Biography Of Lenin & Russian Revolution P2

Table of Contents

BIOGRAPHY OF LENIN AND RUSSIAN REVOLUTION PART – 2

ROLE IN THE WORLD WAR 1

Lenin was in Galicia when the First World War broke out. During World War I Lenin went into exile again, this time taking up residence in Switzerland. As always, his mind stayed focus on revolutionary politics. During this period he wrote and published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916).
He attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists across the continent to convert the “imperialist war” into a continent-wide “civil war” with the proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
In July 1916, Lenin’s mother died, but he was unable to attend her funeral. Her death deeply affected him, and he became depressed, fearing that he too would die before seeing the proletarian revolution.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS

In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out in St. Petersburg – renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War – as industrial workers went on strike over food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions.
A tired, hungry and war-weary Russia deposed the tsars. Lenin quickly returned home and, perhaps sensing his own path to power, quickly denounced the country’s newly formed Provisional Government.
In late 1917 Lenin led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution.Three years of civil war followed. The Lenin-led Soviet government faced incredible odds. The anti-Soviet forces, or Whites fought desperately to overthrow Lenin’s Red regime.

LEADER

In November 1917, Lenin issued the Decree on Workers’ Control, which called on the workers of each enterprise to establish an elected committee to monitor their enterprise’s management.That month they also issued an order requisitioning the country’s gold, and nationalised the banks, which Lenin saw as a major step toward socialism.
In 1921, Lenin now faced the same kind of peasant uprising he’d ridden to power. Widespread strikes in cities and in rural sections of the country broke out, threatening the stability of Lenin’s government.

ECONOMIC POLICY

In October 1917, Lenin issued a decree limiting work for everyone in Russia to eight hours per day. He also issued the Decree on Popular Education that stipulated that the government would guarantee free, secular education for all children in Russia.
In April 1918, it nationalised foreign trade, establishing a state monopoly on imports and exports. In June 1918, it decreed nationalisation of public utilities, railways, engineering, textiles, metallurgy, and mining, although often these were state-owned in name only.Full-scale nationalisation did not take place until November 1920, when small-scale industrial enterprises were brought under state control
December, Sovnarkom established a Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), which had authority over industry, banking, agriculture, and trade A faction of the Bolsheviks known as the “Left Communists” criticised Sovnarkom’s economic policy

LATER YEARS

Lenin expected Russia’s aristocracy and bourgeoisie to oppose his government, but he believed that the numerical superiority of the lower classes, coupled with the Bolsheviks’ ability to effectively organise them, guaranteed a swift victory in any conflict.
During Russia’s Civil War, the Red Army was sent into the newly independent national republics on Russia’s borders to aid Marxists there in establishing soviet systems of government.
In Europe, this resulted in the creation of new communist-led states in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, all of which were officially independent of Russia.
The Treaty along with the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR was approved on December 29, 1922

LENINISM

According to his Marxist perspective, humanity would eventually reach pure communism, becoming a stateless, classless, egalitarian society of workers who were free from exploitation and alienation, controlled their own destiny, and abided by the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
Lenin’s Marxist beliefs led him to the view that society could not transform directly from its present state to communism, but must first enter a period of socialism, and so his main concern was how to convert Russia into a socialist society.
To do so, he believed that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” was necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and develop a socialist economy. He defined socialism as “an order of civilized co-operators in which the means of production are socially owned“.

DEATH

Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922, and then a second one in December of that year. With his health in obvious decline, Lenin turned his thoughts to how the newly formed USSR would be governed after he was gone.
In early 1923 he issued what came to be called as his Testament, in which a regretful Lenin expressed remorse over the dictatorial power that dominated Soviet government. He was particularly disappointed with Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party, who had begun to amass great power.
On March 10, 1923, Lenin’s health was dealt another severe blow when he suffered an additional stroke, this one taking away his ability to speak and concluding his political work. Nearly 10 months later, on January 21, 1924 he passed away in the village now known as Gorki Leninskiye. In a testament to his standing in Russian society, his corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square.