Vladimir Ilich Lenin Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870–1924) was a major Marxist theorist who put his ideas into practice by leading the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and bringing communist government to Russia. His political philosophy, called Leninism or Marxist Leninism, inspired communist movements throughout the world in the twentieth century.

Lenin—born as Vladimir Ulianov—was drawn to revolutionary activity after his brother was executed in 1887 for participation in a plot to assassinate the tsar. Lenin was expelled from Kazan University, where he studied law, for his involvement in radical organizations. He was exiled to Siberia in 1895, where he took the nom de guerre Lenin from the nearby Lena River.

After his release from internal exile in 1900, he left Russia and joined a Russian Marxist circle in Switzerland. He helped found the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1898 and together with fellow radicals Julius Martov and Grigorii Plekhanov edited the journal Iskra (Spark), which was smuggled into Russia to promote a socialist revolution among workers.

In 1902 Lenin wrote What Is to be Done?, in which he argued that revolution would only be brought about by an elite party of professional revolutionaries, not by workers. This was a major departure from the beliefs of German philosopher Karl Marx, who maintained that the workers would attain class consciousness and revolt. Lenin believed that workers, if left to themselves, would develop a trade union mentality and attempt to reform, not overthrow, capitalism. In 1903 he put this idea into practice by forcing a schism in the RSDLP, creating the more radical Bolshevik (from the Russian word for majority) Party. He advocated an immediate and violent revolution to overthrow the tsar and capitalism in Russia, but, as an exile, he lacked the power base to achieve this goal. Instead, he engaged in polemics with other Marxists in Europe and later produced major works extending Marxist analysis, including Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) and State and Revolution (1917). He emphasized that communism would not mean a “withering away” of the state but instead would require a dictatorship of the proletariat, which he equated as rule by a communist party. He split with the Socialist Second International in 1914 over the question of socialist support for World War I (1914–1918), which he opposed.

Lenin did not return to Russia until April 1917, after the tsar had been overthrown. Once there, he argued for another revolution to bring about communism. The Bolsheviks were weaker compared to other political groups, but Lenin’s radical position helped win more converts, including Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky, as the political, economic, and social situation in Russia deteriorated. In November 1917 (October in the old Russian calendar), Lenin convinced his fellow Bolsheviks to seize power from the provisional government. They succeeded, and afterward the Bolsheviks established a Soviet (communist) government in Russia.

Lenin became leader of the Soviet state, fighting off challenges from noncommunist opponents in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) while attempting to bring about a rapid transformation to communism. He later altered course in 1921 with the New Economic Policy, which envisioned more gradual change. He died in 1924 without naming a successor, and questions about his true intentions as to how to build communism remain debated. His ideas about party organization and the need for violent revolution became the basis for most communist movements in the twentieth century.

Bibliography:

Conquest, Robert. V. I. Lenin. New York:Viking, 1972.
Hill, Christopher. Lenin and the Russian Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1971.
Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Tucker, Robert, ed. The Lenin Anthology. New York: Norton, 1975.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Lenin: A New Biography. Translated by Harold Shukman. New York: Free Press, 1994.

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