Lenin
From Conservapedia
Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov [1]) (1870-1924) was the leader of Russian Communism. Coming to power in 1917 he became dictator of the Soviet Union.
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Early Life
Lenin was born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1870. In 1889, he became a Marxist after his older brother was hanged for the murder of Tsar Aleksandr II. Lenin obtained a law degree shortly afterwards, and by 1895 was a subversive who was arrested and sent to Siberia as punishment. Once he served his time he left for Western Europe, where he developed his plans further and used his writings to divide the Russian Social Democrats into Leninists, or Bolsheviks, and Anti-Leninists, or Mensheviks. Despite disapproval of the Mensheviks, Lenin's followers continued to raise money through a mixture of piracy, bank robberies, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, and murder. Unlike the leaders of other Marxist organizations, Lenin did not spent the money on his own lifestyle and carefully strengthened his movement.
He returned to Russia after the tsar abdicated in March 1917 and arrived and the Finland Station. At the time, most Bolsheviks were more interested in using the ballot box to gain political power. Lenin, however, refused even to consider this and declared, "History will not forgive us if we do not take power now."
Revolution
In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a coup d'etat which overthrew the Provisional Government which had replaced the Russian Empire. In what historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has described as a comedy of errors, the Winter Palace was shelled and the Provisional Cabinet was placed under arrest by a mixture of Red Guards and radical sailors from the Kronstadt Naval Base. In the aftermath, the victorious beseigers engaged in a drunken celebration in the Palace's wine cellars and gang raped the units of female volunteers who had been gaurding the Cabinet.
Dictator
(In the night of July 16-17, 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police murdered Russia's last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his wife, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their 14-year-old son, Tsarevich Alexis, and their four daughters.)[2] He then ruled the Soviet Union under Marxism-Leninism, until 1922, when he retired due to ill health. Lenin's government was notable for placing a woman, Alexandra Kollontai, as Commissar of Social Welfare at a time when positions of authority routinely went to men. She resigned early the following year over a difference of opinion where she was in the minority, but continued to be active in Soviet politics.[3]. Lenin's government also denounced anti-Semitism by the old Russian government in a speech in March 1919 [4].
Lenin died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes.
Lenin used concentration camps and "reeducation" to impose the atheistic ideology upon the population.
| “ | A wide campaign of "education" was undertaken to show the people why "workers' rule" meant, in practice, managers' rule. Where necessary, the education by the word was supplemented with education by firing squad or concentration camp or forced labour battalion. [5] | ” |
The régime of Josef Stalin, the next Premier of the USSR, continued the oppression of the masses initiated by Lenin.
