He yearned for greatness, to be on top of everyone and everything. His economic policy was created to make Russia an industrial powerhouse. His 5-year plan would enable rapid industrialization by coordinate investments and production to collectivize agriculture and build heavy industry. Stalin bragged about to booming economy, seeing that much of the capitalist economy in the West was struggling through economic depression post-World War 1. This success, though, came at the cost of human life, with millions dead from man-made famine and cheap labor in gulags.
During the Russian Revolution, Lenin was the first Marxist leader of Russia from 1917-1924. For him, democracy was a form of the State, and in turn, a form of oppression. He believed that democracy was a way to make the people of Russia compliant. He saw Parliament as mask for the government, and that officials would make it seem like they were doing good for the public but end up going behind closed doors to make official changes in their favor. This is something he wanted to change.
This had created an opposition among us fellow Bolsheviks. Lenin did not trust the masses to make a revolution he felt they were only capable of a trade union consciousness. He had favoured a dictatorship of the Bolshevik party over the working class. He had begun to not trust us rank and files of the Bolshevik party workers. Lenin had begun to get his ideas out with a newspaper called Pravda, I personally enjoyed reading his paper and it had become at once in his hands a powerful instrument to overthrow of bourgeois society.
Seton-Watson, a British Historian stated “He was a devoted husband and father, loved the country and wildlife, and was a good landlord. Of constitutional, social and economic problems, he understood little.” In the matter of demands for political freedom and equal rights, the Tsar turned a deaf ear to constant liberals. His belief that it was his right to have unlimited control over the Russian people was of more importance than the harsh lives of the Russian peasants which formed 70% of his subjects. His inability to understand the existing social conditions in Russia and needs of the lower social classes enhanced the Tsar’s ignorance towards issues that Russia was confronted with within the 20th century.
Lenin’s actions are a prime example of a Bolshevik doing whatever it took for the sake of their country including fleeing to Switzerland, putting aside his beliefs for the sake of progress, and looking out for the future USSR from his deathbed. Lenin’s plan to save Russia would have been considered criminal, so he fled the country, his home, to avoid arrest from the czar’s secret police, still keeping in contact and working from a distance. When he returned from exile and gained power, given the ruined economy, trade, and production, Lenin put aside his plan for state-control and allowed a little capitalism in the New Economic Policy which recovered the country by 1928. Even after suffering a stroke Lenin voiced his opinion on Stalin as a successor, fearing the mishandling of power and his country’s fate. Lenin was a deserved leader of the Bolsheviks because he was willing to give everything to his
Along with the progress achieved by the Labour movement in Britain this would lead to a shift towards social democracy and the idea that socialism should develop naturally, as is the case in modern day Scandinavia. In a world without Lenin, socialism would not have the negative connotations of the Gulags, and would return to its humanistic roots. Moreover, this exercise in remodeling history does not exist in a vacuum. It gives us a principle which should be adopted the real world as well.
Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary who played a vital role in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet Union. Lenin's ideas about communism emphasized the need for a classless society in which the state would own and control the means of production. While Lenin's ideas were initially motivated by a desire for social justice and equality, the implementation of his policies led to the suppression of
He used the policies and ideas of Lenin and combined them with his own to change Russia to a communist world. His control over Russia meant that freedom was the one thing that people lost. The people of Russia had to read what
This alone could have been enough to fuel a revolution because there were so many people in need of this support from the government. The final act of reform he promised to give directly to the people is guaranteeing all the nation in Russia to have the right to self-determination. The people are going from a government that was unfair and did not give people much say in how the government was ran to a nation determined by the people. On top of this all the food, peace, workers reform, land reform, and government reform lead to the obvious choice to join the Russian
His contributions to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution can be conspicuously seen in his role in foreign affairs, the recruiting, outfitting and disciplining the Bolshevik Red Guard and his belligerence in the Russia’s civil wars, in which he achieved communist victory. It was a tumultuous time in Russia before the dawn of 1917. Citizens had grown weary of the aristocracy of Czar Nicholas II. During this period the Russian government was fraught with corruption, and the economy was regressive. However, despite the tempestuous climate of Russia due to Czar Nicholas II rule, the most immediate cause of the revolution can be traced to Russia’s ruinous involvement in World War I
Lee argues “Lenin’s diplomacy… ensured Bolshevik survival in this crucial period” . This correctly recognises Lenin’s key role in the Bolshevik success. The Reds’ organisation and control from the central government was hugely important for their win. In August 1918, Lenin finalised a trade agreement where the Bolsheviks were to pay six billion marks and provide Germany with one-quarter of the oil production of Baku on the Caspian Sea. This meant that the Reds could take their focus off the west, especially the Ukraine, and move their forces to better deal with the Socialist Revolutionaries in the east.
When the time came, and Lenin felt that it is suitable to take action, it can be argued that he did not look at Marx for answers, but due to his practical nature, preferred looking at the state that Russia was in, and based his actions on that. This was because Lenin felt that the world had changed since Marx’s time, primarily due to the development of
Marx saw capital and liberal democracies as the fundamental reasons for the low standards of living and the low social conditions of workers. Karl Marx in particular is especially concerned with the political assumptions behind these two ideologies. According to him, these two types of government should be replaced by communism, since communism would provide a more equal and socially just society. Although this statement may seem unusual, since we tend to associate communism with Stalin and China, the type of communism implemented in these countries is different from the communism that Marx and Engels envisaged in their Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels’ vision of communism is based on the principle of equality among the people and freedom
Karl Marx was a German philosopher and economist in the 18th century. He is known for his book the Communist Manifesto that was published in 1848. Marx believed that a revolution of the working classes would over throw the capitalist order and creates a classless society. The Industrial Revolutions led to the proletarianization; his partner Friedrich Engels explained why the changes created by the proletarianization of the worker would develop into a huge problem for industrial societies. I do believe that Karl Marx’s vision of communism in the Communist Manifesto could re-emerge as a popular and workable philosophy of social, economic, and political organization.
“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.
