Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist who lived from 22 April 1870 to 21 January 1924. From 1917 to 1924, he presided as the first and original head of state of Soviet Russia. His developments to the Marxist philosophy are known as Leninism. One of the most important and influential people of the 20th century was Vladimir Lenin. He developed as the ideological leader of Marxism-Leninism and a significant figure in the global communist movement.
Lenin is a contentious historical figure who is regarded as a defender of socialism and the working class by those who support him. On April 22, 1870, Lenin was born in Simbirsk, which is today Ulyanovsk. He was known as Volodya, a short form of Vladimir, when he was younger. He was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir in 1882 for his commitment to education. Alexander was hanged before the assault could happen.
Lenin was a law student at Kazan University when he was dismissed for taking part in a student protest. He was influenced by the agrarian-socialist Narodnik movement, which thought that by establishing peasant communes, the Russian peasantry could bring about socialism. Lenin pushed for a Marxist understanding of societal development in response to Plekhanov's writings. Lenin contributed to the creation of the newspaper Workers' Cause in 1894, and he was one of 40 militants who were detained and accused of sedition in St. Petersburg. Lenin was given a three-year exile in eastern Siberia without a trial.
His longest book to date is The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which he wrote in 1899. Nadya, Lenin's wife, traveled with him to Munich and worked as his personal secretary. In April 1902, Lenin and Iskra relocated to London in order to elude the Bavarian police. The second RSDLP Congress took place in July 1903 in London. Following the conference, arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks persisted.
Lenin encouraged violent rebellion by urging Bolsheviks to participate more actively in the events. His use of SR catchphrases for "armed revolt," "mass terror," and "the expropriation of gentry land" resulted from this. In his essay Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin outlined many of his beliefs. The establishment of a Bolshevik center in Kuokkala, Grand Duchy of Finland, was overseen by Lenin. Lenin escaped Finland for Switzerland as the Tsarist regime repressed resistance.
The British Museum Reading Room is where he composed Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Lenin left the RSDLP in 1910 and moved to France, where he became good friends with Inessa Armand, a French Bolshevik. Roman Malinovsky, a spy sent by the Okhrana to pose as a loud Lenin admirer within the party, took advantage of his factionalism.
When Lenin's mother passed away in 1916, he worried that he might not live to witness the proletarian revolution. The proletariat should be pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy in a continent-wide "civil war," he urged Marxists across the continent. Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in September 1917. He argued that monopoly capitalism produced imperialism. The February Revolution, now known as Petrograd, started in St. Petersburg in February 1917.
Lenin thought that the proletariat in Russia could overturn the tsarist government without a preliminary revolution. Lenin took a "sealed train" through German territory in order to get from Switzerland to Russia in April 1917. The locomotive that pulled the train Lenin boarded to arrive at Finland Station in Petrograd in April was not preserved. Therefore, Engine #293 is displayed permanently on a platform at the station. Lenin proposed an armed political protest in Petrograd in July 1917 to gauge the reaction of the authorities.
Lenin and other well-known Bolsheviks were subject to a government-ordered arrest after a raid on their offices. Lenin sought refuge in several safe homes in Petrograd out of concern for his life. In order to overthrow the Provisional Government, Lenin suggested that the Bolshevik Party should take the lead in an armed uprising. Russian workers, according to detractors, wouldn't back a bloody takeover of the government. The MRC was given the mandate to seize control of Petrograd's major communication, printing, and utility centres in October.
Elections for a Constituent Assembly were scheduled by Sovnarkom for November 1917. According to Lenin, the election did not fairly reflect the preferences of the electorate. Lenin repeatedly declined requests to form a coalition government with other socialist groups, including those made by certain Bolsheviks. Sovnarkom started acting independently, and the ARCS and VTSIK were more ignored. The government ejected Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries from the soviets in 1918 and 1919.
It was now a one-party state in Russia. Despite his disdain of Moscow, Lenin spent most of his time in the city's center. Lenin's government immediately started making decrees after assuming power. Sovnarkom issued a decision in November 1917 that ended the judicial system in Russia. numerous countries proclaimed independence (Finland and Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaucasia in April 1918).
Lenin issued a proclamation in October 1917 reducing labor hours for everyone in Russia to eight each day. Additionally, he signed the Popular Education Decree, which ensured that all kids would get a free, public education. In order to emancipate women, laws were passed that granted them financial independence from their spouses. The nationalization of public utilities, railroads, engineering, textiles, metallurgy, and mining was enacted in June 1918. Nationalization in its entirety did not start until November 1920.
Lenin's economic strategy was criticized by a group of Bolsheviks known as the "Left Communists" as being too moderate. In his Decree on Peace from November 1917, Lenin suggested a three-month armistice. The Second Congress of Soviets ratified the armistice, which was then given to the governments of Austria and Hungary. At the German high command's Eastern Front headquarters in Brest-Litovsk, negotiations got under way. After it was signed in March 1918, Sovnarkom pronounced the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk null and void.
Terrorism was used by the Soviet government against civilians, military, and peasants. Western Russia experienced hunger in numerous cities at the beginning of 1918 as a result of ongoing food shortages.
Lenin issued a directive in May 1918 that set up military detachments to seize grain from kulaks for distribution in the cities. Peasants were discouraged from producing more grain than they could personally consume by the requisitions. The Red Terror, a Cheka-led regime of repression, began in September 1918 as a result of a Sovnarkom edict. The majority of the victims were wealthy persons or former Tsarist government officials. Others were seen as anti-Bolsheviks and undesirable members of society, such as prostitutes.
The pro-Bolshevik republics and the anti-revolutionary White armies faced off in the Russian Civil War. When 35,000 members of the Czech Legion turned against Sovnarkom, the Whites were strengthened. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was perceived as a betrayal of the Allied war effort by Western nations. The White and Red forces engaged in combat during the Russian Civil War. The two main cities in Russia, Moscow and Petrograd, as well as the majority of Great Russia, were under the hands of the Reds.
The Whites were constrained by their ethnic Russian supremacism, geographic dispersion, and group fragmentation. Left Socialist-Revolutionaries attacked the Kremlin and took control of the main post office in order to stage a coup in Moscow. The party's leaders and several members were detained and imprisoned but received kinder treatment than other Bolshevik foes. The Polish-Soviet War began in February 1919 after initial clashes between Polish and Russian forces. In order to encourage the adoption of soviet political structures in nations outside of Russia's sphere of influence, Sovnarkom was established.
The Red Army was dispatched into newly established national republics along Russia's borders during World War One. As a result, communist-run nations were established in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The Russian famine of 1921–1922, which claimed almost five million lives, was the worst to hit the nation since the famine of 1891–1892. Lenin was wary of this aid and kept a tight eye on it. The US government set up an American Relief Administration to help the famine victims by distributing food. Sovnarkom demanded that valuables held by religious institutions be seized.
The Eucharistic artifacts' sale was protested by Patriarch Tikhon. Numerous clergy members opposed the appropriations, which led to bloodshed. The Politburo was presented with the New Economic Policy (NEP) by Lenin. By permitting foreign companies to invest in Russia, Lenin sought to expedite their demise. In an effort to raise tensions between the US and Japan, he tried to rent the oil deposits of Kamchatka.
By the second half of 1921, Lenin had developed a terrible illness that included hyperacusis, sleeplessness, and frequent migraines. He thought of killing himself and asked Stalin and Krupskaya to get potassium cyanide for him. Lenin spent the majority of his latter years in Moscow, mostly in the Gorki mansion. Instead, he suggested Trotsky for the position, praising his superior intellect while criticizing his arrogance and propensity for overzealous management. Lenin suffered his third stroke and become speechless in March 1923.
He appeared to be slowly recovering by May, regaining some of his mobility, speaking, and writing abilities. Lenin went into a coma on January 21 and passed away that same day.
An untreatable blood vessel illness was listed as his official cause of death. In order to be preserved for long-term public exhibition in the tomb in Red Square, Lenin's body underwent embalming. As a stateless, classless, egalitarian society of workers who were free from exploitation and alienation, Lenin believed that humanity will finally arrive at genuine communism. Socialism according to Lenin was planned, centralized, and statist. He felt that in order to facilitate the economic and political centralization of the state, all workers across the nation would voluntarily join.
Russian Marxist theory and broader concepts from the Russian revolutionary struggle had an impact on Lenin's thinking. Compared to other forms of Marxism, his Leninism took a more absolute and dogmatic stance. By highlighting the importance of a vanguard who could inspire the proletariat to revolt, it stood apart. Lenin was a strong advocate of the global revolution and an internationalist. In his view, a socialist society would ultimately lead to the unification of all countries into a single global authority.
Lenin advocated against imperialism and claimed that all nations should have the "right to self-determination." Lenin genuinely thought that his cause was legitimate and that he was a man of destiny. According to biographer Louis Fischer, he was "a devotee of dramatic change and maximum upheaval." According to biographer John Pipes, Lenin was an either-or, black-or-red exaggerator. Lenin, who rejected religion and was an atheist, thought socialism was essentially atheistic. He thought that Russia was culturally inferior to other European nations, especially Germany.
Lenin did not exhibit any signs of sadism or a desire to engage in violent behavior on his own, but he supported others who did. Lenin opposed revolutionary experimentation in literature and the arts, despite his support for revolutionary politics. He was in a relationship with Krupskaya, a fellow Marxist whom he married, for the most of his adult life. Lenin hated disorder, thus he always kept his desk neat and his pencils sharpened. Lenin is still seen as both a despised and revered figure.
The Russian president was largely regarded as one of the "main players" of the 20th century. Political differences have frequently polarized academic discussions of Lenin and Leninism. Some later biographers tried to stay away from disparaging or flattering remarks about him. Lenin's rule has been characterized as a police state by historians and biographers, and many have called it a one-party dictatorship. Slavoj Iek and other left-wing intellectuals urge recreating Lenin's unyielding revolutionary spirit to meet today's pressing global issues.
Lenin's publications were treated in the Soviet Union as if they were holy texts during the time of the Soviet Union. Until the 1980s, his Jewish heritage was suppressed, possibly as a result of Soviet antisemitism. Lenin was portrayed as being close to Stalin and having encouraged his rise to power. Five distinct editions of Lenin's books were printed in Russian during the Soviet era. Nikita Khrushchev started the de-Stalinization effort after Stalin's death and justified it by referring to Lenin's works.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and instituted glasnost and perestroika. Lenin sculptures were vandalized or demolished by demonstrators in numerous Ukrainian cities during the Euromaidan demonstrations. Throughout the 20th century, socialist nations based on Lenin's theories popped up in various regions of the globe. The final Lenin statue to exist was taken down in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, in 2012.
== Leninism ==
Leninism is a political philosophy created by Vladimir Lenin, a Russian Marxist revolutionary. It suggests establishing a proletariat dictatorship under the control of a revolutionary vanguard party. After the October Revolution (1917), Leninism dominated Marxism in Russia and served as the framework for soviet democracy. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels urged the political unification of the European working masses in the 19th century in order to bring about a communist revolution. The Social Democratic Party of Germany's (SPD) political stance in Germany was Marxist social democracy, which served as an inspiration to Lenin and other Russian Marxists.
Lenin predicted that capitalism will evolve into a worldwide banking system in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Industrialized nations are aware of the exploitation of native labor because they exported financial capital to their colonies. It was inevitable that the first proletarian revolution would take place in a backward nation like Imperial Russia. Marx and Engels depict the communist party as the only political force capable of inspiring the proletariat to revolution in The Communist Manifesto (1848). Only through the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard party, drawn from the working class, according to Lenin, could the proletariat successfully carry out their revolution.
The idea of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations, according to Trotsky, "implies universal and complete freedom of criticism, so long as this does not destroy the unity of a specific action." Only on the foundation of this principle, according to Lenin, can disagreements and misunderstandings be resolved honorably for the benefit of the Party. The soviets (elected councils of workers), which Lenin described as the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat" envisioned in traditional Marxism, realized and implemented direct democracy in government. Soviets were made up of union and factory representation committees, but the capitalist social class was not included. The German Revolution of 1918–1919, the general strikes and uprising in Italy in 1920, and the worker pay riots in the UK, France, and the US all backed Lenin's socioeconomic viewpoint.
In order to create Russian socialism, Lenin claimed that the emergence of additional socialist nations was essential. The principles of Leninism transcend nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religion and are founded on class struggle. The Leninist vanguard party's responsibility was to politically educate the working class and peasantry. Stalinism and Trotskyism were the two main ideologies that traced their ideological roots back to Leninism in post-Revolutionary Russia. Lenin's support for the right of self-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the fallen Tsarist Empire was linked with the anti-Stalin movement.
When it came to issues like weakening the anti-bureaucratic Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, Lenin instructed Trotsky to emphasize Stalin's recent bureaucratic alignment. Stalin pushed the 1925-adopted idea of socialism in one nation while Trotsky advocated for global cooperation in establishing government policies. According to Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution, socialist revolutions in underdeveloped nations would further overthrow feudal dynasties and create socialist republics that would not be subject to capitalist development and rule. Stalin used defamation, antisemitism, censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and foreign), and jail to combat and subdue Trotsky and the Trotskyists' political power in Russia. The executions of the Moscow Trials (both legal and illegal) marked the culmination of the anti-Trotsky campaign (1936–1938).
With the totalitarian perspective that the terrible aspects of Stalin were inherent in communism from the beginning, historians have attempted to separate Stalinism from Leninism. Communists who oppose Stalin, like Leon Trotsky, are among the critics. The emphasis on the affluent segments of society and the usage of Cold War ideas like authoritarianism have drawn criticism from revisionist historians. A variety of left-wing political stances are referred to as left communism among communists. The Bolshevik Party's doctrine is criticized by left communism as the revolutionary forerunner.
Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter, Paul Mattick, Sylvia Pankhurst, Antonie Pannekoek, and Otto Rühle are examples of leftist communists. The socialist political spectrum's communist parties adopted Leninism as their guiding ideology. Lenin is regarded by modern left-communist organizations as a crucial and significant theorist, although they continue to be critical of Leninism as a political strategy for the proletariat revolution. The International Communist Party adheres to orthodox Leninism as practiced by Bordiga.
== Bolsheviks ==
In 1903, Vladimir Lenin led the Mensheviks in a split from the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), creating the far-left, revolutionary Bolsheviks. They established their own party in 1912, and they came to power in Russia during the October Revolution in 1917. Lenin and Julius Martov had a disagreement on the criteria for party membership in 1903. Lenin wished to restrict membership to those who gave their full support to the party and labored under the strict direction of the elected party leadership. Anyone "who recognizes the Party Programme and supports it by material means" was eligible to join, according to Martov.
From bolshinstvo, which means "majority," Lenin's supporters came to be known as "Bolsheviks," and Martov's supporters as "Mensheviks," which means "minority." Lenin's side eventually evolved into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The two factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party were first referred to as hard (Lenin supporters) and soft (Martov supporters). By 1905, 62% of the Bolshevik party's members were industrial workers (compared to 3% of the population in 1897), whilst 22% of Mensheviks belonged to the nobility and 38% to the peasantry. Compared to the 38,200 Mensheviks, the total number of Bolshevik members was 8,400 in 1905, 13,000 in 1906, and 46,100 by 1907. Within the RSDLP, the Bolshevik faction was governed by the Bolshevik Centre.
Over empiriccriticism, Lenin had a disagreement with Nikolai Valentinov and Alexander Bogdanov. The Bolsheviks deliberated whether to abstain from voting in the Third Duma, the new parliament. By inserting spies into both groups' inner sanctuaries, the Russian police were able to learn about the plans and hostilities of the other side. This made it possible for tensions between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks to stay high and contributed to their failure to unite. The party went by several names over the course of the 20th century.
The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks made distinct decisions about how to finance their revolutions. While relying largely on funds from wealthier supporters, Lenin's party turned to perpetrating bank robberies. Lenin was amenable to withdrawing from political goals if he perceived the certainty of long-term gains for the party. Both groups failed in their attempts to push for a Russian Civil War during World War I.
=== Bolshevism ===
Bolshevism is a revolutionary socialist tendency within the Soviet Union's Marxist-Leninist political system. It was connected to the Bolshevik faction's operations within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In addition to Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, Vladimir Lenin served as the movement's principal thinker. Due to the division of the party into Leninists and the remainder at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903), Bolshevism emerged. Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Center arbitrarily assumed control of the groups that made up the Bolshevik movement.
Nearly all of Lenin's followers attended the sixth (Prague) Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which took place from January 18–30, 1912. Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which Lenin published in 1916, made a significant contribution to the evolution of traditional Marxism under the new circumstances. Lenin pushed on the Petrograd Soviet's rapid separation from the Provisional Government while he was still abroad. After his return to Russia, he devised the April Theses, a new program of action for the Bolshevik party. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party finally split in April 1917.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union legalized political platforms in 1990, at which point the Bolshevik Platform was established. Massive expropriations (or confiscations) of private property from its owners were carried out by the Bolsheviks. They regarded it as having been obtained by the theft of workers, or the exploitation of those who are employed. Left-wing theorists in Europe like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht supported the Bolsheviks, despite criticizing some of their political practices. Only a small portion of the public backed the coup d'état known as the October Uprising in Petrograd.
The Left Opposition to Stalin adopted the self-designation "Bolshevik-Leninists" in the 1920s and 1930s to emphasize its adherence to the revolutionary tradition rather than Thermidorian Stalinism. Bolshevism, according to some contemporary researchers, was an utterly futile attempt to flee the bourgeois and philistine environment. In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Bolshevik leadership had betrayed the country's interests. He stated that the Bolsheviks had "committed an act of national treachery," which had led to Russia's defeat in the First World War.