Lenin in Power | History Today Lenin in Power Russell Tarr explains how the Bolsheviks established their grip on Russia after the 1917 Revolution, and at what cost. Lenin in 1920 Between 1917 and 1924 the Bolshevik party went through a baptism of fire which transformed it from a revolutionary splinter group into a party of government. During that period it faced intense opposition from a bewildering array of political, military, social and national groups. By the time of Lenin’s death, in January 1924, the regime was, despite all the odds, still in power – but at what cost was this success achieved and to what extent was it superficial rather than real? Political Opposition: Constituent Assembly to ‘Red Terror’ Politically, the Bolshevik party faced massive opposition following its seizure of power in 1917. The Social Revolutionaries (the party of the peasants) had more support in the countryside, whilst the Bolsheviks (the party of the proletariat) did not command the overwhelming support of the Soviets.

Nevertheless, having made so much political capital out of the Provisional Government’s failure to call a Constituent Assembly throughout 1917, Lenin had no choice but to call elections immediately. For the Bolsheviks, the results were depressingly predictable: they gained barely a quarter of the available seats, whilst the SRs gained almost half. Given his precarious position, Lenin’s response to this setback at first sight appears reckless: he contemptuously dissolved the Assembly, calling his action ‘true democracy’ because he knew the needs of the proletariat better than they did themselves. He then set up Soviets throughout the country in a desperate attempt to break the power of the SR-dominated Zemstvos. By the end of May 1918 Lenin felt confident enough to expel opposition parties from the Central Executive Committee and to declare that ‘our party stands at the head of soviet power. Decrees and measures of soviet power emanate from our party.’ Trotsky justified this by saying that ‘We have trampled underfoot the principles of democracy for the sake of the loftier principles of a social revolution’.

By the time of Lenin’s death political opposition parties had been formally banned and the Bolshevik Party (renamed the Communist Party in 1919) reigned supreme. Causes of Bolshevik Success (a) Weaknesses of opponents The Social Revolutionaries in particular had suffered for years from bitter splits over such issues as the validity of terrorism, participation in the Duma and support for the Provisional Government. So it was no surprise that when the moment came they were deeply divided over whether they should participate in the new Bolshevik government. Ultimately, seven leftist Social Revolutionaries joined the government at the end of 1917 and helped to draft the decree which legitimised the seizure of the land by the peasants. This not only exacerbated the divisions in the party, but consolidated the position of the Bolsheviks in the countryside. (b) Ruthlessness of Bolsheviks The weaknesses of their opponents made it much easier for the Bolsheviks to crush them. In summer 1918 a failed rebellion by the SRs in Moscow and an assassination attempt on Lenin persuaded the Bolsheviks to unleash the ‘Red Terror’.

This was presided over by the CHEKA, formed shortly after the October Revolution under the leadership of Dzerzhinsky (‘we stand for organised terror: this should be frankly stated’). Within months, membership of the Menshevik and SR parties had fallen by two-thirds. The following year, Victor Serge felt that the Soviet state had ‘reverted to the procedures of the Inquisition’ and by the time of Lenin’s death an estimated 250,000 opponents had been liquidated. Military Opposition: Brest-Litovsk and Civil War Whilst the Constituent Assembly undermined the regime’s political opponents, the peace treaty signed with Germany in March 1918 served to unite its military opponents. Upon seizing power, Lenin was determined to secure ‘peace at any price’: the war had already brought down the Tsar and the Provisional Government, and if the Bolshevik regime was not to go the same way then the war needed to end. Under the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia ceded Finland, the Baltic states and Poland – a million square kilometres of territory containing 80 per cent of her coal mines and 30 per cent of her population.

Even within the Bolshevik party, the treaty was deeply unpopular: Lenin secured its ratification by the Central Committee only by threatening his resignation, and even then by only a majority of one. Given the unpopularity of the treaty within the party, it is hardly surprising that it united anti-Bolshevik military forces. Three ‘White Army’ commanders posed a serious threat to the Bolshevik regime based around Moscow: Kolchak attacked from the East, Denikin from the South, and Yudenitch from the West. This movement, which had in total over 250,000 troops, was united by a hatred of the Bolsheviks and a desire to restart the war against Germany. This latter objective won them the support of Russia’s former allies, who invaded Russia themselves: Britain and France took control of Murmansk and Archangel in the North, whilst the Americans attacked from the Far East, helping Japan to take control of Vladivostok. At one stage, the Bolsheviks had lost control of almost three-quarters of Russia. However, by spring 1920 all three armies had been defeated and Lenin could finally turn his attention to rebuilding the Russian economy.

Causes of Bolshevik success (a) Personal unity Although the Whites had a number of able generals, this advantage was offset by the fact that many of them (for example, Denikin and Kolchak) did not get on with each other and there was no effective overall leader to co-ordinate their efforts. The foreign powers too were divided: Lloyd George criticised both Churchill’s ‘obsession’ with the Civil War and the refusal of the French to commit resources to the campaign. In contrast, whilst the Reds had similar rivalries these were not as damaging because they had a recognised leader in Lenin. (b) Ideological unity The contrast between the fragmented Whites and the focused Reds was a result of ideology as much as personality: Red soldiers were not only twice as numerous as Whites, but were also united in a common cause. In contrast, the Whites had divided loyalties. Their patriotic rallying cry of ‘Russia: one and indivisible’ was both hopelessly vague and utterly unconvincing, given their reliance upon foreign aid, which was a propaganda disaster. (c) Geographical unity Personal and ideological factors were compounded by geographical considerations. Firstly, the position of the Bolsheviks in the compacted heartland of Russia gave them a strategic advantage.

It not only made it easier for them to organise and co-ordinate their defence but also gave them the largest chunk of the population and most of the war industry. Moscow and Petrograd stayed in Red hands for the entire Civil War. In contrast, the three main White armies were located at opposite ends of Russia – Denikin and Kolchak were 10,500 kilometres apart and had to communicate via Paris! Secondly, the large size of Russia gave the Reds strategic depth. When under attack on one front they could safely give ground until troops were transferred from other fronts to repel the attack. Opposition from National Minorities Whilst personal, ideological and geographical factors go some way to explaining the success of the Reds in the Civil War, the handling of national minorities – whose long-repressed national aspirations for independence suddenly re-emerged in the chaos of war – was another important factor. As Lynch has pointed out, ‘The sheer size of Russia meant that local and regional considerations predominated over larger ideological issues’. By 1918, there were 33 sovereign governments in Russia, and both Reds and Whites realised that the battle for the hearts and minds of national minorities was of paramount importance.

However, the only way to win this propaganda war was to promise them independence – and neither side was prepared to fulfil this promise. The Whites made their slogan ‘Russia, one and indivisible’ whilst Joseph Stalin formulated a doctrine of ‘proletarian self-determination’ which stated that national independence would be recognised only ‘upon the demand of the working population’, which in practice only included those Bolsheviks subject to control by Moscow. (a) Successes The South – The Ukraine After the Central Powers withdrew from the Ukraine at the end of 1918, this fertile area (Russia’s ‘bread basket’) descended into anarchy as Denikin’s White army, supplemented with Ukranian nationalists, competed with the Red Army for control. Baron Peter Wrangel, Denikin’s successor and the ablest White general, employed Kadets to institute land reform, enabling him to win peasant support and to occupy considerable areas to the north. His resistance was only smashed in late 1920, when 150,000 Whites fled to Constantinople.

The East – Transcaucasia and Asia In 1920, the Red Army attacked the three Transcaucasian Republics: in the spring, they conquered Azerbaijan; Armenia surrendered in the winter; and early in 1921 the Mensheviks were driven out of Georgia despite strong resistance. In Central Asia, the Bolsheviks conquered the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara and set up several artificial client national states. (b) Failures The North – Finland and the Baltic States Anti-Communist Finns defeated Bolshevik-supported Red Finns to create an independent Finland in late 1917. The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, assisted by German occupiers, declared independence and, despite attacks from Red forces, ultimately retained it until 1940. The West – Poland To reconstitute a Greater Poland, Marshal Pilsudski attacked Russia and captured Kiev in May 1920.

A Soviet counter-offensive led by General Tukhachevsky almost succeeded in conquering the Poles; they eventually rallied, however, drove out the Red Army, and forced Soviet Russia to accept an armistice and later the unfavourable Treaty of Riga in March 1921. ‘War Communism’ (1918-21) The crisis of civil war pushed the Bolsheviks towards a drastic economic policy called ‘War Communism’ which included the rapid nationalisation of all industry and the requisitioning of all surplus grain from the peasants. Whilst this succeeded in meeting the immediate needs of the Communist state, it created deep resentment in both the proletariat and the peasantry which eventually escalated into outright rebellion. (a) Peasantry At the outset of the Civil War, the peasantry preferred the Soviet programme of peace, land and worker control to that of the Whites, who wanted to restart the war with Germany and were sceptical both of land reform and of workers’ rights. Four out of five peasants conscripted into the White armies promptly deserted. However, by early 1918 the honeymoon was over.

The loss of the Ukraine, disruption of transport routes and the break-up of the most profitable farms produced chronic food shortages in Petrograd and Moscow which pushed the Bolsheviks towards a policy of requisition and collectivisation. Requisitioning was depicted in propaganda as a war of the poor peasants against the Kulaks, but in reality the average peasant resented grain requisitioning by workers and party officials from the towns. In 1918 over 7,000 members of requisition squads were murdered. (b) Proletariat The key to solving the problem of the peasantry was to provide the countryside with the industrial goods it needed, which would then give them an incentive to deliver foodstuffs for the towns and the army. Initially, the proletariat formed the bedrock of Bolshevik support, and, Lenin – arguing that ‘any worker will master a ministry within a few days’ – used workers’ factory committees as a means of controlling management and directing economic policy. However, as with the peasantry, the honeymoon period did not last. Economic crisis convinced Lenin that the workers lacked the self-discipline to supply the Red Army with its essential needs.

So in 1918 he introduced compulsory labour for all citizens between the ages of 16 and 50 and limited the influence of the Workers’ Councils by setting up a Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) staffed by former plant owners, managers, and other bourgeois specialists (‘knowledgeable, experienced, businesslike people’). On the one hand, the nationalisation of industry and the efforts of Vesenkha to control and coordinate the economy and labour force gave the Bolsheviks an overall view of available human and material resources which enabled them to organise munitions production and army supplies much better than could their White opponents. On the other hand, this policy was deeply divisive in a political sense. Left Communists and the proletariat in general, whilst in favour of nationalisation in principle, were critical of the use of capitalists and of the withdrawal of support for Workers’ Councils. The Crisis year – 1921 By 1921, the policy of War Communism had brought the country to the verge of chaos.

In the countryside, around 6 million peasants had died of starvation and reports circulated in the foreign press that mothers were tying their children to opposite corners of their huts for fear that they would eat each other. In the towns, riots broke out in Petrograd and Moscow, which had seen their populations fall by 70 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. However, it was the Kronstadt naval rebellion in March 1921 that gave the regime its greatest scare and destroyed its credibility to the greatest degree. Kronstadt was a naval town on an island off the coast of Petrograd. It had initially been ‘the pride and joy of the revolution’ (Trotsky), training the guns of the battleship Aurora on the Winter Palace and crushing opposition to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly the following year. Yet by 1921 16,000 soldiers and workers had signed a petition calling for ‘Soviets without Bolsheviks’: freely elected Soviets, and freedoms of speech, press and association. As in Moscow and Petrograd the Reds reacted brutally, dissolving the Kronstadt Soviet, executing several hundred ringleaders and expelling over 15,000 sailors from the fleet.

‘New Economic Policy’ (1921-24) Though the rebellions were mercilessly crushed, Lenin now compared the communist state to a man ‘beaten to within an inch of his life’ and, describing Kronstadt as ‘the flash which lit up reality better than anything else’, promptly replaced War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP). This permitted private ownership of small-scale industry and ended grain requisitioning in favour of a tax in kind (eventually settled at 10 per cent of the harvest), with peasants able to sell their surpluses on the open market. By the end of 1922 the crisis began to ease, aided by £20 million of aid from the American Relief Association, and by 1923 grain production had increased by half. As Lenin had predicted, a mixed economy had emerged, with the state controlling industry whilst agriculture and trade were in private hands. However, whilst agriculture recovered rapidly, industry did not. Therefore, whilst agricultural prices fell, industrial prices continued to rise. This meant that farmers could not afford to buy industrial goods and were tempted back towards subsistence farming.

By the time of the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, industrial prices were running at three times the level of agricultural prices and Trotsky compared the growing gap between agricultural and industrial prices to the blades of a pair of scissors. By the time of Lenin’s death industry was well on the way to recovery and the economic ‘scissors crisis’ was largely over, but socially the policy remained deeply divisive. Rumours circulated that NEP really stood for ‘New Exploitation of the Proletariat’, many members of which remained frustrated with the slow progress towards socialism and detested the new breed of Kulaks, retailers and traders known as Nepmen. Divisions in the party Their transformation from a party of revolutionary opposition to one of beleaguered government had a massive impact upon the Bolshevik Party. Within months of taking power, debate and internal democracy became an impossible luxury. By 1921, the official instrument of government – Sovnarkom – had been sidelined by the smaller and more cohesive Politburo and Ogburo, which lay at the heart of a single-party state that dealt with dissent through summary executions during the civil war. Nevertheless, the growing power of the state only served to aggravate divisions within the party.

During the period of War Communism, the Workers’ Opposition, led by Shiliapnikov and Kollantai, opposed the reduction in the power of the Trade Unions and the Workers’ Councils. The Democratic Centralists resented the ‘dictatorship of party officialdom’ and had called for more involvement in the decision-making process by rank-and-file communists. The Decree on Party Unity (1921) banned formal factions, but the partial revival of capitalism in the NEP that same year created still deeper divisions. The Right-wing of the party – led by Bukharin – vigorously defended the gradual, peasant-based socialism of the NEP. The Left Communists, however, quickly came to feel that more emphasis needed to be placed on a programme of massive and rapid industrialisation if the regime was to survive. They were represented most powerfully by Trotsky and his ‘platform of 46’, who described the NEP as ‘the first sign of the degeneration of Bolshevism’. Lenin tried his best to keep the two wings of the party together by refusing to make clear whether NEP was a short-term tactical retreat or represented a radical rethinking of communism, but this merely postponed rather than avoided internal party conflict.

In some of his speeches and writings, War Communism was dismissed as the product of ‘desperate necessity’ and the NEP was presented as ‘a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism’. At other times, he presented War Communism as an ideologically motivated attempt to introduce ‘the communist principles of production and distribution by direct assault’ and described the NEP as a short-term tactical retreat (‘Let the peasants have their little bit of capitalism as long as we have the power’). Conclusion By 1922, when the USSR was formally proclaimed, it was clear that the Bolsheviks had succeeded in dealing with the immediate threats it had faced upon taking power. However, over the course of that year, Lenin suffered three strokes which left him partially paralysed and politically incapacitated. This served to highlight the cost at which success had been bought. As principles had been compromised and policies had become inconsistent, the party had become so divided that Lenin had dispensed with debate and democracy and relied upon brute force and personal dictatorship to hold the regime together. In the short term, this meant that the party rapidly fragmented following his illness, allowing Stalin to play factions off against each other in order to secure his own ascendancy.

In the longer term, it set a tragic ideological precedent which the ‘man of steel’ was to exploit with disastrous effects for the Russian people in the years following Lenin’s death. Far from ‘withering away’ as Marx had envisaged, the state had become all-powerful. Lenin had replaced one dictatorship with another. Issues to Debate Were Lenin’s policies characterised more by principle or by expediency? To what extent did Lenin lay the foundations of Stalin’s dictatorship? To what extent had Lenin built a communist state by the time of his death? SparkNotes: Joseph Stalin: The Struggle for Power The Struggle for Power Civil War and Consolidation Stalin Triumphant Throughout the summer of 1923, Lenin lay close to death, and a lull settled over the political struggle. But the battle lines were forming in the Politburo and Central Committee. Trotsky seemed to hold the most powerful position, thanks to his close friendship with Lenin before the Soviet leader's strokes, but an opposition had already begun to emerge. Although Stalin would later be Trotsky's primary antagonist, for the moment the opposition included not only Stalin but also two other politicians: Lev Kamenev and G.E.

Zinoviev, a leading Bolshevik who had been Lenin's closest aide during the Revolution. Together the three formed what was referred to as the "troika," or "triumvirate"; as Lenin inched closer to death, they launched a series of attacks on Trotsky in party meetings, drawing on his writings and speeches from his years as a Menshevik to attack him for disloyalty to his own movement. On January 21, 1924, Lenin died. He was only fifty-three. Trotsky was away in the Caucasus that month, and Stalin telegraphed him and said that the funeral would be held immediately, so there was no point in undertaking the long trip back to Moscow. Thus Stalin forced Trotsky to be absent for the funeral--he knew how to create and use symbols to his advantage. Meanwhile, the cult of Lenin instantly sprang up among the Bolsheviks, who ordered their leader's body embalmed and turned into a shrine in Moscow's Red Square. Stalin took a prominent and very public role in the mourning of the leader, but in fact Lenin's death put him in a jubilant mood.

However, the death did bring Stalin his share of difficulties: Lenin's Testament, with its warning against Stalin and suggestion that he be removed from leadership, was read at the next Central Committee meeting. This was a critical moment: if his rivals had demanded compliance with the testament at this point, Stalin would not have survived their attacks--his support base was not yet large enough. However, Trotsky kept silent and Stalin's allies, Kamenev and Zinoviev, came to his defense; Stalin retained his post as General Secretary. The following year, 1924, marks the beginning of Stalin's rise to power. At that point he was one of seven members of the Politburo--the others were Zinoviev and Kamenev, Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. By 1930, Stalin would overshadow them, and by 1940 outlive them. His amazing success can be attributed to a combination of his own political genius and the mistakes that his rivals persisted in making. Gifted ideologues though they were, his opponents were primarily men of theory--Marxists to the core-- rather than men of action.

Stalin, meanwhile, never enjoyed a deep understanding of Marxist theory, and was always willing to twist it to his advantage, a habit that proved useful in the years ahead, as he repeatedly out- intrigued his supposed "comrades" within the party. In December 1924, Stalin first articulated his own twist on Marxist orthodoxy, which he termed "Socialism in One Country." He argued that the success of Marxism in Russia was not contingent upon a worldwide Communist Revolution-- which his fellow leaders expected to begin sweeping through the rest of the world at any moment. The global fall of capitalism would come eventually, he said, but in the meantime it was necessary to build a successful Soviet Union. Trotsky and his supporters vigorously attacked this viewpoint, but by this time, Trotsky's star was in eclipse. Always considered an outsider by the older Bolsheviks, he had been a brilliant military organizer, but was proving less adept at the cutthroat world of party politics. By January 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev were urging that he be expelled from the Politburo (though Stalin actually acted as a voice of moderation and prevented the measure from passing).

By this point, Stalin was gravitating away from the "troika" and toward the other three members of the Politburo--Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky. These three formed a so-called "Rightist" bloc, differing on economic policy from Zinoviev and Kamenev (who drew their support from old-line Bolsheviks, including Lenin's wife). The "Rightists" wanted to continue with Lenin's New Economic Policy, which allowed considerable economic freedom for the peasantry, while the Zinoviev-Kamenev "Leftists" wanted to push the country more strongly toward state control of economic life. In 1924, the "Leftists" appeared to hold control over the Central Committee. But by the following year, Zinoviev and Kamenev realized that Stalin, whom they had saved from political ruin after Lenin's death, was betraying them and moving toward an alliance with Bukharin's faction. In addition, Stalin had begun to gather a strong faction around himself, including figures like Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Vorishilov, and Vyacheslav Molotov.

While Trotsky, the weakest member of the Politburo, remained aloof, the Rightists and Leftists clashed at the 1925 Party Congress, and the Rightists carried the day, despite vituperative attacks on Stalin and his "Socialism in One Country" by Kamenev. Kalinin and Vorishilov joined the Politburo, and the suddenly weakened Kamenev and Zinoviev turned to Trotsky for support, forming a "United Opposition" in the summer of 1926. But they were no match for the Bukharin-Stalin alliance. By the time of the next Party Congress, in October of 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev had been removed from the Politburo, and Stalin felt secure enough in his power to urge the Party's official repudiation of their views as "anti-Leninist." Trotsky resisted, and in 1927 he was expelled from the party and exiled to Central Asia; Zinoviev and Kamenev, defeated, begged for clemency, which the Politburo granted.

Stalin was triumphant--now, even his ally in this struggle, Bukharin, grew nervous, as he realized that Stalin's power in the Party now overshadowed even his own influence. More Help Communism: History and Background History and Backround of Communism Foundation, Goals, and Priorities Communism was an economic-political philosophy founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the second half of the 19th century. Marx and Engels met in 1844, and discovered that they had similar principles. In 1848 they wrote and published "The Communist Manifesto." They desired to end capitalism feeling that it was the social class system that led to the exploitation of workers. The workers that were exploited would develop class consciousness. Then there would be a fundamental process of class conflict that would be resolved through revolutionary struggle. In this conflict, the proletariat will rise up against the bourgeoisie and establish a communist society. Marx and Engels thought of the proletariat as the individuals with labor power, and the bourgeoisie as those who own the means of production in a capitalist society. The state would pass through a phase, often thought of as a socialism, and eventually settle finally on a pure communist society.

In a communist society, all private ownership would be abolished, and the means of production would belong to the entire community. In the communist movement, a popular slogan stated that everyone gave according to their abilities and received according to their needs. Thus, the needs of a society would be put above and beyond the specific needs of an individual. Implementation It became the dominant political philosophy of many countries across Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America. In the late 19th century, communist philosophy began to develop in Russia. In 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power through the October Revolution. This was the first time any group with a decidedly Marxist viewpoint managed to seize power. They changed their name to the Communist Party, and sent their ideals to all European socialist parties. They then nationalized all public property as well as putting factories and railroads under government control. Stalin continued leading by the communist philosophies, and extended the growth of the the USSR. This example of Communism has been followed in many countries since then, including China.

Vladimir Lenin dies - Jan 21, 1924 - HISTORY.com Vladimir Lenin dies Publisher A+E Networks Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54. In the early 1890s, Lenin abandoned his law career to devote himself to Marxist study and the provocation of revolutionary activity among Russian workers. Arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1897, he later traveled to Western Europe, where in 1903 he established the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. The Bolsheviks were a militant party of professional revolutionaries who sought to overthrow the czarist government and set up a Marxist government in its place. In 1905, workers rebelled across Russia, but it was not until 1917, and Russia’s disastrous involvement in World War I, that Lenin realized that the opportunity for Communist revolution had come. In March 1917, the Russian army garrison at Petrograd defected to the Bolshevik cause, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.

Lenin immediately left Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines to arrive at Petrograd on April 16, 1917. Six months later, under his leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, and Lenin became virtual dictator of the country. However, civil war and foreign intervention delayed complete Bolshevik control of Russia until 1920. Lenin’s government nationalized industry and distributed land, and on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established. Upon Lenin’s death in early 1924, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. Fellow revolutionary Joseph Stalin succeeded him as leader of the Soviet Union. Related Videos Putin Disses Lenin - The New Yorker Putin Disses Lenin September 3, 2014 CreditPhotograph by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP As Russia’s military escalation in eastern Ukraine continued last week, Vladimir Putin found time to visit the Seliger National Youth Forum, a summer camp for pro-Kremlin young people some two hundred miles northwest of Moscow.

Among the many subjects discussed was history: he spoke about the Bolsheviks, the masterminds of the 1917 October revolution and the founders of the Soviet state. To many in Russia, Putin’s interpretation of the revolution would sound odd. He accused the Bolsheviks of treachery because they undermined the country’s military effort against the Germans in the First World War. Russia had entered the conflict as an ally of France and Britain. Three years later, the imperial regime fell, exhausted by the war and undermined by broad public unrest. The country was in disarray; soldiers defected. Several months after the collapse of the Russian empire, the Bolsheviks seized power. Lenin, their leader, who had called for “turning the imperialistic war into a civil one,” withdrew Russia from the alliance and made peace with Germany. His plan was to pitthe disenfranchised (soldiers, peasants, workers) against the nobility and the propertied class, to radically destroy the ancien régime and consolidate Bolshevik power. He launched the Red Terror, a merciless extermination of the Whites, the “hostile classes”; the officers of the imperial Army who had fought against Germany were among the primary targets.

After several years of a horrific, fratricidal war, the Reds prevailed, and Lenin became the glorious leader of the world’s first “state of workers and peasants,” as it was known. For more than six decades after his death, in 1924, he was a worshipped founding father, his embalmed body kept on display in the Mausoleum in the Moscow’s Red Square. Cities, streets, industrial plants, collective farms, Naval vessels, universities, and libraries came to bear his name. His slogans, portraits, and statues were everywhere. Generations of Soviet citizens revered his memory, including Vladimir Putin, who was born in 1952. By the nineteen-seventies, the cult was wearing out, and Lenin became the butt of political jokes. But the Communist Party, which referred to itself as the party of Lenin, still had a firm grip on power and full control over the historical narrative.

The Soviet people dutifully celebrated the Bolshevik revolution and the Red victors of the civil war, and worshipped Lenin, who was said to be “forever alive,” “forever with you.” During the years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, and the eventual unveiling of the crimes of the Soviet Communism, the figure of Lenin remained untouched long after other Communist heroes had been uncrowned. Even after the Soviet Union fell apart, in 1991, Lenin was not formally denounced. Russia’s first President, Boris Yeltsin, tried to build his regime on anti-Communism, but that effort ended in a spectacular failure. The Communists enjoyed broad public support. When Putin came to power, in 2000, he made peace with the Communists; he expanded his electoral base, reduced theirs, and gently subdued them into loyalty. All through that decade, he preferred to avoid divisive ideological questions. Lenin was not seen as a national hero, and the official discourse was mostly silent about him, but the Mausoleum remained open to visitors, and every Russian city has a Lenin Street or Lenin Square.

In Moscow, a gigantic Lenin monument marks the beginning of city’s longest avenue, Leninsky Prospekt. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, a “systemic” opposition party (that is, opposition only in name), which has a sizable faction in the Duma, regards Lenin as a man of genius, a “great philosopher and economist, a political genius of international renown,” as Vladimir Kashin, the Party’s deputy chairman, put it earlier this year. When Putin returned to the Kremlin, in 2012, he became increasingly ideological. He now professes a state nationalism that draws on a besieged-fortress mentality, a hard-line anti-Western stance, and faux traditionalism. His platform includes a new, uniform concept of history, to be taught in schools. But, his emphasis on ideology notwithstanding, a shared national narrative of the formative event of the twentieth century is still missing: Was the 1917 Bolshevik revolution a national disaster that destroyed the imperial Russian statehood? Or was it the beginning of the Soviet state of which today’s Russia is a successor?

In other words, since the Russian civil war did not end in a reconciliation, do we identify with the defeated Whites or with the Reds, led by Lenin, who exterminated them? Speaking to the young people at Camp Seliger, Putin remembered the events of 1917 as a time when “some were shaking Russia from within, and shook it to the point that Russia as a state collapsed and declared itself defeated.” He likely meant it as a warning to those who might try to “shake” today’s Russia. But he also spoke of the Bolsheviks’ “betrayal of the Russian national interests.” It was the Bolsheviks, after all, who “wished to see their fatherland defeated while Russian heroic soldiers and officers shed blood on the fronts of the First World War.” More than half of the Russian people still view Lenin as a positive figure . Now Putin, with his signature evasiveness—and careful not to mention him by name—has called him a traitor. With streets and statues honoring Lenin all over Russia, Putin’s interpretation hardly contributes to a uniform version of history. Masha Lipman is editor-in-chief of Counterpoint, a Moscow-based journal published by George Washington University.

SparkNotes: The Russian Revolution (1917–1918): Key People & Terms Key People & Terms The Russian Revolution (1917–1918) History SparkNotes People Alexander I The Russian tsar, or emperor, whose death in 1825 prompted a mild secession crisis that created an appearance of weakness in the Russian monarchy. A group of 3,000 soldiers who termed themselves Decembrists took advantage of the chaos to demand reforms, such as a written constitution for Russia. Later revolutionaries such as Lenin saw the Decembrists as heroes. Alexander II The Tsar who formally abolished serfdom in 1861, freeing Russia’s serfs from indentured servitude to their landowners. Though reformers hailed the move, it engendered a severe economic crisis, angered landowners, and prompted a number of revolutionary groups to agitate for a constitution. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by a member of one of these groups, prompting his successor, son Alexander III, to implement a harsh crackdown on public resistance. Alexander III The son of and successor to the assassinated Tsar Alexander II.

Upon taking power in 1881, Alexander III cracked down severely on reform and revolutionary groups, prompting growing unrest. Alexander III’s son, Nicholas II, was the tsar in power during the Russian Revolution in 1917. Felix Dzerzhinsky A Polish-born revolutionary who joined the Bolshevik Party after getting out of prison in 1917. Following the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky head of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force and an early forerunner of the KGB. Lev Kamenev (a.k.a. Lev Rosenfeld) A prominent member of the Bolshevik Party who initially resisted Lenin’s call to hold a revolution sooner rather than later. After the revolution, Kamenev went on to serve in the Soviet government but was executed during Josef Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. Alexander Kerensky A member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and an active participant in both the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet. At first, Kerensky acted as a liaison between the two governing bodies. Within the provisional government, he served as minister of justice, minister of war, and later as prime minister.

After the October Revolution, Kerensky fled the country and eventually immigrated to the United States, where he taught Russian history at Stanford University. Vladimir Lenin (a.k.a. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov) The founder of the Bolshevik Party, organizer of the October Revolution, and the first leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin spent most of the early twentieth century living in exile in Europe (primarily Britain and Switzerland). He was a devout follower of Marxism and believed that once a Communist revolution took place in Russia, Communism would spread rapidly around the world. Though not involved in the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 and orchestrated the October Revolution that turned Russia into a Communist state. Nicholas I The younger brother of and successor to Tsar Alexander I. This unorthodox succession from older to younger brother caused a small public scandal in 1825 and enabled the Decembrist Revolt to take place. Nicholas I was succeeded by his son, Alexander II. Nicholas II The last Russian tsar, who ruled from 1894 until 1917.

Nicholas II, who assumed the throne with trepidation upon his father Alexander III’s death, was a clumsy and ineffective leader whose avoidance of direct involvement in government caused resentment among the Russian people and resulted in violence in 1905. Nicholas II abdicated on March 2, 1917, as a result of the February Revolution. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas along with his wife, Alexandra, and their children. Grigory Rasputin A Russian peasant and self-proclaimed mystic who gained significant influence over Tsar Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra, in the years immediately prior to the revolutions of 1917. Rasputin’s sexual escapades in the Russian capital of Petrograd caused scandal, and the Russian people began to believe that the tsar himself was under Rasputin’s influence. Aware that Rasputin’s presence was damaging Nicholas II’s credibility, supporters of the tsar had Rasputin killed in late 1916. Joseph Stalin (a.k.a. Joseph Dzhugashvili) A Bolshevik leader who became prominent only after Lenin’s return to Petrograd in April 1917.

Although Stalin was very much a secondary figure during the October Revolution, he did gain Lenin’s attention as a useful ally, and following the October coup, Lenin gave him a position in the government as commissar of nationalities. As Stalin was a member of an ethnic minority—he was from the central Asian region of Georgia, not Russia proper—Lenin felt he would be an effective ambassador of sorts to the many ethnic minorities within the former Russian Empire. After the revolution, Stalin became increasingly powerful and eventually succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union upon Lenin’s death in 1924. Petr Stolypin The prime minister under Nicholas II. Stolypin was renowned for his heavy crackdown on revolutionaries and dissidents, in which thousands of suspects were given quick martial trials and promptly executed. A hangman’s noose was often referred to at the time as a “Stolypin necktie.” Stolypin himself was assassinated in 1911 by a revolutionary activist. Leon Trotsky (a.k.a. Leon Bronstein) A Bolshevik leader and one of the most prominent figures of the October Revolution.

Trotsky, who was in exile abroad during the February Revolution, returned to Russia in May 1917, closely aligned himself with Lenin, and joined the Bolshevik Party during the summer. Trotsky headed the Revolutionary Military Committee, which provided the military muscle for the October Revolution. After the revolution, he was appointed commissar of foreign affairs and led Russia’s negotiations with Germany and Austria for the armistice and subsequent peace treaty that made possible Russia’s exit from World War I. Grigory Zinoviev (a.k.a. Osvel Radomyslsky) A prominent member of the Bolshevik Party, closely associated with Lev Kamenev and a close friend of Lenin during Lenin’s years in exile. Initially resisting Lenin’s call to hold a revolution sooner rather than later, Zinoviev played virtually no role in the October Revolution and temporarily receded from party activities after the revolution. However, he became a member of the Politburo in 1919 and went on to serve in the Soviet government until he was arrested and executed during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Terms April Theses The ideas for Russia’s future that Vladimir Lenin expressed upon his return to Russia in April 1917. They were published in the newspaper Pravda on April 7. In short, Lenin called for the overthrow of the provisional government and its replacement with a communist form of government led by the working class. He believed that other countries would follow Russia’s example. Bolsheviks A radical political party, led by Vladimir Lenin, that split from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903. The Bolshevik Party favored a closed party consisting of and run by professional revolutionaries and supported the idea of a dictatorship that would accelerate the transition to socialism. It placed an emphasis on the working class, from which it drew much of its support. Cadets A political group (an acronym for Constitutional Democrats) that wanted to see Russia established as a democratic republic governed by a constitution and an elected parliament. This stance put the Cadets at sharp odds with the Bolsheviks, who favored a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Cadets drew support primarily from professional workers and the bourgeois class.

Constituent Assembly An elected body of representatives from around Russia, created in November 1917, that was meant to decide on the country’s governmental structure. When Nicholas II abdicated in February 1917, the provisional government that took power made plans for the formation of this Constituent Assembly in order to choose a more permanent government for Russia. After Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution, they initially allowed elections for the assembly to go forward as scheduled but changed their minds after receiving less than 25 percent of the vote in those elections. Dual Power A term referring to the two governments that Russia had following the February Revolution—the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet. Duma The Russian legislature from 1905–1917. The term, an ancient Russian word referring to small village councils that existed in early Russia, was resurrected when Tsar Nicholas II agreed to allow the formation of a legislature after the uprising of 1905. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the term has once more come into use, this time specifically referring to today’s lower house of the Russian parliament.

Mensheviks A political group that, like the Bolsheviks, split from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The Mensheviks, less radical than the Bolsheviks, supported the idea of a socialistic party that was open to all who wished to join and that would be ruled and organized in a democratic manner. Petrograd Soviet A body that existed prior to the February Revolution as a sort of underground revolutionary labor union for workers and soldiers in the Petrograd area, containing members of a number of different political parties. During the February Revolution, members of the Petrograd Soviet saw an opportunity and declared themselves to be the government of Russia. However, they quickly found themselves competing with the provisional government. Provisional Government A government that members of the Duma formed following the February Revolution. The provisional government was meant to be temporary and would rule Russia only until the Constituent Assembly decided on a permanent government later. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) A party that formed in 1898 and was among Russia’s earliest revolutionary movements, though by no means the first. In 1903, the RSDLP split into two factions, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) A Russian political party during the revolutionary years that was more moderate than the Bolsheviks but less so than the Mensheviks. The SRs drew their support primarily from the peasantry and thus had a much larger base than the other parties in Russia. Before and during the October Revolution, the SRs were probably the Bolsheviks’ closest allies among Russia’s many political movements. After the revolution, however, the Bolsheviks abandoned the SRs after the SRs enjoyed a major victory over the Bolsheviks in the elections for the Constituent Assembly. Soviet A Russian word literally meaning “council.” In the early twentieth century, Soviets were governing bodies, similar to labor unions, that existed primarily on the local/municipal level and collectively made policy decisions for their respective regions. The idea of Soviets was popular among the various socialist parties of the time, including the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries. When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in early 1917, the powerful Petrograd Soviet wielded significant political power in Russia.

Question: What communist faction came to power in Russia?
Answer: Bolshevik