Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Our demands are simple: We want peace for the soldier, we want bread for our workers, we want land for our peasants now!"

―Vladimir Ilyich Lenin^[src]

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ульянов), better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, a Communist politician and dictator, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and, from 1922, the first de facto leader of the Soviet Union.

Biography[]

Early life[]

Vladimir Ilych Lenin was born in 1870 in a provincial Russian town to a prosperous yet small and educated middle-class family of reformers and educators, being one of the lucky few compared to most illiterate Russian peasants that had been recently freed from slavery. He had an older brother, named Alexander Ulyanov. During Lenin's childhood, his country began a mad strangle to catch up with the industrialized Western Europe, building up transcontinental railroads and huge factories at a great human cost, creating a class of brutalized and angry industrial workers.^[1]

In 1887, Lenin lost his brother when Alexander, upon failing with a group of idealistic bunglers to assassinate Tsar Alexander III, claimed all responsibility for the attempted assassination and was hanged for his treason. Despite how Alexander's death devastated his family, their neighbours and friends turned their backs on them and offered them no support but ostracizement, which hardened the teenage Lenin's heart against the monarchy and his town's middle and upper classes, despising "Old Russia" and wanting a new revolutionary one from that day forward.^[1]

Establishing the Soviet Union[]

As he came of age, Vladimir Ilych Lenin saw how Russian revolutionaries were increasingly turning from ineffective homegrown terrorism to the German philosopher Karl Marx's ideas, which proposed, for the sake of cooperation over competition, a radical offshoot of socialism called Communism. Marx's vision of an utopia created by workers and Russia's revolutionary tradition came together in Lenin, deriving the term "the dictatorship of the proletariat" despite Marx not necessarily meaning a dictatorship, which Lenin planned to use to strip the upper and middle classes from their civil rights like voting, via employing terror so people would behave to any sign of opposition. The Tsar's continued relentless injustices did nothing but feed Lenin's resolve, who became a lawyer who defended industrial workers, reading and writing about revolution on his free time, inevitably leading to his arrest, doing time in prison, going to Siberia and being exiled in late 1895.^[1]

Over a decade, Lenin traveled across Europe, always one step ahead of any Tsarist agents, writing and publishing any clandestine articles, newspapers and books that were smuggled back home to Russia. Fed up with the lack of progress in Russia's situation, Lenin chose to take matters in his own hands by becoming a revolutionary leader, sure the revolution wouldn't suceed without him at its helm and publishing a pamphlet in 1902 titled "What is To Be Done?", signing it with his own name rather than an alias as he used to do to avoid being detected by the police. With this and breaking away from Russia's main socialist party to form his own action-oriented one, Lenin formed the Bolshevik Party, a small group of professional revolutionaries who would serve him as his generals, which would become the foundation for the Communist Party, correctly assuming that if he got a small core of followers, the situation would turn in his favour, workers would join him and the revolution would follow. When Tsar Nicholas II's forces accidentally killed people in a false alarm in 1905, the sole thought of a reforming Parliament did nothing but infuriate Lenin.^[1] Now leading the Bolshevik Party, Lenin's exile from Russia lasted over a decade before the Russian Revolution began. Few Russians knew about him when he appeared on the scene.^[3]

On April 3, 1917, in the aftermath of the Tsar's soldiers massacring women on February 23 in Petrograd for getting on their nerves while demanding bread and the recently-formed provisional government's struggles due to Nicholas' abdication to the throne on March 2 with the Romanov Dynasty's overthrowal that month, Lenin arrived to the capital^[3] aboard his special private train after being stuck in Switzerland due to Germany offering him a safe passage back home hoping he would weaken Russia's war effort^[1] and rolled up his sleeves before going on the attack, insisting Russia's people to give the power to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as he thought giving it to local committees wouldn't end well due to them not being organized. While many including his own supporters were shocked, the horrors lived in World War I and their fragile provisional government's missteps led to Lenin's message appealing to several workers and soldiers,^[3] with society's bottom blaming the Tsar's regime as the one responsible due to their economy not being equipped to fight modern warfare nor able to produce weapons, coupled with food shortages. Rather than befriending the revolutionaries part of the provisional government, Lenin denounced them all and called to overthrow the elites, using the slogans of "Peace, Land and Bread" and "All Power to the Soviets", gaining the crowd's support with the sheer intensity he used to communicate to them.^[1]

In July 1917, for his eighteenth birthday, future American archaeologist Indiana Jones saw Vladimir Ilyich Lenin speak on Communism to a congregation of Bolsheviks in the city of Petrograd, Russia.^[2] Although his Bolsheviks weren't prepared yet, Petrograd's street crowds composed of workers and sailors organized a demonstration demanding a Soviet-run government that failed, with the government blaming Lenin for the revolt despite his attempts to call it off, forcing him to flee and shave his facial hair to disguise himself afterwards as the government started to fail the population with their demands for peace and land due to still losing the war.^[1] He went on a "vacation" to Finland, which coincided with the Russians demanding the Bolsheviks to surrender all power to the Soviets in July 3, forcing Lenin to rush back and urge restraint to the demonstrators to no avail, with Alexander Kerensky being appointed by the government as its new Prime Minister. Pinning the blame on the Bolsehviks, Kerensky ordered Lenin's arrest as well as those of his fellow leaders, but he managed to escape back to Finland^[3] despite his claims it was the right moment to strike as otherwise history wouldn't forgive them.^[1]

Things went from bad to worse and Kerensky alienated the Russian population back to the open arms of the Bolsheviks. Between Summer and Fall, the Bolsheviks were installed as leaders and Lenin's brilliant right-hand Leon Trotsky was elected Head of the Petrograd Soviet, his speeches gaining support. Between September and October, the Soviets felt ready to take over the government and formed a Congress of Soviets to discuss how to peacefully transfer power, but Lenin now had other plans for the power he had previously rejected. By October, Kerensky attempted to seize power but the Bolsheviks prevailed, so Kerensky fled and Trotsky proceeded to form the Bolshevik power envisioned by Lenin, who set off disguised to his party's headquarters in the Smolny Institute the October 24 night before the Congress as crowds filled the streets, only to be apprehended yet unrecognized by the police, who let him go thinking he was a mere tramp, after which he reached the Institute and told the Bolsheviks it was time to strike, which they did the next night, with the Bolshevik Red Guards marching into the poorly protected Winter Palace, the provisional government's seat, bloodlessly arresting a few officials and prompting villages, towns and cities to start ruling themselves. Almost single-handedly starting a second revolution, Lenin was placed at the head of the world's first socialist state.^[1]

The Bolsheviks won in Petrograd, Moscow and other big cities, but the Socialists Revolutionaries won against them, so Lenin and his men agreed to meet with the Constituent Assembly,^[3] planning to call for the Assembly to draft a constitution, holding national elections for its representatives first.^[1] However, the day they met in January 1918, the Assembly refused to acknowledge Lenin's government, so his allies closed the Assembly and never met again,^[3] a decision taken by Lenin because less than a quarter of the population voted for the Bolsheviks, causing one of the great blows against the move toward a democratic Russia, having no armies, industries or food, though he made good on his slogans by passing the land to those who cultivated it and promising to get Russia out of the Great War, yet applied some of the Tsar's measures like secret police, press censorship and state terror, wrathfully targeting even wealthy peasants like the kulaks for hoarding grain to make an example of his rule, which he insisted to keep being going to the utopian Communist government he wanted to make. As Russia went into a crisis with the Great War raging on^[1] and its people resisted the Assembly's closing, the Soviets put down their rebellion and Lenin's people ended Russia's revolutionary dream of a better world, leading to the Russian Civil War^[3] in March when Russia tried to deal with Germany, with Trotsky's Red Army taking down the White Army, enabling Lenin to drastically turn to capitalism in 1921, opening markets to have private industries to help the country recover and turning the Bolsheviks into the Communist Party.^[1]

By 1922, Lenin had dodged many bullets even from an assassination attempt on him, but suffered a stroke that May, which were followed by more, something not even his ferious drive or intellect could overcome. Despite the advise of doctors and government leaders, Lenin kept working until he was forced into a semi-retirement during which Lenin dictated a "Last Testament" document, trying to reform the government by advocating for more freedom for the peasants and ethnic minorities in addition to consider possible successors among his fellow Communist leaders, criticizing them all but specifically Joseph Stalin, whom he condemned as he amassed enormous power in his General Secretary position, requesting his replacement, only to meet his request with rejection from his former inner circle, which would eventually prove to be a profoundly tragic mistake. Spending his last months unable to speak or move on a wheelchair, Lenin passed away in the bitter cold Winter on January 21, 1924.^[1]

Legacy[]

The death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the complicated man who willed the Soviet Union into existence and steered it through its first traumatic years, left the population ponder their future amind an outpouring of genuine grief, having adapted against all expectation from a revolutionary chieftain of a small faction into the leader of a new revolutionary state, leaving no doubt on his massive historical involvement. His funeral brought all Russians together in a way that nothing had since February 1917. Stalin ordered Lenin's body to be embalmed and put on display in Moscow's Red Square, which was probably the last thing Lenin would have wanted.^[1]

Lenin's violent power seizure and the harsh measures he took to hold onto it would go on to inspired generations of dictators and revolutionaries, particularly bequeathing the destructive legacy of Leninism to Stalin, who created the Stalinism. Some alleged the Russian Revolution had a golden period as Lenin founded the one party state, passed on that terror should be used as well as dictatorship to consolidate the revolutionary state, with historians realizing that despite his good intentions, Lenin didn't comprehend his corrupt means to an end wouldn't bring good things.^[1] The city of Petrograd was renamed as Leningrad in honor of Lenin after his death.^[4] Doctor Gennadi Volodnikov stored portraits of Lenin aboard his V. I. Pudovkin submarine in 1947 while looking for the Infernal Machine.^[5] A Soviet honorificency called Order of Lenin was awarded to certain people. As of 1957, Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko had been awarded such honor.^[6]

Lenin's death set off the struggle for power that happened between Stalin and Trotsky, with the former emerging as the victory in 1926, prompting the latter to flee three years later as Stalin succeeded Lenin^[7] and had all Communist leaders who rejected Lenin's advice to replace Stalin murdered, proceeding to commit several human rights violations in the name of Lenin and his revolution.^[1] It wouldn't be until 1991 that Lenin's socialist state, the first in history, was brought to an end.^[3]

Personality and traits[]

"I can't listen to music too often. It makes me want to say a lot of sweet nonsense and stroke the heads of people who live in this filthy hellhole and yet create such beauty. But you can't stroke anyone's head today - you'll get your hands cut off, now you have to beat them on the head, beat them without mercy!"

―Lenin telling a friend of his to not get soft.^[src]

A driven man with a formidable intellect, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin dedicated his life to world revolution on the behalf of oppressed workers. He gave to Russia's people his own form of democracy by making everyone share with the lower classes so peasants and factory workers had the same authority to nobles, whose nobility was excluded like those factory owners and engineers. Overall, his idea of power classes contradicting the general meaning of democracy hence their need to each one be represented through a parliament ended up becoming a dictatorship of the proletariant, shocking even his own supporters. His party wanted peace and opposed war, with Lenin seeing peace, land and bread as springboards for a more ambitious vision, intending to revolutionaze the Earth to get rid of capitalism and replace it with socialism. His military organizational skills and ruthlessness were unparalleled, not willing to relinquist power with the Socialist Revolutionaries.^[3] He was open to being succeeded after his death, though even he realized Joseph Stalin was a "very bad guy" in politics and requested his replacement to no avail.^[1]

Depending on the situation, the revolutionary fanatic and pragmatic opportunist of Lenin was either extremely rigid or extremely flexible, while extremely humane or terrorific in others, doing what he thought he had to in order to create an utopian world, being a brilliant man who wanted to change history, which he did albeit in an unexpected way, upon getting sick of perpetual talk and little action. Highly strung and extremely nervous, the political strategist Lenin was practiced what he preached, his aim consisting on "not correcting the mistake of the opponent, but destroy him to wipe off his organization from the Earth's face", always acting like if he were on duty with his "Spartan" life, having no luxuries and very little relaxation, having his books in order and being extraordinarily fuzzy even for the placing of pencils on his desk, never leaving it without verifying his pencils were all sharpened for the next day, as he felt that everything in his life had to be in order for himself to dedicate to the revolution, for which he had an uncanny sense of timing, an intellectual prowess and being able to make tough decisions amid chaos.^[1]