Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Background:

• Born:  April 10, 1870 in Ulyanovska, Russia
• Died:  January 21, 1924 in Moscow
• Head of State
• Political Leader
• Creator of the Bolshevik Party

 

Vladimir was born as Vladamir Ulyanov and later changed his name to Lenin to avoid persecution.  As a young child, education was a very important part of his life.  Both of his parents were educated and cultured individuals that promoted learning in their home.  Lenin graduated at the top of his high school class in 1887.  Afterwards he entered Kazan University.

Shortly after entering school, his older brother Aleksandr was executed for being part of a group planning to execute Emperor Alexander III.  This drastically affected him and began his interest in anit-Ramanov leadership.  Lenin’s brother wasn’t the only member of his family to be involved in revolutionary acts.  In fact, all of his 5 siblings were involved at some point. While at Kazan, Lenin was pursuing and law degree, however, he was soon kicked out of school for being involved in a student demonstration (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

 

 

Early Activism:

After Lenin was kicked out of school he was soon exiled to live in Siberia at his grandfather’s estate.  While exiled he began reading a lot of radical material, concentrating mostly on that of Karl Marx.  This later led him to declare himself as a Marxist in 1889 (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

After returning from exile, Lenin finished his law degree.  His main client base consisted of peasants.  As he saw his clients struggle, Lenin began to notice the unequal system happening in Russia, a system that treated the majority of the population as second class citizens.  This frustrated Lenin very much and increased his desire to change that system.  In left his job in the mid 1890’s and began to do more political research.  Lenin met with like-minded Marxists and took an active role in their activities (Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 1998).

The Russian leaders soon figured out and arrested Lenin and several others.  This time he was exiled for 3 years to Siberia.  He was joined by Nadezhda Krupskaya, who would become his future wife.  Both of them began to formulate ideas to begin a revolution against the government.  After exile, he lived in Munich for a period of time and started a newspaper called, Iskra, “Spark”.  He soon returned to Russia and increased his leadership in the revolutionary movement (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

 

Russian Revolution:

In 1904 Russia began a war with Japan.  The war caused many hardships on the country in many areas including economically and politically and mainly the entire society.  Many loses began to hurt the budget of each individual and citizens began to despise of the country’s political makeup and wanted it to change.  All of the turmoil came to a head in January of 1905 when a group of workers approached the palace to submit their problems with the government.  They were met by armed security guards who opened fire on the group which killed many and wounded hundreds.  This action would incite the Russian Revolution of 1905.

As a result, Emperor Nicholas II issued decrees stating certain concessions to the structure of government.  Lenin, however, was not satisfied with this.  He believed that the revolution should be led by the workers or the proletariat class of citizens, that this was the only true way to achieve a socialist revolution.  This belief caused a rift between the Mensheveks and the Bolsheviks which caused much fighting and lead to Lenin separating and creating his own group in 1912.

During World War I Lenin went into exile again but this time it was in Switzerland.  While there he continued his revolutionary ideas and wrote a work entitled, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  This work would end up being the defining work of his life.  It said that war was the natural effect of imperialism.  By 1917, all of Russia opposed the tsar rulers.  The majority party established a Provisional Government where the bourgeois class was in charge.  Lenin instead wanted to have a Soviet Government where the soldiers, workers, and peasants were in charge (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

As a result of this Lenin led the October Revolution which ignited three years of deadly civil war in the country.  Lenin’s group was known as the Red’s and the tsarist group was known as the Whites.  The Whites were desperate to stop Lenin’s Red forces and were helped by Russia’s allies in World War I.  Lenin, however, refused to be defeated and was very ruthless in doing so.  He launched what would be called the Red Terror where all opposition to the Red Regime was exterminated in the civilian population.  Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed or imprisoned (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

 

New Economic Policy and Death:

Eventually, Lenin’s party was victorious.  The system that was immediately put into place caused complete chaos in the country and left it completely broke.  Most of the country was dealing with famine and poverty.  As a result the peasant class that had resulted in Lenin being victorious began to revolt again against the terrible conditions of the country.  To help prevent this from happening, Lenin reversed most of his policies and introduced the New Economic Policy (Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 1998).

The New Economic Policy gave peasants the ownership of all of their land and instead instituted a tax.  This started initially as in kind but later became cash.  Instead of having all of their crops taken from them and redistributed throughout the country, each landowner was allowed to keep whatever they had left after the tax was paid and sell it on an open and free market.  Big industrial businesses, however, were still led by the government (Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 1998).

In 1918, Lenin suffered from an assassination attempt that left him injured and his health never fully recovered.  In 1922 Lenin suffered two strokes that severely hurt his health.  Realizing that he his health was fading, he began to think about how Russia would go on without him.  He wrote what would become to be known as his Testament where he told of his regrets of how the dictorial approach dominated the Soviet Government and how he was very disappointed in his soon to be successor Joseph Stalin who had begun to gain great power.

In early 1923, Lenin suffered his third stroke.  This one took away his ability to speak which ended his involvement in political affairs.  He died ten months later in January of 1924 (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

 

Sources:

Vladimir Ilich Lenin. (1998). Retrieved from Gale: In Encyclopedia of World Biography.

 

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. (2014, April 14). Retrieved from Biography: http://www.biography.com/people/vladimir-lenin-9379007