After when the father of communism, Karl Marx breathed his last breath in London only ten people attended the grave when his best friend Fredrich Engels said “His name and work will endure through the ages.”. That day the other 9 people who attended the mourning of the death of Marx thought whatever Engels said was absurd even though it may have seemed absurd at that time, whatever he said one of the most undeniable truths in the world.
Karl Marx’s Ideas made a lot sense but never tested in reality. His ideas were slightly impractical and futuristic. In fact, there is no truly modern communist nation that has existed or exist right now. Still many countries, political organizations, have claimed that Marx’s ideals to be their guiding faith. But how? Well, these countries have adopted a slightly less radical ideology, socialism to be their guiding faith. Even though many countries (example: Republic of Cuba, People’s republic of China, socialist republic of Vietnam.) have said they were socialists, socialism was only meant to be a transitional state between capitalism and communism. According to Karl Marx, Socialism is, after the revolution, it is impossible for the newly formed government jump straight into the state of communism, instead the government nationalizes the industry, redistributes the wealth from the rich landlords and factory owners to the working class. Still, these nations have been somehow successful, as they have achieved the three important goals, dignity of labor, free education, healthcare and food and equality of land.
Around the death of Karl Marx revolutions were brewing in many parts of the world the first one is the Russian revolution, the renaissance of the proletariat. Before the revolution Russia was ruled by Romanov dynasty. It was full of peasants and workers, and almost all of them did not get proper education. Still the Tsars (Romanovs at that time the king was Nicholas II) vaguely industrialized Russia. Life in Russia was like hell. The average Russian worker toiled eleven hours a day and was the lowest paid Europe. An anecdote to describe the abysmal administration of the tsars is, when Nichoas II was crowned, the coronation event was so mal-organized and crowded that many people who had come for the coronation had died. Not only the economy worse the monarchy was so religious and corrupt. Many uprisings had started, but we will not talk about all of them but the most important points. Let us start from the most important personality of the Russian revolution, V.I Lenin. Lenin was born to monarchist parents, but lived a life against the monarchy of Russia. Lenin was expelled from Imperial Kazan University at Autmn of 1887, accused of having participated in the Anti-tsarist movement. He joined the Alexei Sklyarenko’s socialist discussion circle, as his family moved to the city of samara. There he was a very prominent Marxist and embraced the ideals of the communist manifesto. Few years after, in 1897, Lenin with Julius Martov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Anatoly Vaneyev, Alexander Malchenko, P. Zaporozhets and V. Starkov had founded a political party known as League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (SBORK) after the famine in Russia 1891-92. After that the SBORK, Emancipation of labour, Jewish labour bund merged into the Russian social democratic labour party. Because of some Ideological differences, it was split into Bolshevik and Menshevik party. Bolshevik in Russian meant majority led by Lenin and Menshevik in Russian meant minority and was led by Julius Martov. Soon after in 1914 a saint too peacefully petitioned the tsar for better conditions for working. In fact, they shouted slogans such as “god save the king”. In-turn the tsar gave greetings to the petitioners with nothing but rifles. Meanwhile, because of lot of pressure, Tsar formed the Russian duma, the duma was the parliament of Russia. You may ask how the Tsar suddenly turned Russia democratic, actually he did not, he only commissioned the Duma, if he was also in power. Still the duma was so fragile that he vetoed most of the decisions of the Duma was vetoed by the Tsar if it was not favourable to him. Leaving that aside it, was total stupidity of the tsar involve himself to the World War one. Loss of resources getting wasted was not uncommon. Lots of soldiers dead. The Tsar himself went to the battle ground, leaving alone the Tsarina (queen of Russia) and she administered really bad. The political landscape in Russia was not good, one side Russia had internal problems because of the bad administration of the Romanovs and on another side the war was raging against Germany. Many soldiers of the Russian army started deserting it. Meanwhile Lenin was in exile in Germany, So the Germans sent Lenin in a train to Russia, to start the revolution. But already the February revolution (Where the tsar’s throne was abdicated and a temporary government was setup). The provisional government consisted of the Mensheviks, the soviet( a moderate socialist institution) And the Russian Duma. This government still leaned towards bourgeoise (the rich). This government was just a name’s sake. The war against Germany was still not over. Still The Tsar lived in a luxurious house with all facilities, not even in jail for the torture he had done to the people. Moreover, the provisional government was not in order, the military and government fighting with each other. Fortunately, the provisional government collapsed under its own greed, as Lenin arrived from his exile to start the Bolshevik revolution in October 1918. It literally took just ten days to overthrow the provisional government and establish proper socialist order. Still a civil war happened because many parts of the Russian army which did not like Russia’s new Marxist insurgency, the anarchists, the foreign imperialists who did not like the new Marxist insurgency and etc started the white army to overthrow Bolshevik rule. The Bolsheviks countered them with their workers and peasants red army. Meanwhile, the Tsar’s family were removed from their luxury palace was sent to Ekatinburg, in a house fully guarded by red army guards. As the white army was approaching Ekatinburg, Lenin who was the chairperson of the Sovnarkom (position of president in Soviet Union.) had no other way other than to execute them. So did he. Soon after in 1922 civil war ended. He made the population literate, he re-distributed the land from rich to the poor, health care was also provided for free, and provided the 8 hours work day. Even though he was a staunch Marxist, he introduced the New Economic policy (NEP) which slightly privatized the economy, this stabilized the Russian economy. However, Lenin got a stroke and he breathed his last breath in 1924. Unfortunately, his greedy general secretary of the party, Joseph Stalin (Not to confuse with M.K. Stalin) took over and started a repressive regime which spoiled the efforts of Lenin and the fame of the Soviet Union.
Now we saw about the history of the Russian revolution we have not seen about the Ideology that was used by Lenin to lead the revolution, Leninism. Leninism was an attempt to bend Marxism under the material conditions of the Tsarist Russia.
- The workers were not well versed with the ideology of Marxism and communism and did not know the need of communism therefore the educated peasants and workers start a vanguard party which leads the revolution in the behalf of the workers and peasants who are illiterate.
- Revolution could alone improve the life stranded of the workers and peasants trusting the government to pass reforms is a waste of time.
- The revolution should be an armed struggle against the capitalist state.
- Lenin believe there should be a dictatorship of the people (Dictatorship of the proletariat) after the revolution, to suppress counter-revolutionary forces and safeguard the gains of the revolution.
- Lenin expanded Marxist theory to incorporate imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. He argued that imperialism led to the exploitation of colonies and the export of capital, exacerbating class contradictions, and creating conditions ideal for revolution.
- Lenin believed that there should be lot internal debate inside the party for better decisions but everyone should adhere to the decision made finally for better unity inside the party, and the nation.
These are the principles that explain Leninism.
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