Five Questions For Vladimir Lenin

Five Questions For Vladimir Lenin

The most dedicated leader of the revolution, and future leader of the Bolshevik Party in Russia, was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. He was born in 1870 in Simbirsk, Russia, a small town on the Volga River, to a family of hereditary nobles that were not wealt but quite comfortable. Vladimir Ulyanov, who would later change his name to Lenin, was the third of seven children. His oldest brother, Aleksandr, was hanged in May of 1887 for having joined in a plot to kill Czar Alexander III. The czar signed a warra to have the five student conspirators executed. A year earlier, Vladimir’s father had died. Because of these cicumstances Vladimir experienced extreme grief. He died of a stroke in January of 1924 at his villa outside Moscow. I chose Vladimir Lenin to ite about because I felt that I didn’t truly understand what part he played in the Bolshevik takeover of Russia. In fact, I didn’t even understand what role he played in Russia, though I did know that he was associated with communism in some way.

At the University of Kazan, where Lenin majored in law, Lenin was expelled after only three months for taking part in a student protest meeting. He went on to work in a law office in St. Petersburg, where he joined the Social Democratic Party.

In late February 1917 riots broke out in Saint Petersburg. A group of individuals assumed formal governmental powers and declared itself the Provincial Government of Russia on March 1. Lenin took the reins of the Bolshevik Party shortly after the Bolsh ik Revolution which overthrew this Provincial government. Lenin instantly created to pieces of legislation. One of them withdrew Russia from World War I. The other one nationalized personal property. From 1918 to 1921 Russia was torn by a civil war betw n the White armies and the Red Army of the Soviet government. In the summer of 1918 the Soviet government, under Lenin’s leadership, launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign aimed at eliminating political opponents among the civilian population. The g ernment also introduced a series of economic policies in an effort to put socialist principles into practice and to respond to Russia’s pressing economic needs. However, these policies only weakened economic output.Widespread strikes and uprisings broke ut in c...

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...the system?

I realized that once I was gone that the two sides of the party, one led by Trotsky and the other by Stalin, would have nothing in common because the platforms of these two communists were so different. I knew that the communist goals that I had tried uphold would be destroyed. While I was in office I was trying to make Russia prosper under communism. Once I was involved less in communism’s affairs and realized that I was going to die soon, I started thinking of what “The Party” would be like after died. Suffice to say, it didn’t look good. “. . . . the two outstanding leaders of the present Communist Party can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly,” (Lenin 1)

W O R K S C I T E D

Hugley, Ronald. RUSSIA: A Concise History. London, Thames and Hudson Ltd.1972.

Lenin, Vladimir. The Testament. Boston, Halshall, Inc. 1997

McNeal, Robert H., The Bolshevik Tradition. Englewood, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc. 1975.

Sherrow, Victoria. Life during the Russian Revolution. San Diego, Lucent Books, Inc., 1998.