Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Lenin was the Bolshevik leader. He was a clever thinker and
a practical man; he knew how to take advantage
of events. When Lenin arrived in Russia, he issued a document called
the April theses, promising ‘peace, bread, land and freedom’. He
called for an end to the ‘Capitalist’ war, and demanded that power
should be given to the soviets. He demanded a revolution against the
Provisional Government as soon as possible. In November 1917, under
the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolsheviks overthrew the
Provisional government, beginning the era of Communist rule in Russia.
Stalin played no real part in the events of the revolution. The
revolution was the result of detailed Bolshevik planning, and of the
failures and weaknesses of the Provisional government. Lenin knew that
there was enough discontent amongst the people for a revolution to
work. By October 1917 the Bolsheviks controlled both the Petrograd and
the Moscow Soviets. His slogans and policies were popular with the
people. In 1918 Lenin introduced the policy of War Communism, in order
to ensure that the Red Army was well supplied during the Civil War.
All industries were nationalised. Yet production fell as workers were
conscripted the Red Army. In agriculture, the Cheka were sent into the
countryside to seize all surplus grain and produce. Anyone who
resisted was shot. Yet the simple effect of this was that peasants
produced less food, so there were fewer surpluses to take. This helped
to cause the dreadful famine of 1921. War communism was s...
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...e purges of
the 1930s sent millions of Russians to their deaths, the population
was scared of the secret police, the NKVD, and the forced
collectivization of agriculture had wiped out a part of Russian
society, the Kulaks. Due to Stalin’s Purges the army and navy were
seriously weakened by the loss of senior officers; however in Lenin’s
time in Russia he used war communism to help feed and strengthen the
army. Stalin’s dictatorship can be compared to Adolf Hitler as they
ran everything by themselves and did whatever they felt like, even
though others objected. Lenin was clearly had a greater impact on
Russia as he was the one who contributed the most to the Revolution’s
and he got the Bolsheviks into power. He also helped to modernise
Russia. Stalin was a dictator and he did not do as much as Lenin to
help Russia.
Joseph Stalin became leader of the USSR after Lenin’s death in 1924. Lenin had a government of abstemious communist government. When Stalin came into government he moved to a radical communist society. He moved away from the somewhat capitalist/communist economy of Lenin time to “modernize” the USSR. He wanted to industrialize and modernize USSR. He had overworked his workers, his people were dying, and most of them in slave labor camps. In fact by doing this Stalin had hindered the USSR and put them even farther back in time.
Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini were all famous leaders of their time. When the word famous is mentioned for their description, it is not necessarily good. In fact none of them were known for anything good. You could say they were in”famous”. They all lead during the same time period; during the early to mid 1900s. Stalin was part of the Russians, Mussolini was with the Italians, and Hitler was with the Germans.
Eventually, nations collapse and kingdoms fail, termination can occur through many causes. Whether through being ruled by a sequence of out of touch men, engaging in war, having too many enemies, or an amalgamation: no nation is safe. Russia in the year of 1910 was in an immensely horrible situation, she had all of these problems. If it was not for Vladimir IIich Lenin, Russia would not have existed by 1920.
Russian Social Democratic workers party. Lenin eventually returned home and started working against the tsarist regime. From the beginning of the regime, the Bolsheviks relied heavy on a strong secret police known as the Cheka (“Secret Police”). The secret police became quickly known for its brutality. Since the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October revolution, Lenin had been focus on keeping his...
Son of a poverty-stricken shoemaker, raised in a backward province, Joseph Stalin had only a minimum of education. However, he had a burning faith in the destiny of social revolution and an iron determination to play a prominent role in it. His rise to power was bloody and bold, yet under his leadership, in an unexplainable twenty-nine years, Russia because a highly industrialized nation. Stalin was a despotic ruler who more than any other individual molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of Europe after World War II ended in 1945. From a young revolutionist to an absolute master of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin cast his shadow over the entire globe through his provocative affair in Domestic and Foreign policy.
that his real aim was not to be in power but to lead the world to a
“The man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost (Joseph Stalin).” “Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in a poor village in Georgia (Joseph Stalin).” Permanently scarred from a childhood bout with smallpox and having a mildly deformed arm, Stalin always felt unfairly treated by life, and thus developed a strong, romanticized desire for greatness and respect, combined with a shrewd streak of calculating cold-heartedness towards those who had maligned him. “He always felt a sense of inferiority before educated intellectuals, and particularly distrusted them (Joseph Stalin).”
Among the ashes and ruins caused by the devastation of World War Two, two superpowers rose and a new war erupted, the Cold War. The United States and its NATO allies as the capitalists versus the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact as the communists. It was named the Cold War due to the fact the neither countries would attack each other, so they fought proxy wars around the globe. Many small countries started taking sides and one of the most important country in the world sided with the communists, China. During Mao's reign they established the People's Republic of China, changed the tide in the Korean War and aided the Viet Minh; making him the most influential person during the cold war.
Though these many excepts have discrete arguments, they also share several underlying themes. Of these several themes, of fundamental importance is one of work in philosophy and social science bringing about real change in the world. Throughout his writing he continues to focus upon the individuals that from the world, particularly the oppressed, not just the powerful on whim the lens of social science and particularly history is often pointed. Even for those who do not agree with Marx on his prescription for the world, his determination to improve the conditions of the oppressed is a model we should all strive to emulate.
In western society, one of the greatest misconceptions about Vladimir Lenin is that he was a ruthless killer that wanted to exploit his people and ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. He is often compared to the infamous Joseph Stalin, his successor. While Stalin was a killer who cared little for his people, Lenin wanted to liberate the people that he claimed were being oppressed; the Proletariat or the working class people. He sought to demolish the Bourgeoisie who were the rich factory owners and spread the wealth out amongst the masses. Due to the fact that he died in 1924 three years after the establishment of the USSR, his legacy has been greatly twisted into that of a murderer. It was twisted even further in the post World War 2 years in the west as the war time alliance between the USA and the USSR soured. Whether he is perceived as good or bad, the revolution he commanded in the former Russian Empire had a profound effect on the rest of the world.
Joseph Stalin is a polarizing figure. Decades after his death his legacy still continues to create debate about his tumultuous years as the leader of the Soviet Union. This is evident throughout the four documents while some praise Stalin as impeccable others criticize his policies and lack of political, economic, and social progress during his regime. Even though Stalin was behind various violations of human rights he was able to maintain the Soviet Union during a time of turmoil both domestically and internationally as a result he has earned notoriety as a great leader and advocate for Marxist ideology.
Communism, socialism, and capitalism are the three basic forms of economical systems, each evident in the world. Although Karl Marx is portrayed as the father of communism, Marx is able to provide a substantial amount of information about the capitalistic world. In his work, “Capital (1867)”, Marx discusses the nature of commodities, wages, and the relationship between a worker and the capitalist economic system. As a result, Marx portrays workers as human beings who have been exploited in order to maximize production and profit in a capitalistic society. Although Karl Marx wrote “Capital (1867)” over a century ago, Marx’s arguments concerning the various uses of human labor, commodities, and values, have remained relevant in the United States
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were similar in what they claimed to be, but in actuality they were very different people. Although Stalin claimed that he followed Leninism, the philosophy that Lenin developed from Marxism, he often distorted it to follow what he wanted to do. While Lenin wanted to make a unified society without classes, with production in the hands of the people, while Stalin wanted to make Russia into a modern industrial powerhouse by using the government to control production. Lenin accomplished his goals through violence, because he thought achieving Communist revolution was worth using violence, with a ‘The ends justify the means’ mentality. Stalin also used violence to accomplish his goals, however Stalin used much more violence than was often necessary to accomplish his goals. Stalin continued even once he was successful in accomplishing those goals, as he did not stop hurting people, but if anything it gave him more power to hurt people even more. But, at the end of the day, although Lenin ruled for only a very short time, he did raise the standard of living, though there maintained a large amount of hardship. Stalin, however, transformed the USSR from a peasantry to an industrialized nation in less than a decade, he did it on the backs of his millions of victims, who died because of his harsh policies and many purges.
More murderous than Hitler, more powerful than Stalin, in the battle of the Communist leaders Mao Zedong trumps all. Born into a comfortable peasant family, Mao would rise up to become China’s great leader. After leading the communists away from Kuomintang rule, he set out to modernize China, but the results of this audacious move were horrific. He rebounded from his failures time and again, and used his influence to eliminate his enemies and to purge China of its old ways. Mao saw a brighter future for China, but it was not within his grasp; his Cultural Revolution was not as successful as he had wanted it to be. Liberator, oppressor, revolutionary, Mao Zedong was the greatest emancipator in China’s history, as his reforms and actions changed the history of China and of the wider world.
whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly