Lenin and the

Bolshevik seizure

of Power

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born in Simbirsk, Russia in 1870. His brother Aleksandr was executed in St. Petersburg in 1887 for his involvement in an assassination plot on the Russian Emperor Alexander III. Later that year he enrolled in Kazan, a university in Russia but before he completed his first term he was expelled for participating in a demonstration. Then he went to live with his mother and enrolled at St. Petersburg University. He graduated from the University with a degree in law.

When he was going to St. Petersburg University Lenin began to read radical political literature. His favorite was What is to be Done by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. He began to shape his personality after one of the characters named Rakhmetev. Rakhmetev was a very disciplined person who spent all of his time thinking about revolutionary politics. Around the same time, he was being introduced to the ideas of Karl Marx, a German philosopher, through Marx’s greatest work Das Capital. Lenin then became to consider himself a Marxist.

He received his degree in law in 1892. He then moved to Samara and took the job of a lawyer’s assistant. His earlier run in with the law limited his potential as a lawyer. He soon began focusing on revolutionary politics. In the mid 1890s he quit his job in Samara and moved to St. Petersburg. He became associated with the influential Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov and a group of radicals who also believed in the ideas of Karl Marx.

Lenin and the Marxists began working with the industrial workers of St. Petersburg to increase their awareness of their political and economic power. They agitated and distributed political literature in the industrial areas of St. Petersburg. They also attempted to organize strikes to improve working conditions in factories, even though labor unions were illegal in Russia at this time. In 1895 the St. Petersburg Marxists formed the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class so that they could continue their efforts. The group of people who formed this organization included Yuly Martov, a Marxist who would later become one of Lenin’s biggest rivals. It also included Nadezhda Krupskaya, who would later become Lenin’s wife.

Shortly after they had formed the union Lenin and Martov were arrested by the state police. Then in 1897, after serving 15 months in prison Lenin was sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia. During his exile he married Krupskaya, who was also in exile for an incident that happened after Lenin was arrested. In 1899 Lenin wrote his first major work, which was titled, The Development of Capitalism in Russia. This was about applying the lessons of Marx to Russian society. In the book he said that their needed to be a revolution led by the lower class. This revolution would overthrow the imperialist government and would establish a socialist government.

Lenin’s exile ended in 1900. He first went to Switzerland then settled in Munich, Germany. There, Krupskaya joined him one year later. Together with other similar minded Marxists, he became one of the chief editors of the Iskra newspaper, first published in Munich in December 1900. Iskra’s goal was to bring together Marxists from all over Europe, Russia in particular, and to prepare them for the overthrow of the imperial government.

While many Marxists in Western Europe favored the strategy of pursuing socialist goals as a legal political party, the Iskra editors thought it was a betrayal to the ultimate commitment to socialist revolution. Lenin repeatedly emphasized the need for radical thinking and political activism. In 1902, he published What is to be Done? A pamphlet that argued that the revolution should be led by well disciplined, military style fashion, party of professional revolutionaries.

            At the second congress for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in Brussels in 1903 Lenin and his colleagues argued about how the party should be organized. Lenin wanted a smaller party with members who actively worked for the organization. Other members of the party including Martov argued that the party should be open to anyone who shared their political ideas. The party voted and Lenin’s side won by a small margin. As a result of this vote the two sides merged with the RSDLP. Lenin’s side was called the Bolsheviks (the Russian word for majority), and the side led by Martov was called the Mensheviks (the Russian word for minority). Lenin spent the next few years attacking the Mensheviks’ ideas.    

In a pamphlet that was published in 1905 Lenin and the Bolsheviks wrote about how Russia’s revolution would work. They said that the peasants must unite and overthrow the imperial government and establish a dictatorship. The Mensheviks however said that Russia could not go directly from its current state to a dictatorship ruled by workers and peasants. Instead they said that the bourgeois must rule Russia for a while before they went into a dictatorship.

In 1905, the Russian Revolution was a common effort of all revolutionary and reformist movements. In the first Duma of 1906, the Constitutional Democrats were the strongest party, but in 1907 the Social Democrats took part in the elections. In 1912 the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks became separate parties. The Bolsheviks wanted to defeat czarist Russia and bring the proletariat to power. The right wing of the Mensheviks supported the war efforts in World War I. The left wing wanted peace.

In 1914 World War I started. Lenin spent the initial years of World War I in Switzerland. World War I inspired Lenin to write one of his most influential books Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). In the book, he argued that the war was an inevitable result of Western capitalism and imperialism. The book said that the capitalist states of Europe were relying on aggressive foreign expansion to maintain economic profits. He was convinced that the war signaled the final decline of world capitalist economy and bringing the socialist revolution nearer. He declared himself a “defeatist” and argued that imperialist Russia’s defeat would surely bring revolution in Russia. In showing support for Russia’s defeat in World War I, Lenin found himself alone among his fellow Russian Marxists, for whom the war had aroused some patriotism.

In 1917 Russia was in a bad state. The Czar was running the war effort himself, there were food shortages, and there was inadequate industry. In February of 1917riots broke out in St. Petersburg. This caused the Czar to call an emergency meeting of the Duma. This committee assumed control of Russia on March 1, 1917. Another organization that was formed at this time was the Petrograd Soviet (Council) of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. This committee was made up of representatives of the workers and soldiers. Then of March 2 Czar Nicholas II left the throne. This was the end of the Russian monarchy. The new prime minister of Russia was George Lvov, who was replaced by Alexander Kerensky in July. He kept Russia in WWI to keep the nations honor. This upset the people of Russia.

Lenin was imprisoned and exiled in Switzerland for leading the Bolsheviks. He was convinced that Russia could not stop with the creation of this new government. He believed that Russia must go to the final stage of the Revolution and create a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” This is a government that is run on behalf of Russia’s workers and peasants. Lenin knew that he had to go back to Russia in order to keep the revolution going. France and Italy both tried hard to keep him in Switzerland. They refused to let him pass through their countries because they thought that Lenin’s presence in Russia would hurt the Allied war effort. Then Germany helped Lenin get back into Russia because they wanted Lenin to cause unrest in the country. This would enable Germany to more easily defeat Russia in World War I.

Lenin arrived back in St. Petersburg in early April of 1917. After he arrived back in Russia Lenin issued his famous April thesis. In this thesis he said that the Bolsheviks must struggle to prepare for a soviet revolution. Then in July he was exiled again, this time to Finland. While in exile he wrote the pamphlet, State and Revolution. In this pamphlet he outlined his ideas about how the soviets would take power in Russia. By the end of October Lenin had returned to Russia and continued his quest to bring about a Revolution. By the end of October Lenin had convinced a majority of the Bolsheviks to stage an armed uprising. Then in November armed workers, soldiers, and sailors stormed the winter palace and arrested members of the Russian government. That same day the Second Congress of Soviets met and announced soviet power.

Information from- http://www.biography.com/search/article.jsp?aid=9379007&search=Lenin

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761562790/Lenin_Vladimir_Ilich.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0808194.html

http://www.uofdhigh.k12.mi.us/faculty/buchtar/43RussRev0304out.htm