Vladimir Lenin is one of the most famous revolutionaries to fight for communism in Russia. He was commonly known as Lenin and he was born on April 22, 1870. He was a very young and bright man that did very well in school and wanted to study law [1] . His family was very intelligent too. His father worked up to the rank of nobleman and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. Lenin lived in a good family structure not being rich or poor. [2] This is not a common situation for such a revolutionary person. People that come from stable houses like this don’t normally tend to lead many people in a fight for social and political change. He still had some instability in his family with years to come. He was the third kid of six and he looked up to his brother, Aleksandr, was the main reason Lenin started to focus on politics and social changes. In 1887 when Lenin’s brother was executed for trying to assassinate Emperor Alexander III, He noticed that his brother was right and there has to be some changes in politics. This was hard for him because this made him the man of the house since his brother has now passed and just a year earlier his father passed from a stroke. This same year his brother passed, he enrolled to Kazan University to study law but was expelled early in the first term for participating in a student demonstration. This caused his excitement to his grandfather’s where he didn’t stay long because he moved into his sister Anna’s house. She was relocated there by the police because of her own secret activities. Since the death of his brother, the Emperor kept a close eye on Lenin and his family and this helped to push Lenin to start the Bolsheviks Revolution. [3]
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The Bolsheviks were a political party founded Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov. They were founded during a meeting in congress and when a fraction of the congress didn’t agree with his ideas so they left. When they left the majority of congress stayed and that is how they go the name Bolsheviks which means majority. At first they were just Lenin’s ideas which were hard and attacking of the other socialist parties. Since the infighting of all the parties in 1904 Lenin dropped any ideas of change in Russia and went to the Swiss Alps to get away. While he was away conditions in Russia didn’t seem to be simmering down, they actually were elevated. In 1905 there was a peaceful march of the working class which demanded better working conditions and only an eight hour working day. This peaceful march turned into bloodshed when the police started to open fire on the workers. After this the Emperor was forced to create the Duma which was a representative was to start reforms. [4] This didn’t help Lenin’s efforts and many of his Bolsheviks were exiled to Siberia. When this happened he fled Russia once again but never truly gave up his revolutionary efforts. He needed to get money to support the efforts of his Bolshevik party and became ruthless in getting it. He got some money from wealthy people in other countries and good money from his party members marrying in to arises of other countries. He needed even more money so he started to rob banks and this turned lots of his followers away from him and he alienated himself from his own followers. Soon after it is like he faded in his revolutionary efforts. [5]
Lenin saw an opportunity to rise up at the start of World War 1 and he tried to get the lower class to join the army and turn their guns against their officers. No one listened to this and they just focused fully on the war. This was a total war that Russia was pulled in to because of their alliance with France and they had to fight the Germans with little to no training. This caused millions of Russian lives and it didn’t help that there were problems in the towns too. There were lots of problems like desertion, inflation, and food shortages in the towns. With all these troubles no one knew what to do until it came down to protest. On February 23, 1917 there was a violent mob gathering in the streets. Many had guns from the war and were caucusing mayhem in the streets. Many of the police and soldiers didn’t want to fire into the crowd and ended up firing against their own officers and joining the mob. Within a week of these demonstrations of breaking into jails and releasing the prisoners and killing of officers, the Emperor finally stepped down from power. Lenin hear about this in Russia and was happy the people did this but was upset he wasn’t there to lead them. Since he was also a organized man, it frightened him that something like this would spontaneously would happen without order or someone leading it. [6] Out of this freeing of power, two major parties rose up to fight for power. The provisional government and the working socialist parties were formed. The provisional government was the total opposite of what Lenin wanted and I was made up of most of the leaders from Duma and lead by Alexander Kerensky who was Lenin’s biggest enemy. Lenin supported the soviets which consist of representatives of soldiers, workers and peasants elected by the trade unions. Germany saw an opportunity to take down Russia by sending Lenin back to Russia to stir up the conflicts from within. He was paid for and all his Bolshevik followers were too and they all arrived back to Russia only one month after the revolt. When he arrived he called on the people to cause a revolution to overthrow the Provisional government, but few answered his call and they though it was a bad idea. In August 1917 Lenin was at the lowest point of his political career and in hiding as a farmer from Finland. General Kornilov, a well-respected and looked to military general, was looking to march on Petrograd and take over the government. This was the perfect opportunity for Lenin to rise again and try and take over the government with the help of his rivals, the Provisional government. Kerensky needed allies that would join him to defend against the oncoming army of Russia that want to seize of power by force which is also known as Coup d’état. With all of the Bolsheviks released from prison and over 40 thousand rifles to the workers of Petrograd to fight the oncoming attack. The attack ended up never coming because it was never had the right materials to fight. This was great for Lenin and the Bolsheviks because now all the workers are now armed and the Provisional government was not supported by any army. Then in October he snuck into the Bolshevik headquarters and took control of the Red Guard units and sent them out to critical parts of the city of Petrograd and quietly took over the city. All they did was replace the guard that were on duty and that’s how they took over the city without gunshots. The Red Guard snuck into the Winter Palace and they just needed to capture the leaders of the Provisional government and arrest them. They took hours to find them all and they all were captured and arrested. This was one of the biggest political power take overs and there was little to no bloodshed. [7] This finally led to Lenin taking over the power in Russia which he had been trying to do since the death of his brother.
When he first came to power he wanted to stop all democratic say starting with the end of Duma and democratic newspapers. This was a swift idea of his to stop oppressors from the start and he also outlawed any political party other than the Bolsheviks which was his so he renamed it the Communist Party. He also pulled Russia out of World War 1 which was good for his popularity but at a cost of six billion dollars for German reparations and loss of lots of land. Russia gave up Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and part of Belarus. This was lots of land but at the cost of saving many lives from battle. This made peace with Germany and lead to the rise of the White Army. This was the men that fought for the Czar and didn’t want the communist party of the Russia to keep control. This caused a Russian Civil war.
Due to this up rise, Lenin moved the government to Moscow and was safe inside the kremlin. From the safety he had there he would plan to rule and send degrees to peasants to overthrown their land lords and join the communist party. This was all such major plans that would spread terror through Russia so that no one will ever want to oppose him. The Red terror killed many who resisted and even the most celebrated of the citizens, Nicholas Romanoff the former Czar, was killed. He was though to maybe lead the white army against him so he and his whole family were killed. This was a major step for him to take because of Romanoff’s popularity. This led the violence entering Moscow and going all the way to the kremlin. On August 30th, 1918, as he was leaving a Moscow Factory, Lenin was shot twice from close range. This was one of the first assassination attempts against Lenin. This attempt was from Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist revolutionary party. The day after the assassination attempt, Lenin ordered 512 enemies of the state were killed from the Socialist Party. This brought Russia into a bigger civil war. [8]
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It only took him a couple of weeks to recover and he was willing to go back to the kremlin and pose for cameras showing that he was fine. He even showed where the bullets hit him and the scars they left. This was the height of his career and he was 49. This led to him creating the international convention of communist to stimulate communist revolution in the rest of the work. The communist revolution of the world didn’t come but in 1921 the red army defeated the anti-communist parties and Lenin was the undisputed ruler of Russia, which was now a devastated country. With this He knew he had to rebuild and it was hard to rebuild when a famine and a drought spread through Russia. This effected 27 million people throughout Russia. Lenin jump started the economy by abandoning socialism and letting farmers sell the crops they had. They also let them keep the profits which was Lenin’s Strategic Retreat. It was a success throughout and helped Lenin’s popularity. This was one of the last big acts by Lenin because by the end of that year he suffered from Insomnia, Nausea, and Fainting. He retired to his rural retreat east of Moscow. Here he suffered his first stroke and continued to collapse politically and physically. He had a second stroke at the age of 51 and he could barely move or talk now, but still tried to influence the government with his written words in a diary. Before he could make any changes he ended up suffering a third stoke. No one knew about his fatal conditions except for these main leaders of the communist party. He saw how Stalin was in terms of power and he created his last testament to crush Stalin but I was never finished and never got to carry out his last order. [9] He finally died on January 21, 1924 at the age of 53. Most of Russia didn’t know he was sick so most were shocked by the news of his death. Since he moved so many, he had a funeral that lasted 5 days and over three quarters of a million people wanted to go visit his body that was in state.
His body still remains in the Red Square in Moscow and his death and thoughts were still influencing new rulers to come and not just in Russia. [10] With all the negative things Lenin did throughout his life, he created lots of change for the betterment of a nation in a whole. His theories lived on threw other dictators and just showed how his word can influence people even after his death which shows how he is a great man in history.
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