Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known by the alias Lenin, was a Communist theorist, revolutionary leading the October Revolution, and dictator of the Soviet Union, responsible for many millions of deaths during his regime.

Early years

Many of the Communist leaders were not Russians or were of mixed ancestry, which may have contributed to the hostility of the Communist regime against the Russian people. This applies also to Lenin who had a mixed ancestry. Lenin's father's ethnic origins remain unclear; there have been suggestions that he was Russian, Chuvash (Turkic), Mordvin, or Kalmyk (Mongolic). His mother was the daughter of a Jewish father from a Jewish family called Blank and a German–Swedish mother.

Despite positioning himself as the leader of the proletariat, he came from a relatively wealthy background. He was born in Simbirsk, a town on the Volga River. He entered Kazan University in 1887. That same year his brother was hanged for taking part in an unsuccessful plot to kill Czar Alexander III. Soon after, Lenin was expelled from the school for participating in an illegal student assembly. He was also banished to his grandfather’s estate. He met revolutionaries of the older generation and read revolutionary political literature. He became a Marxist in 1889.

Lenin was later granted permission to take his law examinations and in November 1891 he passed his examinations. He moved to St. Petersburg, where he associated with revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895, was Lenin was imprisoned for 15 months and thereafter was sent into exile to Siberia for three years. After this, he left the country for Western Europe.

In 1903, at a congress of the Communist party, Lenin's supporter questionably won a vote and were thereafter often referred to as Bolsheviks ("majoritarians").

Lenin in 1917 wrote a text called Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The direct inspiration for this was Imperialism: A Study authored in 1902 by John A. Hobson, a British socialist who was opposed to the Second Boer War. Hobson argued that one cause was Jewish influence. Lenin stating nothing on this.

In 1917, during World War I, with German assistance and supposedly in a sealed train, Lenin returned to Russia after the Czar had been forced to abdicate, with Germany hoping that this would cause Russia to withdraw from the war, which also occurred.

Communist dictator

The Communists in 1917 seized power in the October Revolution. Lenin immediately implemented a Red Terror against suspected opponents, with the repressions being on an enormously larger scale than those Lenin had protested as occurring during the Czarist regime. Anti-Communist opposition developed into the Russian Civil War. So-called War Communism was implemented, leading to a mass starvation causing many brutally crushed uprisings and millions of deaths.

The Communists eventually won the civil war. Despite supposedly condemning imperialism and colonialism, Lenin invaded and occupied various territories that had declared themselves independent, such as Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. An invasion of Poland was attempted but was defeated. In 1921, the Kronstadt rebellion occurred, by the "reddest of the reds", contributing to War Communism being abandoned, replaced by the so-called New Economic Policy, actually a partial return to non-Communist policies.

Less well-known is that influential and often Jewish financial interests in the US and UK supported the February Revolution and the Bolsheviks before and after the October Revolution. Officially, this was to support the war effort during WWI by countering German influence in order to keep Russia in the war against Germany and even to help the Bolsheviks spread Communist propaganda in Germany in order to cause unrest and thus weaken Germany during the war. Other argued motivations include that the foreign financial interests wanted to open up Russia for global business exploitation of its resources (resisted by the Czarist regime) and that Lenin's New Economic Policy was seen as signaling a return of capitalism. Another argued motivation is foreign Jewish sympathies with the Jewish influenced Bolshevik regime and opposition to the anti-Semitic Czarist regime (see also Jews and Communism).

Communist repressions continued, such as through the forced labor camps that developed into the Gulag system. For example the mass killing of Cossacks, who were viewed as Czarist supporters, has been viewed as a genocide. How many millions died due to Lenin's regime is disputed.

Aside from the violence, in Russia/The Soviet Union, Lenin was also responsible for covertly or overtly inciting, supporting, and/or controlling large scale communist infiltration, terrorism, and revolutionary attempts/preparations in many foreign countries.

Possibly related to an assassination attempt in 1918 and a removal of a bullet in 1922, Lenin became ill, dying in 1924. His death was followed by an internal Communist power struggle, notably involving Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, with Stalin as the victor.

In a quasi-religious manner, a cult of personality devoted to Lenin began to develop already during his lifetime. His corpse was embalmed and placed on public display in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.

Marxism-Leninism

A continuing influence is Lenin's creation of Marxism-Leninism, which at least initially was the state ideology of all Communist states and a major cause of the mass killings under Communist regimes. See also the Communism article. Trotskyism, a variant created by Lenin's associate Leon Trotsky, has been influential in many non-Communist countries. The atrocities and mass deaths during the regime of Lenin and Trotsky are relatively unknown to the general public, with Trotskyists and other leftists often instead preferring to focus on criticizing Lenin's successor and Trotsky's enemy Stalin.

Quotes

Under the revolutionary regimes of Lenin and the early Stalin the former majority population of Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians) in their own country were dispossessed and put under the jurisdiction of the prerevolutionary minority peoples (Jews, Georgians, Latvians, Poles, and Armenians). The October Revolution differed substantially from earlier Western revolutions as, for example, when Frenchmen were pitted against Frenchmen in the French Revolution or when Englishmen fought against fellow Englishmen in the American Revolution for the purpose of improving conditions for the less fortunate. In Russia in 1917, international misfits provided much of the leadership for that revolution as part of a world conspiracy to bring down all other governments that did not accept the dictatorial teaching of Karl Marx and his disciples.

See also

• Mass killings under Communist regimes
• War communism

External links

• What were the most important human rights violations committed under Lenin's rule?
• Vladimir Lenin: Syphilitic Mattoid Motivated by PTED