Vladimir Lenin

Primarily Capitalist, though there is free education and most forms of basic medical care are provided by the state. However, tax rates are low, and most of the economy is private (i.e., capitalist).

Lenin had a powerful army in the biggest country in the world and Marks had only books and words (and a very clever wife!). The difference is always between theory and how they evolve when they face real life.

The Russian Revolution is made of two separate rebellions. The first was between the Czar and the people. The second was between the Provisional democratic Government and the Bolsheviks, who represented the people.

Lenin's party was called the Bolsheviks, meaning majorityites, which was one faction of the Russian Marxist party. The other faction was called the Mensheviks, meaning minorityites. The irony is that there were more Mensheviks than Bolsheviks in the Marxist party, but Lenin chose that name for his faction because it held a temporary majority of one vote for a brief period of time. It was a huge psychological advantage over the other faction.

The "Provisional Government" replaced Tsarist rule after the February 1917 Russian Revolution. This governmental body claimed it had the only legitimate authority in Russia once the Tsar abdicated, because many of its members had been members of the Duma, the Russian form of Parliament under the Tsar. The Provisional Government proved to be as useless and unpopular as the Tsar it had replaced and was itself removed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks several months later in the October Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks were not much better at governing, but they were better at maintaining power by the use of force and terror.

The Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin were the Russian revolutionaries that took control of the government in 1917. In March 1918, they changed their name to Communists.
The Bolsheviks, later calling themselves Communists, were the Russian revolutionaries who took control of Russia in 1917.

He demanded overthrow of autocracy and advocated socialist society.

The Bolsheviks changed their name to Communists. After the October Revolution at their Seventh Party Congress in March 1918, they formally changed the name of the party to the Communist Party.

Technically speaking, no one ever set up a communist state as Karl Marx defined communism. Vladimir Lenin, after the October Russian Revolution, set up a socialist state in Russia, expecting that at some time in the future it would become a true communist state. It was referred to as a communist state because he had the name of the Bolshevik Party changed to the Communist Party in 1918.

The question is disputable as there was no one leader of the USSR (A confederation of states including but not limited to Russia which was controlled in Moscow IE not just Russia.)

During the 1920s due there was a power struggle which began after the death of Lenin in January 1924. Various candidates such as Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin and others fought for party support - this struggle was eventually won by Stalin who gained enough popularity within the Communist Party to then become the leader of the USSR in 1928.

Stalin's leadership was long, brutal but arguably successful only ending with his death in 1953. Tens of millions of Soviet citizens died for a large number of reasons while he stood at the helm; however Russia did advance at a huge pace from an obscure peasant society in the 1920s that was largely irrelevant to global affairs to a modern industrialised state and after his death ultimately the world's other superpower only matched by the United States.

Joseph Stalin

To build 'grass roots' support from the people of South Vietnam to overthrow their government to allow the North to unify the country. Also to wear down the United States public opinion so there would be no popular support for the war effort.

When campaigning for support, Lenin promised "Peace, Land, Bread". He would end the war, divide farmland amongst the peasants and make sure they had food. He also instated a Communist government.

Lenin failed to make good on any of his promises except getting Russia out of World War 1. And even there he did so only because he was forced to because the Germans were marching on St. Petersburg and he was afraid that either the German army or the people of Russia would overthrow him.

Lenin tried to make peace with Germany without giving any concessions to it, but Germany insisted on concessions. Lenin was forced to negotiate a peace at the town of Brest-Litovsk. He would not consent to the initial German demands, so he stalled until Germany got fed up with him and Leon Trotsky's delaying methods. The Germans resumed hostilities and began moving on St. Petersburg. Lenin at first wanted to resume the fighting calling it "revolutionary defensism." It wasn't imperialistic war, but it would still have been war to protect his personal place in power and to retain the lands that were already part of the Russian Empire.

When the Germans were getting close to St. Petersburg, Lenin gave in and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk except that Germany's demands were more than they had been at the start of the negotiations. In the end, Lenin's stalling cost Russia the Ukraine, the various Baltic states, Finland and Belorussia. Many Russians, even Bolsheviks, regarded the treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a national disgrace and referred to it as "the obscene peace."

Lenin's seizure of power touched off the Russian Civil War. His Red forces fought against the various

Lenin failed to give any land to the peasants as he promised. Land was kept under the control of the government. Peasants were not free to farm their lands as they saw fit. Lenin's government controlled the agricultural system.

Lenin failed to provide food for the ordinary Russian citizen, because he was confiscating as much as he needed during the ensuing Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks used famine as a weapon to suppress dissent from their policies.

The Russian cities and towns and the army needed a certain amount of grain to survive. Peasants were forced to sell their crops to the government at artificially low prices. The government took what it wanted without regard to leaving the peasants enough to live on. Tens of thousands of peasants starved to death because of Lenin's policies.

Vladimir Lenin betrayed his revolution. His regime and that of Joseph Stalin's after his became more oppressive than any regime of any Tsar had ever been.

The Provisional Government (PG) which was set up after the February Revolution and abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, did not satisfy the revolutionary desires of the people of Russia which caused the revolution. The PG was comprised of people from the Duma, aristocrats and intellectuals army of whom had interest they wanted to protect now that they had gotten rid of the Tsar.

The PG continued the war against Germany. It failed to improve the availability of food. It failed to redistribute land from wealthy owners to peasants. In short nothing had changed for the common person, therefore it had lost its support.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviks under Lenin had been agitating against the PG itself now. The Bolsheviks had many supporters in the army and they turned they army against the PG just as they had done against the Tsar. The PG, like the Tsar before it, lost the military support it needed to fight the rebellion.

The PG was dependent upon the local councils of workers and soldiers called soviets to maintain its power, but these were gradually taken over by the Bolsheviks so the PG lost its local political support.

All in all though, the October Revolution took place because Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks wanted a socialist (not communist) state and the PG still had capitalist roots. Lenin was not content to wait for a true Marxist uprising of the proletariat so he acted for it by staging the military coup that they called the October Revolution.

Socialism

Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 and died on January 21, 1924 at the age of 53.

Yep, the book that Karl Marx wrote on communism was the whole inspiration for Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin did not follow Marx's ideas very closely. In fact, he adapted his movement to the conditions in Russia so much that the October (Bolshevik) Revolution was not a Marxian revolution at all. It was no more than a political and military coup.

Some examples of Lenin's divergence from Marxian principles are:

1. Marx believed that the revolution would be an economic/social revolution where the workers (the Proletariat) would take the means of production away from their owners (the Bourgeoisie).

Lenin's revolution was a political one where a small group of armed revolutionaries took the government away from the people then in power.

2. Marx believed that the proletariat would consist of the vast majority of people (the factory workers) of many countries.

Lenin's revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, was a tightly disciplined organization membership in which was not open to any outsider who wished to join. Marx's "proletariat" were not even permitted to be part of the revolution.

3. Marx's socialism was to benefit the proletariat by eliminating capitalism's so-called exploitation of the workers.

Lenin's government forced workers and peasants to work harder than any tsarist government or capitalist had ever forced them.

4. Marx envisioned ending capitalism forever.

Lenin, knowing that his new government was not delivering on its promises, temporarily reintroduced capitalism in agriculture and small businesses under his "New Economic Policy." Many Marxist leaders felt this was abandoning the ideals of the revolution.

5. Marx's envisioned a "dictatorship of the proletariat" which would be a government elected democraticaly by the workers.

Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat was not democratically elected. In fact it wasn't even open to anyone but members of the Bolshevik/Communist Party and then only if he approved of them.

6. Marx saw an end to workers being treated as machines on an assembly line. where the owners could accumulate wealth for themselves while extracting as much work as possible from the workers.

Lenin explored ways (such as Taylorism) to make factory workers more efficient in order to accumulate wealth for the new government while extracting as much work as possible from the workers.

There are other examples, because Lenin was the ultimate change artist. Anything that didn't work to keep him and the Communists in power would be changed whether that change conflicted with true Marxian theory or not.

Stalin and Trotsky were among the top leaders of the Bolshevik Party after the Revolution and Civil War. They disliked one another intensely and had conflicting opinions on how to run the country after the revolution. Trotsky favored spreading communism to all countries as Marx and Lenin had envisioned. Stalin felt that they should establish communism firmly in one country first then move from there. Stalin also disliked Trotsky because he was Jewish and had only recently joined the Bolshevik Party.

After Lenin died in 1924, the two vied for control of the Communist Party and the country with Stalin winning and expelling Trotsky first from the Communist Party then from the country. In 1940, Trotsky was living in Mexico in exile and Stalin had an undercover agent assassinate him.

His closest known associate was Leon Trotsky.

The Bolsheviks planned to abolish private property and establish what was social equality, in their view.

Trotsky never ruled Russia. After the revolution put Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power, Trotsky was considered the number two man behind Lenin. Lenin died in 1924 and the country was then run by Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. Stalin had Trotsky expelled from the country, had ousted Zinoviev and Kamenev and took full power to himself by 1928. Thus, Trotsky never was in charge.

By doing some shiz

Russia was not divided into separate republics when the Soviet Union was first formed. The Soviet Union was formed when Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) banded together to form the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union then added more and more republics. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 separate republics.

The Russian nobility was a group thatarose in the 14th century and essentially governedRussia until the October Revolution of 1917. As in other countries, nobility was a status, a social category, but not a title.

The March Revolution happened in 1917. It was a series of political upheavals. These political upheavals led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Workers protested food shortages in Petrograd and within days most local factories and shops closed to join the protests. Police and soldiers joined the protests, attempts to restore civil order were crushed.