LENIN (1870-1924).
Few individuals in modern history had as profound an effect on their times or evoked as much heated debate as the Russian revolutionary Lenin. To his supporters, Lenin appeared as the individual who, through the sheer force of his will and dedication to the revolutionary struggle, played the decisive role in the 1917 revolution that brought about the first government dedicated to overturning the political and economic system of Western capitalism. His detractors denounced Lenin as an antidemocratic despot who, through the use of bloody repression and indiscriminate terror, laid the foundation for the first modern totalitarian police state.
Lenin's birth name was Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. He was born on April 22, 1870, the third of five children of a well-to-do Russian family. The Ulyanovs resided in Simbirsk, Russia, a small town on the Volga River. Ilya Lenin, Vladimir's father, served as a high-level education bureaucrat in the czar's government. No outward signs existed to indicate that each of the children from this respectable family would shun the path of bureaucratic life and enter into the burgeoning ranks of the Russian revolutionary movement--none of them with more vehemence than Vladimir and his older brother Alexander.
The death of Ilya Ulyanov in 1886 was followed by an even greater family tragedy. In March 1887, the czarist secret police arrested Alexander Ulyanov. Alexander, a bright and introverted chemistry student at the University of St. Petersburg, was charged with conspiring, along with members of the radical revolutionary group Narodnaia Volia (People's Will), to assassinate Czar Alexander III. Following a brief trial that clearly exposed Alexander's role in the plot, Alexander was found guilty and promptly executed.
By his own admission, the unexpected arrest and execution of his older brother had a profound influence on the Vladimir Ulyanov. Vladimir had shown no previous proclivity for politics, let alone revolutionary politics, but he became determined to understand what factors and ideas had prompted his brother to sacrifice his life willingly for the revolutionary struggle. The 17-year-old Vladimir immersed himself in books and journals from his brother's collection, devouring the writings of such radical Russian political thinkers as Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Dmitri Pisarev, two of the most prominent writers who inspired a generation of young Russian "Populist" intellectuals to dedicate themselves to the overthrow of the czarist autocracy and to the establishment of an egalitarian socialist society.
Several months after the death of Alexander, Vladimir enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law. As the brother of a now-famous revolutionary martyr, he was greeted warmly by members of the revolutionary underground and watched closely by the czar's secret police. In December 1887 officials from the school expelled him for his role in a student demonstration, and he returned home to live with his family. During the ensuing three years he read voluminously, studying law, languages, and, most significantly, the writings of Karl Marx. Ulyanov became a firm convert to Marx's class-struggle-based interpretation of history.
In 1895, following a brief journey to Europe, Ulyanov returned to St. Petersburg, where he returned to the revolutionary underground. In 1897 he was arrested for spreading propaganda among workers in St. Petersburg and exiled to Siberia.While in Siberia, Ulyanov married Nadezhda Krupskaya, a fellow Marxist whom he had known from his time in St. Petersburg. Ulyanov spent his years in Siberia compiling his first formidable work, 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia', which attempted to place Russia's historical development within the context of Marx's political and economic theories. Ulyanov served his exile in a town near the Lena River, and it was from the name of this river that he took the pseudonym that would remain with him until the end of his days.
In 1900, Lenin and Krupskaya were released from exile. Lenin returned briefly to St Petersburg, only to find that the burgeoning Marxist movement that he had left in 1897 was beset by ideological squabbles. Eager to reestablish unity among the Russian Marxists, Lenin and his wife traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where they sought out the foremost Russian Marxist revolutionary group, headed by the so-called father of Russian Marxism, Georgi Plekhanov. Lenin proposed that the Geneva expatriates publish a new journal, known as Iskra (The Spark), to serve as a mouthpiece for orthodox Marxist theories. The editorial staff was composed of some of the most prominent members of the Russian Marxist intelligentsia: Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Pavel Akselrod, Iulius Martov, Leon Trotsky, and Lenin. Each of these individuals would play prominent roles in the revolutionary struggles of the early 20th century.
From the outset, the Iskra group faced internal differences. These internal divisions came to the forefront in 1903, when the Iskra group organized a conference of Russia's various Marxist revolutionary groups with the intention of unifying the Marxist movement into one social democratic party. At that meeting, which began in Belgium but transferred to London following a police raid, the Iskra group, as well as the entire Russian Social Democratic Workers party, split into two different ideological camps. Lenin played the decisive role in driving a wedge between the two factions when he proposed that the Russian Social Democratic Workers party should organize itself as a small, conspiratorial revolutionary vanguard that would lead the mass of the Russian working class toward revolution. The opposition group, headed by Martov, demanded the creation of a mass-based, openly democratic Social Democratic party. Plekhanov, himself no great defender of democracy, supported Lenin's faction, but the remainder of the Iskra group sided with Martov and attacked Lenin harshly for his dictatorial instincts. Martov's faction, which held a majority throughout most of the conference, lost the deciding vote on party organization after several delegates to the conference walked out in protest of the proceedings. Lenin's radical faction barely won the crucial vote, and Lenin claimed for his group the name Bolsheviks (Majorityites). Martov's group, which would hold the majority within the divided Social Democratic party until mid-1917, nevertheless accepted the moniker of Mensheviks (Minorityites).
In Russia, the divisions between the two Social Democratic parties remained blurred until 1917. From 1903 until 1914, the two groups worked side by side, attempting to recruit workers to the Social Democratic cause. Throughout much of this period Lenin lived with his wife as a semi-wandering exile, traveling and residing throughout Europe. Lenin returned to Russia briefly following the outbreak of revolution in 1905, but he stayed less than two years before returning to Europe. Despite his removal from the ground-level struggle, Lenin continued to issue decrees on policies for the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic party. Lenin attacked many of his Menshevik opponents for suggesting that the Social Democrats should concentrate only on such legal activities as trade union activism and distribution of pro-Socialist propaganda. While Lenin and his Bolshevik faction publicly denounced the use of terrorism as a political tactic, members of the Bolshevik faction nevertheless engaged in several assassinations of czarist officials, and the Bolsheviks regularly resorted to bank robberies to fill the party coffers. Lenin's radical rhetoric and tactics brought him the scorn of his opponents in the Social Democratic party, and the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks became more acute.
Lenin and Krupskaya were in Switzerland when World War I broke out in August of 1914. No issue divided the members of the Russian Social Democrats as decisively as did the outbreak of the war. The response of Socialists throughout Europe varied greatly. As hostilities mounted prior to the outbreak of war, members of the international Social Democratic movement demanded peace. Once war became imminent, the facade of an international movement fell to pieces. Socialists throughout Europe were swept up in the outpouring of patriotism that occurred at the outset of the war. Among the Russian Social Democrats, the enthusiasm for war was far less pervasive. The bulk of the Socialists continued to call for peace without indemnities. Lenin, however, was the only prominent Russian Socialist to take an even more radical stance on the war. He denounced it as a conflict of competing imperialist powers, and he called on the working peoples of all nations to instead use their weapons to overthrow their capitalist governments.
Initially, Lenin's call for class-based civil war fell on deaf ears in Russia. As the war dragged on and as the vast casualties mounted, the mood of the Russian working class and peasantry became more inflammatory. Strikes, which had ceased at the outbreak of war, resumed during 1915 and 1916. In February 1917 (March 1917 by the modern calendar), spontaneous revolution broke out in Petrograd (which had been renamed from St. Petersburg at the beginning of World War I), and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. The new provisional government--composed of a coalition of conservative, liberal, and moderate Socialist politicians--made clear their intention to continue the war at all costs. Lenin, still in Switzerland, increased his attack on the new provisional government, and he sought to return to Russia in the hopes of fomenting revolution.
The German government, eager to remove Russia from the war and to consequently eliminate the burdensome Eastern front, saw in Lenin a potentially potent and corrosive weapon to release on their Russian opponents. Lenin was provided with funds from the German government and sent in a sealed train car back to Russia. Because of this German assistance, his critics would later argue that Lenin was ostensibly a German agent, willing to accept German support and funds to undermine the Russian war effort. While it is clear that Lenin proved willing to use German support to promote the radicalization of the revolution in Russia, it is equally clear that Lenin intended, once in power, to assist German socialists in fomenting an equally radical revolution in Germany.
Lenin arrived in Russia on April 16, 1917. On the following day Leon Trotsky--who had broken with the Mensheviks and become Lenin's most trusted and capable ally--arrived in Russia. The two men, both powerful orators, immediately sounded the call for the end of hostilities and for the beginning of class war in Russia. Lenin's following increased dramatically during the summer of 1917, as a long-anticipated Russian counteroffensive collapsed completely, resulting in some 200,000 casualties. Lenin's call for peace won more and more converts. In July 1917, workers and soldiers stationed in Petrograd took to the streets, demanding that the government turn control over to the revolutionary Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets, or councils, which were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. The government issued a warrant for Lenin's arrest, and he fled to Finland.
Lenin returned to Russia in disguise at the end of October. On the evening of Oct. 26 (November 6 according to the modern calendar), 1917, the Bolsheviks, meeting in secret, resolved to overtake the government and establish a new provisional government. Unlike the revolution of February, the October Revolution occurred with barely any mass uprising. Red Army troops under the direction of Trotsky launched attacks on key installations throughout Petrograd during the evening, culminating in a march on the government's Winter Palace. By the morning of October 27, the city of Petrograd was in Bolshevik hands.
Following the pacification of Russia's major cities, Lenin declared the formation of the world's first Communist government. Opposition groups were banned and newspapers and journals of other political groups were shut down. Banks and industries throughout the country were placed under the control of the new government. The Bolshevik government outlawed trade and outlawed the ownership of most private property. Lenin, convinced of the possibility of forcing social change on the Russian population, argued that the severe measures would facilitate the immediate transition to Socialism in Russia. His numerous socialist opponents--led by his one-time allies Martov, Plekhanov, and Akselrod--insisted that Lenin failed to understand the basic fundamentals of the theories of Marx, in whose name he had purportedly made the Bolshevik Revolution. Russia, they argued, was simply not ready to make the jump to Socialism. Such a misguided experiment, they warned, would end in dictatorship.
Lenin dismissed his critics' warnings and set out to make good on his promise for peace. He immediately opened negotiations with Germany to end the war between the two nations. The German government, with its army poised to march undeterred on Russia, demanded exorbitant concessions from Lenin's government, including the Russian territories of Poland, the Caucasus, and Ukraine. When the terms of the proposed peace agreement became known, Lenin's political opponents accused the Bolsheviks of outright treason. In March 1918 the Bolshevik government, with its Russian and German opponents at its throat, hesitatingly signed the Brest-Litovsk peace agreement, ending the war with Germany.
The signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty sparked civil war in Russia. Lenin's political opponents, including czarist loyalists, various Socialist factions, and many liberal groups, headed to the south of the country. Civil war raged for three years as the two armies--Lenin's Red Army and the White Army of the opposition--vied for control of the country. Lenin instituted a series of drastic and radical measures, known as War Communism, designed to aid the Red Army war effort against the Whites. Groups of armed brigades were sent to the countryside to appropriate by force food from the peasantry; a new secret police, named the Cheka, was formed by Lenin to weed out criminals, political opponents, and "counterrevolutionary" agitators. In July 1918, the Bolshevik government issued the most notorious of its edicts when, fearing a pro-monarchist backlash, it ordered Red Army troops to carry out the murder of Nicholas II and his entire family.
Throughout the course of the civil war, both the White and Red armies carried out atrocities against their perceived opponents. Once in power, neither Lenin nor his fellow Bolsheviks hesitated to use indiscriminate violence as a means of quashing rebellion and extending the power and influence of the Bolshevik government. Lenin called the violent tactics the "Red Terror," and he vowed to destroy enemies of the state, both real and perceived. The exact number of victims who fell before the Red Terror--many of whom were shot en masse without trial or evidence--remains unknown. Estimates of the human toll of the Red Terror range from roughly 13,000 to more than 140,000. Both Lenin and Trotsky defended the use of violence as a necessary tool of revolution, and they frequently pointed to the 25 million casualties from the recent slaughter of World War I to justify the violence practiced by the Bolshevik government.
The civil war exacted its toll on Russia and on Lenin. By the time of the final Bolshevik victory in 1921, the country lay in absolute ruin. The economy, which collapsed at the outset of the Russian war, was virtually destroyed. Lenin, in an effort to begin the rebuilding of the economy, issued a decree ending the draconian laws of War Communism. In its place, Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy, which allowed for a modest resumption of capitalist relations. Restrictions on opposition newspapers were gradually reduced, though never repealed, and the Bolshevik government brought an end to the indiscriminate use of terror that had characterized the civil war period. In one respect, however, Lenin tightened the control of the government, as he decreed that the Bolshevik party would tolerate no dissension in its ranks, and he outlawed the forming of factions within the party.
Lenin's actions during the last years of his life provided much grist for the mill of his successors and for historians, who have often questioned what course the Soviet Union would have pursued had Lenin's failing health not shortened his life. Some have suggested that Lenin would have continued with the policies that he introduced in 1921, hoping to bring the Soviet Union modestly along the course to Socialism. The actual course pursued by Lenin's eventual successor, Joseph Stalin, was clearly of the other extreme. Stalin would restore the most draconian of Lenin's policies, reintroducing the terror, the radical economic policies, and the overall concept of forcing revolution with cold-blooded determination that far surpassed Lenin in ruthlessness. The instruments that Stalin used to carry out his radical policies--from the centralized party to the fierce secret police--had all been established during Lenin's reign. Knowledge of the course that Lenin intended to take, however, went with him to his grave. Lenin suffered two strokes in 1922 and a third in 1923 that severely impaired his ability to function. A final stroke on Jan. 21, 1924, ended his life.
During the Soviet era, Lenin was hailed as the greatest national hero of the country. His writings--particularly his directives for the Communist party--ranked with those of Marx. Lenin's tomb, in Red Square in Moscow, was a national shrine. In 1924 Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. After the demise of Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the Russian people began to turn against Lenin and all he stood for. The citizens of Leningrad in 1991 voted to restore the city's name to St. Petersburg. The fierce attachment--both in support and in disdain--that the Russian population continued to feel towards Lenin would be seen even in the waning days of the century that he had influenced so fundamentally, as the Russian parliament staged fierce debates over whether Lenin's body should be exhumed from his tomb in Moscow, or left as a shrine to the Soviet period
