Difference between revisions of "Vladimir Lenin"

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[[Image:Khvhkgfiy.jpg|right|thumb|Vladimir Lenin]]
'''Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin''' (Russian: Владимир Ильич Улянов, Ленин) (1870-1924) was the 1st Premier of the [[USSR]]
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'''Vladimir Lenin''' (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov <ref>"Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (Russian: Владимир Ильич Улянов, Ленин) was the pseudonym he used after 1900 to disguise his identity.</ref>) (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was the leader of Russian [[Communism]] and an important theoretician of [[Marxism]]. Coming to power in 1917, he became dictator of the [[Soviet Union]].  All over the Soviet Union and even to some extent some Western countries, there were statues and paintings honoring his memory; some were removed when Communism collapsed in 1991.  Lenin repudiated and tried to stop his successor [[Joseph Stalin]], who was an even worse tyrant.
 +
 
 +
==Early life==
 +
Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 (first [[Earth Day]] was established on what would have been his 100th birthday) to a middle-class Russian family; his parents Ilya Ulyanov and Maria Ulyanova were school teachers.  In 1889, he became a [[Marxist]] after his older brother Aleksandr was hanged for the attempted murder of Tsar Aleksandr III.  Lenin obtained a law degree shortly afterward, and hints at his more callous nature, including his intention of using starvations to foster his Marxist agenda, started showing itself by 1891 during the Volga famine. Acting as a high ranking member of the socialist intelligentsia at that time, he was the one voice who opposed supplying any relief aid to them, even going as far as to ruin the Samara charity committee in the process, citing that starving the peasantry would bring death to the old peasant economy and hasten their goal of Marxist revolution, or as he put it, "one shouldn’t improve [the peasants'] lives, but instead let them become bestial and unleash monstrous violence."<ref>https://canadafreepress.com/article/vladimir-lenin-russias-original-cold-blooded-communist-revolutionary</ref><ref>https://www.rferl.org/amp/lenin-at-150-even-without-covid-19-russia-was-set-to-snub-the-soviet-union-s-founder/30568383.html?fbclid=IwAR2s0upNQ-WaEeeXyJBcVF3mL1InW2ynJmOoqg7PkC7Y9OzPSL2X5bXaMDY</ref> By 1895, Lenin was a [[subversion (political)|subversive]] who was arrested and sent to a prison in [[Siberia]] as punishment.  He was in exile 1900-1917, during which time he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov and others to set up the clandestine newspaper ''Iskra'' (The Spark), designed to "ignite" radical consciousness.  In the pages of ''Iskra'', Lenin denounced any alliance with liberals or other elements of the bourgeoisie because they would keep power in the hands of the middle class. He emphasized social democracy—equality of condition, rather than political democracy, as the basis for individual freedom.  His major theoretical publication was the pamphlet "What Is to Be Done?"  (1902). In 1903 he organized and controlled the '''"Bolshevik"''' wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, fighting the opposition "Mensheviks." Lenin, like his populist predecessors in the Russian radical movement, stressed the need for a small elite vanguard to lead the revolution
 +
 
 +
Despite the disapproval of the Mensheviks, Lenin's followers continued to raise money through a mixture of bank robberies, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, and murder. Unlike the leaders of other Marxist organizations, Lenin did not spend the money on his own lifestyle and carefully strengthened his movement.
 +
 
 +
With German help, he returned to Russia after the [[Tsar]] abdicated in March 1917 and a short-lived liberal democracy allowed for free elections. At the time, most Bolsheviks were more interested in using the ballot box to gain political power. Lenin rejected elections, and declared, "History will not forgive us if we do not take power now." In addition, he did attempt to use the ballot box later on, although the Bolsheviks ended up losing in a landslide, causing him to take over via a coup.
  
 
==Revolution==
 
==Revolution==
In November 1917, Lenin, the great leader of the [[Communist Party]], led a Proletarian Revolution to overthrew the Provisional Government that had replaced the Empire.
+
In 1917 Lenin opposed Russia's continued participation in World War I and advocated proceeding directly to a socialist revolution, bypassing bourgeois rule. He rejected cooperation with the Provisional Government and drove some old Bolsheviks out of the party, while co-opting many younger, more radical members. [[Joseph Stalin]], [[Grigori Zinoviev]], and others rallied to Lenin's side during the elections to the party's Central Committee during the 7th Party Conference in April 1917 and became the new leadership. The Bolsheviks were allowed free expression of disagreements until a decision by the Central Committee was reached, and then no opposition or disagreement was permitted. Lenin now ruled the Bolsheviks from his base in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
  
Lenin was one of the most influential persons in all of history. He was both a thinker and a revolutionary. He was an atheist. In 1889, he became a Marxist (as previously formulated by [[Karl Marx]]). He 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 ideas further and became a leader of the Bolsheviks. He returned to Russia after the [[tsar]] abdicated in March 1917, and then Lenin led the Bolsheviks to power in the "October Revolution" (November in the Gregorian calendar). He then ruled the Soviet Union under Marxism-Leninism, until his death in 1924. The régime of [[Josef Stalin]], the next Premier of the USSR, saw a reversal of many of the advances brought about by Lenin. [[Category:Political people|Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich]]
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In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a [[coup d'état]] 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.
 +
==Dictator==
 +
Lenin ruled the [[Soviet Union]] under Marxism–Leninism, until 1922, when he had a debilitating stroke and retired.
 +
 
 +
{{Cquote|A wide campaign of "education" was undertaken to show the people why "workers' rule" meant, in practice, [[Nomenklatura|managers]]' rule. Where necessary, the education by the word was supplemented with education by [[firing squad]] or [[concentration camp]] or forced labour battalion.<ref>James Burnham, ''The Managerial Revolution'', (1940).</ref> }}
 +
 
 +
In 1918 Lenin ordered to kill all prostitutes.<ref>http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/09gff.htm</ref> One of his more infamous orders was the 1918 Hanging Order where he ordered the Cheka in Penza to find and publicly hang at least 100 kulaks, and derogatorily referred to them as "bloodsuckers".<ref>Translation of 'hanging order' by Robert Service, p. 365, ''Lenin a Biography'' (2000). London: Macmillan </ref>
 +
 
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==Mass murderer==
 +
{{Main|Atheism and Mass Murder}}
 +
 
 +
Like Stalin and Mao, and despite his more positive reputation among Leftists, Lenin also wished to exterminate the peasant class, even orchestrating famines to do so, in order to force his will on Socialism. This also proves that Communism, despite the PR, never cared at all for the poor.<ref name="Russia's Original Cold-Blooded Communist Revolutionary">http://canadafreepress.com/article/vladimir-lenin-russias-original-cold-blooded-communist-revolutionary</ref>
 +
 
 +
The [[Russian Civil War]] was fought between the [[Bolshevik]] lead [[Red Army]] and the [[White Army]], which had many factions. As both sides committed gross atrocities, the White Army had only a small one wanted to restore the [[monarchy]].
 +
 
 +
==Death==
 +
Lenin, a workaholic who avoided vacations and downtime, died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes.  [[Joseph Stalin]] was his even more brutal successor.
 +
==Interpretations==
 +
===Lenin on revolution===
 +
Before 1917, Lenin thought that revolution was more likely to break out in Russia than in any other country on the continent, and he expected the outbreak of other revolutions in Europe, or at least in Central Europe, after the Russian Revolution. During the Civil War, he considered a short period of War Communism as an extension of the revolutionary situation from which a direct path might open toward socialism. However, after the failure of War Communism he returned to his earlier viewpoint, that is, to the necessity of a transition period. This was reflected in the New Economic Policy (NEP) - which meant a transition including both private enterprise and a market economy. Stalin deemed the transition favored by Lenin to be too dangerous, because it carried with it the threat of a defeat and an eventual restoration of capitalism. In addition, Lenin advocated perpetual civil war to eliminate all "class enemies", with this being in effect with brief pauses until 1953. He also wrote that "Revolutions are the locomotive of history…Revolutions are the holiday of the oppressed and exploited."<ref name="Russia's Original Cold-Blooded Communist Revolutionary" />
 +
 
 +
===Dictatorship of the proletariat===
 +
see also [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
 +
Lenin saw the Marxist concept of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" in terms of a dictatorship exercised not by a democratically chosen majority but by a [[Revolutionary Vanguard|vanguard minority revolutionary party]], ruthlessly controlled by a few leaders like himself. He eventually accepted the need for a state bureaucracy, and his more extreme opposition to the bourgeoisie led him to favor their exclusion and disenfranchisement to the benefit of the urban working class.
 +
 
 +
==Leninism as a religion==
 +
Lenin's utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosi was a typical political religion of an intelligentsia longing for an inner-worldly salvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the backward Russian society at the outskirts of the industrialized and modernized Western Europe. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 accomplished the institutionalization of a political religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals, and stigmatized social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as a messianic and numinous leader. This process of iconographic work in progress culminated after Lenin's death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served as the monumental centerpiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinist orthodoxy. Joseph Stalin's invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism–Leninism qualified him as the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallible interpretation of the holy scriptures, summarized in his own dogmatic performances. In this sense, Stalin's Leninism became itself the religion of the Soviet state.<ref>Klaus-Georg Riegel, "Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion," ''Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions'' 2005 6(1): 97-126 in [[EBSCO]]</ref>
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==Identity Politics==
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Lenin turned Russia into autonomous republics so not one ethnic group will have too much power; Communist theory denies the existence of race but the adherents flip flop to favor one group over another. [[Rules for Radicals]] by [[Saul Alinsky]], whose disciples include Democrats like [[Hillary Clinton]] and [[Barack Obama]], borrowed his approach to identity politics. The first Ukrainians were Carpathian Russians in [[Austria-Hungary]] who denounced [[Orthodox Christianity]] for [[Roman Catholicism]] in 1893, and then when the Ukrainian People's Republic gained independence after the first Russian Revolution in 1917, he retook the country the next year and expanded it's territory, making it an artificial state in the style of the [[EU]].<ref>https://russophile.org/is-ukraine-an-artificial-state-popular-youtuber-says-yes/</ref><ref>https://orientalreview.org/2017/08/21/ukraines-misunderstanding-lenin-helps-explain-americas-fight-re-invented-historical-statues/</ref><ref>https://russian-faith.com/persecution/struggle-russian-christian-faith-europe-carpatho-russians-n1122</ref><ref>https://www.sott.net/article/391652-The-history-of-Ukraine-as-an-artificial-state</ref> As a consequence, Ukraine became a second [[Yugoslavia]].<ref>https://orientalreview.org/2014/09/15/eight-reasons-why-ukraine-is-new-yugoslavia/</ref> In 1948, the CIA report NSC 20/1, section 4: “US objectives with respect to Russia” warned that separating Ukraine from Russia will not work.<ref>http://www.sakva.ru/Nick/NSC_20_1.html</ref> When splitting the Transcaucasian republics in 1922, he gave the [[Armenian]] territory of [[Nagorno-Karabakh]] to [[Azerbaijan]]. In addition, Lenin and his Bolshevik followers created Central Asian republics, some of which never existed before, like [[Kazakhstan]], gave them many Russian lands that did not belong to them, like Orenburg and other territories populated by Ural Cossacks and provided for building their infrastructure, hospitals, schools etc., by those in the Russian workforce, with Russians being qualified specialists.
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==Image and memory==
 +
After his death in 1924, Stalin portrayed Lenin as an infallible humanitarian; his writings were viewed as gospel. Museums were devoted to his life and work, cities were named for him, and huge statues and monuments honored his memory. Beginning in 1985, however, the Lenin cult began to crumble. Party chairman [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] was a faithful disciple of Lenin, but he now faced the reality that the economically bankrupt Communist state was rapidly decaying. As the Communist nation unraveled, so did the Lenin personality cult. Leningrad residents voted to restore the St. Petersburg name; the once-crowded museums attracted few visitors; and Lenin's philosophy and actions were found less than perfect. In 1991 as Communism fell, the statues and paintings went into cold storage.  By 1995 plans were being made to bury Lenin's corpse, which was finally acknowledged to be putrefying just as the remains of any other mortal, as the cult itself fell into "the dustbin of history."<ref>Trevor J. Smith, "The Collapse of the Lenin Personality Cult in Soviet Russia, 1985-1995," ''Historian'' 1998 60(2): 325-343, in [[EBSCO]]</ref>
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==Legacy==
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His transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union ultimately led to Communism being exported throughout most of the world, and leading to well over tens of millions of death. In addition, there is evidence to suggest the anti-cop violence during the 2010s often encouraged by [[Barack Obama]] were derived from similar rhetoric by Lenin.<ref>http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3365/Lenin-Crush-Smash-the-Police.aspx</ref><ref>[http://www.marx.be/sites/default/files/documents/EN/texts/sr_and_sq.PDF The State and Revolution] by Vladimir Lenin<br />"...at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism -- the proletariat -- and enables it to crush, smash to smithereens, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine -- the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy -- and to substitute for it a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in which the entire population takes part."</ref><ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm What Is To Be Done?] by Vladimir Lenin<br />"...the Social-Democrat’s [Communist's] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat."</ref>
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== Quotes from Lenin ==
 +
* "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth... We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us."
 +
 
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* "The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses."
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* "The best revolutionary is youth devoid of [[moral]]s."
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* "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
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* "The goal of [[socialism]] is [[communism]]."
 +
 
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* "There are no morals in [[politics]] there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."
 +
 
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* "Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a [[Bolshevik]] forever." (see [[Public school values]] and [[Professor values]])
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* "Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of [[atheism]]."
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* "It matters not if 90% of the Russian people perish so long as 10% bring about a world revolution."<ref>http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,717663,00.html</ref>
  
 
== See also ==
 
== See also ==
 +
* [[Karl Marx]]
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* [[Joseph Stalin]]
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* [[Dictatorship]]
 +
** [[List of dictators]]
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** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
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** [[List of Communist States]]
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** [[Death toll of communism]]
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* [[Cult of personality]]
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* [[Single-party state]]
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* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
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* [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (Nazi Party)
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* [[National Socialism]] - the Nazis were elitist [[Police state]] [[liberals]] not [[conservative]]s
 +
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
 +
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
 +
** [[Leninthink]] - a specific subset of liberal totalitarianism coined by its founder Vladimir Lenin.
 +
 +
==References==
 +
{{Reflist|colwidth=35em}}
 +
 +
==Further reading==
 +
===Biography===
 +
* Clark, Ronald W. ''Lenin'' (1988). 570 pp.
 +
* Service, Robert. ''Lenin: A Biography'' (2002), 561pp; standard scholarly biography; a short version of his 3 vol detailed biography
 +
* Volkogonov, Dmitri. ''Lenin: Life and Legacy'' (1994). 600 pp.
 +
===Specialized scholarly studies===
 +
* Anderson, Kevin. ''Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study'' (1995) 311 pp.
 +
* Copleston, Frederick Charles. ''Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev'' (1986). 445pp. by a conservative
 +
* Debo, Richard K. ''Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-1921'' (1992).
 +
* Marples, David R. ''Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917-1921'' (2000) 156pp. short survey
 +
* Pipes, Richard. ''A Concise History of the Russian Revolution'' (1996) [https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Russian-Revolution/dp/0679745440/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232393501&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search], by a leading conservative
 +
* Pipes, Richard. ''Communism: A History'' (2003), by a leading conservative
 +
* Pipes, Richard. ''Russia under the Bolshevik Regime.'' (1994). 608 pp.
 +
* Pomper, Philip. ''Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power.'' (1990). 446 pp.
 +
* Schapiro, Leonard and Reddaway, Peter, eds. ''Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader - a Reappraisal'' (1987). 317 pp.
 +
* White, James D. ''Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution'' (2001) 262pp.
 +
 +
===Primary sources===
 +
* Desai, Meghnad, ed. ''Lenin's Economic Writings.'' (1989). 363 pp.
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* Pipes, Richard, ed. ''The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive.'' (1996). 185 pp.
  
*[[Karl Marx]]
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{{Communism}}
*[[Baldomero Ortoneda]]
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[[Category:History]][[Category:Communists]]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenin, Vladimir}}
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[[Category:Russian History]]
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[[Category:Soviet Union]]
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[[Category:Dictators]]
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[[Category:Communism]]
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[[Category:Socialism]]
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[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
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[[Category:Communists]]
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[[Category:Soviet Leaders]]
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[[Category:Communist Leaders]]
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[[Category:Communist Revolutionaries]]
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[[Category:Atheists]]
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[[Category:Globalists]]
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[[Category:Anarchists]]
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[[Category:Homosexual Agenda]]
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[[Category:Jewish People]]
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[[Category:Terrorists]]

Revision as of 20:58, November 23, 2020

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov [1]) (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was the leader of Russian Communism and an important theoretician of Marxism. Coming to power in 1917, he became dictator of the Soviet Union. All over the Soviet Union and even to some extent some Western countries, there were statues and paintings honoring his memory; some were removed when Communism collapsed in 1991. Lenin repudiated and tried to stop his successor Joseph Stalin, who was an even worse tyrant.

Early life

Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 (first Earth Day was established on what would have been his 100th birthday) to a middle-class Russian family; his parents Ilya Ulyanov and Maria Ulyanova were school teachers. In 1889, he became a Marxist after his older brother Aleksandr was hanged for the attempted murder of Tsar Aleksandr III. Lenin obtained a law degree shortly afterward, and hints at his more callous nature, including his intention of using starvations to foster his Marxist agenda, started showing itself by 1891 during the Volga famine. Acting as a high ranking member of the socialist intelligentsia at that time, he was the one voice who opposed supplying any relief aid to them, even going as far as to ruin the Samara charity committee in the process, citing that starving the peasantry would bring death to the old peasant economy and hasten their goal of Marxist revolution, or as he put it, "one shouldn’t improve [the peasants'] lives, but instead let them become bestial and unleash monstrous violence."[2][3] By 1895, Lenin was a subversive who was arrested and sent to a prison in Siberia as punishment. He was in exile 1900-1917, during which time he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov and others to set up the clandestine newspaper Iskra (The Spark), designed to "ignite" radical consciousness. In the pages of Iskra, Lenin denounced any alliance with liberals or other elements of the bourgeoisie because they would keep power in the hands of the middle class. He emphasized social democracy—equality of condition, rather than political democracy, as the basis for individual freedom. His major theoretical publication was the pamphlet "What Is to Be Done?" (1902). In 1903 he organized and controlled the "Bolshevik" wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, fighting the opposition "Mensheviks." Lenin, like his populist predecessors in the Russian radical movement, stressed the need for a small elite vanguard to lead the revolution

Despite the disapproval of the Mensheviks, Lenin's followers continued to raise money through a mixture of bank robberies, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, and murder. Unlike the leaders of other Marxist organizations, Lenin did not spend the money on his own lifestyle and carefully strengthened his movement.

With German help, he returned to Russia after the Tsar abdicated in March 1917 and a short-lived liberal democracy allowed for free elections. At the time, most Bolsheviks were more interested in using the ballot box to gain political power. Lenin rejected elections, and declared, "History will not forgive us if we do not take power now." In addition, he did attempt to use the ballot box later on, although the Bolsheviks ended up losing in a landslide, causing him to take over via a coup.

Revolution

In 1917 Lenin opposed Russia's continued participation in World War I and advocated proceeding directly to a socialist revolution, bypassing bourgeois rule. He rejected cooperation with the Provisional Government and drove some old Bolsheviks out of the party, while co-opting many younger, more radical members. Joseph Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev, and others rallied to Lenin's side during the elections to the party's Central Committee during the 7th Party Conference in April 1917 and became the new leadership. The Bolsheviks were allowed free expression of disagreements until a decision by the Central Committee was reached, and then no opposition or disagreement was permitted. Lenin now ruled the Bolsheviks from his base in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).

In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a coup d'état 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.

Dictator

Lenin ruled the Soviet Union under Marxism–Leninism, until 1922, when he had a debilitating stroke and retired.


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.[4]

In 1918 Lenin ordered to kill all prostitutes.[5] One of his more infamous orders was the 1918 Hanging Order where he ordered the Cheka in Penza to find and publicly hang at least 100 kulaks, and derogatorily referred to them as "bloodsuckers".[6]

Mass murderer

For a more detailed treatment, see Atheism and Mass Murder.

Like Stalin and Mao, and despite his more positive reputation among Leftists, Lenin also wished to exterminate the peasant class, even orchestrating famines to do so, in order to force his will on Socialism. This also proves that Communism, despite the PR, never cared at all for the poor.[7]

The Russian Civil War was fought between the Bolshevik lead Red Army and the White Army, which had many factions. As both sides committed gross atrocities, the White Army had only a small one wanted to restore the monarchy.

Death

Lenin, a workaholic who avoided vacations and downtime, died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes. Joseph Stalin was his even more brutal successor.

Interpretations

Lenin on revolution

Before 1917, Lenin thought that revolution was more likely to break out in Russia than in any other country on the continent, and he expected the outbreak of other revolutions in Europe, or at least in Central Europe, after the Russian Revolution. During the Civil War, he considered a short period of War Communism as an extension of the revolutionary situation from which a direct path might open toward socialism. However, after the failure of War Communism he returned to his earlier viewpoint, that is, to the necessity of a transition period. This was reflected in the New Economic Policy (NEP) - which meant a transition including both private enterprise and a market economy. Stalin deemed the transition favored by Lenin to be too dangerous, because it carried with it the threat of a defeat and an eventual restoration of capitalism. In addition, Lenin advocated perpetual civil war to eliminate all "class enemies", with this being in effect with brief pauses until 1953. He also wrote that "Revolutions are the locomotive of history…Revolutions are the holiday of the oppressed and exploited."[7]

Dictatorship of the proletariat

see also Dictatorship of the proletariat Lenin saw the Marxist concept of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" in terms of a dictatorship exercised not by a democratically chosen majority but by a vanguard minority revolutionary party, ruthlessly controlled by a few leaders like himself. He eventually accepted the need for a state bureaucracy, and his more extreme opposition to the bourgeoisie led him to favor their exclusion and disenfranchisement to the benefit of the urban working class.

Leninism as a religion

Lenin's utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosi was a typical political religion of an intelligentsia longing for an inner-worldly salvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the backward Russian society at the outskirts of the industrialized and modernized Western Europe. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 accomplished the institutionalization of a political religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals, and stigmatized social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as a messianic and numinous leader. This process of iconographic work in progress culminated after Lenin's death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served as the monumental centerpiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinist orthodoxy. Joseph Stalin's invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism–Leninism qualified him as the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallible interpretation of the holy scriptures, summarized in his own dogmatic performances. In this sense, Stalin's Leninism became itself the religion of the Soviet state.[8]

Identity Politics

Lenin turned Russia into autonomous republics so not one ethnic group will have too much power; Communist theory denies the existence of race but the adherents flip flop to favor one group over another. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, whose disciples include Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, borrowed his approach to identity politics. The first Ukrainians were Carpathian Russians in Austria-Hungary who denounced Orthodox Christianity for Roman Catholicism in 1893, and then when the Ukrainian People's Republic gained independence after the first Russian Revolution in 1917, he retook the country the next year and expanded it's territory, making it an artificial state in the style of the EU.[9][10][11][12] As a consequence, Ukraine became a second Yugoslavia.[13] In 1948, the CIA report NSC 20/1, section 4: “US objectives with respect to Russia” warned that separating Ukraine from Russia will not work.[14] When splitting the Transcaucasian republics in 1922, he gave the Armenian territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. In addition, Lenin and his Bolshevik followers created Central Asian republics, some of which never existed before, like Kazakhstan, gave them many Russian lands that did not belong to them, like Orenburg and other territories populated by Ural Cossacks and provided for building their infrastructure, hospitals, schools etc., by those in the Russian workforce, with Russians being qualified specialists.

Image and memory

After his death in 1924, Stalin portrayed Lenin as an infallible humanitarian; his writings were viewed as gospel. Museums were devoted to his life and work, cities were named for him, and huge statues and monuments honored his memory. Beginning in 1985, however, the Lenin cult began to crumble. Party chairman Mikhail Gorbachev was a faithful disciple of Lenin, but he now faced the reality that the economically bankrupt Communist state was rapidly decaying. As the Communist nation unraveled, so did the Lenin personality cult. Leningrad residents voted to restore the St. Petersburg name; the once-crowded museums attracted few visitors; and Lenin's philosophy and actions were found less than perfect. In 1991 as Communism fell, the statues and paintings went into cold storage. By 1995 plans were being made to bury Lenin's corpse, which was finally acknowledged to be putrefying just as the remains of any other mortal, as the cult itself fell into "the dustbin of history."[15]

Legacy

His transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union ultimately led to Communism being exported throughout most of the world, and leading to well over tens of millions of death. In addition, there is evidence to suggest the anti-cop violence during the 2010s often encouraged by Barack Obama were derived from similar rhetoric by Lenin.[16][17][18]

Quotes from Lenin

  • "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth... We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us."
  • "The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses."
  • "The best revolutionary is youth devoid of morals."
  • "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
  • "There are no morals in politics there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."
  • "Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism."
  • "It matters not if 90% of the Russian people perish so long as 10% bring about a world revolution."[19]

See also

References

  1. "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (Russian: Владимир Ильич Улянов, Ленин) was the pseudonym he used after 1900 to disguise his identity.
  2. https://canadafreepress.com/article/vladimir-lenin-russias-original-cold-blooded-communist-revolutionary
  3. https://www.rferl.org/amp/lenin-at-150-even-without-covid-19-russia-was-set-to-snub-the-soviet-union-s-founder/30568383.html?fbclid=IwAR2s0upNQ-WaEeeXyJBcVF3mL1InW2ynJmOoqg7PkC7Y9OzPSL2X5bXaMDY
  4. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, (1940).
  5. http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/09gff.htm
  6. Translation of 'hanging order' by Robert Service, p. 365, Lenin a Biography (2000). London: Macmillan
  7. 7.0 7.1 http://canadafreepress.com/article/vladimir-lenin-russias-original-cold-blooded-communist-revolutionary
  8. Klaus-Georg Riegel, "Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion," Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 2005 6(1): 97-126 in EBSCO
  9. https://russophile.org/is-ukraine-an-artificial-state-popular-youtuber-says-yes/
  10. https://orientalreview.org/2017/08/21/ukraines-misunderstanding-lenin-helps-explain-americas-fight-re-invented-historical-statues/
  11. https://russian-faith.com/persecution/struggle-russian-christian-faith-europe-carpatho-russians-n1122
  12. https://www.sott.net/article/391652-The-history-of-Ukraine-as-an-artificial-state
  13. https://orientalreview.org/2014/09/15/eight-reasons-why-ukraine-is-new-yugoslavia/
  14. http://www.sakva.ru/Nick/NSC_20_1.html
  15. Trevor J. Smith, "The Collapse of the Lenin Personality Cult in Soviet Russia, 1985-1995," Historian 1998 60(2): 325-343, in EBSCO
  16. http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3365/Lenin-Crush-Smash-the-Police.aspx
  17. The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin
    "...at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism -- the proletariat -- and enables it to crush, smash to smithereens, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine -- the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy -- and to substitute for it a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in which the entire population takes part."
  18. What Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin
    "...the Social-Democrat’s [Communist's] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat."
  19. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,717663,00.html

Further reading

Biography

  • Clark, Ronald W. Lenin (1988). 570 pp.
  • Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography (2002), 561pp; standard scholarly biography; a short version of his 3 vol detailed biography
  • Volkogonov, Dmitri. Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994). 600 pp.

Specialized scholarly studies

  • Anderson, Kevin. Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (1995) 311 pp.
  • Copleston, Frederick Charles. Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev (1986). 445pp. by a conservative
  • Debo, Richard K. Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-1921 (1992).
  • Marples, David R. Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917-1921 (2000) 156pp. short survey
  • Pipes, Richard. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1996) excerpt and text search, by a leading conservative
  • Pipes, Richard. Communism: A History (2003), by a leading conservative
  • Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. (1994). 608 pp.
  • Pomper, Philip. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power. (1990). 446 pp.
  • Schapiro, Leonard and Reddaway, Peter, eds. Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader - a Reappraisal (1987). 317 pp.
  • White, James D. Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (2001) 262pp.

Primary sources

  • Desai, Meghnad, ed. Lenin's Economic Writings. (1989). 363 pp.
  • Pipes, Richard, ed. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive. (1996). 185 pp.