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How Did Lenin Come To Power In Russia

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In the aftermath of the previous February Revolution, there was power sharing between the weak Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. The October Revolution was a much more calculated event, orchestrated by a small group of people: the Bolsheviks. Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks launched a coup d'état against the Provisional Government and seized power, occupying strategic locations such as government buildings and forming a new government with Lenin as its head. The October Revolution was a watershed in Russian history, affecting Russia's economy, society, culture, international politics and industrial development. Russia's new leaders were drawn mainly from the intellectual and working classes rather than from the aristocracy. …show more content…

To put this into context, Lenin was aware that the Provisional Government's willingness to continue Russia's participation in the war contributed to its unpopularity. His promise of peace can therefore be seen as a way of consolidating Bolshevik power in Russia, as well as offering a different vision of foreign policy from the Provisional Government and Russia's Tsarist past. However, this source does not paint a full picture of Russia's exit from the war. In actuality, Russia's formal exit from the war was politically complicated and expensive for the Bolsheviks. Negotiations for a peace treaty began in December 1917, headed by Leon Trotsky and German and Austrian representatives. Trotsky had tried to stall negotiations, hoping that a socialist revolution would break out in Germany before signing a treaty that could potentially involve granting territory to the Central Powers. In his autobiography My Life …show more content…

The CHEKA, the Bolshevik secret police headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, targeted any individual or group deemed to be a threat to Bolshevik power, including Tsarists, liberals, non-Bolshevik socialists and kulaks (wealthy peasants). This could be said to be a practical implementation of the Marxist concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. As explained by Lenin in The State and Revolution (1917), "the supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution." The utility of this source is that it lays the groundwork for political action, shaping the character of Bolshevik politics (owing to Lenin's leadership). Thus, Krasnaya Gazeta, a pro-Bolshevik newspaper, announced the start of the Red Terror on 1st September 1918: "We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky, Zinoviev and Volodarski, let

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Revolutionists explanation of October Revolution is based on the importance of the force of the masses which created the revolutionary nature of the society leading to cardinal reforms. Lenin was indeed a key figure and the Bolshevik party was able to meet the demand of the masses which raised their popularity. This view shows a direct conflict between a revolutionist and liberal ‘totalitarian’ schools that implements Lenin and Stalin as the only people that caused terror and emplaced control over

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Research question: "Was Stalin's Great Terror in the late 1930s driven by a fear of foreign infiltration?" This investigation focuses on the late 1930s when the state-orchestrated purges were most intense. This investigation studies the purge of foreign elements who might betray the state during war. The purge of the Red Army and the intelligence apparatus is analysed in relation to the threat of these organisations being penetrated by foreign countries. The Kulak Operation is analysed in relation to the threat of foreign countries encouraging rebellion amongst kulaks.

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During the 20th century, Russia was experiencing turmoil in war and the country was deeply affected with Tsar Nicholas’s wrong decisions and lack of experience in politics. After the 1917 revolution in Russia, Lenin became the ruler of Russia and the USSR and proved to be the best Russian ruler of the 20th century. Before then, Tsarism dominated and Nicholas II was in power until he foresaw many revolutions against his methods of ruling. He remained as the supreme ruler and did not take actions for reforms. However, after the 1917 revolution, which Lenin masterminded, the Tsar was overthrown and the Bolsheviks established a stable government which took control in Russia.

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Question: Evaluate the rule of Stalin in the Soviet Union, taking into consideration the changes made and the methods used. Russia’s turbulent start in the 20th century was characterized by their involvement in the first world war, being the critical factor in the Bolsheviks seize for power in the October Revolution in 1917. Vladimir Lenin rose into power and lead Russia toward a communist nation with extreme centralization and doctrinaire socialism but the Kronstadt Rebellion of March 1921 forced Vladimir Lenin to begin the New Economic Party in order to stay in power. The policy allowed private ownership and management of agriculture, trade, and small businesses. However, upon Lenin’s death in 1924, rose Joseph Stalin as the leader of

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Joseph Stalin and His Rise to Power Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili was born on December 18th 1878 in Gori, Georgia, which, at the time, was still part of Russia. His early years consisted of hardship, having been born an only child to an impoverished family with an alcoholic father who abused him and contracting smallpox that left him riddled with facial scars. In his teens he was granted a scholarship in order to study priesthood at the Georgian Orthodox Church, where he secretly began reading the writings of Karl Marx, and would eventually throw away his scholarship and be kicked from the school for missing exams, having claimed it to be for communist propaganda. He soon became a political agitator, fighting for the revolutionary movements against the Russian monarchy by partaking in strikes and demonstrations; however, these peaceful protests soon turned into bank heists, of which the money went to the Bolshevik Party, and would get him “arrested multiple times between 1902 and 1913, and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia”(“Mini-biography on the life of Joseph Stalin” 2009).

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The first victims of this purge were Zinoviev and Kamenev which were arrested on false charges in which Stalin’s secret police brutally beat them until they confessed to killing Kirov. After them the leader of the trade union, Mikhail Tomsky, committed suicide. Then former Red Army chief Mikhail Tulchaehevsky was arrested and shot. Stalin’s purge killed more than 40,000 Red Army officers. No one was safe from Stalin so that put terror in everyone’s hearts much like Ivan the

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Stalin not only followed Lenin’s example of terrorism against citizens, but he exceeded Lenin’s

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Lenin’s new government wanted to peacefully take Russia out of World War I, with no imperialism or capitalism involved. Russia had lost about one-third of its population (1.7 million soldiers) from World War I. Lenin, through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, took Russia out of World War I due to the lives and resources the war caused Russia to lose. “‘Peace’, in Lenin’s usage, meant not only withdrawal from the imperialist war but also recognition that such withdrawal ‘is impossible...without the overthrow of capital’” (Fitzpatrick 51). Lenin wanted to get rid of capitalism and imperialism in Russia because of the unrest he knew it would cause, in order to create and preserve peace in

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The first duty that Lenin took on when he got into a high position of authority was sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which was an agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire, in early March of 1918, which meant that Russia could instantaneously evade the First World War. Although, aside from this immense change in Russia’s level of nonviolence and peacefulness, Lenin was forced to modify his preliminary ideals as he found it was impossible to follow through with them after the treaty had been engaged. The widespread famine continued onwards and remained stagnant, for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk assured that Germany would benefit from this and not Russia. As for the land, Lenin was only able to grant peasants a little bit of land, but not as much as anybody was expecting. Lenin’s final adage was “All power to the Soviets,” although this principle was completely modified as well in the end.

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Peter Oxley has estimated that of the 10 million deaths during the Civil War, 9,500,000 were due to famine and disease. Volkogonov has acknowledged the damaging effects of War Communism, stating that, “the Bolsheviks were incapable of giving the people anything but…hunger and terror”. Furthermore, in the Cheka (formed in December 1917) spread terror throughout Russia, which was particular poignant following Lenin’s order in February 1918, that all counter revolutionaries and individuals assisting counterrevolutionaries be arrested immediately. Thus, the Russian Revolution forced numerous individuals to live in impoverished conditions, and subjected them to terror in the form of the Cheka (who were given power of trial and execution in February 1918). Despite this, certain aspects of life in the new regime were positive following the Bolshevik takeover, and an examples of this are Lenin’s initial reforms.

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The Russian Revolution, which was started by Lenin and his followers, was a rebellion that occurred in 1917 which forced higher powers to act to the needs of the lower class. For instance, many citizens were worried for their protection in consequence to the lack of survival necessities due to an early drought. Furthermore, their current czar during the time was incapable for his position as a czar and made horrendous decisions as czar. For example, when the czar, Nicholas, entered in World War I, he sent untrained troops into countless battles of failure which costed in mass amounts of lost life (paragraph 23).

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Andre Abi Haidar PSPA 210 INTRODUCTION It is always difficult to write about and discuss Karl Marx, or more importantly the applications of Marx’s theories, due to the fact that he inspired and gave rise to many movements and revolutionaries, not all of which follow his theories to the point. Although Marx tends to be equated with Communism, it might not seem righteous to blame him for whatever shortcomings occurred when his theories were put to the test; Marx passed away well before the revolution in Russia, and he played no role in the emergence of the totalitarian regime at the time. When discussing Marx, however, Vladimir Lenin is one of the biggest highlights when it comes to studying the outcomes of Marx’s theories.

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During the crisis months of 1917, the Soviet and Provisional Government worked together. This all changed when Vladimir Ilich Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, heard the news of the February Revolution and returned to Russia from exile. When Lenin arrived at the Petrograd station, he set out his April Theses. His slogans were ‘Peace, Land and Bread’ and ‘All power to the soviets’, increasing support for the Bolsheviks, particularly in the Petrograd Soviet and

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“Is what you want? A miserable little bourgeois republic? In the name of the great Soviet republic of labour we declare war to the death on such a government!” (Bukharin, 1917) . The Russians were fed up of being poorly treated by their own country, so they decided to take a stance.

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