MacFormat 1996 July/macformat-039.iso/DATABASE/SHARED.DIR/01279_107.cap.txt

Text File | 1996-03-14 | 6.5 KB | 362 lines

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Lenin was born into
a family of middle-
class provincials.
When he was 17 his
brother Alexander,
whom he idolised,
was hanged for a
failed attempt to
assassinate the
tsar, Alexander III.
The young Lenin
became convinced
that 'any correctly
thinking and truly
honest person must
be a  revolutionary.'
#
Lenin's views soon
brought him to the
attention of the
police. Exiled for
his views, he set
up a wide network
of Marxists abroad.
He insisted that the
coming revolution
must be made by a
small core of dedi-
cated professionals,
a tactic adopted by
the majority- or
'bolsheviki' - at
the congress of
Social Democrats
at London in 1903
#
Lenin was in
Switzerland when
a revolution broke
in Petrograd. Mass
strikes and angry
demonstrations
were prompted
by war weariness,
food shortages, and
by contempt for
tsarist autocracy.
Troops called in to
disperse crowds
of demonstrators
showed them open
sympathy instead
#
The mutiny of the
Petrograd garrison
swiftly destroyed
tsarist credibility.
The dynasty of the
Romanovs, which
had lasted 300
years, was over.
The autocracy was
replaced by the so-
called Provisional
Government. The
Bolsheviks played
almost no part in
the revolution
#
As a boy, Nicholas II had watched his grandfather, Alexander II, die in agony after
being blown up by revolutionary assassins. He always knew he might meet a similar
fate. After the first revolution the tsar was placed under house arrest. When the
Bolsheviks took power the whole family was deported beyond the hope of rescue
@
Lenin returned to
Russia in April
1917 with the
intention of over-
throwing the new
provisional govern-
ment. An attempted
coup by  Bolsheviks
in July failed, and
Lenin fled into
hiding in Finland.
It seemed that his
vision of a workers'
state was going to
be lost in the chaos
of the headless
Russian state
#
Undetered  by the
July fiasco, Lenin
was determined to
seize power in the
capital. He came
back in disguise
from Finland to
make new plans.
On the night of
November 7, 1917
(October 25 in the
Julian calendar),
armed Bolshevik
troops stormed key
sites in Petrograd,
among them the
Winter Palace. The
October revolution,
the pivotal event
of the century,
was under way
#
Kerensky, the head
of the provisional
government fled
Petrograd after
the Bolsheviks.
Lenin tried to win
over the populace
with the slogan
'Bread, peace and
land and announced:
'We shall create
a proletarian
socialist state.
Long live the
socialist world
revolution!'
#
Few observers
expected Lenin's
infant  regime to
last for long. The
Bolsheviks soon
signed a peace
treaty to end the
war with Germany,
but civil war broke
out in Russia as
right-wing Whites
clashed with the
Red Army, led by
Lev Trotsky
#
Lenin's success in crushing opposition relied heavily on terror and the use of
the Cheka secret police. Felix Dzerzhinsky was the architect of repression,
appointed as head of the Cheka in December 1917. Lenin used the Cheka as
much against the non-Bolshevik left as against the right
#
Lenin always
stood head and
shoulders above
his colleagues. His
authority was so
great that it was
never felt
necessary to
assign him a post
in the party. He
was simply the
leader. A cult of
his personality
began to establish
itself even while
he was alive
@
Lenin was a
tireless worker
for the revolu-
tionary cause both
before and after
the great victory
of October 1917,
and his phenomenal
stamina was part
of his genius. His
collected works
run to dozens of
volumes of books
articles, pamphlets
and memoranda
#
The Constituent
Assembly was
the first Russian
parliament to be
elected by a
popular vote. The
Bolsheviks won
only 24 per cent
of the vote and
forcibly dissolved
it on the first day
that it sat. This
inaugurated the
'dictatorship of
the proletariat'
#
The effects of
civil war were
worsened by the
Bolshevik take-
over of factories
and property and
the collapse of
the banking
system. Lenin's
new state was in
constant crisis as
British, French,
American and
Japanese troops
intervened on the
side of the Whites
#
An assassination
attempt on Lenin
in 1918 was used
as a pretext to
widen Red terror
against socialist
opponents. The
would-be assassin
was Fanya Kaplan,
a young Socialist
Revolutionary. The
SRs were a rival
left-wing party
popular with the
Russian peasants.
Kaplan was shot.
#
The survival of
Bolshevism was
in doubt through-
out 1919 as White
armies advanced
on Petrograd and
Moscow, the new
capital. Lenin kept
up morale with
parades in Moscow's
Red Square, but
even to many loyal
Bolsheviks it
seemed that the
days of the world's
first socialist state
were numbered
#
The inspired leadership of Lev Trotsky, and Bolshevik control of the
Moscow-Petrograd core of European Russia, enabled the Red Army to inflict heavy
defeats on the Whites in1920. In November 1920, the last cohesive White units
were evacuated from Sevastopol
#
Authoritarian
Bolshevik rule
combined with
the rigors of "war
communism" and
the banning of
private enterprise
to produce a series
of revolts in 1921.
The most serious
was a rising by
sailors previously
loyal to Lenin at
the naval base in
Kronstadt. Troops
marched across the
frozen ice of the
Finnish Gulf and
ambushed the
sailors to put
down the revolt
#
In 1921 Lenin
was forced to
go back on the
harsh economic
measures which
had created chaos
and hostility in the
population. In a
'tactical retreat'
from  Marxist
ideology Lenin
introduced his 'new
economic policy',
which allowed
peasants to sell
surplus grain for
personal profit
and gave rise to a
culture of small
businesses in
the big cities
@
Lenin's health was
undermined by a
series of strokes.
The third, in March
1923, confined him
to a wheelchair. He
could not decide
whether Trotsky
('too reaching a
self-confidence')
or Stalin ('too rude')
should succeed him,
and his last letters
and instructions are
full of disillusion
#
Lenin died in 1924.
His corpse was
embalmed and put
on display in a
mausoleum on Red
Square, where it
still lies. Lenin had
shaped the world's
first Communist
state, dominating
it through personal
charisma and an
unwavering sense
of purpose. The
state he founded
is in tatters, but
Vladimir Lenin
casts his long
shadow over our
century even now
#
Leninism had many
inner weaknesses:
its rank economic
incompetence, its
brutality, the
moral corruption
implicit in a single
party state. These
things led to the
collapse of the
USSR in 1991.
Statues of Lenin
were gleefully
torn from their
pedestals, and
the reputation of
Lenin, an extra-
ordinary but
deeply flawed
man, came down
with them
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