"There are decades where nothing
happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"--
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D.
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov on
April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia. Until 1901, he was known as. Volodya or
Vladimir Ulyanov. In 1910 he
took the political alias of Lenin. He was a political genius and also
the main architect of the Soviet Union. Lenin’s theories became a major part of
the Communist worldview. He transformed the Russian Empire in to a Marxists
state.
According to the newly revealed actualities
Lenin’s childhood has been scrutinized. These reports indicate that he was a
problem child. He displayed a number of childhood neurotic behavior. Little. Volodya
used to go in to hyperactive and hysterical behavior and sometimes used to bang
his head on the floor. He was a neurotic child with tantrums. He experienced
more psychological distress than other Ulyanov children probably due to
insecurity. Constantly Volodya needed his mother’s attention and his
father’s approval.
However he was not his parent’s
favorite child. Lenin’s elder brother Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov became the central attraction in the family.
He was an eloquent intelligent and a gentle child. Everyone adored him. From
the early days Volodiya (Lenin) had a resentment and jealousy
towards Aleksandr or Sacha. However
things changed dramatically when Aleksandr
Ulyanov was arrested by the Police for an assassination attempt on the life of
Alexander III of Russia. Later He was
hanged.
Young
Volodiya (Lenin) experienced two family tragedies which changed his life
drastically. One was the death of his father Ilya
Nikolayevich Ulyanov (1886) and the second - execution of his brother Aleksandr
in 1887. Both events transformed him to an emotionally numbed radical
character. Sacha was his competitor as well as his role model. Sacha‘s
departure created a deep void in him. Until Sacha’s death he was not interested
in politics. He was mostly reading the works of Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander
Pushkin. But after Sacha’s death he entered in to underground politics. He began his active revolutionary work in 1892.
Sasha’s
death haunted Volodiya relentlessly. He began to study Marxism and became an
orthodox Marxist He became a Compulsive Revolutionary. Revolution
became an obsession for him. Lenin once said Revolutions are the locomotive
of history. Bolton (2012) states that traumas in Lenin’s youth did
provide the catalyst for his life’s course.
Lenin was an excellent orator and a propagandist. His
writings were incomparable. He had the ability of analyzing political events
radiantly. He was charming and a charismatic person. He had outstanding
organizational skills. He was becoming popular among other revolutionaries. His
slogans attracted a large number of followers home and abroad.
While
working as a revolutionist and living in exile Lenin published his philosophical work titled
Materialism and Empiriocriticism in which he argued the human perceptions and
the objective external world. In his 1901 political pamphlet What Is to Be
Done? Lenin insisted that Marxists should form a political party, or
"vanguard," of dedicated revolutionaries to spread Marxist political
ideas among the workers (Martin, 1994). Lenin believed that capitalism was
doomed by its inherent contradictions, and would inevitably collapse.
In January 1905, the massacre of protesters that came to be
known as Bloody Sunday took place in St. Petersburg, sparking the civil unrest
known as the Revolution of 1905 (Rice, 1990). Condemning this bloody event
Lenin used Bolsheviks to cause violent unrests against the Tsarist establishment.
Furthermore Lenin attacked Chornaya
Sotnya or the Black Hundreds - an ultra-nationalist
movement in Russia.
When the First World War broke out Lenin remarked that it was
an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war. In 1917 he wrote: Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism. He was against the war. Lenin and his supporters
encouraged the retreating Russian army soldiers to cause unrest in Russia. In his
"Aprelskiye Tezisy", (April Theses) written in 1917 Lenin
called for Soviet control of the state.
On March 15, 1917 the Czar Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne. When this event occurred Lenin
was in Switzerland. Much of the revolutionary activity were organized by Leon
Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein). He was the guiding force behind the
October Revolution. When radical changes were happening in his home country the
German authorities helped Lenin return to St Petersburg. Lenin led the
Bolsheviks in the overthrow of the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.
Although Kerensky was his childhood friend Lenin
wanted to arrest him. Kerensky narrowly escaped from Bolsheviks and
escaped to Paris. Lenin became the chief commissar of Russia.
He signed an armistice with Germany and ended the Russia’s involvement in World War I which
infuriated England and France.
Allied
Intervention and the Russian Civil War occurred during 1917 to 1922. Allied military
assistance intensified the civil war. The Civil War had wreak havoc on the
country. In 1917 the Russian Empire
disintegrated. The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 from the Empire’s rubble,
without Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and parts of the Ukraine
and Belorussia. The Central Asian territories of Khiva and Bukhara were
formally incorporated in 1925 (Markevich & Harrison, 2011).
In
September 1917 Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the
restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse
it with the army. Lenin's militarization of
Marxism involved a substantial shift in the place of war in socialist ideology.
War, while previously seen as a social evil imposed upon the working class, had
never stood at the center of Marxist analysis of capitalism. Lenin put it
there. He emphasized the inevitability of wars among capitalist states in the
age of imperialism and presented the armed struggle of the working class as the
only path towards the eventual elimination of war (Kipp, 1985).
The State and Revolution (1917) by Vladimir Lenin, described
the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution.
Suny (1983) indicates that the Bolsheviks came to power not because they
were superior manipulators or cynical opportunists but because their policies
as formulated by Lenin in April and shaped by the events of the following
months placed them at the head of a genuinely popular movement. Lenin believed
that mass terror as a necessary weapon during the dictatorship of proletariat
and the resulting class struggle.
According to Dr. James Ryan Lenin used terror against classes
soon after the October Revolution. He considered mass terror a strategic and efficient method
for advancing revolutionary goals (Chaliand & Arnaud, 2007). Lenin
projected the responsibility of his brother’s execution onto entire social
classes (Bolton, 2012). Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was of the view that the Russian
Revolution was an invasion and conquest
over the Russian people. He used the term revolutionary genocide and claimed that it swallowed up some 60 million of human lives. One of the gruesome acts of the 1917 Revolution
denoted as the killing of the Russian Imperial Romanov family. On the 17th of
July 1918 the family of Russia's last Emperor, Nicolas II and his family were
killed in Ekateringburg in the Urals. The Emperor Nicholas II, his family
members, and persons in their attendance and the Prince Alexey’s pet dog were
brutally murdered by Yaakov Yurovsky and his firing squad.
Although it was is claimed that a telegram giving the order
to execute the prisoners on behalf of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow was signed
by Yakov Sverdlov - chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Lenin
knew and approved the deaths of Romanovs. The
murder may have taken place in order to prevent the royals from being
liberated by approaching White forces as well as It may have been to avenge what the tsarist
regime had done to his brother.
After killing of the
Romanov family Trotsky wrote: the decision [to kill the imperial family] was
not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this punishment showed
everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing.
The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten,
horrify, and instill a sense of hopelessness in the enemy but also to shake up
our own ranks, to show that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either
total victory or total doom (Pipes,
1990).
Lenin was against the
class system. In 1901 he stated: If democracy, in essence, means the abolition
of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole
bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration? (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
“Dogmatism and ‘Freedom of Criticism’”) Lenin approved terror tactics against
classes. In 1918 Yakov Sverdlovsk - officially announced Red
Terror. Sverdlovsk always took orders from Lenin. After the October Revolution
mass executions of people took place and killings were based not upon their
actions but their class origins and beliefs. According to Stewart-Smith (1964)
estimates that the total number of people killed in the Red Terror range from
50,000 to over a million.
Pipes (2014)
points out that although pre-Stalin gulags have been ignored by historians the
Soviet concentration camps first came into existence under Lenin and Trotsky.
Nonetheless when Stalin came to power the slave labor camps reached their
pinnacle. Many
leading Bolsheviks were of the view that human lives are expendable in the
cause of building Communism. In 1918 Grigory Zinoviev said: To overcome our enemies we must have
our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the
100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to
say to them. They must be annihilated (Leggett, 1986).
Cheka (the
Extraordinary Commission against counter-revolution, sabotage and speculation) or
the Soviet state security organization was created on December 20, 1917, by
Vladimir Lenin. Cheka was headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky who had a tormented
childhood and probably suffered from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dzerzhinsky conducted a large number of
summary executions. Dzerzhinsky declared: We stand for organized terror - this
should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution.
The Cheka published an article on the 18th of
August 1919 in Krasnyi Mech (the Red Sword) newspaper: "We reject the old
morality and ‘humanity’ invented by the bourgeoisie in order to oppress and
exploit the lower classes. Our morality does not have a precedent, our humanity
is absolute because it rests on a new ideal: to destroy any form of oppression
and violence. To us, everything is permitted because we are the very first to
raise our swords not to oppress and enslave, but to release humanity from its
chains... Blood? Let blood be shed! Only blood can dye the black flag of the
pirate bourgeoisie, turning it once and for all into a red banner, flag of the
Revolution. Only the old world’s final demise will free us forever from the
return of the jackals."
The Cheka was
intended to inherit the security responsibilities of the dissolved Military
Revolutionary Committee (MRC). The Bolshevik-controlled Sovnarkom charged the
Cheka to investigate and liquidate all attempts or actions connected with
counter-revolution or sabotage, whether they were domestic or foreign in
origin, and were expected to deliver the ‘criminals’ to Revolutionary Tribunals
to face trial (Lewis, 2007). According to the Russian historian Sergei Petrovich Melgunov Cheka's executions estimated at between
100,000 and 500,000. Felix Dzerzhinsky;s methods were never questioned and Lenin
always defended the work of Dzerzhinsky.
At times Lenin was uncaring. Richard Pipes an emeritus
professor of Russian history at Harvard University highlights that during 1891
Volga famine Lenin opposed raising aid for the starving masses. His argument
being the death of the poor would destroy the old peasant economy and pave the
way for the Marxist revolution that was imminent.
In the early years Lenin used Stalin to full fill hard tasks for
the Revolution. Stalin was involved in the 1907 Tiflis bank
robbery. Some of the stolen money was delivered to Lenin when he was living in
Finland. This money was used to fund revolutionary activities. Lenin
had little regard for Trotsky's judgment on important matters and relied
heavily on Stalin (Pipes, 1999). Leon Trotsky never trusted Stalin and he was called by the
nickname of Mountaineer.
After the Bolshevik
Revolution Stalin detained a group of Red Army officers who were loyal to
Trotsky and they were kept in a barge. However the barge snaked killing all the
officers. Trotsky suspected a sabotage that was planned by Stalin. Although Trotsky
urged Lenin to take stern actions against Stalin the matter was dropped. Lenin
was soft on Stalin. However gradually Lenin grew to
distrust him and criticized Stalin’s
crude nature.
On May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke and his health
started to deteriorate. He had to go
for semi-retirement and Stalin
gradually started strengthening his possession as Lenin’s successor. However
after Stalin verbally swore at Lenin's wife Nadezhda
Krupskaya Lenin demanded an apology. In addition in his testament Lenin recommended
that Stalin be removed from his position as secretary-general of the party.
After Lenin's third
stroke in March 1923 left him paralyzed and unable to speak. According to the official version, Lenin’s
illness began in 1922, although the first signs and symptoms were probably
manifested many years earlier (Learner et al., 2004). Lenin died in January
1924, aged 53. Lenin’s autopsy revealed
cerebral calcification. The reason for his premature atherosclerosis has yet to
be explained. He had a family history of cardiovascular disease and, therefore,
is suspected of having had an inherited lipid disorder. Stress too might have
had a role in the progression of his atherosclerosis (Vinters, Lurie & Mackowiak, 2013). The left brain hemisphere was seriously suffered as a result of the
vessels damage of atherosclerosis origin ( Adrianov et al.,1993 ).
After Lenin's death Stalin elevated Lenin as a demi god
creating a cult of worship of the deceased leader. Against Lenin's wishes, he
was given a lavish funeral and his body was embalmed and put on display. Stalin
promoted Lenin in quasi-religious fashion (Cawthorne, 2011). But he abolished Lenin’s New Economic Policy
which granted more economic freedom for the peasants and promoted agriculture.
Lenin stands out as one of the revolutionary thinkers of 20th
century. He brought a highly influential ideology. Lenin considered "moral
questions" to be "an irrelevance", rejecting the concept of
moral absolutism; instead he judged whether an action was justifiable based
upon its chances of success for the revolutionary cause (Service, 2000). Indeed
he was a dedicated revolutionist. As Bolton (2012) states that the rest of the
life of the once apolitical youth who became Lenin was fanatically devoted to
avenging his brother’s death, and ‘Lenin’ was the persona that was adopted for
the purpose. He became a compulsive revolutionary.
Acknowledgments
1) Dr. James
Ryan Lecturer in Modern European (Russian) History School of History,
Archaeology and Religion Cardiff University
2) Dr.
Richard Pipes, Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University
3) Professor
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca- Associate Professor in the Political Science Department
at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
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, N.(2012). Stalin: The Murderous Career of the Red Tsar.Arcturus
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