Lenin
May 10, 2023•737 words
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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