Vladimir Lenin Essay

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners” (Lenin). Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, and architect and first head of the Soviet state. He was also the inspiration for ‘Leninism” which was conjoined with Marx's work to create Marxism-Leninism. He has been regarded as one of the greatest revolutionary leaders and thinkers since Marx. Vladimir Lenin was an important Russian leader that helped shape Russian society to what it is now.

therefore he had the control of most things . This is to say he was

Once eliminating Trotsky, Stalin’s idea of, “socialism in our country,” inevitably meant that Russia needed strength. The productions in the USSR had almost reached pre-war levels by the mid-1920s, but the population of Russia had also increased by 20 million people. No matter, Stalin assured that maximum efforts and resources would be given to the expansion and strengthening of Russia herself rather than an effort to start a revolution elsewhere. This is explained in his famous 1931 speech, gaining power for himself. The people had nowhere else to turn to and needed a leader. Stalin was there and knew what to do to make the people interested in his ideas, thus acquired their trust and control. From these ideas, he created his first

Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin were both Bolsheviks looking to make a communist state in Russia. They both had ideals and methods that brought them to where they got to and what they had achieved. While Lenin was more of a democratic follower, and allowed inter-party discussions, he was also a great theorist of socialism. He was also a communist who focused on the temporary capitalist development of Russia. As for Stalin, he was an opportunist politician, and was also a communist mostly just for his personal benefits and gains. He had and followed socialist policies and didn’t have the best personality and attitude, he was quite rude and disgraceful. These two leaders were mainly shaped into who they were due to their past, by comparing them, it will show if their pasts affected their ideology and methods as how different it was, also seeing how with the similar aims, how with their different attitudes and personality, they were able to

In 1917, Russia was crumbling into pieces. The World War I was draining all of Russia’s resources. There was shortage of food throughout the country, which left people starving. At the battlefront, millions of Russian soldiers were dying, they did not possess many of the powerful weapons that their opponents had. The government under Czar Nicholas II was disintegrating, and a provisional government had been set up. In November of 1917, Lenin and his communist followers known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and set a communist government in Russia. However, in 1924, Lenin died and Josef Stalin assumed leadership of the Soviet Union, which was the name for the communist Russia. Stalin was a ruthless leader who brought

Trotsky’s overall role in the Soviet Union is indisputable as his strategic leadership skills enabled him to play a fundamental role in the organisation and implementation of the November 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power and the Civil War of 1918-21. However, the importance of Lenin’s role must also be taken into account to achieve a more balanced portrayal, as many of Trotsky’s successes were based on Lenin’s initiatives. Although Lenin held authority over the Bolshevik’s, it

In order to establish whether Lenin did, indeed lay the foundation for Stalinism, two questions need to be answered; what were Lenin’s plans for the future of Russia and what exactly gave rise to Stalinism? Official Soviet historians of the time at which Stalin was in power would have argued that each one answers the other. Similarly, Western historians saw Lenin as an important figure in the establishment of Stalin’s socialist state. This can be partly attributed to the prevailing current of pro-Stalin anti-Hitler sentiments amongst westerners until the outbreak of the cold war. As relations changed between Russia and the rest of the world, so did the main historical schools of thought.

According to History.com Staff, “The provisional government had created a group of leaders from Russia’s bourgeois capitalist class. Lenin would alternatively call for a Soviet state that would be controlled directly by councils of workers, peasants, and soldiers.” (“Russian Revolution”). Both decided that the Soviets was going to be a useful instrument in the next revolution. They didn't want the Soviets to have all the power until they could control them. In the book, Rise and fall of Communism 2009, Archie Brown shows us that, “On 12 October, according to the old calendar, Trotsky took command of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and on 25 October...the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd” (Brown 51). Insurrection was to start, but there were complications with the date set. In the book, The History of the Russian Revolution 1960, Leon Trotsky says, “At a session of the Petrograd Soviet on the 18th, Trotsky, in answer to a question raised by the enemy, declared that the Soviet had not set a date for an insurrection, in the coming days, but that if it became necessary to set one, the workers and soldiers would come out as one man” (Trotsky 162). There were forty thousand workers in the army of Petrograd.

The Bolshevik party was based on Marxist ideals, ideals which sought to rid society of class conflict and create an egalitarian society. After the fall of the provisional government, the Bolsheviks were now able to implement an economic policy of their own, introducing a form of communism called ‘War Communism’. It was a form of strict communism that, amongst many things, took money out of circulation and banned private enterprise. It should, therefore, seem surprising that the Bolshevik government got rid of this policy, a policy which espoused many Marxist principles of destroying interclass conflict through the abolition of private enterprise, and replacing it with the NEP, a policy which at first glance, may resemble something much more capitalist orientated than would one expect of a party based on communist ideals. The NEP was a policy that reintroduced “a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control” . This may have therefore have been a step back from achieving a Marxist utopia in the Russian State but it can be argued that the continuance of war communism would have ultimately led to the utter economic collapse of the Russian state and the NEP prevented this from occurring.

Lenin grew up in a middle class family but was never fond of the political party and the class system. Having a Marxist political belief system, Lenin wanted the government to own and control everything. After taking control of the Soviet Union, Lenin wanted supreme power for himself and the government, with hopes to make all of the citizens’ equal. Throughout his reign, the Soviet Union was crowded with war, disease, and destruction. His idea of a perfect communist society was anything but

The difference between Lenin and Stalin was that Stalin wanted this all done in ten years so he was more drastic than Lenin. Peasants were not at all pleased because they liked how they were prospering before, so to retaliate they burned their crops and slaughtered their livestock as to sabotage what the central government was trying to do and how they were trying to get it done.18 The slaughter of livestock and burning of crops led to the famine of 1931-1932 that caused the death of five to seven million people.19 The Ukraine was especially hit hard by famine it was not unusual for families to starve and stay alive for as long as they could then they would just die.20 The famine caused so many deaths that trains were needed to collect corpses from peasant villages who had died from starvation .21 In extreme cases, although not too uncommon, families would turn to cannibalism to stay alive. Some families even murdered their children and would eat them in order to continue on living.22 In order to get the actual work done Stalin made changes in society. One change was the conditions of labor, now forced labor was the norm and it was always intensely disciplined.23 There were life and death incentives to having a job. If someone was fired from their job then they were

In 1922, by gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmaneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, established totalitarian rule, which contains a series of radical economic reformations, aiming at thoroughly change the agricultural and industrial structure. The new policies, known as Stalinism, indicate that the New Economic Policy has been annihilated. Stalinist policies and ideas, as developed in the Soviet Union, included rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a centralized state, collectivization of agriculture, cult of personality (Jan Plamper, 2012) and

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was the seizure of power by the radical Marxists led by Vladimir Lenin and was one of the pivotal moments of the 20th Century. The ramifications of the event, and the subsequent establishment of the world's first Communist regime were immediately obvious, but also had continuing repercussions for decades. This essay will argue that although Lenin and Stalin seemed to have conflicting views, in reality they shared very similar policies; Stalin just took these policies to an extreme.

One step forwards, two steps back. This was the mantra of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as he consolidated power during the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 (Lenin 1941). In the statement, Lenin illustrates the idea that every attempt or step towards progress only succeeded in creating new challenges, new problems, out from the woodworks. Sixteen years into the 21st Century, this catchphrase seems to be the running theme, or perhaps joke, of the new millennium. The internet has connected all of humanity in ways that have never before been seen throughout the history of mankind, yet it also opened the door for cyber terrorism, illegal surveillance, and the efficient propagation of dangerous hateful ideologies. Progress in the field of medicine races forwards at the speed of light, but pharmaceutical companies are greedy. They hold onto their patents with vice grips and raise prices of essential medications while they cost only pennies to produce.

In the beginning Communism seemed to the people of Russia as a utopian ideal. The promise of the elimination of classes, of guaranteed employment, "The creation of a comprehensive social security and welfare system for all citizens that would end the misery of workers once and for all." Lenin's own interpretation of the Marxian critique was that to achieve Communism there would first have to be a socialist dictatorship to first suppress any dissent or protest. Through coercive tactics this new government seized power and in 1917 Lenin came to power. Under his "rule" Russia underwent radical changes in it's economic doctrines adopting a mixed which was termed the New Economic Policy, also referred to as NEP. This