Vladimir Lenin

[[File:Lenin.jpg|thumb|right|165px|''Lenin'', a thrilling action biopic coming to a theater near you.]]
{{cquote|His purpose, to save the world; his method, to blow it up.|||[[Winston Churchill]]<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol08/no08/churchill.htm "Churchill on Lenin"]. ''Marxists Internet Archive''. Retrieved 3 January 2018.</ref>}}
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'''Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov''' ('''Владимир Ильич Ульянов''') {{lived|22 April, 1870|21 January, 1924}}, better known as '''Vladimir Lenin''', was a [[Russia]]n [[communist]] revolutionary who played a leading role in the overthrow of the Russian provisional government during the [[October Revolution]] of 1917. He subsequently became the [[dictator]] of Russia and then the [[Soviet Union]].

Though he was still in exile in [[Switzerland]] when the Russian [[monarchy]] was overthrown, Lenin arrived in time to take command of the second and more important phase of the 1917 [[Russian Revolution]]. Although he is widely believed to have given the order to kill the [[Tsar]] and his family to keep them out of the hands of anti-communist forces, current evidence holds that he had no action in it beyond approving of the executions after they had taken place.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8264321/No-proof-Lenin-ordered-last-Tsars-murder.html "No proof Lenin ordered last Tsars murder"].</ref>

Lenin's [[Bolshevik]] government initially shared power with other leftists and popularly elected officials, but after signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the [[Germany|Germans]], the Left SR revolted against the Bolsheviks attempting to continue the war, but failed horribly.<ref> https://alchetron.com/Left-SR-uprising "Left SR revolt was an uprising against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in July 1918. The uprising started on 6 July 1918 and was claimed to be intended to restart the war with Germany. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War." </ref> Lenin quickly centralized power underneath his party and became the dictator of a one-party regime. Lenin's leadership came during a tumultuous and violent time. Russia had been ravaged by the Central Powers during [[World War I]], and Lenin decided that it was better to sign the extremely harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk than continue losing the war.<ref>[https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/treaty-of-brest-litovsk/ The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]. ''Alpha History.''</ref> This did not bring peace, as the [[Russian Civil War]] was still ongoing, pitting Lenin's Red Army against the anti-communist White Armies and Russia's former Entente allies.<ref>{{wpa|Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War|}}</ref> Lenin ordered the Red Terror, a wave of arrests, attacks, and murders committed by state security forces against tens of thousands of people to eliminate internal opposition during the war.<ref name="redterror">[https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/red-terror/ The Red Terror]. ''Alpha History.''</ref>

Before the [[civil war]] was even finished, Lenin expanded hostilities by attacking [[Poland]] in an attempt to expand his revolution to Western Europe.<ref>[https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/polish-soviet_war_1920-1921 Polish-Soviet War 1920-1921]. ''International Encyclopedia of the First World War.''</ref> Lenin won the civil war but suffered a costly defeat against the Poles.

After peace finally broke out, Lenin was able to turn his attention entirely to domestic policy. To address Russia's severe economic problems, he implemented some limited market reforms called the New Economic Policy. (According to certain Marxist thinkers, the NEP was needed to diminish and eventually eliminate the worker-peasant divide. In their view, this needed to be abolished as part of the transition to communism, as Russia still had a large peasant population at the time.) He then reunited Russia with those parts of its territory that had broken away after the revolution, forming the Soviet Union in 1922.<ref>{{wpa|Treaty on the Creation of the USSR|}}</ref> Around the same time, he started expelling intellectuals and their families from the new country.<ref>{{wpa|Philosopher's ships}}</ref> Lenin then died of poor health, and he was succeeded as Soviet leader by [[Joseph Stalin]], who was much worse.

Notwithstanding his world [[history]]-making role, Lenin was punished in death by having his funeral requests denied and his wax-filled corpse put on eternal display 
[[Transhumanism|so we can rebuild him once we have the technology]]
 in Moscow.<ref>[https://allthatsinteresting.com/lenin-corpse Inside Lenin’s Mausoleum And The Best-Preserved Corpse On Earth]. ''All That's Interesting.''</ref> As the first person to put [[Karl Marx]]'s ideas into practice on a national scale, Lenin is especially revered among the [[Moonbat|hard-left]], despite founding the Cheka (although the apparatus for [[secret police]] had existed since the days of the Tsar), militarizing labor at the cost of thousands of people being displaced, bringing about the Red Terror and brutally crushing [[anarchist]] uprisings.

==Paint the town red==
{{cquote|Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!|||Vladimir Lenin, 1918.<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jan/10.htm Report On The Activities Of The Council Of People’s Commissars].</ref>}}
Departing from Marx, Lenin dropped the idea of direct [[democracy]]. He also started nationalizing major companies while granting workers more autonomy and benefits on behalf of the government. However, Marx's idea was to let workers run the industries themselves and let the socialist state "wither away". A bunch of bitter monarchists and peasants (not together, of course) tried to overthrow Lenin and his Bolshevik Party, which led to the Russian Civil War and the harsh policies of War Communism (which amounted to going out into the countryside and simply taking what the cities or armies needed). Such policies led to the [[Command economy|total control of the economy]] and government by one party, which could not be accused of corruption (for fear of execution or imprisonment). Indeed, the differences between Marxism and Leninism are significant. [[Joseph Stalin]] later cranked these up to 11, especially with the [[cult of personality]] Stalin constructed around Lenin (and eventually around himself). Lenin was adamant that a personality cult should not be built around him due to Marxist doctrine, which dictates that [[Working class|classes]] led history, not "Great Men".

Still, Lenin did manage to accomplish [[Stopped clock|several genuinely good things]]. He was the man who took Russia out of [[World War I]] (and brought it into the internecine [[Russian Civil War]]) and (at first) brought in some degree of democracy. [[Women's suffrage|Women were given voting rights]] and allowed to attend university, as were [[Jews]], effectively enabling [[Ayn Rand]] to go to university and dedicate the rest of her life to [[Irony|bringing about the fall of communism]]; [[homosexuality]] was legalized<ref>Seriously: [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_social_history/summary/v036/36.4merrick.html "Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (review)"]. However, Stalin recriminalized it.</ref>, abortion too (the first state to do this, actually); and the [[Soviet]] government began to implement universal [[education]] projects—which, "coincidentally", were also convenient places to spread pro-Soviet [[propaganda]].

While Leninism usually refers to Lenin's [[Bolshevik]] revolutionary model, Marxism–Leninism is the ideological/political platform developed by Stalin during his ascendancy and rule. With its Stalinist tweaking, Marxism–Leninism became the most influential form of Marxism, spread to the communist parties of the world through the Third International.

Lenin is also widely credited with articulating one of the first strong critiques of [[imperialism]]. However, note that his theorization bears a remarkable similarity to that in an earlier work by the liberal J.A. Hobson. Also, note that Lenin launched invasions of [[Poland]] and the [[Oil|oil]]-rich Caucasus states—including Georgia, ironically, which had a ''Menshevik'' (i.e., mainstream Marxist) government. These countries had only recently become independent after Tsarist Russia's collapse and were not appreciative of yet another Russian attempt to dominate them. Though the invasion was successfully repelled in Poland's case, all three Caucasus states fell to the Red Army. Today, Lenin remains a highly controversial figure in all of these countries. The same is true of several former Soviet states like [[Ukraine]] and the Baltic states, which have torn down most of the Lenin statues the Soviet Union built in these countries.

===Red Wedding===
Lenin found fault with everybody likely to succeed him, including [[Leon Trotsky]], but he explicitly said Stalin should not be considered, [[Psychological projection|ironically citing brutality]]. Lenin may also be the first guy to get mad about a dude emailing his wife (he cc'ed comrades K. and Z.).<ref>[https://twitter.com/micahuetricht/status/918848638754918400 "Strictly personal"]. Copies to Kamanac and Zionviev.</ref> A trailblazer in so many ways.

If Lenin had lived a little longer, the rumor is he would have expelled Stalin from the party, but frankly, little would have changed. If given a chance, Lenin's right-hand man would have ruled in the same way as Stalin did. Trotsky approved of all the counter-revolutionary policies of Lenin: one-man government, state control of unions and councils, the Cheka, denying Soviet colonies the right to secede, banning all other political parties, and ending freedom of the press/speech. The apparatus set up by the Bolsheviks meant that a Stalin was likely sooner or later.

After Lenin's death, Stalin liked to portray himself as his best friend and chosen ruler, although Lenin himself urged on his death bed not to let Comrade Stalin take control.<ref>{{wpa|Lenin's Testament}}</ref> However, Stalin managed to oust the competition. Later, Trotsky mysteriously turned up with an ice axe in the back of his head after fleeing to [[Mexico]].

Amadeo Bordiga called Stalin the "gravedigger of the revolution" to his face while visiting Moscow.  Brass balls, that guy.

==The power of the written word==
Lenin was a prolific writer throughout most of his life and was a firm believer in the power of the written word,<ref name=kalder>''The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy'' by Daniel Kalder (2018) Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 1627793429.</ref>{{rp|35-36}} resulting in the massive 45-volume ''V.I. Lenin: Collected Works''.<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm ''V.I. Lenin: Collected Works''] (1972) Foreign Languages Publishing House</ref> (Unfortunately he was a very dull writer, like Marx.) Daniel Kalder calls Lenin "the father of dictator [[literature]]".<ref name=kalder/>{{rp|1}} Ironically—though entirely predictably—two days after the [[October Revolution]], Lenin issued a [[censorship]] decree as a "temporary measure".<ref name=kalder/>{{rp|35-36}}  Ever had a roommate move his girlfriend in "temporarily, just 'til she can get her own place"?  Yeah, that kind of "temporary".

==Modern admirers==
Some members of the [[Democratic Socialists of America]] are still fans of Lenin after all these years. The [[Jacobin (magazine)|''Jacobin'']] magazine wrote an article arguing that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were just trying to survive the [[Russian Civil War|war]] against the Whites as if the millions of deaths (around ten times more than the [[American Civil War]] 60 years before) were just a contingency.<ref>[https://jacobinmag.com/2014/07/the-lies-we-tell-about-lenin The Lies We Tell About Lenin]</ref> Of course, the article doesn't mention that Lenin came into power through a coup, and after a major defeat in the {{wpl|1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election}}, he disbanded the Constituent Assembly and proceeded to rule the country as a one-party state with all opposition parties outlawed.  The article also ignores that the October Coup (or, to quote the article, the "glorious October Revolution") didn't take the Tsar from power (that happened during the February Revolution). Another article published by the same magazine claimed that much that Lenin represented "has become buried treasure" and that he's "a transitional figure of deep importance".<ref>[https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/lenin-imperialism-anti-colonialism-empire The Anti-Colonial Revolt Was Key to Lenin’s Vision of Revolution]</ref> Indeed, [[Josef Stalin|he was]]. 

The former co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, the young section of the DSA, Ajmal A, also wrote an article explaining how the youth has a lot to learn from Lenin's political program.<ref>[https://y.dsausa.org/the-activist/lenins-relevance-today/ Lenin’s Relevance Today]</ref> According to Ajmal:{{quotebox|There’s much to learn from this revolutionary social-democratic tradition. But, today, YDSA should focus on a particular aspect of it: the role of students in socialist organizing and the purpose of the political program.}}

Some [[conservative]]s in the [[United States]] are also extremely fond of quoting Lenin, either to [[Red-baiting|tie his words to the tactics of their opponents]] or to boast how smart their own tactics are (by saying they come from Lenin): {{quotebox|You know, Putin believes in the old Lenin adage that you probe with bayonets, when you find mush you push, when you find steel you stop. Under Obama and Clinton, we found a lot of mush, over the last few years. − Gov. [[Scott Walker]] (WI)<ref>Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark, [https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2015/0817/Probe-with-bayonets-Why-so-many-politicos-are-cribbing-from-Lenin "Probe with bayonets': Why so many politicos are cribbing from Lenin"]. ''CS Monitor''. 17 August 2015.</ref>}}
{{quotebox|Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment. − [[Steve Bannon]]<ref>Ronald Radosh. [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html?via=desktop&source=twitter "Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was a 'Leninist'"]. ''The Daily Beast'' (22 August 2016, 1:00 AM ET).</ref>}}

Many non-conservatives find this completely understandable.

== Bibliography ==
{{collist|2|
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/ The Development of Capitalism in Russia] (1899)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf What is to Be Done?] (1902)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm One Step Forward, Two Steps Back] (1904)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/index.htm Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution] (1905)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/ Materialism and Empirio-criticism] (1909)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism] (1913)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/index.htm Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism] (1914)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ The Right of Nations to Self-Determination] (1914)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s-w/index.htm Socialism and War] (1915)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume38.htm Philosophical Notebooks] (1916) 
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?] (1917)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm The April Theses] (1917)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/imperialism.pdf Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism] (1917)
*[https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf The State and Revolution] (1917)
*[https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/C27-The-Proletarian-Revolution-and-the-Renegade-Kautsky-1st-Printing.pdf The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky] (1918)
*[https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/C29-Left-Wing-Communism-1st-Printing.pdf "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder] (1920)
*[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm On Cooperation] (1923)
}}

==See also==
*[[Russian Civil War]]
*[[Tankies]]

==External links==
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKTA_agCj50 "Lenin Cat"].
* [http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Cato-Heritage-1983-Lenin-Plan.pdf "Leninist Strategy"] for privatizing Social Security – [[Cato Institute]].

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenin, V.I.}}
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Categories: Anti-intellectualism, Atheists, Authors, Authoritarianism, Coups, Crimes against humanity, Dictators, Economists, Frequently misquoted people, History of communism, Left-wing activists, Russian history, Russian politicians, Totalitarianism, World War I