Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov: The Bolshevik Revolution

A leader is the one in charge, the person who convinces other people to follow; a great leader inspires confidence in people and guides them to action. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) “was the founder of the Communist Party, the Soviet State and the Bolshevik System in Russia”(Volkogonov 1) and he motivated the Russian people to stand up to what he considered a corrupted government and to start the revolution. Russia was never the same after Vladimir Lenin and neither was World War 1. Lenin created extreme pressure on the Allied Powers and he was responsible for Germany taking on new responsibilities. Lenin’s large group of followers impacted the nation’s ability to continue the war effort. Although history has recorded his name

During this period Vladimir’s group of revolutionaries were not in support of the war and there were more and more believers of this everyday, even including Russian soldiers. In 1917, the minister of war led a series of speeches to convince soldiers to keep the war effort up. At this time the Bolsheviks were already influencing the soldiers in ways Kerensky couldn’t stop. The July Offensive was an attack from the Russian army to advance their troops, but it abruptly ended because of low moral and not enough supplies. The July Offensive made “a rapid increase in the number of men deserting, an estimated 2 million men had unofficially left the army”(Simkin 3). The decline in the Russians military started creating conflicts between Russian Generals and their decisions on military action. The fact that men were leaving the army and some men were completely disobedient with orders given to them created all sorts of chaos within the army. The Germans started advancing into Russia, the only thing left to do was for Russia to give up their land. At this point Russia was pulling out of World War 1. This was the start to Lenin’s domino effect in Russia, which began with the influence of his followers in the war

In December 1917, Germany (on behalf of the Central Powers also) negotiated a treaty with Russia to create peace. This treaty left Germany with ¼ of Russia’s territory including, “the Baltic States, Poland, Finland, the East Anatolian provinces, Ukraine, the districts of Erdehan, Kars and Batum”(Kitchen 2). In addition to gaining new territory, Germany also got one million square kilometers and 50 million inhabitants. At this point in time Russia was in a revolution and the people were in an uproar. Now that Germany had gained so much territory from Russia, it was their responsibility to keep it from breaking out in chaos and civil war. Many troops were now available to use that originally fought on the Eastern front but much of the territory gained from Russia needed to be occupied with troops to enforce the treaty and detain the people. This introduced a great disadvantage to Germany, a lot of the newly acquired troops could not be shipped to the eastern front to help fight the Allied Powers and due to the civil war that broke out in the Soviet Union, there was disruption to agriculture in the German territory. Farms and markets were now battlefields and the Germans could not use their new territory as sources of food for their army. These setbacks from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk made it more difficult for Germany to fight the war to the best of their ability and maybe even caused the outcome of Central