Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR
In office November 8, 1917 – January 21, 1924
Succeeded by	Alexei Rykov
Born	Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov April 22, 1870 Simbirsk, Russian Empire
Died	January 21, 1924 Gorki Leninskiye, Soviet Union
Resting place	Lenin's Mausoleum, Moscow
Political party	Bolsheviks (1918 - 1924)
Spouse(s)	Nadezhda Krupskaya ​(m. 1898)

Vladimir Lenin (born either Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ^[1] known as Volodya as a child^[2]) (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was the leader of Russian Communism and an important theoretician of Marxism. Coming to power in 1917, he became dictator of the Soviet Union. All over the Soviet Union and even to some extent some Western countries, there were statues and paintings honoring his memory; some were removed when Communism collapsed in 1991. Lenin repudiated and tried to stop his successor Joseph Stalin, who was an even worse tyrant, although his reasons were implied to be more due to Stalin's lower-class upbringing than any moral objections to Stalin, due to his dismissing Stalin as a "Georgian peasant" when someone suggested him to take Lenin's place. In addition, Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the few members of Stalin's inner circle to serve both Lenin and Stalin, when asked about who was harsher, indicated that Lenin was more severe than Stalin.^[3][4]

Early life[edit]

Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 (first Earth Day was established on what would have been his 100th birthday) to a middle-class Russian family; his parents Ilya Ulyanov and Maria Ulyanova were school teachers. According to a note by his older sister Anna that was uncovered in 2000, he had a big head and weak legs, which resulted in him toppling over onto the carpet and even the floorboards of their house, and constantly banging his head in tantrums as a result, with the wooden structure of their house acting as an echo chamber and amplifying his tantrums. In addition, even as a child, he was unruly and disturbed, including deliberately trampling over his younger brother Dmitry's theater poster collection as well as terrorizing his younger sister Maria, and on his third birthday, when given a small, papier-mache horse as a gift, he secluded himself to his room and spent his time trying to twist off its legs, ultimately leaving the room satisfied after he had done so. His own parents also had no idea on how to control him, with his mother Maria even thinking he'll likely grow up mentally retarded.^[2] In 1889, he became a Marxist after his older brother Aleksandr was hanged for the attempted murder of Tsar Aleksandr III. Lenin obtained a law degree shortly afterward, and hints at his more callous nature, including his intention of using starvations to foster his Marxist agenda, started showing itself by 1891 during the Volga famine. Acting as a high ranking member of the socialist intelligentsia at that time, he was the one voice who opposed supplying any relief aid to them, even going as far as to ruin the Samara charity committee in the process, citing that starving the peasantry would bring death to the old peasant economy and hasten their goal of Marxist revolution, or as he put it, "one shouldn’t improve [the peasants'] lives, but instead let them become bestial and unleash monstrous violence."^[5][6] By 1895, Lenin was a subversive who was arrested and sent to a prison in Siberia as punishment. He was in exile 1900-1917, during which time he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov and others to set up the clandestine newspaper Iskra (The Spark), designed to "ignite" radical consciousness. In the pages of Iskra, Lenin denounced any alliance with liberals or other elements of the bourgeoisie because they would keep power in the hands of the middle class. He emphasized social democracy—equality of condition, rather than political democracy, as the basis for individual freedom. His major theoretical publication was the pamphlet "What Is to Be Done?" (1902). In 1903 he organized and controlled the "Bolshevik" wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, fighting the opposition "Mensheviks." Lenin, like his populist predecessors in the Russian radical movement, stressed the need for a small elite vanguard to lead the revolution

Despite the disapproval of the Mensheviks, Lenin's followers continued to raise money through a mixture of bank robberies, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, and murder. Unlike the leaders of other Marxist organizations, Lenin did not spend the money on his own lifestyle and carefully strengthened his movement.

With German help, he returned to Russia after the Tsar abdicated in March 1917 and a short-lived liberal democracy allowed for free elections. At the time, most Bolsheviks were more interested in using the ballot box to gain political power. Lenin rejected elections, and declared, "History will not forgive us if we do not take power now." In addition, he did attempt to use the ballot box later on, although the Bolsheviks ended up losing in a landslide, causing him to take over via a coup.

Revolution[edit]

In 1917 Lenin opposed Russia's continued participation in World War I and advocated proceeding directly to a socialist revolution, bypassing bourgeois rule. He rejected cooperation with the Provisional Government and drove some old Bolsheviks out of the party, while co-opting many younger, more radical members. Joseph Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev, and others rallied to Lenin's side during the elections to the party's Central Committee during the 7th Party Conference in April 1917 and became the new leadership. The Bolsheviks were allowed free expression of disagreements until a decision by the Central Committee was reached, and then no opposition or disagreement was permitted. Lenin now ruled the Bolsheviks from his base in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).

In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a coup d'état which overthrew the Provisional Government which had replaced the Russian Empire. In what historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has described as a comedy of errors, the Winter Palace was shelled and the Provisional Cabinet was placed under arrest by a mixture of Red Guards and radical sailors from the Kronstadt Naval Base.

He ultimately wasn't content with merely having Russia be under Communist rule, as he sought to back the Communists in Germany in the hopes of subjecting the entirety of Western Europe at a bare minimum to Communism, proving he had no loyalty to the Imperial Germans despite their role in his gaining power. To this end, he planned to have two divisions of the Red Army invade Germany, which ultimately resulted in the Polish-Soviet War.^[7]

Dictator[edit]

Lenin ruled the Soviet Union under Marxism–Leninism, until 1922, when he had a debilitating stroke and retired.

In 1918 Lenin ordered to kill all prostitutes.^[9] One of his more infamous orders was the 1918 Hanging Order where he ordered the Cheka in Penza to find and publicly hang at least 100 kulaks, and derogatorily referred to them as "bloodsuckers".^[10]

Mass murderer[edit]

For a more detailed treatment, see Atheism and Mass Murder.

Like Stalin and Mao, and despite his more positive reputation among Leftists, Lenin also wished to exterminate the peasant class, even orchestrating famines to do so, in order to force his will on Socialism. This also proves that Communism, despite the PR, never cared at all for the poor.^[11] On a similar note, he also actively encouraged the use of terror for the revolution, to such an extent that when the second Soviet congress passed a resolution to abolish the death penalty without his knowledge due to being absent that time, he flew into a rage and screamed "Nonsense, how can you make a revolution without firing squads? Do you expect to dispose of your enemies by disarming yourself? What other means of repression are there? Prisons? Who attaches significance to that during a civil war?" That said, however, he made sure to avoid publicly endorsing the terror, having others sign the death warrants in his stead, which resulted in the false myth that he was the good and gentle ruler of the Soviet Union who was isolated from the Red Terror.^[12]

The Russian Civil War was fought between the Bolshevik-led Red Army and the White Army, which had many factions. As both sides committed gross atrocities, the White Army had only a small one wanted to restore the monarchy.

Aside from this, he and the USSR are particularly notorious as being the first state leader and country, respectively to issue unlimited and unrestrained abortions,^[13] which shocked even the likes of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and disturbed even the likes of Joseph Stalin enough to have him temporarily make abortion illegal largely because it would have ensured Russia as a country no longer existed otherwise. This was in keeping with Marx and Engels' demand for, among other things, the abolishment of the family unit.

Death[edit]

Lenin, a workaholic who avoided vacations and downtime, died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes. However, recent studies indicate that his "strokes" were actually the terminal effects of syphillis that he got from interacting with a prostitute during his exile.^[14] Joseph Stalin was his even more brutal successor.

Interpretations[edit]

See also: Marxism-Leninism and Leninthink

Lenin on revolution[edit]

Before 1917, Lenin thought that revolution was more likely to break out in Russia than in any other country on the continent, and he expected the outbreak of other revolutions in Europe, or at least in Central Europe, after the Russian Revolution. During the Civil War, he considered a short period of War Communism as an extension of the revolutionary situation from which a direct path might open toward socialism. However, after the failure of War Communism he returned to his earlier viewpoint, that is, to the necessity of a transition period. This was reflected in the New Economic Policy (NEP) - which meant a transition including both private enterprise and a market economy. Stalin deemed the transition favored by Lenin to be too dangerous, because it carried with it the threat of a defeat and an eventual restoration of capitalism. In addition, Lenin advocated perpetual civil war to eliminate all "class enemies", with this being in effect with brief pauses until 1953. He also wrote that "Revolutions are the locomotive of history…Revolutions are the holiday of the oppressed and exploited."^[11]

Dictatorship of the proletariat[edit]

see also Dictatorship of the proletariat Lenin saw the Marxist concept of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" in terms of a dictatorship exercised not by a democratically chosen majority but by a vanguard minority revolutionary party, ruthlessly controlled by a few leaders like himself. He eventually accepted the need for a state bureaucracy, and his more extreme opposition to the bourgeoisie led him to favor their exclusion and disenfranchisement to the benefit of the urban working class.

Leninism as a religion[edit]

Lenin's utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosi was a typical political religion of an intelligentsia longing for an inner-worldly salvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the backward Russian society at the outskirts of the industrialized and modernized Western Europe. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 accomplished the institutionalization of a political religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals, and stigmatized social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as a messianic and numinous leader. This process of iconographic work in progress culminated after Lenin's death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served as the monumental centerpiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinist orthodoxy. Joseph Stalin's invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism–Leninism qualified him as the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallible interpretation of the holy scriptures, summarized in his own dogmatic performances. In this sense, Stalin's Leninism became itself the religion of the Soviet state.^[15]

Identity Politics[edit]

Lenin turned Russia into autonomous republics so not one ethnic group will have too much power; Communist theory denies the existence of race but the adherents flip flop to favor one group over another. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, whose disciples include Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, borrowed his approach to identity politics. The first Ukrainians were Carpathian Russians in Austria-Hungary who denounced Orthodox Christianity for Roman Catholicism in 1893, and then when the Ukrainian People's Republic gained independence after the first Russian Revolution in 1917, he retook the country the next year and expanded it's territory, making it an artificial state in the style of the EU.^{[16][17][18][19]} As a consequence, Ukraine became a second Yugoslavia.^[20] In 1948, the CIA report NSC 20/1, section 4: “US objectives with respect to Russia” warned that separating Ukraine from Russia will not work.^[21] When splitting the Transcaucasian republics in 1922, he gave the Armenian territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. In addition, Lenin and his Bolshevik followers created Central Asian republics, some of which never existed before, like Kazakhstan, gave them many Russian lands that did not belong to them, like Orenburg and other territories populated by Ural Cossacks and provided for building their infrastructure, hospitals, schools etc., by those in the Russian workforce, with Russians being qualified specialists.

Image and memory[edit]

After his death in 1924, Stalin portrayed Lenin as an infallible humanitarian; his writings were viewed as gospel. Museums were devoted to his life and work, cities were named for him, and huge statues and monuments honored his memory. Beginning in 1985, however, the Lenin cult began to crumble. Party chairman Mikhail Gorbachev was a faithful disciple of Lenin, but he now faced the reality that the economically bankrupt Communist state was rapidly decaying. As the Communist nation unraveled, so did the Lenin personality cult. Leningrad residents voted to restore the St. Petersburg name; the once-crowded museums attracted few visitors; and Lenin's philosophy and actions were found less than perfect. In 1991 as Communism fell, the statues and paintings went into cold storage. By 1995 plans were being made to bury Lenin's corpse, which was finally acknowledged to be putrefying just as the remains of any other mortal, as the cult itself fell into "the dustbin of history."^[22] His memory also faltered, ironically enough ending up being behind Stalin, largely because of more exposure to his unprincipled and horrific crimes.^[23]

Legacy[edit]

His transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union ultimately led to Communism being exported throughout most of the world, and leading to well over tens of millions of death. In addition, there is evidence to suggest the anti-cop violence during the 2010s often encouraged by Barack Obama were derived from similar rhetoric by Lenin.^[24][25][26]

Quotes from Lenin[edit]

• "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth... We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us."

• "The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses."

• "The best revolutionary is youth devoid of morals."

• "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

• "The goal of socialism is communism."

• "There are no morals in politics there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."

• "Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever." (see Public school values and Professor values)

• "Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism."

• "It matters not if 90% of the Russian people perish so long as 10% bring about a world revolution."^[27]

See also[edit]

• Karl Marx
• Joseph Stalin
• Dictatorship
  • List of dictators
  • Dictatorship of the proletariat
  • List of Communist States
  • Death toll of communism
• Cult of personality
• Single-party state
• Mobocracy, Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution, Anti-Semitism, Communist Racism, Genocide, Holocaust
• National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party)
• National Socialism - the Nazis were elitist Police state liberals not conservatives
• Big government Welfare state leads to Nanny state, leads to Police state: Globalist-Statist-Socialist-Communist
• Liberal totalitarianism
  • Leninthink - a specific subset of liberal totalitarianism coined by its founder Vladimir Lenin.

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Biography[edit]

• Clark, Ronald W. Lenin (1988). 570 pp.
• Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography (2002), 561pp; standard scholarly biography; a short version of his 3 vol detailed biography
• Volkogonov, Dmitri. Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994). 600 pp.

Specialized scholarly studies[edit]

• Anderson, Kevin. Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (1995) 311 pp.
• Copleston, Frederick Charles. Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev (1986). 445pp. by a conservative
• Debo, Richard K. Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-1921 (1992).
• Marples, David R. Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917-1921 (2000) 156pp. short survey
• Pipes, Richard. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1996) excerpt and text search, by a leading conservative
• Pipes, Richard. Communism: A History (2003), by a leading conservative
• Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. (1994). 608 pp.
• Pomper, Philip. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power. (1990). 446 pp.
• Schapiro, Leonard and Reddaway, Peter, eds. Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader - a Reappraisal (1987). 317 pp.
• White, James D. Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (2001) 262pp.

Primary sources[edit]

• Desai, Meghnad, ed. Lenin's Economic Writings. (1989). 363 pp.
• Pipes, Richard, ed. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive. (1996). 185 pp.

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