Who was Nikolai Lenin?
Vladimir llyich Ulyanov, popularly known as easily as Lenin, the founding father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born on April 10, 1870 at village called Simbrisk and located on the bank of the river servant and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. His parents took good care of him and gave him good education.
In those of days of early 19th period in Russia, there the administration was corrupt and inefficient. People were very poor unhappy and illiterate. The official’s of the Tsar were the real rulers who exploited the poor peasants as much as they could. The sepoys and secret agents of Tsars hunted down, persecuted and killed or sent into exile to Siberia on the slightest suspicion of one’s being a revolutionary.
During Period 1807
Plot against Tsar Alexander III came to light. Lenin’s brother was accused to be one of those who tried to throw a bomb at the Tsar and he was sent to gallows. Then Lenin was in school, but this tragic incident left an indelible impression on his tender mind and memory.
Therefore, Lenin later joined the Social Democrats, the group of young and educated Russians who wanted to bring about radical reforms in order to build a new and better Russian through a revolution.
Next he joined a law college at Petrograd but his sole aim was to eliminate and wipe out the Tsar and his corrupt administration and rouse the people into a revolution. he came under a deep influence of Karl Max believed that private property was wrong and that workers and peasants could gain power and destroy capitalism only by a violent revolution. Lenin read with deep interest Marx’s Das Kapital.
A large group of young men in St. Petersburg railed round Lenin and worked secretly to bring about the early fall of the Tsar and his corrupt and tyrannical rule. But soon was arrested and sent to Siberia from where he went into self-exile aboard in 1900.
Lenin along with his equally determined wife undergo a lot of hardship and constant touch with his fellow revolutionaries in Russia through communication and prepared meetings in support of the cause wherever he went and lived.
First World War Circumstances
In the in the intervening time the First World War broke out. Earlier 10 years ago Japan had defeated Russia in 1904. The War offered a golden opportunity for Lenin. Russian people began to think that the Tsar and his men were corrupt and out of touch with the ground realities.
When they could not manage things in peace time, how would they do during the First World War. Impatience increased both in the force and the civilians and people felt demoralized. Food, fuel and other essential possessions were scarce and costly and people began to have nothing to eat.
The economy got on the verge of collapse. Consequently, riots broke out in the Capital St. Petersburg which was renamed as Petrograd at the beginning of the World War One.
When the army troops joined the rioting public, the Tsar abdicated and adviser resigned and a temporary government came into power. First government was headed by Prince George Lvov and then by Alexander Kerensky. They both proved very weak chief ministers. The Bolsheviks were strong-minded to seize power.
In April 1917 Lenin returned from exile in Germany. There was extensive confusion, chaos and discontentment. People wanted peace, law and order. The Bolsheviks wanted Russia to become a communist country.
Finally they seized power in Petrograd led by Lenin in November 1917. In March 1918 they signed a peace with Germany. They moved the capital Petrograd to Moscow and implemented large scale reforms.
USSR
The Bolshevik or October Revolution had at last succeeded with Lenin as Premier and Trotsky in charge of foreign affairs. And then began one of the greatest experiments in human history. Large farm estates were broken up and given to the peasants and workers. Factories came under direct control of the workers.
Banks were nationalized and the vast property of the church was seized.
The secret police known as “Cheka” was formed which came to be known as “Ogpu” later. The white Russians or anti-communities were put to death in thousands including Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Thousands other fled to neighboring countries. For Lenin ends always justified the means.
The name of the country was altered to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Lenin introduced maximum Communism. All the supplies – everything produced in the factories and on the farms by workers and peasants was taken-over by the State and in return the workers were given the supplies like, bread, clothes, shelters etc.
Later he restored in part to private enterprise and ownership in 1921 faced with a terrible drought and famine. Millions of peasants and workers died of starvation and the situation was really desperate.
Lenin Bequest
Under Lenin’s new economic policy large collective, cooperative and mechanized farms came into existence. This plan was further carried out by the “steel man” Stalin on a gigantic scale. It was a super human task to implement such large reforms and such a huge scale.
New-Russia- union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The storm and stress was too much and so Lenin died in 1924 after a long illness at the age of 54. In six years Lenin had altered Russia into an on the whole different state.
At this death Russia was stunned and people could not believe that their hero was dead. Once when an attempt was made on Lenin’s life Trotsky said, “When we think that Lenin may die, our whole life seems useless and we cease to want to live. “ After his death a new struggle for power began to between Stalin and Trotsky. Ultimately, Josef Stalin won and went on to rule over Soviet Russia until 1953.
The Communist Hero Petersburg
The name of St. Petersburg was changed to Leningrad in the honour this communist hero, who remodeled the largest State of modern history. Lenin has been one of the greatest world huge personalities.
His ideas were not original. They were rented from Karl Marx but he gave them practical shape to a large extent. His courage was stupendous and faith formidable and they in combination took Lenin to new and dizzy heights of success and fame.
What he did for the millions of workers and peasants of Russia, only he could have done and none else. He himself lived like a peasant or worker all his life. His life was as simple as is possible. He was a great revolutionary and his motto was, “Workers of the world , Unite.