution and jail for the anti-Bolsheviks. , 31 March 1927.]] To initiate the Russian economic recovery, on 21 February 1920, he launched the GOELRO plan, the State Commission for Electrification of Russia (Государственная комиссия по электрификации России), and also established free universal health care and free education systems, and promulgated the politico-civil rights of women. Moreover, since 1918, in re-establishing the economy, for the productive business administration of each industrial enterprise in Russia, Lenin proposed a government-accountable leader for each enterprise. Workers could request measures resolving problems, but had to abide the leader's ultimate decision. Although contrary to workers' self-management, such pragmatic industrial administration was essential for efficient production and employment of worker expertise. Yet Lenin’s doctrinaire Bolshevik opponents argued that such industrial business management was meant to strengthen State control of labour, and that worker self-management failures were owed to lack of resources, not incompetence. Lenin resolved that problem by licencing (for a month) all workers of most factories; thus historian S.A. Smith's observation: "By the end of the civil war, not much was left of the democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees in 1917, but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had passed into the ownership of a workers' state." Internationally, Lenin’s admiration of the Irish socialist revolutionary James Connolly, led to the USSR’s being the first country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Irish Free State that fought the Irish War of Independence from Britain. In the event, Lenin developed a friendship with Connolly's revolutionary son, Roddy Connolly.

Establishing the Cheka

On December 20, 1917, "The Whole-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" (Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya), the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission) was created by a decree issued by Lenin to defend the Russian Revolution. The establishment of the Cheka, secret service, headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, formally consolidated the censorship established earlier, when on "17 November, the Central Executive Committee passed a decree giving the Bolsheviks control over all newsprint and wide powers of closing down newspapers critical of the régime. . . .";Leonard Shapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union non-Bolshevik soviets were disbanded; anti-soviet newspapers were closed until Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (The News) established their communications monopoly. According to Leonard Schapiro the Bolshevik "refusal to come to terms with the Revolutionary socialists, and the dispersal of the Constituent assembly, led to the logical result that revolutionary terror would now be directed, not only against traditional enemies, such as the bourgeoisie or right-wing opponents, but against anyone, be he socialist, worker, or peasant, who opposed Bolshevik rule".Leonard Bertram Schapiro. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970. ISBN 0413279006 p.183. See also: Lenin and the First Communist Revolutions, V On December 19, 1918, a year after its creation, a resolution was adopted at Lenin's behest that forbade the Bolshevik's own press from publishing "defamatory articles" about the Cheka. Black Book of Communism, p. 79 As Lenin put it: "A Good Communist is also a good Chekist."

Lenin on anti-Semitism

Lenin was enthusiastic about new mass communication technology like the radio and the gramophone and its capacity for educating Russia's mostly illiterate peasant population. In 1919 Lenin recorded eight speeches on to gramophone records. During the Khrushchev era (1953–64), seven were published. The eighth speech, which was not published, outlined Lenin's thoughts on anti-Semitism:Ronald W. Clark, Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask, London: Faber and Faber (1988), p. 456. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. ... It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. ... The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. ... Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob, and disunite the workers. ... Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.V. I. Lenin, 'Anti-Jewish Pogroms' (1919), Lenin Internet Archive.

Failed assassinations

, 1919.]] First, on 14 January 1918, in Petrograd, after a speech, assassins ambushed Lenin in his automobile; he and Fritz Platten were in the back seat when assassins began shooting, and "Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down... Platten's hand was covered in blood, having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin". A New Biography |publisher= Free Press|date= |page=229 |isbn=0-02-933435-7 |location=New York}} Second, on 30 August 1918, the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan approached Lenin after a speech; at his automobile, whilst he rested a foot upon the running board, in speaking with a woman, Kaplan called to Lenin, and, as he turned to face her in reply, she shot him three times. The first bullet struck an arm, the second bullet struck his jaw and neck, and the third bullet missed him — and wounded the woman with whom he was speaking; the wounds felled him, unconscious.Pipes, Richard, The Russian Revolution (Vintage Books, 1990) p.807 Fearing in-hospital assassins, Lenin was delivered to his Kremlin apartment; physicians decided against removing the bullets — lest the surgery endanger his recovery, which proved slow. To the public, Pravda ridiculed Fanya Kaplan as a failed assassin, latter-day Charlotte Corday (a murderess of Jean-Paul Marat) who could not derail the Russian Revolution, reassuring readers that, immediately after surviving the assassination: "Lenin, shot through twice, with pierced lungs spilling blood, refuses help and goes on his own. The next morning, still threatened with death, he reads papers, listens, learns, and observes to see that the engine of the locomotive that carries us towards global revolution has not stopped working..."; despite unharmed lungs, the neck wound did spill blood into a lung.Dr. V. Bonch-Bruevich, Lenin's attending physician, Tri Pokusheniia na V. Lenina, 1924. The Russian public remained ignorant of the true physical gravity of the wounded Soviet Head of State; other than panegyric of immortality (viz. the cult of personality), they knew nothing about either the (second) failed assassination, the assassin, Fanya Kaplan, or of Lenin's health. Historian Richard Pipes reports that "the impression one gains . . . is that the Bolsheviks deliberately underplayed the event to convince the public that, whatever happened to Lenin, they were firmly in control". Moreover, in a letter to his wife (7 September 1918), Leonid Borisovich Krasin, a Tsarist and Soviet régime diplomat, describes the public atmosphere and social response to the failed assassination on 30 August, and Lenin's survival: From having survived a second assassination originated the cult of personality, that Lenin, per his intellectual origins and pedigree, disliked and discouraged as superstition revived; nevertheless, his health, as a fifty-three-year-old man, declined from the effects of two bullet wounds, later aggravated by three strokes, culminating in his death.Clark, Ronald, Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask (1988) p. 373

Red Terror

In response to Fanya Kaplan's failed assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the successful assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief Moisei Uritsky, Stalin to Lenin proposed "open and systematic mass terror . . . against . . . those responsible"; the Bolsheviks instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky to commence a Red Terror, announced in the 1 September 1918 issue of the Krasnaya Gazeta (Red Gazette). Red Terror To that effect, among other acts, at Moscow, execution lists signed by Lenin authorised the shooting of 25 Tsarist ministers, civil servants, and 765 White Guards in September 1918.
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|last=Cliff |first=Tony |authorlink=Tony Cliff |title=Building the Party: Lenin, 1893–1914 |publisher= Haymarket Books |year=1986 |isbn=1-931859-01-9}}
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|last=Felshtinsky |first=Yuri |authorlink=Yuri Felshtinsky |title=Lenin and His Comrades: The Bolsheviks Take Over Russia 1917-1924 |publisher= Enigma Books |year=2010 |isbn=1929631952}}
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|last=Fischer |first=Louis |authorlink=Louis Fischer |title=The Life of Lenin |publisher= Orion Publishing Co. |year=2001 |isbn=1-84212-230-4 }}
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|last=Gellately |first=Robert |authorlink=Robert Gellately |title=Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe |publisher= Knopf |year=2007 |isbn=1400040051}}
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|last=Gooding |first=John |title=Socialism In Russia: Lenin and His Legacy, 1890–1991 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan |year=2002 |isbn=0-333-97235-X}}
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|last=Hill |first=Christopher |authorlink=Christopher Hill (historian) |title=Lenin and the Russia Revolution |publisher= Pelican Books Ltd. |year=1971 |isbn=978-0140212976}}
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|author= Kolakowski, Leszek and Falla, P. S. |authorlink= |title=Main Currents of Marxism |publisher= W. W. Norton & Company |year=2005 |isbn=0-393-06054-3}}
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|last=Leggett |first=George |title=The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police |publisher= Oxford University Press |year=1987 |isbn=0198228627}}
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|last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |authorlink= |title=Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917 by V. I. Lenin |publisher= Verso Books |year=2002 |isbn=1-85984-661-0}}
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|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=L89oAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn=0874626544 |last1=Pannekoek |first1=Anton |last2=Richey |first2=Lance Byron |title=Lenin as Philosopher |authorlink=Antonie Pannekoek |publisher= Marquette University Press |year=2003 |isbn=0-87462-654-4}}
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|last=Payne |first=Robert |authorlink=Pierre Stephen Robert Payne |title=The Life And Death Of Lenin |publisher= Simon & Schuster |year=1967 |isbn=0-671-41640-5}}
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|last=Pipes |first=Richard |authorlink=Richard Pipes |title=The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive |publisher= Yale University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-300-07662-2}}
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|last=Rappaport |first=Helen |title=Conspirator: Lenin in Exile |publisher= Basic Books |year=2010 |isbn=9780465013951}}
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|last=Read |first=Christopher |title=Lenin: A Revolutionary Life |publisher= Routledge |year=2005 |isbn=0-415-20649-9}}
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|last=Service |first=Robert |authorlink=Robert Service (historian) |title=Lenin: A Biography |publisher= Belknap Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-674-00828-6}}
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|last=Shub |first=David |authorlink= |title=Lenin: A Biography |publisher= Penguin Books |year=1965 |isbn=0-14-020809-7}}
  • {{Cite journal
|last=Toynbee |first=Arnold |authorlink=Arnold J. Toynbee |title=A Centenary View of Lenin |journal= International Affairs |volume=46 |issue=3 |pages=490–500 |month=July |year=1970 |doi=10.2307/2613225 |accessdate= |url=http://jstor.org/stable/2613225 |publisher= Blackwell Publishing}}
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|last=Trotsky |first=Leon |authorlink=Leon Trotsky |title=On Lenin: Notes Towards a Biography |publisher= Harrap |year=1971 |isbn=0-245-50302-1}}
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|last=Tucker |first=Robert C. |authorlink=Robert C. Tucker |title=The Lenin Anthology |publisher= W. W. Norton & Company |year=1975 |isbn=0-393-09236-4}}
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|last=Volkogonov |first=Dmitri |authorlink=Dmitri Volkogonov |title=Lenin: A New Biography |publisher= Free Press |year=2006 |isbn=0-02-933435-7}}

External links

Selected works

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This article based upon the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin, the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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