Lenin

Life

Context

• Late 19th early 20ths
  • Russia Is Czarist state: they are conservative
  • Caused hostility in peasant society
  • Still an unindustrialized, agrarian society, serfdom
  • Destabilizing wars
  • 1904-1905: Russo-Japanese war humiliates Russia
  • 1905 Revolution: protest to petition at Winter Palace, ended in a massacre of 150 people
  • October Manifesto permitted to establish the Duma and grant rights, not respected by Czar
  • WWI: Czar defends ally Serbia triggering world war despite not having the technology for modern warfare
  • Logistic failures, loss of life and starvation led to later revolutions
  • Army turned against the Czars, leading to the fall of the Czar and his abdication
  • Provisional government overthrown by Bolsheviks
• Early life
  • Born 1870
  • Middle class family, received good education
  • Studied law, during his studies his brother was arrested and executed for an assassination attempt on the Czar
  • Expelled and exiled after a year in university, became more vocal Marxist
  • Received a law degree and moved to Samara
  • Moved to St. Petersburg and convened with revolutionaries, exiled to Serbia
  • Worked on the Iskra Marxist newspaper in Munich
• Revolution
  • Did not find the reform sufficient
  • 1912: Bolshevik Menshevik split
  • WWI: Lenin stayed in Geneva and returned because of Feburary Revolution
  • Wanted Soviet Marxist government
  • 1917: October Revolution: Lenin overthrows government, civil war ensues between red Bolsheviks and nobility-backed whites
  • Begins measures to eliminate opposition
• Later years and death
  • Suffered three rehabilitating strokes
  • Dies in 1924 and succeeded by Stalin

Philosophy

Leninism

• Bridge between Capitalism and socialism
  • Hard to implement Marx’s views
  • Proletariat was actually improving
  • Cites imperialism as a new form of exploitation that explained increase in quality of life
  • Russia still feudal, there could be no phase of proletariat revolution
  • No proletariat, so he creates a vanguard of intellectuals who would convince the people and use violence
  • Called the Vanguard
  • Highly-trained intellectually dedicated force
  • Provide necessary leadership (top down change)
  • Allowed Russia to transition from feudalism to socialism without capitalism
• Need to adapt Marxism
  • Phases of Marxism: Tribal > Ancient > Feudal > Capitalist > Socialist > Communist
  • Leninism used this as a guide to his revolution
  • Leninism is unleashed upon Russia, Germans send him back to destabilize Russia
  • Adjusted Marxism in 1917 Russia, through the lens of Marxism it was in the feudal phase
  • No large industrialization, which was prerequisite for Marx’s proletarian revolution
  • Imperialism was the answer to why the proletariat was not dissatisfied
  • Imperialism was a global form of capitalism, therefore impossible in colonized revolutions
  • 1917: Lenin thought the WWI showed capitalism was in its final stage, mutual annihilation, capitalist destroying itself
  • Saw the Feburary Revolution as the dictatorship of the bourgeoise, enough to say it was a capitalist country
  • Dictatorship of the proletariat not possible without proletariat, his solution was democratic centralism ruled by the communist party (partocratic regime in the name of proletariat)
  • Important elements of the socialist phase were education, industrialization, world revolution
  • Education: indoctrinate the youth and educate people to become proletariat
  • Industrialization: Would create the proletariat, enabled a war industry in WWII
  • World revolution: Communism should be exported and inspired in other countries: Hungary, Berlin, suppression of communism
  • Russian politics wanted socialism under one state, and consolidated communist states within the U.S.S.R
• Violence
  • Believed in violent revolution as a necessary evil
  • Ensures royal family slaughtered to end legitimacy to the old regime
• Government
  • Democratic centralism: centralized economy and government
  • Party rule to prevent dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and allow proletariat rule
  • Wanted to spread this movement to other countries, created the Communist International
  • Government determined how to distribute resources to those that needed it
  • Centralized, planned economy
  • Believed workers would voluntarily work towards centralized economy

• Society

  • Breakdown of class distinctions
  • Access to education to allow indoctrination

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Impact

• Spread of communism
  • Spreads to other authoritarian regimes
  • Lenin-Marxism became an agrarian plan
  • Established first communist state

• WWI

  • Put in place the mechanisms to modernize Russia’s economy
  • Allowed Russia to have the military needed to be a power in the second World War

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